According to the biblical record, King Solomon was the wisest and most powerful king of his time—perhaps of all time. We have this conclusion from no less an authority than God himself. Early in King Solomon’s reign, God appeared to him and basically gave him a blank check. He simply said to Solomon, “Ask what you wish Me to give you.” You may know this story already—Solomon decided to ask for wisdom, and in response God said, “Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you, all your days” (1 Kings 3:12–13).
We’ve been studying the words of this wise man for several months now in the book of Proverbs, and I think we certainly have seen some keen and penetrating insights into life. But perhaps the quality that truly made Solomon the wisest man around was that he acknowledged that God was even wiser! Solomon said this and more about God in the book of Proverbs, and today we’re going to study what this book teaches us about our Creator.
This subject is one that is of no small importance. Pastor A. W. Tozer once wrote, “What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. Worship is pure or [impure] as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most [important] fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”1 If this is true, then let’s allow Proverbs to clarify our mental image of God today!
What does Proverbs teach us about God?
I. God Knows Our Actions And Attitudes
This is a lesson that we teach our youngest Sunday School kids, but a man as wise as Solomon felt it was important enough to mention. Look at Prov. 15:3 [READ 15:3]. Here we are told that God watches everyone and takes note of our actions. Notice something about God’s knowledge here—His knowledge is first-hand knowledge. He doesn’t have to rely on someone else to tell Him what is going on—He observes everything first-hand, so there’s no possibility that a messenger got the story wrong or that details were left out.
Compare this with the knowledge of someone like the President of the United States. Our president has a tremendous amount of information available to him, but that’s only because we have a network of people around the world that collect information for him. Ambassadors, spies, our government allies—all of these people make information available to him, but this is nothing like God’s knowledge. God doesn’t need anyone to inform Him of anything. As Paul wrote in Romans 11:34, “Who has been his counselor?”
But God not only knows our actions—He knows our attitudes as well. He not only has an external knowledge of us, but an internal knowledge as well. Let’s read Prov. 15:11 [READ 15:11]. These two words—Sheol and Abaddon—are simply Hebrew words spelled out in English letters. So the first part of what I just read from the English Standard Version isn’t actually a translation—they just brought the Hebrew words into English in order to leave the interpreting up to us. Now some translations say, “hell and destruction,” and others say, “death and destruction.” I think “death and destruction” would be more accurate because the idea of sheol is not exactly the same as the idea of hell; its basically the idea of the grave or the afterlife. The destruction mentioned here would probably refer to the decomposition of the physical body in the grave.
But the basic idea of this verse is very clear—if even the grave and the afterlife are known to God, then how much more does He know our hearts!
But apparently God doesn’t just know our hearts—it seems that He actually knows them better than we do! Turn to Prov. 21:2 [READ 21:2]. This verse touches on the potential that we have for deceiving ourselves. We can convince ourselves that we are right in basically any situation—even when we’re doing something sinful! We can convince ourselves that we have some kind of special exception in certain cases. We can justify virtually any kind of behavior, but God sees the reality of things. He understands our true motives when we may not even understand them. God revealed the same message to the prophet Jeremiah when He said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds” (Jer. 17:9–10).
The application that we should take from all of this has both a challenge and an encouragement to it. The challenge is that we must not think that we can hide anything from God. He knows us better than we know us, so how could we hide something from Him? The encouragement is to remember that God doesn’t miss anything that happens to us. If someone hurts us or robs us of justice, God knows! If we are dealing with fear or deep emotional wounds, God knows! He knows, and He is there for us.
But not only does God know all things…
II. God Is In Control Over All Things
We see a lot of turmoil and upheaval in our world right now, but be assured that our world does not operate by chance or simply by the whims of human beings. God, the Creator, is still in control over His creation. Look at Prov. 16:9 [READ 16:9]. Verses like this strike a blow at our pride, don’t they? Now, there’s nothing wrong with planning, but as the old poem says, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” and that’s because we’re not ultimately in control! We can make all the plans we want, and have every detail accounted for, but ultimately it is God who determines what actually happens. History has rightly been called “His-story,” because God is the author.
Now, common people like ourselves can certainly understand that we’re not in control, because we’re used to being effected by things that are out of our control—like the economy, or the weather, or international politics. But surely this lesson wouldn’t apply to a king, would it? Who has more control than a king? Well, let’s read Prov. 21:1 [READ 21:1]. I love the picture of ease that comes through in this verse. It’s like when you water your lawn. It’s not hard—you just turn the water on, and turn the water off, however you please. And if you want more water in a certain spot, you just move the sprinkler. Aside from maybe a little walking, its as easy as can be!
That’s what God’s control over the most powerful people in the world is like! Its not difficult for Him; its really very easy. He just directs their hearts any way He wants!
Now this lesson brings up all sorts of questions for us that we really cannot completely answer. Some of these are philosophical questions, like “How do our choices play into God’s control?” or “If God is in control, do we really determine our own destiny?” But some of these questions are much more personal and even painful, such as “If God is in control, why do bad things happen in my life?” As I said, I don’t think we have a complete answer for this question, but I do think that our next lesson gives us at least a partial answer.
III. God Works To Purify Our Hearts
One of the purposes behind everything that God allows is to remove the impurities of sin from our hearts. Notice what Prov. 17:3 has to say [READ 17:3]. You probably know that when silver and gold are mined out of the earth, they don’t come out of the ground ready to be formed into jewelry. Because of geological and chemical processes, they are often bonded with rock and other materials, so they are put through a refining process to separate the precious metals from everything else—to purify the silver and the gold and thus reveal their true beauty and quality.
According to Prov. 17:3, God puts our hearts through a similar process. The contamination of sin is thorough within our lives, so that even our hearts are corrupted. Thus, even our most noble and godly desires may be bonded together with impure motives, goals, or aspirations. And so as God sovereignly directs our lives, part of His design is to melt away these impurities that pollute our hearts.
This purifying process is what Paul had in mind in Romans 8:28 when he wrote, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” And the good result that Paul had in mind is defined in verse 29: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” There’s the goal; there’s the point of this whole process—that we might be conformed to the image of Christ, so that we can be faithful representatives for Him today and become joint-heirs with Him (Rom. 8:17) as servant-leaders in His coming kingdom on earth.
Now I do not mean to minimize the pain that any of you have endured through the circumstances of your life, because that pain is very real and it can be very intense. Let’s face it—when we talk about being purified by God and compare it to gold being melted in a furnace, that doesn’t sound entirely pleasant, does it? I’m sure if gold could talk, it would probably scream as its being refined. Sometimes that’s where we find ourselves—screaming and crying out to God to put an end to all the pain. But please remember the final product, my friends. If you allow God to purify you, you have that moment to look forward to when Jesus will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.” That’s why Paul could say, “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:16). Don’t lose hope as God shapes you to be more like His Son.
IV. God Desires Obedience From Us More Than Religious Formalities
One of the reasons that God purifies us is so that we will offer Him obedience from the heart rather than just go through the motions of religious activity. Turn with me to Prov. 21:3 [READ 21:3]. This verse expresses a consistent theme of the Old Testament—God certainly did want the people to offer sacrifices, but He wanted the worship that flowed from the people to be consistent with the rest of their lives. He wanted their obedience first and foremost, and then their worship was to be simply one more expression of a life of obedience.
It is far too easy to go through the motions of worshipping God and not follow through with a lifestyle of worship. In corners of the world like Montezuma, KS, we often find what we might simply call “countryanity.” Countryanity is the basic religious mindset in many rural areas. It embraces a strong tradition of going to church, but sometimes it means little more than that. We hear this loud and clear in a lot of country music. The basic religious worldview of country music sounds something like this: “Yeah, I may get drunk and chase cowgirls over at the honky-tonk on Saturday night, but I’m in the front row at church on Sunday morning singing old-time gospel hymns at the top of my lungs.” Well, I don’t think “hymns with a hangover” is quite what God desires from us. He’ll take the hymns, but the hangover He can do without. He is pleased with our worship when it flows from a life of faithfulness and obedience.
And in light of what we’ve learned about our God today, how can we give Him anything less? If we simply give the Lord half-hearted obedience and worship, who do we really think He is? Do we truly think of Him as the God who knows all things and controls all things and who works to purify us, or do we think of Him as some kind of optional accessory in our lives? To quote A. W. Tozer again, he said, “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” What does the direction of your life say about your mental image of God? We would be wise to take a cue from a man of wisdom like Solomon and make sure that we think of God the way He truly is—the King of all things, who works for our good and His glory.
1. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, (San Francisco CA, HarperSanFrancisco, 1961) Pg. 1. Updated wording in brackets is mine. The original words are “base” and “portentous.”
No comments:
Post a Comment