” 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. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.” (Proverbs 3:1-4, ESV)

The picture presented to us here is of a Godly father teaching his son the spiritual necessities of life – things which will inform his ethics on every level. The opening exhortation is to remember these things, to treasure them up (vs. 1) and to anticipate the benefits these remembered, treasured teachings will bring (vs. 2). Verse 4 summarizes again that acting upon what he is being taught here will find him not only living wisely before men, but God as well. The rest of the chapter will bear out the details of this “teaching” – but it is verse 3 which captures the essence of what the young man needs to know and do as the predicate to all else: “Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.” Rightfully, our first impression is that such a student would learn himself to be a man of steadfast love and faithfulness. He is to “wear” these like precious jewelry and take them into the deepest recesses of his heart. But perhaps there is more here. Perhaps, the idea even underneath this – is that the father wants his son to learn of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God in this way. To wear THAT lesson like the most precious jewelry of all. To have it as it were not only tattooed, but etched – scarred into his own heart. That the heart and mind so saturated with the fullness of the God’s unfailing, unerring, eternally abiding love – is the only way he will ever own the “ethics” aimed at. He is to come to know God’s love in Christ so well, that he is eventually filled with all the fulness of God (Eph. 3:14-21). Father, may I learn that lesson so.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5, ESV)

It is an easy error to take a passage like this one, and turn it into something it is not. All one need do, is take the first word “trust” and make it bear the entire weight of the thought. But that is to miss the point entirely. In other words, our author’s exhortation is NOT to merely be a trusting person, to be a “person of faith” or to have some sort of generic trust that everything will work out OK. What we are being called to here is to trust in God Himself. To trust His character, His promises. We cannot trust our own perceptions of circumstances and their imagined meanings. But we can and MUST trust God’s revelation of Himself in His word, and in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This takes us off of the futile task of trying always attach specific meaning to very little event in life – to instead find the meaning of everything in the Author of Life Himself. Trust Him Believer. Trust the God who cannot lie. Trust the God who cannot sin. Trust His promises. Trust His descriptions of reality in the Word. Trust His Gospel. Trust Him above everybody and everything else. But then again – do not forget the underlying presupposition here: You cannot trust anyone you do not know – not really. So – do you know Him? Do you know Him in the person of Jesus Christ? Do you know Him as your Lord and Savior? As your sin-bearer? When you do – then you can trust Him fully.

Proverbs 2:5 (ESV) “then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.”

The word “THEN”, opening this verse serves as a conclusion to what came immediately before in the previous 4 verses. IF – we seek out God’s Word with all due diligence – THEN we will understand THE FEAR OF THE LORD. If the fear of the Lord is the very beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7), then this is how we come to it. The pursuit laid out for us in the first part of this chapter is the very means to gain this fear. Combine the two and you have this simple reality – I cannot know God rightly, unless I pursue the knowledge of Him the way He has appointed. You cannot know anyone, let alone God, apart from taking the steps necessary to understand their heart and mind and values and goals and desires. And we cannot know these things about God apart from the diligent searching out of His Word by the aid of the Holy Spirit.

The amount of the Bible you are willing to leave un-mined – is directly proportional to the amount of God you are unwilling to know, and willing to do without. Note again this verse begins with “THEN” – THEN you will understand, and not until.