Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 14, 2019 | There's An App For That - Proverbs 3:5-6

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July 14, 2019 | There's An App For That - Proverbs 3:5-6 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: How'd you like worship?
0:06
SPEAKER_00: You better be saying it was good, because that ref worship depends on you more than it does.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: Our worship is intentionally pew-centered, not stage-centered.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: And so uh hope you were belting it out.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: I had the privilege of singing next to somebody who was singing almost as loudly as I was.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: That was fun.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: So if you're visiting today, if you're just coming, we're doing a series this summer called There's an App for that.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Based upon the number one Bible app in the world, it's called UVersion.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: Last year, uh Uversion uh boosted 1800 versions in 1,200 languages around the world, and just picking one statistic, people read 27.2 billion chapters on UVersion in 2018.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Starting eight years ago, they started figuring out what verse each year was shared the most, bookmarked the most, read the most, etc., etc.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: And so this summer my series, there's an app for that, is going through those uh those verses during the last eight years.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: And we've gotten up to 2015, and this is the world's favorite verse for 2015, Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Last week and I, uh last week, Melody and I, uh Melody happens to be my wife.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: So uh Melody and I missed the 4th of July.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Actually, of course, we didn't miss it at all.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: We were there during the live during the 24 hours, but we happen to be in our northern neighbor, Canada.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: So we missed all the independence food and fireworks.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: If you've never been to Canada, it's a lot like America, but without Disneyland, without the good economy, but it does have government health care and signs in French and people that make fun of us, and lots and cold weather.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the sun only peaked out two of the nine days we were there.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: We were with our daughter Adriel and her husband Daniel and their three little girls, and uh they used they joked when we were there that Nova Scotia, which is on the Atlantic coast up there, has two seasons in the year.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: There's winter and there's August.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: And we weren't there in August, so we suffered.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: But we made it work.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Eight of us crammed into an SUV and we traveled the roads and we hiked the trails even in the rain of part of Nova Scotia.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: It's called Cape Breton, it's an island, and uh it was uh it was beautiful, the brochures were right that uh the scenery was beautiful even in the rain, and the towns are quaint.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: But the roads we found were narrow and windy.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: When a truck comes around the corner, you get to the uh shoulder.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the roads were so zigzag and so crooked, there are 158 miles of roads on that island, and we went over most of them.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Adrian Daniel stocked up the SUV with dramamine patches and medication and with a whole pile of these barf bags uh for the girls.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: And every day as we would wind up and down and back and forth and around, our youngest granddaughter would cry now and then, I'm getting sick, and I would hold my nose.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So, um, so but I thought since, and this is not this last week, week before, and I thought I was gonna preach on Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, which talks about straight roads, I found myself asking, why is the road of life that Christians live on, that God gives us, why is it so crooked?
3:53
SPEAKER_00: Why is it so zigzaggy?
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, of course, Christians pretend that it isn't that way at all, that it's straight, and it's smooth, and it's not winding.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when we're sharing the life of Jesus with people that need it, and when we're talking about the new life in Christ, we present it as a straight, smooth, level road.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: Yoke is easy, burden is light.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And then when by faith they step on that road, they find out that it's not so straight and not so smooth.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: Last Sunday night we had a great baptism out at Larry and Patty Kazir's Pond in the Shiny Heights area.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: We love listening to the 35 testimonies of the 35 children and parents.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're going down in the water, and they were really uh authentic and real, although it is kind of funny when a six-year-old says, years I spent in vanity and pride, and I finally, you know, whatever.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, uh, they were really uh authentic and realistic and theologically accurate.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes at a baptism, though, you hear a testimony that goes something like this.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: I have had a lot of troubles in my life, money troubles, addiction troubles to alcohol and to other things.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: My marriage's broken up, I've been a bad boy or been a bad girl, but then I put my faith in Christ and my life has changed and everything is great now.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: And you hear that, and and your first response, if you're Christian, is to cheer, because it fits the promise that we proclaim that heaven uh has a wonderful plan for your life, you know, down here as well as in the future, that in a world that is broken and chaotic and sad and all messed up and fractious, that life in the Savior is full of meaning and it's full of hope and it's full of joy.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: And if you trust Christ as your Savior, life will be different for you.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: It will come together.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: And there's truth there, isn't there, that to know Christ is to know the meaning of life and to have purpose in life and to be a child of the king, walking on the roadway to heaven.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: But of course, this is not the whole truth.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Right?
6:04
SPEAKER_00: Because all of us in this room have walked a long and winding road, it's felt like, with zigzags and barf bags and detours that are uh crooked and narrow.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: And so we're surprised, frankly, when we come to one of our favorite verses in the entire Bible, Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, that we find that it ends like this: trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, always acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Really?
6:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe the reason this verse is so popular in 2015, and maybe the reason you and I decided we liked it so much, is we're more familiar with the King James Version, and we probably are, right?
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not unto thine own understanding, and all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall what?
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Direct thy past.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: So it's a verse about guidance, is a verse that promises that God will, especially in the two major areas of life, you know, when you're young, meaning where am I going to go to college and who am I going to marry?
7:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is when this verse is like other guidance verses, is grasped because we're desperate not to make a mistake that'll, you know, that'll ruin us.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: And so a verse that promises guidance, and maybe around the world, this is the way it was translated in most of those translations.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe not.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was a smooth, uh, the New King James Version, fortunately, adds at the bottom, or make smooth or straight, which is by far, well, actually the only correct translation.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: And maybe around the world, especially say in Africa, where they are besotted, the Christian church in Africa is besotted with health and wealth gospel.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe that's why they liked it so much.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: It seemed to promise that God would pave your way to success, you know, if you trust him.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: But let's just talk about this last line for just a second.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: The NIV came along and translated accurately.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: He'll make your paths straight.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: And every modern translation leaves the whole guidance thing and moves to a prosperity type of a thing.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: And this is a common theme, especially I preached earlier this year on Isaiah.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: And Isaiah is the book in the Bible where one of its main themes is a highway.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: You can't go more than a few chapters in that book without it talking about a highway or a road.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: And in that book, it's always talking about a wonderfully straight or smooth road.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make straight in the desert a highway, make straight in the desert a highway for our God, begins the second half of the book, Isaiah 40.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, you and I are used to Europeans making fun of us here in the Midwest for our straight roads, right?
8:47
SPEAKER_00: Haven't you ever had anybody, or even in the East?
8:50
SPEAKER_00: When you go look at the leaves in New Hampshire or Vermont, oh, you come from the Midwest.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Or you can just, you know, put your car in 55 or 60 or 65 or whatever, and turn off your mind and drive straight four or seven hours or whatever.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, they make fun of us uh in Europe today for that, but but the fact is in the ancient Near East, they longed for a few yards of straight road because it took so long to get places, walking, or on a donkey or something on a horse, whatever, like that, on a camel.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: And not only that, but there were so many dangers back then.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: There were lions back then around the very next bend, and there were robbers, and so they longed for straight roads and smooth roads.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: And here you have a verse that seems to be promising a straight road, and just a little seminary moment here to convince you that this is a verse about success.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 3 is the number one health and wealth chapter in the Bible.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: Though most health and wealth people don't study the Bible, so they don't know that.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: But uh the first ten verses, first ten verses, notice the odd numbered verses 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 tell you what you need to do.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: That's a the condition you need to keep the if you keep the commands of God, if you love faithfully, if you keep my commands, the Father says, if you love faithfully, if you trust the Lord, this is our verse, if you fear the Lord, if you honor the Lord, then the results are the even numbered verses, two, four, six, eight, and ten.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: Then you'll have a long life.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
10:21
SPEAKER_00: And peace.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Then you will create you'll have favor with everybody on earth and in heaven, God and man.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: You'll have a straight, smooth path.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: You'll you'll be healed from your diseases.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: You'll have prosperity, your barns will be full.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: So you have these amazing promises that come if you will simply do this.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: And you and I are going, really, that's pretty exciting, but you know, really, do I believe it?
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Do I believe that Proverbs 3, this health and wealth chapter, gives us five keys to guarantee biblical wealth and prosperity?
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Certainly a number of people take it that way.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: And you can't drive more than 10 miles in Africa anywhere.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Even the best Christians down there somehow believe the prosperity preachers that have come over.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: Even though they're living in abject poverty, they believe if they just give their last penny to these preachers, that they'll become wealthy themselves.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 3 could be titled How to Be or How to Enjoy Success in Life or How to Live the Good Life, which is a really interesting topic lately, because just in the last year or two, we're finding that people who graduate from university are suing the university because they they thought that the university was promising them success in life.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Man sues Western University, alleging their med school didn't set him up to succeed.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Student sues Anglior Ruskin University for Mickey Mouse degree that hasn't helped her career.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: So people want success, and we really want success.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: And then the Bible comes along and says, You want success?
11:53
SPEAKER_00: I'll show you how to have success.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: I'll show you how to have how to live the good life.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: That's what Proverbs 3 says.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Now, in the Old Testament, Proverbs 3 is not the only place that promises prosperity and health, especially earlier in the Old Testament, when God was clearly the king of Israel, and so forth, we have all these promises like in Deuteronomy 5.33.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: Walk in obedience to all the Lord your God's commanded you so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess, right?
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 37, 25, even more shocking.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: I've been young and now I'm old, and yet I've not seen the righteous forsaken, or his children begging for bread.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: I can take you places, if, you know, overseas.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: And India and China were just in this last year, the two most populous countries in the entire world have decided to start persecuting Christians.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Both of their governments have gone super uh, in the one case communistic, but both anti-Christian, in the other case Hindu.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a promise.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Thumbs up.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: Never see Christians begging bread.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: And yet we have we have these balancing verses, right?
13:11
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 73, say, no, this is not true.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: Did I keep my heart pure for nothing?
13:17
SPEAKER_00: Did I keep myself innocent for no reason?
13:19
SPEAKER_00: I get nothing, says David.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: I get nothing but trouble all day long.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Every morning brings me pain.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's entirely the opposite.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: And then we have the story of Job and we have the story of Jesus.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Neither one experienced, Jesus didn't experience a long life, did he?
13:34
SPEAKER_00: Didn't experience prosperity.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Job didn't get that unrelenting help.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't easy, it wasn't straight, wasn't smooth.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: He said, Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: How do we resolve this theological problem?
13:48
SPEAKER_00: By the way, we find some verses that combine both ideas.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 37, 1 and 12.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: The wicked plot against the righteous, so your life's not going to be easy.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: But their day is coming, so one day the road will become smooth, right?
14:03
SPEAKER_00: First verse, don't fret because of the wicked.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: Like the grass, they will wither.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: I like Proverbs 24, 16.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: This is the same book we're in in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: I think that this verse captures both sides in Proverbs.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a unique verse in the Bible, and I think it captures the truth perfectly.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: A righteous man falls seven times.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: You're going to come across potholes and you're going to fall.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Righteous man falls seven times and rises again.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: Beautiful verse.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about this because we want to walk away with something from Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Let's decide quickly what the translation should be, what should what we should stick with.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: And let's start with the end of it, the most famous line, he shall direct thy path.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: The New King James is correct that it's make smooth or straight.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice, by the way, two observations really quickly.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: There are four verbs, one for each of these lines, four verbs in this verse.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: Everything hangs on the four verbs.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: There's trust, lean, or lean not, acknowledge, and direct, or make straight.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: Those are the four verbs.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: The first three verbs are what you and I do.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: They are our responsibility.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: It's our job to trust.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: It's our job to lean not.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: It's our job to acknowledge Him, right?
15:20
SPEAKER_00: And the fourth is God's responsibility.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: If we do the first three, then God says He'll do number four.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay, is that clear?
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Second observation is that there is one word in this verse.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: Here's the NIV.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: There is one word that appears four times, once in each line.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: You see which word that is?
15:41
SPEAKER_00: Answer is it's the pronoun your.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with your heart, and on your own understanding, all your ways make your path straight.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: So this is about you and God.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: This is not about somebody else, not about the church.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: This is not something someone else can do for you.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: This is really personal.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: This is you.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: This is your job, your responsibility, and then what God will do for you.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: All right, uh, let's talk about the translation.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: The NIV, I think correctly, I'm sure correctly, concludes make your paths straight.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: NIV, though, for some strange and wacko reason, puts in the word submit instead of acknowledge.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Two very different words.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: So let's ignore that, okay?
16:21
SPEAKER_00: NIV, you're done.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh the ESV, English Standard Version, very popular today.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: It was a seven-month revision of the old revised standard.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Correct, all the translations agree.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: Do not lean on your own understanding.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: It goes back to acknowledge in all your ways.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Good version.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: If you have ESV, this is good, but I got a better one.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
16:48
SPEAKER_00: The CSB is called the Christian Standard Bible, and even though the Southern Baptists were in charge of it, it was a seven-year new brand new version, uh, more recent than these others.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: And uh notice how it changes the word in line three.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not rely.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: It changes lean to rely, to explain it.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: What as if we need to an explanation of what lean means.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: So I don't like that.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: But on your honor, in all your ways, know him.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting, though, the literal translations of this verse, the young translation, the Jewish translation, and so forth, all say no, but most modern ones just stick with acknowledge.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge no.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
17:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, the Hebrew word is this simple, very, very common word, no, and that's gonna be highly significant.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: Because when we're talking about acknowledge, I don't know about you, but when I've recited this verse a million times over the year, acknowledge, trust the Lord I heartly not and acknowledge him.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I got like, what does that mean?
17:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it means so you sort of give him a thumbs up.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm acknowledging you in this situation.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: It seems too mild to me, and and I know that it's there's a better translation.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna go with the Christian, no, we're not.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go with my translation.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, G.I.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Packer, we're talking here when we're talking about no.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna share with you something significant.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: This is the key to this verse, I think.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about knowing God.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Not acknowledging whatever that means, but knowing Him.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh, really a quick comparison.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Sorry about this, this is just the kind of thing I do.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, King James, NIV, English Standard, CSB, Christian Standard.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: So all four have trust in the first line.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: Three of the four have lean in line two.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: Christian Standard doesn't think we're smart enough to know what lean is, so it gets rid of the metaphor.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: And then we have acknowledge, NIV had a mind blip and switch to submit.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge, CSB no.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: And then King James Version had a direct, which is really popular, but just flat wrong.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: And then we have make straight, make straight, make straight.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: So here's the divinely inspired version, okay?
19:07
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to recite this with me.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the go with me, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: Get ready, it's gonna change now.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: In all your ways, know him intimately, and he will make your paths straight.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
19:29
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Memorize that.
19:31
unknown: Okay.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: So let me walk through the four lines and tell you how this verse can change your life.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Number one, trust in the Lord with all your heart.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: This is the word trust, very common word.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: It's the word amen.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: It's the word for faith.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: It's a word, however, that we somehow think must be invested with some halo or religious meaning, but it doesn't really mean anything different than trusting your doctor, trusting your attorney, or trusting the medication that you take.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: It just means you are uh actually it's related to an Arabic word uh that that means to fling yourself, like flinging yourself on a bed at the end of an exhausting day.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: You're exactly, you come home, you're totally exhausted.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever done this and you just flop onto your bed?
20:10
SPEAKER_00: You fling yourself with a reckless abandon upon your bed and you let your tiredness just soak into the mattress.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: So that's the picture here.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: You're trusting in the Lord.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: You're flinging yourself on him.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: Not quite sure.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's no guarantees in life, but that's what trust is.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: And you do it with all your heart, not your bloody pumper.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: The heart in the Old Testament is the center of who you are.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: It includes your emotions, your feelings, your mind, your how you think, and then the decision you make.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: That is your will, your mind, emotions, and will.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: So the very heart of you trust in the Lord.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: This is the main phrase, this is the main command of this verse.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh the middle two lines explain or feed into this, and then you have the promise, okay?
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: By the way, uh, do I have time?
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, listen, okay, back in Isaiah, I couldn't preach on this.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: There was too much to preach on in Isaiah, but I did include this, I'm sure, in my devotions in Isaiah 8.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah, the first half of it, is all about trusting in the Lord.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: And the prophet Isaiah is just pleading with King Ahaz, who's scared because of attacking nations.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: Don't try, you're you're trusting in Assyria.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: You're calling on this nation, you know, this foreign nation.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're and he makes, and Isaiah makes this picture statement.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm asking you to trust in the little Gihon Spring here in Jerusalem.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: This little spring that still runs there in Jerusalem.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: I'll be walking in 10 days, I'll be walking 50 people through it.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: Hezekiah built a tunnel a few years, just within five years of Isaiah saying this to Ahaz.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so I'll be walking people through this little spring.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm asking you, Isaiah says, to trust in the Lord, the little Gihon spring here in Jerusalem.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: I realize it's a gently flowing small stream, and you're wanting to trust in the mighty river Euphrates, which runs through the nation of Assyria.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: And I realize that the mighty river Euphrates seems a lot more trustworthy in these political days of instability than this little gently flowing stream of the Lord.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you, he says, on the one hand, the Euphrates likes to overflow its banks.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: And I can promise that if you trust Assyria, which Ahaz did, and this prediction was right, he's going to come and he's going to wipe out your enemies, but he's going to overflow his banks and he's going to come and he's going to wipe out the northern ten tribes.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: And that happened.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: And number two, Isaiah said, I'm telling you, this little gently flowing stream of the Gihon, one day will be the mightiest river on earth, and the Euphrates will dry up.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: And I wrote in my I wrote in my devotion, I said, you know, this is the way we are.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: We trust in what seems to be the biggest and the best and the greatest.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: And he said, and I wrote, looks can be deceiving, right?
23:14
SPEAKER_00: That Rolex watch you bought on the street, disintegrated.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Your favorite actress looks like a dream.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: Then you learn she's a nightmare.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: Your candidate of choice, talked cream, but once in office lived skim milk.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: And now think about the Lord.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't he, and doesn't Christianity seem like no more than a tiny, gently flowing stream at times, in contrast to the mighty rivers that rush our world along?
23:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, how can our gentle, quiet God compare to the great rushing rivers of professional sports and music and art and movies and internet and fine dining and travel and higher education and military might and politics and world leaders?
24:02
SPEAKER_00: But beware, appearances are deceptive.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: In the end, God's weakness, God's Gihon spring, will destroy man's might, the Euphrates River.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: And that's the call here that by faith you and I trust in the Lord with all our heart, even when everything seems to tell us that's silly.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: So this is actually a line that's that's especially for you when you're in a situation like Melody and I were in eight days ago.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: When you're the stress is just choking you and you're worried, you know, about your flight, or you're worried about something else, and the worry is just crushing your heart for a moment, it's squeezing it, and you can hardly breathe, then you need to say to yourself, trust in the Lord with all your heart.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: So that's number one, that's the first line.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: And the great opponent or enemy of trusting the Lord with all your heart is the fact that we tend naturally to lean on our own understanding, on our own way of seeing things.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Notice he doesn't say, don't use it, don't use your understanding, because of course your understanding is one of God's greatest gifts to you.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: He's not excluding human thought, he's not excluding human effort.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: He used David's skill and David's stones.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: But he's saying, don't lean on it.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: The picture here is of a prop, of a, of a cane that you lean on.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Don't rely on it.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: Don't lean on your own intellect, because your intellect, man's intellect apart from God, won't guide you right.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: It may seem right in the short run, but we are blinded, all of us, by temptation and by passion and by folly, by the lust of the flesh, by the lust of the eyes, by the pride of life, which is why Proverbs says elsewhere, chapter 28, he who trusts in his own mind is a fool, which always reminds me of the line the physician who treats himself as a fool for a patient.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: Or the man who is his own liar has a fool for a client.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: So verse 5 is not saying in its second line that we should be brainless and shallow or not consider facts.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: It's just saying we should, when we make decisions, because we're made in his image, we should, yes, reason and think, but we shouldn't, we should caution ourselves that we're not as smart as we think we are, that we tend to be irrational and we tend to be emotional.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Your wife told me to tell you that.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: And that experience shows us every week that there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: And that the Lord's thoughts and his ways are much higher than ours.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: So we should choose God's viewpoint thinking rather than human viewpoint thinking.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: And I know the temptation is to go, well, I know what you mean by human viewpoint thinking.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: You're thinking of the National Enquirer or the Star or those magazines, you know, and the checkout line.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: And, but you can't be meaning the morning talk shows.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: You can't be meaning Science magazine or Time magazine.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: You can trust those people.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: They're really bright, they're really smart.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
27:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, it was the brightest minds of their day that gave us the flat earth.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: It was the brightest mind, scientific minds of their day that gave us the idea that the sun revolves around the earth.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: The brightest human minds of their day came up with Agent Orange and Chernobyl and the Y2K Doomsday scenario and the Ford Pinto, and New Coke, and asbestos, and pay toilets, and hair in a can, you know.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: Bright human minds come up with all of those things, right?
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Bright human minds were the ones who came up with the idea that slavery was a great idea because some people are inferior to other people and should be as enslaved for their own good.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: Thirty years ago in 1989, it was a bright scientific mind that the New Yorker magazine published who declared that cancer came from electromagnetic fields surrounding power lines, okay?
28:31
SPEAKER_00: Which the government took seriously and began investigating that claim.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: And 10 years later, President Clinton put a stop to the program and announced that America's taxpayers had coughed up over the past 10 years$25 billion to discover that power lines don't affect our health at all.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: And that same year, by the way, in 1989 was when the whole cold fusion thing came out.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember it.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Two brilliant chemists announced that the world's energy problems were over, that they had discovered cold fusion.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Basically, they could replicate the energy of the sun in a test tube and the world gasped and the world bowed and the world genuflected.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: It turned out not to be true.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: How do I move then from my own thimble full of understanding, my few drops and a cup, to the ocean of God's understanding?
29:23
SPEAKER_00: How do I do that?
29:25
SPEAKER_00: The answer has to be that I consult God's word, that I immerse myself in God's understanding in the Word, that to get God's viewpoint thinking, as versus human viewpoint thinking, that I need to read the Word of God, I need to immerse myself in that, so that sort of when I'm watching the morning show or the evening talk show or reading time or reading science magazine, that I am naturally, as Aristotle put it, automatically repelled by ideas that are shallow, stupid, bent, and wrong.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: Because I need to be thinking God's thoughts after him in a world where I am pummeled constantly with human viewpoint thinking on television or in movies or in modern books or in the newspaper or whatever else.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Those people who are always telling us, right, on the talk shows that those scientists in the past were wrong.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they were wrong about what foods are good for you and bad for you and where the stars are and this and that and so forth, and about gender and everything else.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: They were all wrong, but we now have the knowledge, right?
30:29
SPEAKER_00: So you need to trust me.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm infallible, I'm exactly right.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: And uh and I'm also right about how to live the good life, the smart life, the successful life.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't include God or Jesus.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Why would you ask such a stupid question?
30:45
SPEAKER_00: Give me back the mic.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: Get off my show.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, God, I mean, really?
30:51
SPEAKER_00: That's so yesterday.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: You see, the competitor for trusting in the Lord is human thinking, trusting in the Lord with all your understanding.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: So the third line is, in my view, if this is the enemy of line one, this is the key to line one.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: In all your ways, know him intimately.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: And as I said, this word actually is that simple word that speaks of a personal, intimate relationship.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: The top commentary in the world on Proverbs, a two-volume work by Bruce Waltke, he says, acknowledge just doesn't capture it.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: To know in this book means personal knowledge, intimate experience.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: Ron Ronald Allen, who's been a famous teacher of Old Testament at two different seminaries, once I got him to speak here, in his book Worship, writes the verb translated acknowledge is a word that speaks of knowing actively the presence of God.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: One is to know God in daily activities.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: We're to experience his presence in the most mundane of our chores.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And this is why there are pastors today, preachers across the country, across the world, who are standing up and they're smart.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: But I can guarantee you that a certain percentage of them have not known God in this way at all the previous week.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: Have not experienced him, have not practiced his presence in the way that I hope you did during our worship this morning.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: Which is a great way to do that.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: But there are there are there are there are humble, let's say, women who have been washing pots and pans this last week, who in the moment of washing pots and pans connected with God, experienced Him, practiced His presence, and maybe there's a husband in the other room, let's hope He was doing something profitable like changing a diaper, and he, even while changing a diaper, maybe to distract his sense of smell, was walking and talking with God in that moment.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: And you know what it's like to know God intimately in worship or even alone while driving your car.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
32:58
SPEAKER_00: You know what that's like.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: You've done that, even if just for a few moments.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: You've connected with him, you've talked with him.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: It's not some sort of a mild acknowledgement, yeah, thumbs up to you, God.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a personal, intimate knowing of him in your daily activity.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: And you see how this relates to trusting God?
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Because when you know him and when you've spent time talking with him, then you know he's reliable.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: And you know he's far more reliable than you are with all your irrationality and emotionality, and so then you can trust him.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: It's the key to the whole thing.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: If you have trouble trusting God, if the worry and the stress are choking out the very life of you, then go practice his presence.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Get yourself still.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: Brother Larren's hundreds of years ago, was the monk in the kitchen, in a hot kitchen, washing pots and pans, when he said that every moment of the day he would practice the presence of God.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: That became famous and is still a very famous phrase.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: And that's what line three is about.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: In knowing God, J.I.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: Packer puts it this way He says, there's a difference between knowing God and knowing about God, right?
34:10
SPEAKER_00: And when you truly know God, you, he said, one of the things that happens is you have contentment in him.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you're able to trust him, you're able to relax in him, you realize that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and so you're able to trust in him with all of your heart.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: He writes in that book, once you become aware that the main business that you're here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And you find you don't need to stress out about them or to worry about them.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: So then after you know him intimately, therefore trust him, the result is, he says, he'll make your paths straight.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: Or will he?
34:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is tough, isn't it?
34:53
SPEAKER_00: Will your paths zigzag or will they be straight?
34:57
SPEAKER_00: Is this true or is this false?
34:59
SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest practical, ethical, theological problems in the entire Bible.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: Because after all, this is a picture from in China.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: There are people you and I know who are Christians, who are better Christians than we are, whose lives are like this road.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Some of them live in places where the prince of the power of the air seems to hold sway, in Muslim countries, in India today, where the persecution is absolutely terrible, where they have to hide, where they're where they're being persecuted and killed.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: And the road is definitely not straight.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: The other word, some people, scholars believe that the word should be smooth.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever, this is in Haiti, where some of us have driven.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: The road is not smooth.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: We're serving the Lord down there, and yet we're breaking axles because we're having to drive on roads like this for hours to get to places.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: And some of you know what that's like.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: You're Christian, you're a Christian, and you love the Lord Jesus Christ, and you feel like you're trusting in Him, but your road has not been straight lately.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Your road has not been smooth lately.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: It's been full, it's been crooked, zigzaggy, full of potholes.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: Is this really true?
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Can you say this is really true?
36:14
SPEAKER_00: Emily Dickinson, at the close of the Civil War, came across this poem a few days ago.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: And she just was struck by how many hundreds of thousands of good and Christian Americans were dying, and she wrote briefly, far from love, the Heavenly Father leads the chosen child.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: Oftener through realm of Briar than the meadow mild, oftener by the claw of dragon than the hand of friend, guides the little one predestined to the native land.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: The child of the king going to heaven, and yet seems to be guided by a Lord who takes him through trials and suffering, not straight and smooth pathways.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: And yet I'm going to answer this question, true, he will make your paths straight.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: True in two ways.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: True, not always, true not without exceptions, but generally true and ultimately true.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: Generally true, I say, because Satan likes to tell us that the life of Christianity, the life of following Christ, the righteous life, is a life of misery.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: It is a life of boredom.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: It's an awful life, that you ought to leave all of that stuff.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: It's so much more fun, so much more of a good life to live apart from God and apart from Jesus and apart from the Bible and apart from Christianity, right?
37:32
SPEAKER_00: But the opposite is true.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: That it is generally true that the way of the transgressor is the hard way, as Proverbs 13, 15 says.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: That all of the studies show that if you have, let's say, two brothers who are twins or the same age, they grow up, one of them follows the Lord.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ, one of them goes the way of righteousness, and the other one rejects the Lord as they go on in life.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: All of the studies show.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Even secular psychology study earlier this year pointed out that much as we don't like to say so, it is the religious girl, you know, who ends up with the good life, who ends up emotionally happier and more fulfilled, who finishes college and gets married and stays faithful and goes to church every Sunday.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: Generally, it is true all of the things being equal, that this world tells us a lie when it says that the Christian life is a life of misery.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: Generally, it is true that your road is smoother and straighter.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: Soren Kierkegaard said, it costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a tough life, not being a Christian.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite quotes comes out of C.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: S.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, The Great Divorce.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: I've thought of this so often because I used to go door to door selling Christian books for five summers, and one of the most, I get in a lot of evangelistic talks because I was selling Christian books, and a lot of people were interested in talking with a salesman about heaven and Christ.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: And I had so many people say, you know, I really don't believe in heaven or hell, but I do know this that if there is a heaven, I'm going there because I've lived hell down here.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: You ever heard that?
39:10
SPEAKER_00: Really common.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: I'd say, can I go to your bathroom?
39:13
SPEAKER_00: I'd throw up, I'd come back.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: So, but anyway, but then I came across this quote from the great divorce, C.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: S.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, who says, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the blessed will say, We have never lived anywhere except in heaven.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: And the lost will say, We were always in hell.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: And both will speak truly.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: He will make your paths straight.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: This is true generally.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: It's also, of course, ultimately true for the writer, the inspired writer is speaking of a future that outlasts death.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: There's a golden age coming.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: There are straight roads and smooth roads coming for those who have trusted in Jesus Christ.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: The eighth president of Yale University put it this way.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: I've paraphrased it so we can understand it a little easier.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: In this world, non-Christians have 1,000 sufferings of which the Christian is ignorant.
40:07
SPEAKER_00: And in the world to come, non-Christians will lie down in eternal sorrow.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: It's not only generally true, it's ultimately true.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, say it with me, will you please?
40:20
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: In all your ways, know him intimately, and he'll make your paths straight.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: So what?
40:34
SPEAKER_00: One quick lesson from each of these four lines.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: Line one.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: I found myself muttering that line over and over again in Halifax eight days ago as the plane sat on the tarmac.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: And then we fly into Philly and we sit an hour on the end of the runway before we even go up.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying to Melody, Melody, this is not looking good.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Starting to text Doug Will, who's up in Chicago.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying, Doug, here's a couple of options to consider, but I may not make it back.
41:13
SPEAKER_00: And an hour or two later I find out that I'm trying to switch to from American to Delta to United to everybody else to fly through Charlotte and fly, almost fly through Miami, but there was no plane that could get me here in time for last Sunday morning.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going, trust in the Lord.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: Trust the Lord, all I trust in the Lord.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: Doug says, I've got this.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: And it was good, wasn't it?
41:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: Line two, when you're absolutely sure you know what to do, caution your understanding.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: On your own understanding.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: Line number three, when you've been too busy to know the Lord intimately, stop where you are.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: And practice his presence.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: And line number four, when the road is smooth and straight, thank you.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Lord.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: It's been straight for a whole four hours.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: It's been smooth for a whole day.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: But when it zigzags, tell him you'll trust him anyway.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: Lord Daigle closes with this.
42:18
SPEAKER_00: She sings a song whose second stanza I think captures this part well.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: Lord, when you don't move the mountains, I'm needing you to move.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: When you don't part the waters, I wish I could walk through.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: When you don't give the answers, as I cry out to you, I will trust, I will trust.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: I will trust in you.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Lord, for this verse that calls on us to do what.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, it doesn't seem natural at times when the worry and the stress are squeezing us when the enemy attacks.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the fact that we can, if we'll just hang really close to you, then we'll see you as reliable, and we'll be able to trust in you and not to lean on our own understanding.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: And then life will get so much greater and smoother.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.