Trust In The Lord - Know His Character

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Tall Paul's Preaching. [00:00:04] Speaker B: This is the fifth sermon recorded on June 10th of 2018. The main text for this episode is Proverbs chapter 3, verses 5 through 8, Proverbs 3, 5, 8. This episode is titled Trust in the Lord. Know his character. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Well, good morning. As you can see, my wife is here and well. And I do want to thank you for praying for her last week as Stan. I think let you know she was not doing good, but she is doing much better today and I will be talking about that in my message today. We're going to get some prayer first. All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that you do for us, Lord, behind the scenes when we're not even aware, Lord. You are an advocate for us, Lord. You strive for us and do so much for us when we don't even know. And we just want to thank you this morning for that and praise you for that, Lord. We pray for our country, Lord, that you would guide us and guide those in charge and just your will would be done this country. And pray for all our little ailments or big ailments, Lord, that you would heal us and comfort us. And we pray that you would open our ears and let the spirit speak to our hearts today, Lord, that your word would cause us to grow and grow in you and grow in the knowledge of you and your son. And this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Well, my wife was recently in the hospital and I had prepared a different message or was working on a different message, but while in the hospital I kind of thought this was a little more needed. The Holy Spirit just kind of brought this to me and today I'm going to be going over a well known verse. It's often quoted, in fact, I think we've got a magnet on our fridge from Peru or Haiti or somewhere. And with this verse on it, and It's Proverbs chapter 3, verses 5 through 8, I'll be covering those if you want to turn there. And as soon as I start it, you'll go, oh, I know that 1. So Proverbs 3, 5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. It shall be health to your navel and marrow to your bones. So we're going to be talking about trust. That's the first word right there. It can be defined as confidence in the truth of anything for Example, I trust that you can hear me. Now, my trust, my confidence that you can hear me doesn't change the truth if you can hear me or not. It's just my trust in that fact. And we have all kinds of trust and levels of trust as well as consequences to a betrayal of trust. For instance, you can trust that someone's going to save you a seat at dinner. The consequences is minor if they don't. And then kind of moving up, you women, you trust someone with your hair, hairdresser, and it's getting a little more, you know, a little more level of trust you must have. We trust that others, as they drive, that they're going to obey the laws, they're going to stop at the. When they should stop and not cross the line. And then we trust someone with our money. Ooh, that's a big one, huh? Trust, Trust someone with our money. Let's just suppose that you're in a large, unfamiliar city and you got lost. And let's just suppose you're not a man. And so you're going to stop and ask a stranger for directions. And you ask that stranger and that you say, you know, I know where to go if I can just get back to the city square with that weird statue thing. And the stranger goes, well, you just head right down through this dark alley and turn right and you'll be there. That takes some trust. But imagine if you're in a large city and you got lost and you run across someone that you knew a while ago, a long time ago, and you start and you oh, hey. And they say, oh yeah, I've been living here for a couple months. And you're like, oh, praise the Lord, you know, can you help me get back to the city square with that weird statue thingy? And he says, you just head right through that dark alley and turn right and you'll be there. But what about trusting someone with your heart? With our lives and with our souls, shouldn't we do our due diligence and vet that someone, check them out and read up on them. Wisdom is to research whomever we're going to give our souls to. So trust in the Lord with all your heart, but not blindly. We can know the character of God and we can have a complete and a deeper trust in who we are entrusting our souls to. And there's two kind of ways to trust, and one is begrudgingly or half heartedly. That's when we're not in control and we don't like it. For instance, if someone's driving us around. We're just going to trust that they get us there. Or if you've ever been to a buffet, they trust you to get your own food, but they don't trust you to get your own drink. You have to rely on that person and they bring you a soda. And I'm not sure this is diet. Is this diet? I don't know. I asked for a diet and where's my water? And when we're forced to trust someone and it often leads to ungratefulness and unthankfulness, we're not often grateful that they brought us a soda because we felt that we could do it better or on our own. Another way is with your whole heart, willingly out of faith, trusting, in love with a knowing familiarity. So what was the difference between the two advice givers of when you're lost in that city, in that dark alley, it was the knowledge of their character. It was the same action, same advice, go through that dark alley, right? But our trust was in the confidence of their character. And so if you lack trust in God, get to know him better. And God's word teaches us about God's character, so. So that we can trust in him. For example, let's take a look at the nation of Israel as they wandered in the desert. They had left Egypt and were being led by God and Moses through the wilderness. They whined, you take us out here to kill us. We're dying of thirst, we're dying of hunger. They whine. They complained because it was out of their control. They were trusting, begrudgingly, half heartedly. They thought they knew better than that stupid Moses. That led to unthankfulness even though their clothes and shoes didn't wear out. God manna. Every week he delivered quail to them when they got tired of the manna and they had a rock that followed them around and produced water. And through all that they were still ungrateful because they relied on what they knew. It was their understanding from back in Egypt that influenced their minds. It did not shape their experiences to the light of the truth. They made it up. Proverbs 3. 5 says, and lean not unto your own understanding. It was like the idols that they served back in Egypt. You must appease them when angry and do a dance and beat a drum and do whatever it was to try and get them some idol to produce rain, for instance. That's what they knew. They did not know the God of love who loves us regardless of when we're bad or good. Moses, on the other hand, he was initially the same way. But he got the opportunity to spend an additional 40 years in the desert tending the flock, where he learned through experience with God to be different before God. Thought Moses ready at a ripe young age of 80. Many of us still have time. His experience with God produced a faith selflessness. He was willing to sacrifice himself When God said, I'm done with those people, and Moses stood in that gap and said, I'll pay you, Let them be. It was his humility and thankfulness and through that experience with God that resulted in Moses having a very, very close relationship with God that I wish I had. Proverbs 3, 6 says, in all your ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths. Moses did exactly that and was guided. He did not fear the world, but trusted God. He knew the truth of God. And the tribes were not that way. God told them to enter into the promised land, and they sent spies. And spies came back and said, there's giants. Lots of fruit, but there's giants. They rejected God's path, and their decisions caused them to take another path, their own path. And that was through the wilderness for 40 years. Another example is David. Saul. Saul was the first king, and David was the second king of Israel. Speaking of giants, David faced Goliath. And he trusted God to deliver not just his life, but the life of all of Israel. The Goliath came out from the Philistine army and would stand and say, everybody doesn't have to fight. Just one of you. Come out and fight me, and that will decide the battle. And everybody feared, but not David. Saul the first king feared the world and did not trust God. In fact, even at the very end of his life, he goes to a fortune teller for advice instead of seeking the Lord. Saul trusted the world, but not God. He was to go and wipe out the Amalekites. Saul was. And yet when he got there, the world said, oh, the sheep and the goats and all the spoils, that's all valuable. We shouldn't let that go to waste. Instead of obeying God, he chose to keep that stuff. And the world told David, goliath is too big to fight, he's too powerful, that you should probably just compromise, you know, put your God aside and serve the Philistines. But David trusted in God, saw the true light, that God is bigger, God has more power. And he knew that God's will was for him and the nation to be blessed and to live and to grow. Now my wife's story. A week before Memorial Day weekend, she ran a half marathon, which is 13.1 miles. And she felt terrible during and after. And it's not from lack of training. She'd run 12 miles the week before and had no problem. But the half marathon left her in pain. Pain in her side, Pain. It felt like her leg was dead. A dead weight she was carrying around. She was just in pain, no comfort. And soon, early that week, she realizes that she's swollen from hip to toe in one leg, her left leg. And so after consulting some friends, she goes to urgent care to get checked out. As we're heading out of town for the weekend to have some fun in Wenatchee, A little hiking and biking and relaxation. And before we leave, she heads to urgent care. Now, God, he's always in control, but he took control of the situation. And her doctor said, well, you don't have any symptoms, or she had symptoms, but she didn't have any reason to have a blood clot. You know, she hadn't traveled recently. She wasn't on birth control or estrogen or she wasn't a smoker or diabetic. And so the doctor, though, could not ignore her swelling in her entire leg and sent her up to the ultrasound tech anyway. And coincidentally, and there's no coincidences with God, this ultrasound tech had previously worked for a vascular surgeon. And so not finding a clot in her leg where it normally is, she worked up, and now she's looking in my wife's side where she finds a blood clot, a very, very large blood clot in her iliac vein, which is up before it branches into the legs. Well, change of plans. Instead of heading out to Wenaki, we headed to hospital where my wife was for five nights. Six days. Five nights. She had three surgeries in three days to clear this blood clot that had been there for years. The surgeon says it could have been up there for up to 10 years. It had been growing collateral veins, in other words, to try and get that blood back. She was getting blood to her leg, but it wasn't making it back. And we had no idea, she had no idea that she was a ticking time bomb with a blood clot. But God knew. God knew all along he was in control. Not just with her, but he was in control with all the doctors that led to her ultimate healing. And as she gets better, he created the perfect conditions to get her fixed. And we have a choice to trust God and be thankful even when we don't know we're in danger or we have no control and we're lying in the hospital, we are all still here for a purpose. God has a purpose for each and every one of us. And we need to learn to trust the Lord with all our heart. Now we laugh at the Israelites in the desert for not trusting. But we're really not different. We often rely on worldly influence. We doubt, we fear, we question. We're wise in our own eyes and our own understanding. The world teaches things like we have to give to get. Sometimes we have to lie or steal to make things right. That's the world's way. It teaches us we need to appease our God through works, by being good and sacrifice and perform for God to love us. But that's not. That's not our God. God loves us. He knows everything. All our worries, our fits, our tantrums, even our praise is all lined out and scheduled before Him. There are no surprises with Our God. Philippians 1:6 says, Being confident of this very thing, that he which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. God in control, that is his character. And where do we learn that? Through God's word. Our experiences should be filtered through the light and truth of God's word. Another example is Paul the Apostle. Back when he was Saul, he was zealous for God. He was on the fast track to becoming one of the Sanhedrin. He knew the word of God, but not his character, or at least one side of God's character, the judgment and the justice side. He thought the Word is a bunch of rules and regulations with no love, trying to earn God's favor through strictly obeying of the rules and laws. And he decided to make those sinners, the Christians pay. But they were already paid for. God is balanced. He's not all judgment and he's not all love. If it was all love, he would just ignore sin. But he doesn't. He doesn't just ignore your sin. Sin has to be paid, for someone has to pay. Praise God. There's Jesus. Proverbs 3:7 says, Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. He did not fear the Lord, and he did not depart from the evil. But Paul learned the hard way. He learned through shipwrecks and beatings and developed a trust. In fact, God's first act when Paul met the Lord was to blind him, making Paul rely on others to guide him. 2nd Corinthians 11. Paul recounts just how he learned. Paul says, I am more in labors, more abundant in stripes above measure, in prisons, more frequent in deaths, often of the Jews. Five times I received 40 stripes, minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I have spent in the deep, in journeys, often in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness, in painfulness, in watching often in hunger and in thirst, in fasting, often in cold and nakedness. We don't want to learn that same way, but if you are in a trial, it's best to learn quick and not repeat that. But Paul, through his experiences with God, went on to teach us about God's character, writing most of the New Testament. He was wise beyond his peers. Because of that knowledge of God, of God's Word, combined with his experiences. Paul, in fact, goes on to teach us about God's love. This same Saul, Paul, who was so zealous throwing the Christians in prison, teaches us about God. And I've memorized this in the singsong version, so forgive me, but it's First Corinthians 13 and love is patient, love is kind, doesn't want what you have and wish it was mine. Love doesn't brag, isn't haughty or proud, doesn't seek its own way, get touchy and loud. Love hardly knows when it's under attack. Don't wait for a chance for it to strike back. Love won't endure the injustice of men, but rejoices in the truth and brings peace when it can. And it's that love that we can substitute the word God for love, and we learn his character. God is patient, God is kind, God is love. And similarly with Philippians 4. 8 that says, finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. And in that same way that we substitute the word love with God, who is true but God. God is true. God is honest, God is just, God is pure, God is lovely, God is of good report, God is virtuous, God should be praised. Can we trust in that? Can we remember God and think on Him? It's not just Paul and his scriptures, but the Old and the New Testament are just full of the truth of God. We should know that all the time. God is good. Even when we are walking around with the ticking time bomb of a blood clot. God is good. Even when we're laid out miserably in a hospital as it gets fixed, God is good. God is good on our best days and during our darkest nights. God is good, for his mercy endures forever. In fact, Psalm 136:26 times states that God's mercy lasts forever. Do we believe in it? Jeremiah says in Lamentations 3, 21, 23. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions do not fail. They are new every morning. Great is God's faithfulness. God's mercies are new every morning. Praise the Lord. 2nd Samuel, chapter 22, verse 31. David says, as for God, his way is perfect. The word of the Lord is tried. He is a shield to all them that trust in him. And Psalm 18, verse 2. The Lord is my rock and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust, my shield and the horn, or the power of my salvation and my high tower. So the Scriptures are full of God's character. If we would take the time and read and grow. Trusting in God with knowledge and understanding leads ultimately to health. That's the last verse in what I read. Proverbs 3, verse 8. It shall be health to your navel and marrow to your bones. Now, the navel, that's what we call our core. Working out your core and the bones obviously are our foundation. And those that the core and our foundation, our bones, that's the building blocks of our bodies. And when those are healthy, it's a healthy life we have. We want our core and our foundation in the Lord to be strong so that we can trust. So let us relax, knowing the character of God, that God is good, he is loving, he is able, he is willing. He has already done the work for us through Jesus Christ. So trust God, read your Bible, get to know him better and grow. God will direct your paths, whether that means it's a path of running a half marathon to get your body to show signs of impending failure. Or that path might be staying in a hospital for six days, allowing for the doctors to fix the problem so that you can heal. So again, Proverbs 3, verses 5 through 8. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. It shall be health to your navel and marrow to your bone. Let's bow our hearts and pray. Lord, thank you for who and what you are. Thank you, Lord, that we can trust in you with everything we've got. And we can be assured of that trust knowing your character. And thank you for your word that sheds the light and truth of that character. Lord, thank you also for that Holy Spirit that teaches us and grows us and comforts us in sickness and in good times. Lord, you are good and you are there for us. Lord, we praise you. We want to be thankful and grateful for everything. Lord, thank you for life everlasting through your son, Jesus Christ. We pray all this in your name. Amen. [00:30:41] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to this message. We hope you enjoyed it. Our prayer is that the message, in some way or another, helped in your walk with God and that your relationship with God was strengthened and grew more intimate. If you would like to contact us with questions or comments, you can email us at the following address. That's me at redletters. Com or me at R E D L E T T E R S. Com. Thank you.