Weekly Sermons from Spruce Creek Presbyterian Church - Port Orange, FL

God loves community and since this is something so close to the heart of God it makes sense that it would be such a struggle. Community is hard work and there are roadblocks to developing loving, vulnerable community. The sage in this section of the Proverbs we are looking at this morning instructs us in three areas of practical wisdom. He gives very practical warnings in three areas which can destroy us both as individuals and harm us as a community. The first area is the area of debt. And the sage instructs about the need for wisdom in order to cultivate the characteristic of generosity. The second area is discipline. Here he contrasts the sluggard with the ant. Lastly, the sage gives practical warnings concerning characteristics which promote unity rather than sowing discord. As Jesus was preparing to face His greatest trial, the trial of the cross, He prayed to the Father, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21). Why did Jesus die? Among other things, it was to create a family, a covenant community who will love God and live for His kingdom. The gospel is good news of Jesus creating this family and it grieves the heart of God when we sow discord rather than work for the unity of His Church.

This morning we are looking at Proverbs 5, where a father is addressing his sons on the topic of sexuality. The Bible speaks very realistically in the way it handles topics like human sexuality, along with every other topic for that matter.

The passage we are looking at this morning, on this Easter Sunday, is a prayer of the apostle Paul for the church. Paul was one of the men whose life was dramatically changed through an encounter with the risen Jesus. He went on to be an instrument in the hands of God taking the gospel all over the world. And in this passage in his letter to the Ephesian church he is praying that the eyes of their hearts (an interesting phrase) would be enlightened to know three things. The third of these things is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. And he goes on to say that that power is like the power that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. And these two great acts, the resurrection and the ascension show how God, in history, became King. They show His supremacy, His lordship, His authority and absolute dominion. He is in charge right now. And we will show this morning what that means to us in two things. First, the significance of His resurrection power. What does the resurrection mean for our daily lives? It begs the question what or who am I living for? And second, we will see the scope of God’s resurrection power. The text teaches us that all of this supremacy and authority and power was for the sake of the church. The church, as the text says, is the body of Christ, the fullness of Christ in the world. We are called to represent Christ in the world as His fullness, for the sake of the world. This whole passage is about the gospel, the good news of the kingdom of God. And whereas in this particular passage, in that it is about the power of the resurrection, the cross is not explicitly mentioned, the climax of the cross is the resurrection. And Paul’s prayer for the church in this passage is that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened to know the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. And if in this letter Paul is exhorting the church to be mature, to be fully and genuinely human, and if that maturity and humanness is exhibited in a cross-shaped life, the power for that cross-shaped life is the resurrection.

One of my favorite books is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. There is a place in it where the king is coming into the city but he is incognito, and nobody really knows whether he is the true king and one of the old wise women says, “Ah, but the hands of the king are healing hands and thus shall the rightful king be known. So she says let’s take him into the house of healing and see if he can heal some people.” The hands of the king are healing hands. Think about Palm Sunday. What was Palm Sunday all about? It is the entrance of the king into His city. The King comes into the city to bring healing and restoration, but not in the way that the power brokers, nor ourselves expected. And in a week’s time this King would prove and demonstrate His Kingship through His death on a cross and His subsequent resurrection, defeating death and evil. In Acts 3:1-10 we see God’s reign of grace manifested in this account of Peter and John healing a man lame from birth. And we learn three things about the reign of grace. First, we learn of our desperate need of the reign of grace. This man is lame from birth and we are born into sin. We are crippled from birth. We desperately need grace. We are helpless without it. Second, this text teaches us the living reality of the reign of grace. In v.6 Peter tells the man “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” Third, we learn of the radical propulsion of the reign of grace. The man rises up and walks to do what? To worship and live. We need to rise up and walk in order to live for Christ.

Proverbs 4 is all about life. Finding life. The springs of life. And Jesus Christ came to give us life. In the gospel of John Jesus says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). And Jesus is life. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). And all of the promises of God find their fulfillment in Him, for as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory (2 Cor. 1:20). In Jesus are the springs of life and Proverbs 4 give us a strategy for gospel renewal and for finding the springs of life. The right strategy consists of three things in this text. First is the right beginning, which is to begin with belonging. It is interesting here that not only is the father teaching his sons but he is sharing them about how his father (their grandfather) taught him. The springs of life are rooted in tradition, the tradition of the faith passed down through the covenant family. Second, is the right path. We must progress on the path. And here two ways or two paths are laid out for us: the way of wisdom and the way of evil. There is no third option. And lastly, we must fix our focus. We must have the right focus. Verse 23 tells us to keep our hearts with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life.

In these early chapters of Proverbs we are given a picture of a wise counselor, a sage, a father, instructing and encouraging his son, a neophyte in wisdom, as he is beginning his life journey to seek to find wisdom. To make it his priority to pursue a life of wisdom. He is explaining to his son how to live a life centered on the fear of the Lord and what it looks like to trust the Lord wholeheartedly and to not lean on his own understanding. The text before us today motivates us to pursue wisdom by showing us the value of wisdom. And it does so in two ways. First, by telling us that wisdom is the only life of true security. Wisdom is the path to true blessing or human flourishing. The foundation of God’s creation is wisdom and the truest security of wisdom is by the Lord being your confidence. He is by your side as you journey through life. Second, the value of wisdom is that it creates a community of love. Verses 27-35 all focus on the practicalities of loving our neighbor. Wisdom not only focuses on our relationship with God but it also has a horizontal direction of our relationships with others.

Right after we learn that our chief battle comes in trusting the Lord wholeheartedly by not leaning on our own understanding, we learn in the text before us today of two areas where this is tested. And so in Proverbs 3:9-12 we will be looking at the fruits of wisdom and we will be exploring this in two key areas. First is stewardship. The text instructs us to honor the Lord with our wealth, with our first fruits. This is deeper than simply a law on tithing for the Hebrew word for honor is the word for glory. So our wealth, our stewardship is a glory issue. Whose glory are we living for? Whose fame, whose honor, whose reputation are we seeking? The second area is suffering. And suffering in the form of discipline. But discipline is a sign of God’s fatherly grace towards us. It is a sign of His love and commitment to our greatest good, or as we have been exploring, our true human flourishing.

The Proverbs are all about human flourishing or shalom in the kingdom of God. They are not a set of ethical principles that say if you do such and such this will happen to you. They are not to be read in a formulaic fashion as if to say if I live right then God will give me long life, a life of comfort and ease and success. No, they are about the biblical worldview, about a life of faith and trust in the covenant God, the One who is sovereign and who is writing our life story. Which is why our chief battle comes right at the center of the passage we are looking at today, v.5 which says to trust in the Lord with all our heart and to lean not on our own understanding. Our lives can be quite complicated as God gives and God takes away as He sees fit. And faith and trust is not the absence of questioning or doubting, but it is living with all our doubts and fears and questions about God and still lamenting and pursuing Him. How do we fight our chief battle? By remembering two things. First, God’s covenant design. And God’s covenant design is shalom. Shalom is wholeness in every area of life. It is both physical and spiritual. It involves body and soul. And second, God’s covenant demand, which is whole hearted trust.

As we move forward in our study of the Book of Proverbs we are now in chapter 2 which is all about the doctrine of sanctification, or to put it more simply, the process of change. How do we change? What are the dynamics of change? All of us, as Christians, want to change. We struggle with issues of identity, relationships, the practical stuff of life. How do we grow towards God’s goal of wholeness, maturity, completion, conformity to the image of Christ?