08 The LORD’s Promises and the Son’s Obligations (Proverbs 3:1-4)
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Last week we finished walking through chapter 2 of Proverbs, primarily focused on wisdom and its immense value, & today we continue our walk through Proverbs by beginning chapter 3.
Now there are many thoughts & themes presented in chapter 3, which is why it's one of the best chapters in the whole book & one of the hardest for me to cover just because of the sheer overload of content to talk about, but it's important to note that collectively the thoughts & themes in chapter 3 are strongly connected to what we talked about in chapter 2.
In fact, together they ADVANCE all that we just covered:
From receiving the Father’s words in v1-4 of chapter 2 to remembering & never losing sight of them in verses 1 and 21 of chapter 3…
From the promises of seeking and knowing in God in verse 5 of chapter 2 to a command to acknowledge the LORD in all our ways in verse 6 of chapter 3…
From God’s revealed wisdom to us in verse 6 of chapter 2 to God’s establishing of creation through wisdom in verses 19-20 of chapter 3…
From the promise that wisdom leads to abundant life with good godly people & saves us from death with the wicked in verses 20-22 of chapter 2, to the expanded promise of blessing, favor, and honor from the Lord, who curses the scornful & devious wicked man in verses 31-35 of chapter 3…
From the practical blessings of wisdom found in verse 9 of chapter 2 to the more palpable blessings of health, wealth, and prosperity in chapter 3…
And we could go on & on & on, but the point is that although Solomon in chapter three is beginning a new lecture in this so-called class he’s teaching, he is still advancing and building off his previous lecture (otherwise known as Chapter 2).
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Now Chapter 3 can be broken down into a few subsections of verses, the first of which we’ll study the next few weeks, which is the subsection in your Bible titled ‘Trust in the LORD with all your heart’, consisting of the first 12 verses of Chapter 3.This first subsection consists of 6 what are called ‘Quatrains’ - a 4 line stanza - which in the text occupies two verses. So verses 1-2 are our first quatrain in the verses 1-12 subsection, followed by verses 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, and then 11-12.
The reason why this is important is because each quatrain presents one, two, or three admonitions (or pieces of counsel) in the odd verses & they contain a motivating argument in the even verses, which contain either one or two promises, or in the case of verse 12, a reason.
One commentator named this subsection ‘The LORD’s promises & the Son’s Obligations’ because in the odd verses we are given the obligations of the son in the covenant relationship we have with the LORD, and the even verses give us the promises of the LORD to the son, to us, for keeping those obligations in our covenantal relationship with Him.
So what does all that mean? Let’s restate.
That means as you look in your Bible at the first 12 verses of chapter 3, you will see an admonition, or piece of authoritative counsel, in all the odd verses. So in verses 1,3,5,7,9, and 11 you will see Solomon giving us an admonition. Then as you look at the even verses, verses 2,4,6,8,10,and 12, you will see an argument for heeding those odd-verse admonitions which consist of a promise or in some verses multiple promises.
For example, as we will see today, Solomon gives us a piece of counsel in odd verse 1, and then he provides an argument for heeding that counsel with two promises found in even verse 2…then he does the same thing again in verse 3, giving us a piece of counsel followed by two more promises in verse 4.
So as you look at this subsection in verses 1-12, I want you to see it through the lens of quatrains or couplets…looking at:
odd verse/even verse
admonition/promise.
I think that’s the easiest way to look at it and that’s the structure of our study we’ll follow as we go through these verses.
And if all that I just said confuses you, that's okay, because we’re going to take it slow & break this subsection down like we would an essay over the next three weeks on the podcast, beginning by looking at the introduction of said hypothetical essay in verses 1-4, then looking at the body of the essay in verses 5-10, and then we’ll wrap up studying this subsection by looking at the conclusion in verses 11-12.
You ready? I’m ready. Verses 1-4 of Chapter 3. Let’s go.
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Today marks a shift in focus for us. A shift from a focus on the outer life to the inner life.
How so…you ask? Well if you remember last week we talked of two groups of people, two voices, the voice of evil men and the voice of evil women, who seek to pull you away from the wisdom that brings life and toward the way of evil, of perversity, of sin, that leads to ruin & death.
Essentially what we were doing is we were looking at external threats in last week's episode. We were looking at the outer life. But today marks a shift in Solomon’s teaching to his son & to us, a shift from the outer life, from those external threats to our pursuit and possession of wisdom, to a threat that is even bigger, one that is of the inner life, one that is internal, and that is the threat of the heart.
We see Solomon make this transition from outer life to inner life in verse 1 of chapter 3, saying
‘My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments…’
Then he builds on this in verse 3, saying
‘Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart’.
You see, I'm not sure if you’ve picked up on this by now, but there is a really strong connection in Proverbs between the law and wisdom. I think back to Chapter 2 where we talked about how wisdom helps us to understand God’s moral code, because with wisdom we come to understand righteousness and justice and equity.
It’s also awfully similar to Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 4:6, where he says that keeping God’s law is wisdom, and it is!
There is a strong connection between the law and wisdom because keeping the law IS wisdom, and possessing wisdom helps you to keep the law. They both go hand in hand.
And so what we’re seeing here in verses 1 and 3 about the law and wisdom is that the law must be written on the heart. I like how verse 3 says we are to write it on the ‘tablet of our heart’. I like that because when you think of commands and tablets what do you think of?
You probably think of the ten commandments.
Moses wrote the ten commandments on stone tablets, and guess what? The people of Israel did not obey them. They didn’t. They didn’t uphold the covenant with God. And what did that lead to? Well on the one hand it led to some very rough times for the people of Israel, but it also led to the making of a new covenant.
And this covenant would be different, because instead of writing the law on tablets, the LORD says in Jeremiah 31:33 that,
‘I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’
How about that? A new covenant, where the law is put within them, written on their hearts.
Now the people of Israel in that time did not get to experience this new covenant, but you and I do. This new covenant was marked by Jesus’s death on the cross, shifting from the old covenant focused on the law, to the new covenant focused on grace. Grace that we do not deserve because we cannot uphold the law, because we all fall short of the glory of God and we all sin.
And through this new covenant we get to receive the Holy Spirit, the law within us, written on our hearts, so that we can obey God. You see the people of Israel under Moses’ leadership did not have the Holy Spirit…they did not have God Himself dwelling in their hearts…so it’s no wonder the law never made its way from the stone tablets to the tablets of their hearts. But for you and for me, that’s not the case, because the Holy Spirit lives within us.
Isn’t that cool??? To see the connection to Christ and the new covenant in Proverbs???I think it's so cool and also so important to see.
And so that is what Solomon is commanding in verse 1 and 3. He is commanding us to write his words on the tablet of our heart, to keep his commandments in our heart.
This again emphasizes a theme from our study so far of the need for heart transformation and not behavior modification. I think it's easy to read Proverbs as behavior modification because of its emphasis on morality, but we need to understand that at the end of the day Proverbs is about wisdom and wisdom is a person, the person of Jesus, who cares far more about heart transformation than he does behavior modification.
Now what is the motivation to do all this? What is the motivation to not forget Solomon’s teaching, and to let our hearts keep his commandments?
The motivation is found through two promises given in verse 2…
‘for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you’.
The son’s reward for not turning his back on his father’s teaching is long life in peace. A life, as Bruce Waltke puts it, ‘having every sufficiency & good fortune, free from hostility and lack, and so filled with inner contentment, delight, joy, and pleasure as a gift from God’.
Sounds like some pretty good promises doesn’t it? Long life and peace? A life having every sufficiency & good fortune, free from hostility and lack, and so filled with inner contentment, delight, joy, and pleasure as a gift from God?
Now though that sounds great…doesn’t it almost sound too good to be true? I mean lets be real. What about when the wicked seem to live longer and the life of a godly friend or family member is cut short? And what about this peace we just talked about? Why is it that oftentimes the wicked die in outward comfort while the righteous die in outward trouble? What about when the wicked seem to be enjoying this peace we just described while those in Christ seem to be suffering without it?
I’m sure we all have stories like those, where the promises of long life and peace in verse 2 don’t seem to be a reality in your life or the lives of other faithful believers you know. And I get it. These are genuinely good and hard questions to ask, HOWEVER they don’t recognize the fullness of the promise.
Charles Bridges says that ‘length of days is the promise to the righteous - whether for earth or for Heaven, as their Father deems fittest for them’
You see sometimes it's easy to lose focus & not look at Scripture through the lens of eternity. Keeping God’s commandments & remembering his teaching truly does add days and years to your life, along with peace.
Now that may or may not be true in this life, but it is certain, absolutely certain, in the life to come.
Revelation 22:14 in the NKJV says
‘Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city’.
Keeping God’s Word in your heart adds years to your life because you have the right to the tree of life, abiding in a heavenly city for eternity with the LORD. So yes, keeping God’s commands and remembering his teaching adds days and years and peace to your life, because it gives you the right to the tree of life…to Christ, who you get to abide with for eternity. Without the blood of Christ, without the new covenant, you are deserving of quite the opposite of life and peace. You are deserving of death and suffering, but through Him and only through Him are we able to experience the promise of increasing days and years and increasing peace.
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Now what does it take to keep and remember the commandments given by Solomon?
It takes steadfast love and faithfulness (verse 3). It takes seeking to keep steadfast love and faithfulness ourselves, and it takes remembering the steadfast love and faithfulness of the LORD.
‘Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.’
Now the command Solomon gives us in verse 3 to bind steadfast love and faithfulness around your neck is very similar to the command he gave in verses 8-9 of chapter 1, when he says
‘Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, 9 for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.’
In those verses in Chapter 1 and also in verses 3-4 of Chapter 3 Solomon’s teachings are implicitly likened to a necklace, a graceful garland, which symbolizes protection, guidance, eternal life, and social exaltation. And what does that mean? It means when we keep God’s commands, when we live in light and remembrance of His steadfast love and faithfulness, writing His commands and character on the tablet of our heart, we are promised favor and good success with God and with people.
We will have favor with God for eternity, and we will have favor with people on earth, given from God, in all that we do.
I think Jesus is the perfect example of this in Luke 2:52, where it says ‘Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.’
In other words, as Jesus’s possession of wisdom increased, His stature and favor with God and man did as well. So when we write the steadfast love and faithfulness of the LORD on the tablet of our hearts, when we bind them around our neck like we would a necklace, putting it on each and every day like we do the armor of God in Ephesians 6, as we continually grow in wisdom, then we will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.
What a promise that is. Think about it…what is better than favor in the eyes of God? Getting a billion dollars? No. Becoming the President? No. Becoming an NBA superstar and dunking on Lebron James? No. There is nothing better than favor in the eyes of God, and we’re promised that. You’re promised that. How comforting and encouraging.
Just today on this podcast you have been promised through Scripture life & peace, favor & good success. That is incredible and I’m thankful.
So that’s the introduction of this subsection.
To recap:
If we keep the Lord’s commands in verse 1, we are promised longer life and increasing peace in verse 2.
Then in verse 3 if we don’t let go of steadfast & unfailing love and faithfulness, writing the commands and character of God on the tablet of our heart, we are promised favor with God and with people in verse 4.
But how does this happen? How do we do these things?
Well as we move on to the ‘body of this essay’ next week, looking at verses 5-10, we will see how.
And I look forward to it!
I love you.
See you all then.
