Trust in the Lord
This is a transcript. It may contain small inaccuracies.
I don't have to tell you this, but these two verses are very, very popular. Very popular, well-known amongst God's people. You cannot be in the average evangelical church longer than six months, and even if you are a total stranger to God and the Bible and salvation, what you will know is that these verses—you will know them, though you may not know where they are. And you will know that they're somewhere in the Bible. They're quoted. Someone will quote them in prayer, in a prayer meeting. Someone will quote them to a young person desiring to know the will of God for his life's occupation, his life's marriage partner, where he should go to school, etc., etc.
You cannot pick up the most basic booklet on the subject of divine guidance without confronting Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6. I have a sneaking suspicion that what makes these verses popular is not the main bulk of the verses. You see, the heart of the text is not the promise for guidance. The heart of the text is the command to trust in Yahweh, and to trust in Him with a whole heart, and to repudiate all confidence in human wisdom, and to acknowledge God in the totality of one's lifestyle and pattern.
Now, I say that I have a sneaking suspicion that these verses are not popular because they come with such sweeping demands upon us to trust in the Lord, but they are popular because of the little promise at the end: "And He will make your path straight." And the thing that really struck me—and I will emphasize it more when we come to expound the promise—is that this verse, or these verses, are usually regarded this way: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him," so that you may know that your paths are being directed.
In other words, most people look upon the command as a means to the end that I will be guided of God, and that is not the thought of the text at all. What God commands in this text is your duty and mine, even if He does not guide you for a moment. You are to trust Him with the whole heart, because God is worthy to be trusted with the whole heart. Period, paragraph. You may have never thought of it this way, but that's how the text comes to us. It doesn't say do this, and do this, and this, and this, and this, so that you may be guided. It says do this, and this, and this, because God tells you to. But wonder of wonders, even though you ought to do them without any promise, He gives this gracious promise: I will grant this blessing to you as you do. How good of God. You ought to do it anyway, but I will grant this blessing in the path of obedience. Oh, the goodness of God.
Now, the whole subject of divine guidance is a subject of great concern to the child of God, and the reason is not really difficult to discover. Why is it that a Christian is concerned to know that his paths, his ways, are being directed by the Lord, that they are being straightened by the Lord? Well because he has a new heart, and that new heart longs and desires to do the will of God. God said in Ezekiel 36:26–27, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to do My judgments."
Every regenerated heart has that ambition, that desire, that longing. Every Christian can say with the psalmist, in Psalm 40:8, "I desire to do Your will, oh my God” — God, I desire to do Your will — “Your law is within my inner being." So because he has a new heart, he longs to do the will of God, he pursues it. Anyone who is a true sheep of Christ follows the Shepherd. In fact, he wants to follow the Shepherd. Jesus said, "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they”—what?—“follow Me." John 10:27. So it is natural for a true child of God to be deeply concerned, deeply exercised concerning this matter of divine guidance, pardon me. Because of this, this text, Proverbs 3:5–6, really strikes an immediate response in the heart of the child of God, because it is one of the clearest, one of the strongest texts on the general theme of divine guidance. And so it is important for us to come to grips with what the text is really saying. Hence, nothing is to be spared in seeking to clear away all the debris, all the sentimental perspectives of this text, and to come to grips with the true substance of the mind of God contained in these two verses.
And to do this, we are going to consider together, first of all, by way of introduction, the climate of these verses—the climate of this text. Look at the text itself as a beautiful forest. And before we go in to examine the various trees in the forest, we're going to hop into a helicopter, as it were, and we're going to fly over it and around it a few times, because we want to see the entire forest before we begin to zero in on a specific tree. We don't want it said of us, with this text, we couldn't see the forest for the trees.
So the first thing we're going to do is to enter into something of the atmosphere, the ethos, the mood, the spirit, the climate of this text. It breathes a spiritual climate, and we want to become sensitive to it. Then secondly, what we will do—we will consider then, after considering the climate—we will consider the commands in the text, and obviously, the text contains three commands: trust, lean not, acknowledge. And then we will attempt, by God's grace, in the third place, to open up the promise of the text: "and He will make your paths straight." So we have a long way to go, alright? So tonight, we will begin with the climate.
What is the climate of the text? And see how far we will go, at which you will not be able, I will not be able to really grasp the text itself, to understand the text itself. Well, let me suggest three things about the climate of the text. Again, this is an aerial view of the forest. First of all, the climate of the text is the climate of the biblical doctrine of God. It is the climate of the biblical doctrine of God. You say, well, where in the world do you get that? Well, look at the text. We are called to trust a certain Being with the totality of our heart's affection and trust. We are called upon to acknowledge—that is, to recognize—the claims, laws of a certain Being in every single facet of our lives. So you see, beloved, at the very outset, we are confronted with a concept of God who is worthy, absolutely worthy, of this absolute trust, and this unquestioned and total obedience. And commanding us to lean not on human wisdom is the assumption of the infinite, all-embracing wisdom of this all-wise God. And calling us to acknowledge Him in all our ways is the assumption that God is concerned indeed about all the ways of the people of God, that He is the God of particular and detailed providence, the God of loving involvement with His own people. And promising His direction is the assumption that He is so vast, so infinite in power and might and wisdom, so that He can cause all of the intricate machinery of the universe to move, with reference to working out every detail, the macro and the micro in the life of everyone, and particularly every child of God in every single place and in every single instance.
You see, if you wrench the text out of the climate of the biblical doctrine of this kind of a God, we cannot appreciate the text. You can't really understand it. You can't really grasp it. It would just be a nice sentimental plaque-like text hung up on the wall of your home or the wall of your mind, but you really do not hear the voice of God in it. The Shorter Catechism asks the question, what is God? And the answer is, "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Now, if we do not know God to be this kind of a God, the God of the Bible, not a God concocted in man's own imagination, then we have no basis to understand this text. No basis.
If we want this God for guidance, we must first of all have Him for worship and for intelligent praise. Your dealings with God in guidance will rise no higher than your dealings with God in worship. It is the God whom you worship to whom you will be related in the matters of guidance. So the climate of this text is not the little god of human conceiving in one's mind, nor the little god of much popular, pablumized preaching, diluted preaching. Here's the God of the Bible, infinitely wise, infinitely holy, infinitely sovereign, glorious in His majesty and in His power. And the more you know Him as revealed in His Word, the more broad, the more glorious will be a text such as the one before us.
In the second place, as we make our second pass over the forest in the helicopter, this is the climate of the biblical doctrine of man. The biblical doctrine of God, but also the biblical doctrine of man. Look at the text. Why does He say, "...And do not lean on your own understanding"? "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." “Acknowledge Him in all your ways.” You see, man is a creature. And he's a creature incapable of rightly directing his own ways. And that's why he's called upon to trust in Yahweh. That's why he's called upon not to lean on his own understanding. Why? He's a creature. A feeble creature. And this text breathes the climate and atmosphere of that biblical doctrine of man—that man is a creature utterly, utterly dependent upon God. For “He Himself gives to all people," —the Bible tells us, — "life and breath and all things." "For it is in Him that we live and move and have our being," and without Him we can do nothing.
Now, unless you know something of that biblical climate of the doctrine of man assumed in this text, you will not be able to understand the text. You cannot live a creature—you see, here's the thing. Here's the principle. You cannot live a creature-dependent life in nine areas, and when it comes to guidance, live a Creator-dependent life. It never works. You will carry over into the matter of guidance the same perspective that you have of yourself in your general existence day in and day out. And so the climate assumes and breathes and exudes this biblical doctrine of man—not only his insufficiency as creature to direct his own ways, but there's a hint of his double insufficiency. Why? Because he is a sinful creature. He is a depraved creature. He is a wretched creature. His understanding, which should be the very lamp of God within his breast, has been what? Darkened, as we saw this morning. So he's not to lean upon it, except as it is illuminated by the Holy Spirit through special revelation—that is, the Word of God written.
But then there's something on the positive side. Man is this special creature whom God—and I love this—delights to guide. He delights to guide. What a precious thing. Though it humbles me that I cannot lean upon my own understanding, the text says that this infinite, almighty, sovereign, all-powerful, all-wise God will direct my feet, my steps, my path. I'm not just a speck in a meaningless, empty void of a universe, just a little bit of cosmic dust floating around until I float off somewhere else into oblivion. I have meaning. I have dignity. I am a human being made in the image of God, and God is committed to guide the steps of such a creature.
And so, beloved, the climate of this text is the climate of the biblical doctrine of man. And by way of application, let me say, beloved, that you can't appreciate the text until you have some sensitivity to the biblical doctrine of man. What are you—what you are, pardon me—a creature utterly dependent upon Him for all that you are and have. Sinful creature, doubly dependent upon Him because of sin. Sin has darkened the mind, and yet, wonder of wonders, a noble creature made in the image of God, an image-bearer of the living God. And the more we view ourselves in the eyes of the Scripture, the more we will appreciate this text. I'm not saying anything new, by the way. All of this is to say we have to really hold on to and develop a high view of God and a proper biblical view of man. That's all I said. Why didn't you say it? You say, well, why did you take all this time? Because we need the reminder. My heart needs it. My heart needs it.
Thirdly—and we're making our third pass over the forest in the helicopter, right?—it is the climate of the biblical doctrine of communion with God. Communion with God. Solomon assumes that God can be known to the extent that trusting Him with the whole heart will be both reasonable and delightful. He assumes that God can be known with such intimacy that He may be acknowledged in all our ways. He assumes that the creature can so enter into such a vital communion and fellowship and walk with God so as to have all of His ways directed by this God.
You see, take the words "trust in Yahweh." "Acknowledge Him." "He will make your path straight." What do those words mean if severed from the biblical context of communion with the living God? Now here you see, is one of the great problems in this matter of guidance. We want the formula. We want the formula. We default into thinking this way. We want the formula that will assure us of right decisions in life and guidance in life, but a formula that can work detached from a living communion with the living God. And God says, I don't have such a formula. I don't.
And here's the principle, beloved. Mark it down. You and I can never know the gift of guidance by God without the grace of communion with God. It doesn't work. It's not supposed to work that way. You and I can never know the gift of guidance by God without the grace of communion with God. We cannot have our feet directed into the will of God unless our hearts are directed into communion with the person of God day in and day out.
Trust Him with the whole heart. With the whole heart. That's communion with God. "In all your ways acknowledge Him." And we'll see as we seek to open up that phrase when we get to it, Lord willing, that it's a profound, profound concept. Acknowledging Him is the very essence of communion with God. God is. God is here. I am in communion with Him. All that that implies. He doesn't say, your paths will be made straight. That's not what the text says. That's too detached. That's too disconnected. That's too impersonal. It says, "He," —the living God, — "will make your paths straight." He Himself. That's the whole climate of the text. Do you feel it, beloved? Do you sense it? I trust you do. The climate of the biblical doctrine of communion with God.
So if you're here tonight and you are an utter stranger to vital communion with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, this text is not for you. Until you've entered into the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, until you've repented of sin and believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ and come by that one way into fellowship with God, you cannot know the blessings of this text fulfilled in your life. And so I ask you, if that is you tonight, to give your life to Him who is the light of the world.
We move now from the climate to the commands. The commands in the text. Commands. You say, why do you call them commands? I mean, isn't it better to call them exhortations maybe, you know? Exhortations. Encouragement. No, no, they're commands. But commands—I mean, delight in God—I mean, isn't that a bit legalistic? I mean, commands, harsh? What makes the word command legalism is any thought that by obedience I earn the favor of God. What makes it Christianity is, having received His favor graciously, I long to obey Him from the heart, explicitly.
All right, what are the commands? Well, there are three of them. Look at the text: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." "Do not lean on your own understanding." "In all your ways acknowledge Him." Three commands—commands to, we can put them this way—they're commands to, number one, reliance: trust in Yahweh, repudiation: do not lean and recognition: in all your ways, acknowledge. Reliance, repudiation, recognition.
Let's begin now with the first of the commands, and what is it? It's a command to reliance, and this is where we will spend the rest of our time this evening, by the grace of God. "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart," and every word is pregnant with significance. First of all, consider with me the object of this reliance. The object of this reliance: “trust in Yahweh.” "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." Trust in Him who knows the right way, to the right ends, and the right means to attain it. Trust in Him—Yahweh, the great I Am—the one who is the source of life, and the sustenance, and everything else, the one who depends on no one else outside of Himself to exist, and everything else, and everyone else depends upon Him—the great I Am.
The one who created you anew in Christ Jesus, “for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them”—Ephesians 2:10. How is this God described to us in Scriptures? He's described as the one “who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure”—Philippians 2:13. Hebrews 13:21—He works in us “what is pleasing in His sight.” He's described as the one who has a will for us, and what is His will? Romans 12:2 —it is good, it is pleasing, it is perfect. His will is good, His will is pleasing, His will is perfect, and it is a will for our lives woven in the fabric of eternal love—love so amazing, so divine—eternal wisdom, eternal faithfulness. And the object of this reliance is none other than this God—God Himself.
God Himself, the great God of providence, the great God of grace, the great God of promise. The object being what it is, then, anything less than this is the essence of wickedness. Anything less than absolute reliance upon this God is the essence of wickedness. And so the key to complying with this command is having right views of God—this God. And if you have any suspicions about the genuineness of His love, of the infinite scope of His wisdom, or any questions about His good intentions—the good intentions of His heart—you'll find it very difficult to trust Him with the whole heart. Think about it. When we have absolute confidence in the presence of a person—that they are not out there to hurt us, they're not out to conquer us, they're not out to show us up, they're not out to undercut us—they are the kind of people we love to be around. They are the kind of people we love to be with. Why? Because we have absolute trust as to their intentions. When there's somebody that you think is out to rival you, you will find it difficult to get along with that person. It doesn't matter who that person is. It could be even a loved one. It could be a co-worker—it doesn't matter. The people you're really comfortable with are those whose intentions that you have absolute confidence in. Isn't that true?
Now apply it to the text: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." If you have absolute confidence that this God, Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is not out there to get you, He's not out to show you up, He's not out to put you down, He's not out to undercut you, He's not out to really make you squirm for no reason—for the sheer delight for Him just to see somebody squirm—if you have absolute confidence that all of His intentions are intentions of love and goodness and grace, what else can you do but to trust Him with your whole heart? Now do you see why the Bible talks about an evil heart of unbelief? — Hebrews 3:12. That was the sin of Adam and Eve, wasn't it? God says, Adam, Adam, in My goodness, in My love, I tell you, leave that tree alone. Stay away from that forbidden tree. If you eat of it, you will die. And in My goodness, in My love, in My concern for your well-being, I don't want you to die. Leave that tree alone. And the devil came with his lie, as we saw recently, casting insinuation upon what? The goodness of God, the truthfulness of God. Has God said? Maybe God isn't quite true to His Word. Maybe what He said can fall to the ground in unfulfillment, you know? He doesn't mean it. He can't keep His Word. He doesn't keep His Word. And then he casts aspersions upon the goodness of God: "For God knows" — he said, — "that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." In other words, God is not your friend. He's your rival. And Eve believed him. She, along with her husband, did not trust the Lord with the whole heart. And so you and I are called upon as children to trust God completely.
Oh, dear child of God, never try to view the heart of God in abstraction. Never. View it fleshed out in the person and work of Jesus Christ. View it expressed, put on display, fleshed out in the person and work of Jesus Christ, “the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father,” —He, He has exegeted Him — “He has explained Him.” John 1:18. "He who has seen Me," — Jesus said, — "has seen the Father." John 14:9. And in the Lord Jesus Christ, we read the goodness, the kindness, the love, the faithfulness, the mercy of our God. That's the object of our trust.
In the second place, notice about the reliance—this reliance—not only the object of it, but would you please notice with me the essence of it? The essence of this reliance—not only the object of this reliance—but the essence of this reliance. What is it? Trust. Trust. "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." Trust, trust, ‘batah.’ In Proverbs 3:5, ‘batah’ means to lie helpless. Face down. Face down. It's actually a very similar word in Arabic. It sounds the same. ‘Batah’ means to lie flat on your face, on your stomach. It pictures a servant waiting for the master's command in readiness to obey, a defeated soldier yielding himself to the conquering general. To trust in God is, someone said, and I quote, "To trust in God is to be unbottomed of thyself and of every creature and so to lean upon God that if He fails thee, thou sinkest.”.
I love Jerry Bridges' definition of this word trust, and I believe it's a really beautiful, workable, biblical definition. Listen to what he said commenting on this word trust in this text. He writes, and I quote, "It is childlike, unwavering confidence in our Father's well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love." I love that. “It is a childlike, unwavering confidence in our Father's well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” What does it mean to trust Yahweh with all our hearts? It means to exercise “childlike, unwavering confidence in our Father's well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” We can illustrate it this way. Here's a father doing some work in the backyard, and his wife is somewhere running errands, and their son is in the upper level of the home playing in his room. All of a sudden, the house begins to be consumed with flames from the basement up. The child on the second floor, not aware of it, is in danger, and the father's way into the house is blocked because of the fire. He begins to shout to his son, and suddenly the son comes to the second-story window. Then the father says, "Son, the house is burning, and you need to come out," and the son says, "Dad, how can I?"
He tells him not to open the door to the bedroom leading to the downstairs, and then he begins to plead with his son to jump into his arms to flee the fire. The child is tempted to think, "But daddy, I just can't do a thing like this. It would destroy me. It would kill me. It would hurt me." And the father says something like this: "Son, trust me. Son, have I ever asked you to do anything that I was not confident that it would be for your good? Have I ever expected you to do anything that was not framed by my love for you?" And then he pleads again with his son to have what? To have a “childlike, unwavering confidence in his well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” When that child has that, he'll jump. He will trust in his father with the whole heart, and that's what the text is telling us. For some of us, it's so simple, yet it's so difficult, isn't it? Has not God proven His wisdom and faithfulness and His love to you, child of God, times without number? Has He not? And yet, isn't it amazing that in the moment of pinch, we forget so quickly His well-proven wisdom, and we start leaning upon what?
Do you see how the text comes to us? Solomon has observed human nature in his own heart and in others, and whenever we're tempted not to trust in the Lord, when He's saying jump, we say, no, there must be a better way down the stairs, God, and we start looking for our own way of escape. That's why he follows up with the words, "Do not lean on your own understanding." Why? As we will see, it's the essence of unbelief. It's unbelief that makes human understanding a substitute for this “childlike confidence in the Father's well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” But you don't understand, I need to be hands-on. I need to be in control. I'm afraid to take the risk. What if, what if, what if? May I ask you, child of God, is it risky to rest in the lap of infinite love? Is it risky to repose in the lap of infinite wisdom? Is it risky to do that? If it's risky, then welcome the risk. That's the essence of this reliance. And having looked upon the object of it—Yahweh, the great I Am—the essence of it—childlike confidence—consider with me in the third place the source and the measure of this reliance, the source and the measure of this reliance.
Here it is in the text: with all your heart. With all your heart—that's the source of the trust. The heart, the heart, the seat of your being, biblically defined, the center of what makes you you. The heart, which is comprised of the judgments, the affections, the will, the faculty of choice, desire, the totality of the inner life—the center, the citadel of man's being. The source of his trust is to be right from there: the heart. It's the thing that happens with that little boy when he's standing there and seems frozen to jump out of the window, but when his heart really goes and plops in his daddy's arms, then his feet and his hands and everything else follows as well. You see, beloved, this is the principle of the Word of God. Wherever the heart goes, the rest of you will come. Wherever the heart goes, the rest of you will come, because what has your heart has you. What has your heart has you. It's that simple.
That's why the Scripture says, out of the heart are what? “The issues of life.” Jesus said, out of the heart proceed adultery, sexual immorality, theft, pride, foolishness, coveting, deceit, slander, et cetera. In Mark 7 and elsewhere, He says, when you see a man's hand steal something, his hand is going where his heart was all the time. That's what He's saying. That's the doctrine of the Bible. Where the heart is, the man is. What the heart is, the man is. So the source of this trust is to be nothing less than the citadel of your being. And what's the measure of it to be? All your heart. "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." Now, is that some kind of a sinless perfection? A perfect streak? No, no, no. When the Bible talks of an undivided heart, it doesn't mean a heart that has attained absolute purity, but it speaks about basic sincerity. Basic sincerity.
The Bible describes single-heartedness as opposed to double-mindedness, in which a man or a woman, boy or girl, is trying to serve what? Two masters. Now, what happens when you try to serve two masters? Jesus says it's impossible. You can't do it, “…You love the one, hate the other, or you will be devoted to the one, despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Because the heart can only have one supreme object of affection and allegiance—only one, only one—and that's the call of this text. That's the call of this text. It's a call to “trust in Yahweh with all your heart.” No holding back of any department of the heart's affection. No pocket in the heart is off-limit. No department of the heart's affection is off-limit. Less than this is an ugly provocation of God. It is a heinous provocation of God. Look at an example in the Scripture—the example of the children of Israel. We find the record of it in Psalm 78. Turn with me to Psalm 78. Here they are, wonderfully provided for by God's ‘hesed,’ God's loving-kindness, God's steadfast love, His “well-proven faithfulness, wisdom, and love” had been their portion, being brought out of Egypt through the Red Sea, established in the wilderness, the manna provided from heaven day after day, but they did not get the message. And so we read in verse 18, "And in their heart they put God to the test by asking for food according to their desire. Then they spoke against God; they said, ‘can God prepare a table in the wilderness?’"
I mean, it's unbelievable. All the while they're groaning and moaning that God would give them meat, they said, well, He couldn't even do it even if He wanted to. Do you see the height of that divided heart? See the expressions of it? We just got this manna. Day after day after day—manna, manna, manna. Of course, it's a miracle. Of course, it's a constant monument of God's faithfulness. It's there every day in double portion on the day before the Sabbath. Of course, it meets all of our temporal, physical needs, but we're not concerned about that. It doesn't satisfy our desires. It doesn't satisfy our taste buds. We want meat, but God can't give it to us even if He was concerned about our taste buds. Do you get something of the feeling of the spirit of unbelief that questions what? That questions God's love, God's wisdom, God's faithfulness. That's what it is. Now, how does God regard this? How does God regard this? When the heart is in this state, how does God regard it? Drop down to verse 20: "Behold, He struck the rock so that water gushed out, and streams were overflowing; Can He give bread also? Will He prepare meat for His people?"
Now, look at God's reaction here, how He regards this: "Therefore, Yahweh heard and was full of wrath; and a fire was kindled against Jacob and anger also mounted against Israel, because they did not believe in God and did not trust in His salvation." They had a divided heart. May I press the question upon your conscience tonight, beloved, as I had to face that in my own preparation? Do you sit here in this place with a single heart or with a divided heart? As you sit here tonight, do you sit with a single heart or a divided heart? If trusting God is to be true, it must be wholehearted. It must be complete. To put half our trust in God and half our trust in self or something else or someone else is really a failure to trust Yahweh at all times. We should endeavor to give God all our conscious trust. You've got to do it completely, unequivocally. One commentator said, "He that stands with one foot on a rock and another foot upon a quicksand will sink and perish as certainly as he that stands with both feet on a quicksand." You can't have that divide. If the Lord is God, follow Him. If Baal is God, follow Him. You can't be in this divided space.
Ah, but you say it's hard. Look to the Lord. Look to the call of the text: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." Dare to believe that His ways for you are what? Good, acceptable, and perfect. Good, acceptable, and perfect. That's His heart. That's His will.
Ah, but you say, I question God all the time. I question His wisdom. I want to know everything all mapped out. And then I'll see if I can trust Him. If I see that it's good for me. I want to see the plan, the blueprint ahead of time. And then I'll see if this is really good for me from my perspective. That's unbelief. That's unbelief. Questioning of His wisdom. Questioning of His love. What's the way in through the condition commanded by the text? I believe the answer is beautifully and simply stated in Psalm 9 and verse 10. What is the way to comply with this first commandment which leads on to fulfillment of the promise for divine guidance? Well, look at Psalm 9 and verse 10. I love this. Simple but salient: "Those who know Your name will put their trust in You" That's it. That's it. "Those who know Your name will put their trust in You." The name of God, beloved, is a revealed character of God. Bound up in the name of God is a revealed character of God. And this text says those who know the revealed character of God will trust in that God. And I intend to be intensely practical at this point as we bring this to a conclusion.
If you're having trouble complying with this text, and that's why you're all fouled up when it comes to guidance, and you can't with confidence pray that God will unfold His ways because you're afraid that they might not be good for you, you can't come with unfettered liberty and say, guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, because you think maybe He's going to guide you to eat sour grapes for the rest of your life. And so you're afraid to pray it, to ask. You've got such low, mean, unworthy thoughts of God. Well, how are you going to come to that place where you say, Lord, O Lord, I do trust You. I do place “childlike, unreserved confidence in Your well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” Here's the answer: "Those who know Your name will put their trust in You." In other words, you need to study the character of God as revealed in the Word of God, and particularly as revealed in Jesus Christ, the Word that became flesh.
Study the character of God. Find in the Scripture where the Lord Jesus would come all the way from Heaven to the confines of a virgin's womb, and into the filth and mire of a world full of sin and iniquity. Identify Himself with sinners in the sinners' ordinance of the water of baptism. Live among sinners, pray among sinners, eat among sinners, and then go to a cross until the billows of the Father's wrath break upon His holy head, and He's cast into abandonment, and He cries, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" You look at all that, and you see, if you can woefully question the love and the kindness and the goodness of God. Those who know Your name, the name of God is bound up in the name of Jesus. He has revealed Him. Study the character of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. Study it until you find your heart almost without conscious effort running out, saying, Lord Jesus, how can I do anything other than trust You with my whole heart?
The great problem of the rich young ruler was right here. It was right here. When he came seeking Jesus, saying, Lord, I want eternal life, true life. I want my ways now to be guided by You and into eternity. And the Lord, in essence, said to him, Oh, my young man, if that's to be true, then the vicious, self-destructive plague of idolatry must be ripped from your heart. Sell what you have, give to the poor, come follow Me, and you'll have what? Miseries the rest of your days? No, treasures in Heaven. You'll have an earnest of them now and the full inheritance in Heaven. And the young man couldn't believe those words. It says he went away sorrowful. Why? Because he felt that this was the way into bitterness and now he was torn. I don't have all that I long for in my riches, but I know I'll lose much that is real and very important to me if I give up my riches, my idols. And he was torn with a divided heart. And oh, the blessedness of those who can say with Peter, James, and the others, Lord, we have left all to follow You. And Jesus says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, there is not one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, or farms for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive many times more at this time and in the age to come eternal life." This is the path into compliance with this text. Study the character of God as it is revealed in the Word of God, but particularly in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the positive. And I close with the negative. I close with the negative. See, the Bible always has positive and negative. Put on, put off. Lay aside, put on.
Here's the negative. Not only study the character of God in the Bible. Study the character of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Get to know this God of the Bible. Get to know His heart, His intention, who He is. He is compassionate, gracious, loving, kind. He is committed to do us good with all His heart and all His soul. And He spared not His own and His one and only Son, but delivered Him for us. Study the character of God. But on the negative side, oh beloved, refuse. Be resolved to refuse, refuse, refuse all mean thoughts of God as coming from the devil himself. Strike at the first rising of those thoughts. Whenever you find your heart drawing back from trusting in the Lord with all your heart, believing that His will is good, acceptable, and perfect, don't entertain those suspicions for a moment, for a split second. They are breathed by the same serpent who breathed them to our first parents when he said, has God said?
Oh, may God humble us tonight and bring us to repentance. Not so much for gross sins, likes of immorality. I mean, if we've been guilty of them, may He humble us for them. But that's not the problem tonight in this case, particularly by way of application with most of us. May He humble us not for that which mark the multitudes of people in the world—the worldly who abandon themselves to wickedness, immorality, and the deeds of the flesh. But may God humble us tonight for the terrible, terrible sin of questioning His well-proven faithfulness, wisdom, and love towards us.
That's why God let us feel the bitterness of going our own way. We've said in essence, God, I can't trust You to lead me in a good way. I'll make my own good way. I know what is good for me. And God says, I'll hedge it up with thorns until you wise up and realize how foolish you've been. Because I love you. That's God's discipline. Lord, I can't believe that the way that might come if I fully trust You is the way of love. But I will, in a form of perverted, inverted self-love, I'll plan my own way. And God says, All right, I'll see to it that bitterness stalks your path until you fall upon your face and say, Lord, Thine way, not mine. O Lord, whatever that path may be, You lead the way. Now for some here, that has very concrete implications. I don't need to tell you what they are. Maybe right now they're coming to your mind. It's between you and God. For some it may be a relationship that you haven't dared to hold that thing up and say, God, if this relationship is not of You, sever it. Because it cannot be for my good and for Your glory. And you haven't dared to do that. If so, God is calling upon you to do it tonight. It may be a thing, an idol, whatever that is. For some it may be an ambition, an ambition, a sinful ambition to be something that you haven't really dared to say, Lord, if this ambition is not of You, smash it. Because it cannot be for my good and for Your glory.
For you to trust in the Lord with all your heart, and as it were, get into the way where this text will become a precious framework of God's dealings with you, you're going to have to do something specific—some specific dealings with God about some very specific things. A specific area, a specific sin, a specific idol, a pocket of resistance. And though you push that thing down and down and down, your conscience is tormented and it cannot be at rest. And you say, I know I ought to make it right and deal with this, but I don't understand. How can a good God ask me to do this? I might lose this relationship. I might fail the course. I might, I might, I might. And what are you saying? You're saying that God's demand that you thoroughly deal with this matter, His way, is a bitter way, not a good way for you.
That's casting aspersion on the character of God. For you to trust in Yahweh with all your heart means that you're going to have to have specific dealings with God about some specific things. Beloved, if God so zeroed in upon you tonight, you dare not walk out of this place, out of that door, saying, I'll leave that for next time. You dare not walk out of this place without saying, oh God, I will trust You. Though everything in my flesh cries out, I read Your character in the face of Jesus. I see Your faithfulness. I see Your love. I see Your mercy. I see Your kindness. I see Your grace. Lord, I will trust You with the whole heart. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. It's one thing to put Proverbs 3:5-6 on a plaque, quote it in a prayer meeting. It's another thing to know what it is, to know what it says, and to walk in the light of it. May God grant us to face this first of the commands: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart."
Let's pray.
You cannot pick up the most basic booklet on the subject of divine guidance without confronting Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6. I have a sneaking suspicion that what makes these verses popular is not the main bulk of the verses. You see, the heart of the text is not the promise for guidance. The heart of the text is the command to trust in Yahweh, and to trust in Him with a whole heart, and to repudiate all confidence in human wisdom, and to acknowledge God in the totality of one's lifestyle and pattern.
Now, I say that I have a sneaking suspicion that these verses are not popular because they come with such sweeping demands upon us to trust in the Lord, but they are popular because of the little promise at the end: "And He will make your path straight." And the thing that really struck me—and I will emphasize it more when we come to expound the promise—is that this verse, or these verses, are usually regarded this way: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him," so that you may know that your paths are being directed.
In other words, most people look upon the command as a means to the end that I will be guided of God, and that is not the thought of the text at all. What God commands in this text is your duty and mine, even if He does not guide you for a moment. You are to trust Him with the whole heart, because God is worthy to be trusted with the whole heart. Period, paragraph. You may have never thought of it this way, but that's how the text comes to us. It doesn't say do this, and do this, and this, and this, and this, so that you may be guided. It says do this, and this, and this, because God tells you to. But wonder of wonders, even though you ought to do them without any promise, He gives this gracious promise: I will grant this blessing to you as you do. How good of God. You ought to do it anyway, but I will grant this blessing in the path of obedience. Oh, the goodness of God.
Now, the whole subject of divine guidance is a subject of great concern to the child of God, and the reason is not really difficult to discover. Why is it that a Christian is concerned to know that his paths, his ways, are being directed by the Lord, that they are being straightened by the Lord? Well because he has a new heart, and that new heart longs and desires to do the will of God. God said in Ezekiel 36:26–27, "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to do My judgments."
Every regenerated heart has that ambition, that desire, that longing. Every Christian can say with the psalmist, in Psalm 40:8, "I desire to do Your will, oh my God” — God, I desire to do Your will — “Your law is within my inner being." So because he has a new heart, he longs to do the will of God, he pursues it. Anyone who is a true sheep of Christ follows the Shepherd. In fact, he wants to follow the Shepherd. Jesus said, "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they”—what?—“follow Me." John 10:27. So it is natural for a true child of God to be deeply concerned, deeply exercised concerning this matter of divine guidance, pardon me. Because of this, this text, Proverbs 3:5–6, really strikes an immediate response in the heart of the child of God, because it is one of the clearest, one of the strongest texts on the general theme of divine guidance. And so it is important for us to come to grips with what the text is really saying. Hence, nothing is to be spared in seeking to clear away all the debris, all the sentimental perspectives of this text, and to come to grips with the true substance of the mind of God contained in these two verses.
And to do this, we are going to consider together, first of all, by way of introduction, the climate of these verses—the climate of this text. Look at the text itself as a beautiful forest. And before we go in to examine the various trees in the forest, we're going to hop into a helicopter, as it were, and we're going to fly over it and around it a few times, because we want to see the entire forest before we begin to zero in on a specific tree. We don't want it said of us, with this text, we couldn't see the forest for the trees.
So the first thing we're going to do is to enter into something of the atmosphere, the ethos, the mood, the spirit, the climate of this text. It breathes a spiritual climate, and we want to become sensitive to it. Then secondly, what we will do—we will consider then, after considering the climate—we will consider the commands in the text, and obviously, the text contains three commands: trust, lean not, acknowledge. And then we will attempt, by God's grace, in the third place, to open up the promise of the text: "and He will make your paths straight." So we have a long way to go, alright? So tonight, we will begin with the climate.
What is the climate of the text? And see how far we will go, at which you will not be able, I will not be able to really grasp the text itself, to understand the text itself. Well, let me suggest three things about the climate of the text. Again, this is an aerial view of the forest. First of all, the climate of the text is the climate of the biblical doctrine of God. It is the climate of the biblical doctrine of God. You say, well, where in the world do you get that? Well, look at the text. We are called to trust a certain Being with the totality of our heart's affection and trust. We are called upon to acknowledge—that is, to recognize—the claims, laws of a certain Being in every single facet of our lives. So you see, beloved, at the very outset, we are confronted with a concept of God who is worthy, absolutely worthy, of this absolute trust, and this unquestioned and total obedience. And commanding us to lean not on human wisdom is the assumption of the infinite, all-embracing wisdom of this all-wise God. And calling us to acknowledge Him in all our ways is the assumption that God is concerned indeed about all the ways of the people of God, that He is the God of particular and detailed providence, the God of loving involvement with His own people. And promising His direction is the assumption that He is so vast, so infinite in power and might and wisdom, so that He can cause all of the intricate machinery of the universe to move, with reference to working out every detail, the macro and the micro in the life of everyone, and particularly every child of God in every single place and in every single instance.
You see, if you wrench the text out of the climate of the biblical doctrine of this kind of a God, we cannot appreciate the text. You can't really understand it. You can't really grasp it. It would just be a nice sentimental plaque-like text hung up on the wall of your home or the wall of your mind, but you really do not hear the voice of God in it. The Shorter Catechism asks the question, what is God? And the answer is, "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Now, if we do not know God to be this kind of a God, the God of the Bible, not a God concocted in man's own imagination, then we have no basis to understand this text. No basis.
If we want this God for guidance, we must first of all have Him for worship and for intelligent praise. Your dealings with God in guidance will rise no higher than your dealings with God in worship. It is the God whom you worship to whom you will be related in the matters of guidance. So the climate of this text is not the little god of human conceiving in one's mind, nor the little god of much popular, pablumized preaching, diluted preaching. Here's the God of the Bible, infinitely wise, infinitely holy, infinitely sovereign, glorious in His majesty and in His power. And the more you know Him as revealed in His Word, the more broad, the more glorious will be a text such as the one before us.
In the second place, as we make our second pass over the forest in the helicopter, this is the climate of the biblical doctrine of man. The biblical doctrine of God, but also the biblical doctrine of man. Look at the text. Why does He say, "...And do not lean on your own understanding"? "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." “Acknowledge Him in all your ways.” You see, man is a creature. And he's a creature incapable of rightly directing his own ways. And that's why he's called upon to trust in Yahweh. That's why he's called upon not to lean on his own understanding. Why? He's a creature. A feeble creature. And this text breathes the climate and atmosphere of that biblical doctrine of man—that man is a creature utterly, utterly dependent upon God. For “He Himself gives to all people," —the Bible tells us, — "life and breath and all things." "For it is in Him that we live and move and have our being," and without Him we can do nothing.
Now, unless you know something of that biblical climate of the doctrine of man assumed in this text, you will not be able to understand the text. You cannot live a creature—you see, here's the thing. Here's the principle. You cannot live a creature-dependent life in nine areas, and when it comes to guidance, live a Creator-dependent life. It never works. You will carry over into the matter of guidance the same perspective that you have of yourself in your general existence day in and day out. And so the climate assumes and breathes and exudes this biblical doctrine of man—not only his insufficiency as creature to direct his own ways, but there's a hint of his double insufficiency. Why? Because he is a sinful creature. He is a depraved creature. He is a wretched creature. His understanding, which should be the very lamp of God within his breast, has been what? Darkened, as we saw this morning. So he's not to lean upon it, except as it is illuminated by the Holy Spirit through special revelation—that is, the Word of God written.
But then there's something on the positive side. Man is this special creature whom God—and I love this—delights to guide. He delights to guide. What a precious thing. Though it humbles me that I cannot lean upon my own understanding, the text says that this infinite, almighty, sovereign, all-powerful, all-wise God will direct my feet, my steps, my path. I'm not just a speck in a meaningless, empty void of a universe, just a little bit of cosmic dust floating around until I float off somewhere else into oblivion. I have meaning. I have dignity. I am a human being made in the image of God, and God is committed to guide the steps of such a creature.
And so, beloved, the climate of this text is the climate of the biblical doctrine of man. And by way of application, let me say, beloved, that you can't appreciate the text until you have some sensitivity to the biblical doctrine of man. What are you—what you are, pardon me—a creature utterly dependent upon Him for all that you are and have. Sinful creature, doubly dependent upon Him because of sin. Sin has darkened the mind, and yet, wonder of wonders, a noble creature made in the image of God, an image-bearer of the living God. And the more we view ourselves in the eyes of the Scripture, the more we will appreciate this text. I'm not saying anything new, by the way. All of this is to say we have to really hold on to and develop a high view of God and a proper biblical view of man. That's all I said. Why didn't you say it? You say, well, why did you take all this time? Because we need the reminder. My heart needs it. My heart needs it.
Thirdly—and we're making our third pass over the forest in the helicopter, right?—it is the climate of the biblical doctrine of communion with God. Communion with God. Solomon assumes that God can be known to the extent that trusting Him with the whole heart will be both reasonable and delightful. He assumes that God can be known with such intimacy that He may be acknowledged in all our ways. He assumes that the creature can so enter into such a vital communion and fellowship and walk with God so as to have all of His ways directed by this God.
You see, take the words "trust in Yahweh." "Acknowledge Him." "He will make your path straight." What do those words mean if severed from the biblical context of communion with the living God? Now here you see, is one of the great problems in this matter of guidance. We want the formula. We want the formula. We default into thinking this way. We want the formula that will assure us of right decisions in life and guidance in life, but a formula that can work detached from a living communion with the living God. And God says, I don't have such a formula. I don't.
And here's the principle, beloved. Mark it down. You and I can never know the gift of guidance by God without the grace of communion with God. It doesn't work. It's not supposed to work that way. You and I can never know the gift of guidance by God without the grace of communion with God. We cannot have our feet directed into the will of God unless our hearts are directed into communion with the person of God day in and day out.
Trust Him with the whole heart. With the whole heart. That's communion with God. "In all your ways acknowledge Him." And we'll see as we seek to open up that phrase when we get to it, Lord willing, that it's a profound, profound concept. Acknowledging Him is the very essence of communion with God. God is. God is here. I am in communion with Him. All that that implies. He doesn't say, your paths will be made straight. That's not what the text says. That's too detached. That's too disconnected. That's too impersonal. It says, "He," —the living God, — "will make your paths straight." He Himself. That's the whole climate of the text. Do you feel it, beloved? Do you sense it? I trust you do. The climate of the biblical doctrine of communion with God.
So if you're here tonight and you are an utter stranger to vital communion with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, this text is not for you. Until you've entered into the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, until you've repented of sin and believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ and come by that one way into fellowship with God, you cannot know the blessings of this text fulfilled in your life. And so I ask you, if that is you tonight, to give your life to Him who is the light of the world.
We move now from the climate to the commands. The commands in the text. Commands. You say, why do you call them commands? I mean, isn't it better to call them exhortations maybe, you know? Exhortations. Encouragement. No, no, they're commands. But commands—I mean, delight in God—I mean, isn't that a bit legalistic? I mean, commands, harsh? What makes the word command legalism is any thought that by obedience I earn the favor of God. What makes it Christianity is, having received His favor graciously, I long to obey Him from the heart, explicitly.
All right, what are the commands? Well, there are three of them. Look at the text: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." "Do not lean on your own understanding." "In all your ways acknowledge Him." Three commands—commands to, we can put them this way—they're commands to, number one, reliance: trust in Yahweh, repudiation: do not lean and recognition: in all your ways, acknowledge. Reliance, repudiation, recognition.
Let's begin now with the first of the commands, and what is it? It's a command to reliance, and this is where we will spend the rest of our time this evening, by the grace of God. "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart," and every word is pregnant with significance. First of all, consider with me the object of this reliance. The object of this reliance: “trust in Yahweh.” "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." Trust in Him who knows the right way, to the right ends, and the right means to attain it. Trust in Him—Yahweh, the great I Am—the one who is the source of life, and the sustenance, and everything else, the one who depends on no one else outside of Himself to exist, and everything else, and everyone else depends upon Him—the great I Am.
The one who created you anew in Christ Jesus, “for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them”—Ephesians 2:10. How is this God described to us in Scriptures? He's described as the one “who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure”—Philippians 2:13. Hebrews 13:21—He works in us “what is pleasing in His sight.” He's described as the one who has a will for us, and what is His will? Romans 12:2 —it is good, it is pleasing, it is perfect. His will is good, His will is pleasing, His will is perfect, and it is a will for our lives woven in the fabric of eternal love—love so amazing, so divine—eternal wisdom, eternal faithfulness. And the object of this reliance is none other than this God—God Himself.
God Himself, the great God of providence, the great God of grace, the great God of promise. The object being what it is, then, anything less than this is the essence of wickedness. Anything less than absolute reliance upon this God is the essence of wickedness. And so the key to complying with this command is having right views of God—this God. And if you have any suspicions about the genuineness of His love, of the infinite scope of His wisdom, or any questions about His good intentions—the good intentions of His heart—you'll find it very difficult to trust Him with the whole heart. Think about it. When we have absolute confidence in the presence of a person—that they are not out there to hurt us, they're not out to conquer us, they're not out to show us up, they're not out to undercut us—they are the kind of people we love to be around. They are the kind of people we love to be with. Why? Because we have absolute trust as to their intentions. When there's somebody that you think is out to rival you, you will find it difficult to get along with that person. It doesn't matter who that person is. It could be even a loved one. It could be a co-worker—it doesn't matter. The people you're really comfortable with are those whose intentions that you have absolute confidence in. Isn't that true?
Now apply it to the text: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." If you have absolute confidence that this God, Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is not out there to get you, He's not out to show you up, He's not out to put you down, He's not out to undercut you, He's not out to really make you squirm for no reason—for the sheer delight for Him just to see somebody squirm—if you have absolute confidence that all of His intentions are intentions of love and goodness and grace, what else can you do but to trust Him with your whole heart? Now do you see why the Bible talks about an evil heart of unbelief? — Hebrews 3:12. That was the sin of Adam and Eve, wasn't it? God says, Adam, Adam, in My goodness, in My love, I tell you, leave that tree alone. Stay away from that forbidden tree. If you eat of it, you will die. And in My goodness, in My love, in My concern for your well-being, I don't want you to die. Leave that tree alone. And the devil came with his lie, as we saw recently, casting insinuation upon what? The goodness of God, the truthfulness of God. Has God said? Maybe God isn't quite true to His Word. Maybe what He said can fall to the ground in unfulfillment, you know? He doesn't mean it. He can't keep His Word. He doesn't keep His Word. And then he casts aspersions upon the goodness of God: "For God knows" — he said, — "that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." In other words, God is not your friend. He's your rival. And Eve believed him. She, along with her husband, did not trust the Lord with the whole heart. And so you and I are called upon as children to trust God completely.
Oh, dear child of God, never try to view the heart of God in abstraction. Never. View it fleshed out in the person and work of Jesus Christ. View it expressed, put on display, fleshed out in the person and work of Jesus Christ, “the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father,” —He, He has exegeted Him — “He has explained Him.” John 1:18. "He who has seen Me," — Jesus said, — "has seen the Father." John 14:9. And in the Lord Jesus Christ, we read the goodness, the kindness, the love, the faithfulness, the mercy of our God. That's the object of our trust.
In the second place, notice about the reliance—this reliance—not only the object of it, but would you please notice with me the essence of it? The essence of this reliance—not only the object of this reliance—but the essence of this reliance. What is it? Trust. Trust. "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." Trust, trust, ‘batah.’ In Proverbs 3:5, ‘batah’ means to lie helpless. Face down. Face down. It's actually a very similar word in Arabic. It sounds the same. ‘Batah’ means to lie flat on your face, on your stomach. It pictures a servant waiting for the master's command in readiness to obey, a defeated soldier yielding himself to the conquering general. To trust in God is, someone said, and I quote, "To trust in God is to be unbottomed of thyself and of every creature and so to lean upon God that if He fails thee, thou sinkest.”.
I love Jerry Bridges' definition of this word trust, and I believe it's a really beautiful, workable, biblical definition. Listen to what he said commenting on this word trust in this text. He writes, and I quote, "It is childlike, unwavering confidence in our Father's well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love." I love that. “It is a childlike, unwavering confidence in our Father's well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” What does it mean to trust Yahweh with all our hearts? It means to exercise “childlike, unwavering confidence in our Father's well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” We can illustrate it this way. Here's a father doing some work in the backyard, and his wife is somewhere running errands, and their son is in the upper level of the home playing in his room. All of a sudden, the house begins to be consumed with flames from the basement up. The child on the second floor, not aware of it, is in danger, and the father's way into the house is blocked because of the fire. He begins to shout to his son, and suddenly the son comes to the second-story window. Then the father says, "Son, the house is burning, and you need to come out," and the son says, "Dad, how can I?"
He tells him not to open the door to the bedroom leading to the downstairs, and then he begins to plead with his son to jump into his arms to flee the fire. The child is tempted to think, "But daddy, I just can't do a thing like this. It would destroy me. It would kill me. It would hurt me." And the father says something like this: "Son, trust me. Son, have I ever asked you to do anything that I was not confident that it would be for your good? Have I ever expected you to do anything that was not framed by my love for you?" And then he pleads again with his son to have what? To have a “childlike, unwavering confidence in his well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” When that child has that, he'll jump. He will trust in his father with the whole heart, and that's what the text is telling us. For some of us, it's so simple, yet it's so difficult, isn't it? Has not God proven His wisdom and faithfulness and His love to you, child of God, times without number? Has He not? And yet, isn't it amazing that in the moment of pinch, we forget so quickly His well-proven wisdom, and we start leaning upon what?
Do you see how the text comes to us? Solomon has observed human nature in his own heart and in others, and whenever we're tempted not to trust in the Lord, when He's saying jump, we say, no, there must be a better way down the stairs, God, and we start looking for our own way of escape. That's why he follows up with the words, "Do not lean on your own understanding." Why? As we will see, it's the essence of unbelief. It's unbelief that makes human understanding a substitute for this “childlike confidence in the Father's well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” But you don't understand, I need to be hands-on. I need to be in control. I'm afraid to take the risk. What if, what if, what if? May I ask you, child of God, is it risky to rest in the lap of infinite love? Is it risky to repose in the lap of infinite wisdom? Is it risky to do that? If it's risky, then welcome the risk. That's the essence of this reliance. And having looked upon the object of it—Yahweh, the great I Am—the essence of it—childlike confidence—consider with me in the third place the source and the measure of this reliance, the source and the measure of this reliance.
Here it is in the text: with all your heart. With all your heart—that's the source of the trust. The heart, the heart, the seat of your being, biblically defined, the center of what makes you you. The heart, which is comprised of the judgments, the affections, the will, the faculty of choice, desire, the totality of the inner life—the center, the citadel of man's being. The source of his trust is to be right from there: the heart. It's the thing that happens with that little boy when he's standing there and seems frozen to jump out of the window, but when his heart really goes and plops in his daddy's arms, then his feet and his hands and everything else follows as well. You see, beloved, this is the principle of the Word of God. Wherever the heart goes, the rest of you will come. Wherever the heart goes, the rest of you will come, because what has your heart has you. What has your heart has you. It's that simple.
That's why the Scripture says, out of the heart are what? “The issues of life.” Jesus said, out of the heart proceed adultery, sexual immorality, theft, pride, foolishness, coveting, deceit, slander, et cetera. In Mark 7 and elsewhere, He says, when you see a man's hand steal something, his hand is going where his heart was all the time. That's what He's saying. That's the doctrine of the Bible. Where the heart is, the man is. What the heart is, the man is. So the source of this trust is to be nothing less than the citadel of your being. And what's the measure of it to be? All your heart. "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." Now, is that some kind of a sinless perfection? A perfect streak? No, no, no. When the Bible talks of an undivided heart, it doesn't mean a heart that has attained absolute purity, but it speaks about basic sincerity. Basic sincerity.
The Bible describes single-heartedness as opposed to double-mindedness, in which a man or a woman, boy or girl, is trying to serve what? Two masters. Now, what happens when you try to serve two masters? Jesus says it's impossible. You can't do it, “…You love the one, hate the other, or you will be devoted to the one, despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Because the heart can only have one supreme object of affection and allegiance—only one, only one—and that's the call of this text. That's the call of this text. It's a call to “trust in Yahweh with all your heart.” No holding back of any department of the heart's affection. No pocket in the heart is off-limit. No department of the heart's affection is off-limit. Less than this is an ugly provocation of God. It is a heinous provocation of God. Look at an example in the Scripture—the example of the children of Israel. We find the record of it in Psalm 78. Turn with me to Psalm 78. Here they are, wonderfully provided for by God's ‘hesed,’ God's loving-kindness, God's steadfast love, His “well-proven faithfulness, wisdom, and love” had been their portion, being brought out of Egypt through the Red Sea, established in the wilderness, the manna provided from heaven day after day, but they did not get the message. And so we read in verse 18, "And in their heart they put God to the test by asking for food according to their desire. Then they spoke against God; they said, ‘can God prepare a table in the wilderness?’"
I mean, it's unbelievable. All the while they're groaning and moaning that God would give them meat, they said, well, He couldn't even do it even if He wanted to. Do you see the height of that divided heart? See the expressions of it? We just got this manna. Day after day after day—manna, manna, manna. Of course, it's a miracle. Of course, it's a constant monument of God's faithfulness. It's there every day in double portion on the day before the Sabbath. Of course, it meets all of our temporal, physical needs, but we're not concerned about that. It doesn't satisfy our desires. It doesn't satisfy our taste buds. We want meat, but God can't give it to us even if He was concerned about our taste buds. Do you get something of the feeling of the spirit of unbelief that questions what? That questions God's love, God's wisdom, God's faithfulness. That's what it is. Now, how does God regard this? How does God regard this? When the heart is in this state, how does God regard it? Drop down to verse 20: "Behold, He struck the rock so that water gushed out, and streams were overflowing; Can He give bread also? Will He prepare meat for His people?"
Now, look at God's reaction here, how He regards this: "Therefore, Yahweh heard and was full of wrath; and a fire was kindled against Jacob and anger also mounted against Israel, because they did not believe in God and did not trust in His salvation." They had a divided heart. May I press the question upon your conscience tonight, beloved, as I had to face that in my own preparation? Do you sit here in this place with a single heart or with a divided heart? As you sit here tonight, do you sit with a single heart or a divided heart? If trusting God is to be true, it must be wholehearted. It must be complete. To put half our trust in God and half our trust in self or something else or someone else is really a failure to trust Yahweh at all times. We should endeavor to give God all our conscious trust. You've got to do it completely, unequivocally. One commentator said, "He that stands with one foot on a rock and another foot upon a quicksand will sink and perish as certainly as he that stands with both feet on a quicksand." You can't have that divide. If the Lord is God, follow Him. If Baal is God, follow Him. You can't be in this divided space.
Ah, but you say it's hard. Look to the Lord. Look to the call of the text: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart." Dare to believe that His ways for you are what? Good, acceptable, and perfect. Good, acceptable, and perfect. That's His heart. That's His will.
Ah, but you say, I question God all the time. I question His wisdom. I want to know everything all mapped out. And then I'll see if I can trust Him. If I see that it's good for me. I want to see the plan, the blueprint ahead of time. And then I'll see if this is really good for me from my perspective. That's unbelief. That's unbelief. Questioning of His wisdom. Questioning of His love. What's the way in through the condition commanded by the text? I believe the answer is beautifully and simply stated in Psalm 9 and verse 10. What is the way to comply with this first commandment which leads on to fulfillment of the promise for divine guidance? Well, look at Psalm 9 and verse 10. I love this. Simple but salient: "Those who know Your name will put their trust in You" That's it. That's it. "Those who know Your name will put their trust in You." The name of God, beloved, is a revealed character of God. Bound up in the name of God is a revealed character of God. And this text says those who know the revealed character of God will trust in that God. And I intend to be intensely practical at this point as we bring this to a conclusion.
If you're having trouble complying with this text, and that's why you're all fouled up when it comes to guidance, and you can't with confidence pray that God will unfold His ways because you're afraid that they might not be good for you, you can't come with unfettered liberty and say, guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, because you think maybe He's going to guide you to eat sour grapes for the rest of your life. And so you're afraid to pray it, to ask. You've got such low, mean, unworthy thoughts of God. Well, how are you going to come to that place where you say, Lord, O Lord, I do trust You. I do place “childlike, unreserved confidence in Your well-proven wisdom, faithfulness, and love.” Here's the answer: "Those who know Your name will put their trust in You." In other words, you need to study the character of God as revealed in the Word of God, and particularly as revealed in Jesus Christ, the Word that became flesh.
Study the character of God. Find in the Scripture where the Lord Jesus would come all the way from Heaven to the confines of a virgin's womb, and into the filth and mire of a world full of sin and iniquity. Identify Himself with sinners in the sinners' ordinance of the water of baptism. Live among sinners, pray among sinners, eat among sinners, and then go to a cross until the billows of the Father's wrath break upon His holy head, and He's cast into abandonment, and He cries, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" You look at all that, and you see, if you can woefully question the love and the kindness and the goodness of God. Those who know Your name, the name of God is bound up in the name of Jesus. He has revealed Him. Study the character of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. Study it until you find your heart almost without conscious effort running out, saying, Lord Jesus, how can I do anything other than trust You with my whole heart?
The great problem of the rich young ruler was right here. It was right here. When he came seeking Jesus, saying, Lord, I want eternal life, true life. I want my ways now to be guided by You and into eternity. And the Lord, in essence, said to him, Oh, my young man, if that's to be true, then the vicious, self-destructive plague of idolatry must be ripped from your heart. Sell what you have, give to the poor, come follow Me, and you'll have what? Miseries the rest of your days? No, treasures in Heaven. You'll have an earnest of them now and the full inheritance in Heaven. And the young man couldn't believe those words. It says he went away sorrowful. Why? Because he felt that this was the way into bitterness and now he was torn. I don't have all that I long for in my riches, but I know I'll lose much that is real and very important to me if I give up my riches, my idols. And he was torn with a divided heart. And oh, the blessedness of those who can say with Peter, James, and the others, Lord, we have left all to follow You. And Jesus says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, there is not one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, or farms for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive many times more at this time and in the age to come eternal life." This is the path into compliance with this text. Study the character of God as it is revealed in the Word of God, but particularly in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the positive. And I close with the negative. I close with the negative. See, the Bible always has positive and negative. Put on, put off. Lay aside, put on.
Here's the negative. Not only study the character of God in the Bible. Study the character of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Get to know this God of the Bible. Get to know His heart, His intention, who He is. He is compassionate, gracious, loving, kind. He is committed to do us good with all His heart and all His soul. And He spared not His own and His one and only Son, but delivered Him for us. Study the character of God. But on the negative side, oh beloved, refuse. Be resolved to refuse, refuse, refuse all mean thoughts of God as coming from the devil himself. Strike at the first rising of those thoughts. Whenever you find your heart drawing back from trusting in the Lord with all your heart, believing that His will is good, acceptable, and perfect, don't entertain those suspicions for a moment, for a split second. They are breathed by the same serpent who breathed them to our first parents when he said, has God said?
Oh, may God humble us tonight and bring us to repentance. Not so much for gross sins, likes of immorality. I mean, if we've been guilty of them, may He humble us for them. But that's not the problem tonight in this case, particularly by way of application with most of us. May He humble us not for that which mark the multitudes of people in the world—the worldly who abandon themselves to wickedness, immorality, and the deeds of the flesh. But may God humble us tonight for the terrible, terrible sin of questioning His well-proven faithfulness, wisdom, and love towards us.
That's why God let us feel the bitterness of going our own way. We've said in essence, God, I can't trust You to lead me in a good way. I'll make my own good way. I know what is good for me. And God says, I'll hedge it up with thorns until you wise up and realize how foolish you've been. Because I love you. That's God's discipline. Lord, I can't believe that the way that might come if I fully trust You is the way of love. But I will, in a form of perverted, inverted self-love, I'll plan my own way. And God says, All right, I'll see to it that bitterness stalks your path until you fall upon your face and say, Lord, Thine way, not mine. O Lord, whatever that path may be, You lead the way. Now for some here, that has very concrete implications. I don't need to tell you what they are. Maybe right now they're coming to your mind. It's between you and God. For some it may be a relationship that you haven't dared to hold that thing up and say, God, if this relationship is not of You, sever it. Because it cannot be for my good and for Your glory. And you haven't dared to do that. If so, God is calling upon you to do it tonight. It may be a thing, an idol, whatever that is. For some it may be an ambition, an ambition, a sinful ambition to be something that you haven't really dared to say, Lord, if this ambition is not of You, smash it. Because it cannot be for my good and for Your glory.
For you to trust in the Lord with all your heart, and as it were, get into the way where this text will become a precious framework of God's dealings with you, you're going to have to do something specific—some specific dealings with God about some very specific things. A specific area, a specific sin, a specific idol, a pocket of resistance. And though you push that thing down and down and down, your conscience is tormented and it cannot be at rest. And you say, I know I ought to make it right and deal with this, but I don't understand. How can a good God ask me to do this? I might lose this relationship. I might fail the course. I might, I might, I might. And what are you saying? You're saying that God's demand that you thoroughly deal with this matter, His way, is a bitter way, not a good way for you.
That's casting aspersion on the character of God. For you to trust in Yahweh with all your heart means that you're going to have to have specific dealings with God about some specific things. Beloved, if God so zeroed in upon you tonight, you dare not walk out of this place, out of that door, saying, I'll leave that for next time. You dare not walk out of this place without saying, oh God, I will trust You. Though everything in my flesh cries out, I read Your character in the face of Jesus. I see Your faithfulness. I see Your love. I see Your mercy. I see Your kindness. I see Your grace. Lord, I will trust You with the whole heart. Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. It's one thing to put Proverbs 3:5-6 on a plaque, quote it in a prayer meeting. It's another thing to know what it is, to know what it says, and to walk in the light of it. May God grant us to face this first of the commands: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart."
Let's pray.
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