In the sermon titled 'Prosperity Proverbs' by Peter Allison, the focus is on Proverbs Chapter 3, emphasizing the promises of prosperity through adherence to God's commandments. The sermon outlines five key couplets from the prologue of Proverbs, which promise health, wealth, and longevity when God's laws are remembered and preserved. Allison stresses the importance of guarding these commandments, not just through obedience but by preserving and teaching them. Mercy and truth are highlighted as essential attributes that must be bound together, as mercy without truth is cruel, and truth without mercy fosters pride and tyranny. Trusting in the Lord with all one's heart, rather than relying on one's own understanding, is presented as a daily practice that brings God’s guidance. The sermon concludes by discussing how honoring the Lord with possessions and the first fruits of one's increase leads to abundance. Ultimately, Allison underscores that these promises are not merely proverbial but are fulfilled through God's grace, enabling believers to meet the conditions required for these blessings.

Please turn to Proverbs, Chapter 3. I'd like to read the first ten verses. My son, do not forget my law, But let your heart keep My commandments. For length of days and long life and peace they will add to you. Let not mercy and truth forsake you.

Bind them around your heart. Write them on the tablet of your heart. And so find favor and high esteem in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.

Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones. Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of your increase. So your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine." Thus far the reading of God's Word, a Word that endures forever.

Almighty Heavenly Father, may you teach us, may you show to us the wisdom of your word this morning. A word that you bring to us through a vessel of clay that the glory might be yours. In Jesus' name we ask, Amen. We take up the third of the discourses in the prologue to the book of Proverbs, a prologue that takes up the first one third of the book. That's rather long for a book, you might think a third of the book to be taken up in why we should read and heed and understand this book.

We've looked at the previous week, the call of wisdom, the pursuit of wisdom, and the blessing and the protection that this wisdom brings to us, delivering us from the way of evil, and evil men, perverse men, and from strange and foreign women. This third discourse now promises that if we keep God's commandments and remember mercy and truth and trust in the Lord, that we will have health, wealth, and prosperity. These are Proverbs. You might call these the promise of prosperity. The prosperity proverbs.

Because that is indeed what is promised. And so, before you just dismiss that thought as, well, there must be a catch. Well, that can't really be true. Well, that's not quite the way it is. Consider these words.

If you don't forget My law and you keep My commandments, length of days, long life, and peace I will add to you. If you don't forget mercy and truth, You will find favor and high esteem with God and man. If you trust in the Lord, God will direct your way. If you're not wise in your own eyes, you will have health and strength in your body. If you honor the Lord with your possessions, you will never lack for any of them.

That's what these Proverbs say. These are the Word of God. That means this is true. This is true. Let's look at these four couplets.

Sorry, five. First, my son. Sorry, five. First, my son. Each of these discourses so far has opened with these words, my son.

Do not forget my law, but let your heart keep my commandments." Now we sometimes think of keep commandments as obeying them, and that's not wrong, but the sense of that word keep is more of guarding, of preserving. In one place in the scriptures it's even translated as a watchman. But it's the idea of guarding, of preserving something. Something that is valuable, something that would be lost if we aren't careful to keep it. What do you do if you have something that you want to keep?

Something that is intangible. Something that You can't just put your hands around and put in a safe. Well, you might write it down. You might write it down. You might memorize it.

You might Commit it to memory, which means that you purposely go over it in your mind. Dwelling upon it, making associations with other things so that you can remember whatever it is that you're trying to guard or preserve or keep. This is what Solomon is saying here. We ought to have this understanding, this concern for God's Word, His commandments, His law, His precepts. That we recognize that there is great value in them.

And we preserve them. The king, you remember, was to write out God's law. He wasn't just to read it, but he was to write it out, because in writing it out, he would think about it. He would meditate upon it. Writing out is a slower, more laborious process.

You can read through something and your mind can be a thousand miles away, as they say. But it's a little bit harder to, when you write something and think about it, it sticks. That's why you take notes in a class. You don't just listen. You listen and you write.

That's a way of preserving the material that you're receiving. Keeping preserving God's Precepts and laws means that we recognize their great worth, their value. We not only read and write, but also teach. What is the best way to learn something? Try and teach it.

If you know it, you'll learn it better. If you don't know it, you'll realize you don't know it when you try and explain it to somebody else. I once had a physics professor, he had a PhD and did all the graduate school studies and all that. Say at the beginning of his class, at the start of his physics class, so this is a year and a half sequence, and all these new students are sitting in this class. And he got up and said that he didn't really learn this material.

Here's a guy who went through college just like we were. He's taken all the courses that we were about to take. He got to graduate school and taken a whole lot more courses. He'd done a dissertation. He'd been writing, studying, researching.

He said he didn't really learn this physics until he had taught this physics a couple of times. Then he understood it. So if you want to preserve the law of God, teach it. Teach it to your children. Teach it to your neighbor.

Teach it to your brothers and sisters in the Lord. And also practice them. Hebrews says that our senses, and I'm going to come back to this verse again and again, that our senses are trained through practice to discern right from wrong. It says we practice these things that we learn them as well. Learn them as well.

My son, do not forget my law, but let your heart guard these. Obedience must begin in the heart. Obedience that isn't from the heart is, of course, not obedience. That's true of the seven-year-old child who famously told her mother when she was asked to stand that Me stands on the outside, but me sits on the inside. Obedience begins in the heart.

And that's true of the seven-year-old or the 70-year-old. It is the heart that is the first to wander away. It's the heart that's the first to wander away. When people fall into sin and fall away from the Lord and fall away, they don't first stop going to church and then start thinking. They start thinking first.

It's their heart that quits going to church. It's their heart that quits wanting to know the Word of God, quits desiring to study it and to read it and to memorize it and to teach it and to practice it. And then, only after the heart has long departed does the body and their life, outward life, follow? The heart is also the first thing to turn, isn't it? To turn back.

When the prodigal son was in the land, he had to first realize the lostness of his condition and realize and desire in his heart to be back with his father as a servant and then once that was in his heart then he was then his body followed and his legs took him back to his father It is our heart in which we keep and guard God's commandments. We have to guard God's commandments not just in our own heart and in ourselves, but we also have to guard and keep God's commandments in our homes. This is especially true of fathers and mothers who have headship and leadership in the home. And in the church, it's especially true of elders, but it's also true in the civil realm. It's true of citizens.

We need to guard, we need to preserve God's precepts and His commands in our civil realm. And if we forget about them in the civil realm, We lose the same benefit that we lose if we forget about them in our own heart. That means that we need to be people who testify to the truth of God's Word in the civil realm. That can be hard to do. We're busy.

We've got a lot of other responsibilities. Certainly not everybody has all the same responsibilities. We don't all have the same responsibilities in our homes. We don't all have the same responsibilities in the church. We certainly don't have the same responsibilities in the civil government.

But there is a need to remember, to keep, to preserve the commandments of God in the civil realm. That means We need Christians who remember and preserve these commands to our county commissioners, to our state senators and legislators. And why? Why do we need to do this? There's a great blessing that's attached to those who preserve, who keep, who guard God's word, His commandments.

That is a promise of long and prosperous life. For length of days and long life and peace they will add to you length of days and long life and peace they will add to you. What do we see around us when we look at people who have pushed away dramatically God's commands from their life, ignored them, rejected them. This is most dramatically exemplified among homosexuals. Homosexual fornicators have life expectancies that are dramatically, almost a generation shorter than others.

But we see here peace, Where God's commandments are not guarded in the home, there won't be peace in the home. And where God's commands are not guarded and preserved in the civil realm, there won't be peace in the civil realm either. But rather shootings, murders, tyranny Become expected become a way of life And people become afraid to walk down the street at night where God's commands are not guarded in the civil realm. And you see, that doesn't just say guard the second table here. It doesn't just say, well, guard the command not to kill.

There are nine other commandments that have to be guarded as well. We hear a lot about victimless crime or victimless sin. So the seventh commandment is seen as an area where people can sin without a victim. If it's consensual then there's no victim. Well the Bible says otherwise.

We cannot ignore the commandment not to commit adultery and expect that we will have peace in our civil realm any more than we can think that we can break this commandment not to commit adultery and have peace in our home a Culture that tolerates adultery and fornication Will will destroy their own peace as surely as a man will destroy the peace of his home when he commits adultery. It doesn't matter if the parties are consenting. It's still contrary to the Word of God. And so next time somebody talks to you about a victimless crime or sin, Remember this passage, the peace of our culture depends upon it. You and I are the victims of such sin.

When the peace of our culture is destroyed because of it. When you have a culture where half of the people that grow up or more or half of the marriages are an end in divorce that destroys the peace of the culture. The second couplet here says, Let not mercy and truth forsake you. Let not mercy and truth forsake you. These are attributes of the Lord.

The Lord is merciful. In fact, the next psalm from what we read this morning, Psalm 136, is a whole psalm that every verse proclaims that the Lord is merciful, is merciful, has loving kindness, and God is truth. And we are to have these attributes, these characteristics ourselves. Our salvation brings with mercy, comes with when mercy and truth are joined together. Psalm 85, mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed.

Truth shall spring out of the earth and righteousness shall look down from heaven." Just a little later in Proverbs 16, it says that in mercy and truth, atonement is provided for iniquity. In mercy and truth. Mercy and truth are joined in salvation. Mercy without truth is cruelty. Without truth is cruelty.

Mercy without truth is cruel. If somebody is going over a cliff, If you give somebody a canoe and let them go out over the Niagara Falls. That's not...that's cruel. If they want a kayak or a canoe and you just give it to them and they want to do it so you let them do it and you never tell them the truth about where they're headed that's cruel mercy without truth is cruelty If you look at a disobedient child and you think you're going to have mercy on their disobedience, you're going to ignore it. You're going to let them not obey what you've told them to do because you're going to be merciful.

That's cruel. Like the Bible says, you don't love your child when you do that. Mercy without truth is cruelty. But truth without mercy brings pride and a pharisaical tyranny. Paul said knowledge puffs up.

Knowledge puffs up. If the truth is spoken without love or without mercy, that brings a legalism, that brings a hardness, a callousness that becomes tyranny. You see, some look for good in everyone and many times they're deceived. But another person discerns people instantly and they make no bones about telling everyone. One is truth without mercy.

The other is mercy with no truth. But in the Lord, All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth to such as keep his covenants and his testimonies. Psalm 25 10 says, all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth. In our salvation God is truthful, he's righteous, he's just, but he's also merciful. You see, mercy without truth grows weeds.

If you think of a garden and you're afraid to pull any weeds out, what do you have? You have a garden that's overrun by weeds. But Truth without mercy kills everything. It is round up on steroids. Truth without mercy.

And all too often we think sometimes that we are being persecuted for righteousness sake because we've spoken the truth and we've let them have it. When really all we're being persecuted for is being rude and inconsiderate and not having any love or mercy. We're simply being persecuted because we're being arrogant, calloused. See, where there is the Lord's work, then the truth is combined with mercy. And when we speak the truth, we do so knowing that we ourselves are no better than the person we're speaking to that but for the grace of God we ourselves would be in the same folly that we are seeking to address with the truth of the Word of God.

You see that radically changes the way we speak and communicate the truth. If we're speaking the truth and nobody is listening, if everybody's running away, maybe it's because we've forgotten mercy with truth. These, let not mercy and truth forsake you. Bind them around your neck. What do you do with something you don't want to forget?

You put it around your neck. Maybe you've worked in office buildings, I know I have, where you have to have a badge to get in and out of doors. And without your badge, you can't get anywhere. You just have to go home. So you don't want to forget that badge.

What do you do with it? Most people put it around their neck. So it's right there and they won't forget it. You're not going to forget your head anywhere, are you? Bind them around your neck.

Where do you put things that are very precious to you, those keepsakes, you put them on a necklace around your neck. That charm that has special significance goes around your neck you keep it there that's what we're to do with mercy and truth not mercy without truth or truth without mercy, but mercy and truth. Bind them around your neck. In the military, everybody that goes through basic training is taught to take their little tags that identify who they are in their metal. They're stamped in metal so that they don't burn up, they don't blow up.

They're very hard for them to get destroyed. And they're taught to put them around your neck. Because then when you get blown to pieces and nobody can recognize your face, you still have those dog tags, they call them. And people will know who you are. That's the sense.

That's how we're to perceive mercy and truth. Bind them around our neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. There's a great promise attached to that. You will find favor and high esteem with God and man.

If you just have truth without mercy, we might think, well, the world won't like us, but God will. No. God is not pleased by his truth without mercy. It's a false truth. We don't find favor with God by being pharisaical proclaimers of truth without mercy.

But truth with mercy finds favor with God and man. Even a man's enemies are at peace with a righteous man. So if you find that people are not favorable toward you, Maybe you need to ask yourself, is my truth mingled with mercy? Have I spoken the truth in love? And if not, that's something to repent of.

Trust in the Lord, the third couplet here, with all of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Have you ever been at a crossroads and you need to make a decision? You have to decide this way or that way. It's tempting at those times to think, well, we need to pray.

And that's True. But if trusting in the Lord has not been the pattern of your living, day by day, then don't expect to have great wisdom at this crossroads just because you've prayed. Remember as we said, it's senses that have been trained through practice to discern. This is speaking here of an ongoing Trust that characterizes our life day by day, hour by hour, encounter by encounter, decision by decision. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not onto your own understanding.

This is an exclusive trust. This is an exclusive trust. No diversification here. It's a trust of the Lord with all of our heart not apart Not trust the Lord and and then trust these other things over here Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and it's an exclusive trust. There is no no one else nothing else Worthy of our trust Of course if we trust in the Lord then we will have a right trust of other people and other things, but it's a trust that grows out of That's born of our trust in the Lord Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Trust his word. Trust his word. So often, in my experience I've found this, and I'm sure you have in yours as well. We don't always understand the consequences of our decisions. We don't understand the long-term consequences of choice A or B.

I used to marvel at that. How years later you look back and realize, look at these blessings. I had no idea. I had no idea. Or look at these problems.

Look at that decision I made and all these problems that have come through it. I had no idea at the time I made that decision. We don't know. We need to trust the Lord that His Word is true and not lean on our own understanding, our own thinking. Well, I don't see how that's true.

I know that's what the Bible says. I just don't see how that's true. I think I can do this and that's not a problem. Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding. When you're young, just starting out life, debt might be very tempting.

You might think, well, I'm young, what's wrong with this debt? Trust in the Lord. And don't lean on your own understanding. The Bible says debt is bondage. And yes, there are times for it.

But it is bondage. Never forget that. This is an exclusive trust and this is an exhaustive trust. There is no area here that is outside of where we need to trust the Lord. We trust the Lord to provide our daily bread.

We trust the Lord to provide our home. We trust the Lord to provide for our clothing, for our physical provisions for this life, our temporal needs. We trust the Lord about a job or where to work. We trust the Lord for his blessing in our home. We trust the Lord for the salvation of our children and loved ones, particularly our children because as parents we are given these responsibilities to teach and to train them.

In all of your ways, the promise here is that in all of your ways, Acknowledge Him. Not just most of them. Not just your religious ways. In all of your ways, whatever you're doing, wherever you're going, whatever you're thinking about, whatever plans that you have, Look to the Lord. Trust in the Lord's Word.

If you don't know what the Lord's Word says about something, ask somebody. Ask somebody. Ask a brother. Ask an elder. I'm thinking about this.

What does the Lord's Word have to say? You know, and maybe they won't know either. And you think, well, what's the use of asking? There's a lot of use in asking. It's important for you to ask.

It's important for you to ask. Because if you're asking, maybe the seed that the Lord uses for somebody the person you're asking to begin studying that matter if you're asking somebody who is in an office of shepherding, then you're going to be helping them. You'll help make them a better shepherd, a better husband, a better father. Children, ask your parents. Ask your parents.

And parents, if you don't know, don't be afraid to say, I don't know how to trust the Lord in this matter. But we'll find out together. Trust in the Lord in all your ways with all your heart. That's an exclusive trust and an exhaustive trust. And this promise is great.

The Lord will direct your path. He will. He will direct your path. And you'll be able to look back and see how the Lord has directed your path how he's brought good out of out of everything you've been in this is a way of life a way of life This isn't something you just do at major decision points. This is a way of life.

An exhaustive and exclusive trust. Fourthly, don't be wise in your own eyes. Have a humble fear of God and depart from evil. To fear God is to turn to His Word for every explanation of the world and of life itself is to turn to God. It's a carefulness not to do anything that displeases the Lord.

Not because we're afraid of being punished but because we are afraid of displeasing the one that we love. And there's a big difference in those two motivations. The fear of the Lord is a carefulness not to do unrighteousness lest we displease the one who has loved us and given himself for us." It is to recognize here, don't be wise in your own eyes. It's to recognize that we don't know. That our eyes see through colored glasses and that our senses don't perceive correctly.

Don't be wise in your own eyes. It's like a pilot in the middle of bad weather, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of clouds that are black and a wind buffeting a plane around. Not a pilot, but I've heard people talk about this and seen videos of it. So I think I can describe it accurately because I have a little bit of understanding. Having driven a submarine where there are no windows in a submarine, you drive looking at steel and you have to, you can't trust your your eyes to look around and see there's nothing in front of you.

In a pilot going through bad weather, our senses can get confused and disoriented. We might think we're right-side up when we're really upside down We might think we're right side up when we're sideways Because we can our senses are easily fool More spiritually and in our life were the same way We have to rely on God's word. That has to be the instrument that guides us. Our senses can't. Our senses don't perceive correctly.

There was a man about 50 years ago who did a little experiment. I don't know, there may have been others. But he took his glasses. He learned that everything on your, the images on your retina are upside down. Physically, the image on your retina is upside down from the way it is, the way the object is in front of you.

So he thought, what if I took glasses and turned the image right side up on my retina? What would happen? He did it. He actually had some glasses made and he put them on. When he put them on, everything was upside down.

It was very confusing. Just imagine seeing everything upside down. You're looking out and I'm standing on my head, my feet up in the air, or actually the floor up there. You're thinking, how's that? How's that work?

You go to the, everything's backwards, upside down. Well, what do you think happened after a while? His eyes retrained themselves. And it wasn't very long of wearing these glasses every day that turned the image on his retina right side up. It wasn't very long before his eyes completely, his brain completely retrained itself to reinterpret the image on his retina.

And pretty soon, everything was right side up again. The image on his retina was now inverted from what it was before, but after a couple weeks, everything was right side up. In fact he could see perfectly. He had perfect depth perception, he had perfect coordination, hand to eye coordination. There wasn't one task that he could do before he put these glasses on and retrained his eyes that he couldn't do after he put them on and retrained his eyes.

He could fly an airplane, something that's, he could land an airplane, something that was very physically demanding with your hand-to-eye coordination. What's the point of that? His eyes are not very reliable. They can be completely fooled. They can be retrained to perceive the exact opposite of what we would call reality in a very short amount of time.

Are you going to trust those kind of eyes? Are you going to trust that kind of heart to make the right decisions? To know up from down, right from wrong, left from right? Don't be wise in your own eyes. You don't know whether that image on your retina is upside down or right side up, apart from the Word of God.

There's a great promise attached to this trust as well. Health, health, physical health and well-being. Health to our flesh, that word is literally navel or muscle or sinew. No, there's health to your body, your physical body. Strength to your bones.

Who would have thought? Not Being wise in your own eyes brings physical health and well-being. That's what the Bible says. When we live recognizing that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, then we're careful. We're careful with what we do with our bodies.

But it goes far, far beyond that. It goes far beyond that. It goes far beyond that in ways that we simply can't understand. But God does. And he's promised to direct our path.

He's promised to bring peace and length of days. He's promised to bring health and strength to us. Lastly, honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of your increase. Everything we have belongs to God. It does.

Do you think of your possessions that way? Do you think of everything that you have, God gave it to you, and you're a steward of it? Honor the Lord with your possessions and With the first fruits of all of your increase, How do you honor the Lord with the first fruits of your increase? You tithe on those. You tithe.

You give a tenth of what the Lord gives to you to Him. And I believe you give more. There are different tithes in the Bible. But you give a tenth to the church. A tenth is given for rejoicing that is kept by us to use in these areas to rejoice.

And I can say, having lately learned that in my life, what a great source of rejoicing it has brought to have this tithe for rejoicing. And Also, there's a poor tithe, which is one third of a tithe. Why do we have so many poor people in our midst that have to rely on government care? Because we have forgotten the poor tithe and with if we had remembered the poor tithe then we would be providing for those needs with accountability the government doesn't bring accountability so when they provide for these there's needs they're simply subsidizing poverty and when you get more of what you subsidize, you get more of what you pay people to do. If you pay people to be poor, you'll have a lot of poor people.

The poor tithe is different. There's accountability with it. Because you're not going to give that to anybody. You're going to give it to people who are willing to listen to counsel. And people who receive it are going to be willing to listen when you're the one that's helping them out.

Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of your increase that is a command honor the Lord with the first fruits of your increase How do you honor the Lord with the first fruits of your increase? Well the Bible clearly says that you give a tithe of the first fruits of your increase to the Lord. You give one-tenth And it is very specific in how you figure out that increase and how you calculate that one-tenth of the increase. It's not just everything that comes in. And I say that because when God gives the directions on how to tithe, He doesn't say you give a tithe on all of the calves that are born, or kids that are born on your farm that year.

You don't say, well, I had 31 kids born this year, so I need to give 3.1 to the Lord, first of all. Nope. You don't say, well, you round down, I have to give three to the Lord. Nope. You actually put those kids at increase under the rod, and you take every tenth one.

That's how you do it. So you're not taking the best, the worst. When you offer a sacrifice, you take the best. When you bring the tithe of the increase of the first fruits, you simply put them under the rod and you take every tenth one. So if you put 31 under the rod and you take every tenth one, you'll have three.

But what if the coyotes got three of them? You know, one a week after they were born, another one three weeks after they were born, another one three months after they were born. So now you only have 28. Well, when you put them under the rod once a year, you do it once a year for calves, because they come once a year. But when you put them under the rod, they're not going to be there, are they?

And so you're only going to have 28, And so you only end up with two. God doesn't exact a tithe on what the locusts eat. He exacts a tithe on the increase. And what the coyotes ate is not an increase. It's a loss.

So scripture is very clear about how to tithe. And the tithe is exacted in a very merciful way, in a very appropriate way. It's not a tithe on your gross income. Why? Because how are you going to pay a tithe on your gross income when the civil government has taken a tax of 93%?

You can't. Can you? And you think, well, the government doesn't take a tax of 93%. Well, but they have. There has been a time, not that long ago, in my lifetime, when the marginal tax rate was over 90%.

How are you going to tithe 10% on your income if you tithe on the gross and the government is taking 93%? And that doesn't even include the other rejoicing tithe and the poor tithe. So really if the government is taking more than 76 and two-thirds percent, you can't tithe on the gross anymore. Notice here the tithe, the first fruits of your increase. What the government takes in its payroll tax and I'm not talking about property tax or sales taxes that's not a tax that's not an increase but They take on a payroll tax that you never see is not an increase.

Honor the Lord, but it's honor the Lord with your possessions. You tithe on the increase, you honor the Lord with all of our possessions. That means we recognize that all that we have is the Lord's. Our house, our cars, and that we're to honor the Lord with them. What we do with them.

Do we use them as instruments of sin or as instruments of righteousness? Do we use our possessions for the good of the kingdom? Do we use our food to feed people? Do we use our possessions to bless people? There's a great promise attached to this.

So your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine. In other words, you won't lack for any need. You honor the Lord with your possessions and tithe on the increase. Your barns will be filled with plenty. God says elsewhere, try me, Try me.

Don't believe this. You think that giving the tithe when you think you need it for these other urgent needs, you think that that's going to result in you having all your needs met? You think you doubt that? The Lord says, try me. Try me and see if all your needs are not met.

The Lord in this matter asks us to test him. Do it. Do it. Do it out of gratitude, not out of greed. Do it out of gratitude.

Why do we honor the Lord with our possessions and with the first fruit of our increase because we're grateful to the Lord for His provision for us. If we're doing it out of greed, if we're giving in order to get, That's not honoring the Lord with our possessions. But when we do it out of gratitude for what the Lord has done for us, recognizing that everything we have He's given to us, and we're grateful for what He's given to us. The Lord promises that we will have plenty. David could say, I have been young and now I am old and I have never seen the righteous begging bread.

Now what about that person who fears the Lord and ends up dying young? What about that person who is a faithful in the church and finds that they have lost their job and they're losing their house. How do we understand these kinds of things? How do we understand these promises when Christians die young? Well, there are people I propose a lot of very unsatisfactory answers.

It's not Because these writers are deluded and just mistaken. It's not because people sin. Some will say, well, that happened because he sinned. Job disproves that. Job had great calamity come to his life, and yet God said, God himself said Job was a righteous and upright man.

The disciples asked Jesus on the man born blind, whose sin this man or his parents? And Jesus said, neither. Neither. Didn't mean that neither of them were sinners, but there was no specific sin that this calamity was attached to. Or the tower that fell, Jesus said.

We're not to think that it was because they that those people had some sin it now it's now sometimes that is the case though and that's we James talks about where people are ill to confess our sins and for the elders to anoint with oil and you will be forgiven. So it can be. There are many other examples in the Bible where people are struck for their sin. Isaiah was struck with leprosy. Miriam was struck with leprosy for her sin.

Isaiah was struck with leprosy for his sin. And so on. But it's not always the case and we're not right to assume that it's the case. And some have just said, well, that these Proverbs, they're just proverbial. In other words, they're true most of the time.

They're just not true all of the time. There are certain exceptions. And I think we have to utterly reject that idea out of hand. That would mean God isn't faithful, that he doesn't keep his promises. He keeps them most of the time.

But that's not what we read about God. He is always faithful. And if these are only proverbial, and they're only true most of the time, then We really need to know, well, how often are they true? Are they true 50% of the time? Well, maybe it's not worth keeping them then.

If they're only true half of the time. Are they true 99.999% of the time? It makes the Word of God meaningless. How can we trust in the Lord with all of our heart and fully commit to Him, as we talked about, exhaustively and exclusively, if We know it might not work out. If these promises aren't yea and amen in Jesus Christ, I don't think you can.

God is not asking us to commit to things that are only proverbially true. True most of the time. He's asking us to trust in him, commit our way to him, because his word is always true. It's always right. But how do we deal with these things?

How do we understand these kinds of occurrences? I think the easiest way to think about it, in your mind, to wrap your mind around it, is to compare it to the other promises of Scripture and the ones regarding salvation. So for example, in Romans 10, it says that if, and notice the condition here, if, just like these conditions in Proverbs, If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes under righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

We know that's not a proverb, is it? That is, yea and amen in Jesus Christ. And yet there are people that would seem to do this, isn't there? Who wander, who apostatize. Like Charles Templeton and others.

Started out being a greater evangelist than Billy Graham. In fact, he was Billy Graham's mentor and ended his life writing a book, Why I Don't Believe in God. John talks about that, you know, people that have departed, that have gone out from us. And what does he say? They've gone out from us because they were not of us.

When somebody turns out to be apostate, we recognize that they didn't confess with their mouth to Lord Jesus and believe in their hearts. And we have to say the same thing about these promises. When these things don't happen, it's because we haven't done these things. We're sinners, all of us. And So the immediate question then is, well, what good is this promise?

We're all sinners. Nobody can keep them perfectly. What good is this promise if I can't keep it? Well, I said, you want to understand these promises? Just compare them to the promises of salvation what good is a promise of salvation who is able to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ no one no one Does that mean this promise is no good?

What use is it to us? No. With God all things are possible. With God the impossible is possible. How are we enabled, those of us who have confessed with our mouth, Lord Jesus, how are we were we enabled to do that?

It's by the grace of God. It's by the Holy Spirit working in us, enabling us to do what we cannot do in our own power. That is grace. That is the grace of God to us. So we look at this promise of salvation and we lay hold of it with both hands and we fall in our faces before the Lord in gratitude of his grace that enables us to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and to be saved.

As we read in our confession, he gives to us that assurance of our salvation, that we know that we know. And that's exactly how we have to look at these promises. If you're trying to do these things in your own strength, you will fail. You can't do them. If These things are a burden to you.

It's because you are doing them in your own strength. It's because you are seeking to follow the Lord and keep God's commandments in your own power. And you can't. You can't. You need to look at these promises the same way you look at that promise in Romans.

We are utterly unable to do these things, but by the grace of God in us, he enables us to do these things. And we can trust in him to give to us length of days and life and to provide for our needs and to direct our path. Because by His grace, by His grace, He will enable us to do, to keep these conditions. It is not our work. And so when you do these things, it's not you can't pat yourself on the back Any more than you pat yourself on the back because you confess the Lord Jesus.

Weren't you so smart? No, not at all. We recognize it's grace of God. And if you have barns overflowing with plenty and vats overflowing with new wine And you have health and you have strength because you have committed your way to the Lord. And you've been careful in what you do to follow his precepts.

It's not because you're so smart. It's because of the grace of God. Look to Christ and to his spirit to enable you to obey and where the where God's commands seem burdensome that's not the yoke of Christ his burden is easy and his yoke is light And he gives rest to all who come to him. And where our lives are cut short, I just need to add this, where there is a trial in these areas. We know even there, he gives his grace to know that he is working these things out for our good.

And We can say in those situations that to live is Christ and to die is gain. Even in sickness, he's working that out for our own good. How do you say that? By His grace and by His Spirit dwelling in us. Look to Christ and to His Spirit.

For as many as be the promises in God, they are yea and amen in Jesus Christ Almighty Father in heaven we thank you for your word that is so precious to us pray that you would make it more so and we May delight in it that we may understand it that we may walk in it Because of the of our gratitude for your work in us and for your grace We ask these things in Jesus name, amen.