Okay, we're going to study today again in the book of Proverbs. You can join me there in chapter three. We're going to attempt to cover the first 12 verses of chapter three this morning. We're continuing our study through the entire book of Proverbs verse by verse, we will, you can anticipate that we will probably take a break from Proverbs the next two Sundays, I intend or hope to do a teaching that's more focused on Easter week and the events of Easter week. So we'll take a break for a couple of weeks and then come back to it after that, Lord willing. Last week, what we focused on was the second half of chapter two. And the concern of that second half is, of course, as we've been developing this series of exhortations from a father's heart to his son's heart, A young son, but young spiritually more than young physically. We're probably talking again someone in his teenage years that's being addressed by his father as he's preparing this son to go out into the world and to find his own way in life. And the Father's heart is appealing to him from many different angles, many different directions, but primarily communicating the Lord's own concerns through this Father's heart. And last week the focus was the dangers that are in this world that this son has to watch out for. It's kind of like the line from the famous song Amazing Grace through many dangers, toils and snares, we have already come. And the idea being that a person who is discerning, a person who has spiritual perception, learns to recognize early on that we don't live in a safe environment, spiritually speaking, in this present world. The only safety ultimately that we have even now is in very close relationship with the Lord and ultimately to be with Him. But while we're in this world, we're dealing with very specific dangerous spiritual elements and we identify that those dangers are primarily brought into our lives or we encounter them through our interaction with two specific dangers and those are the dangers of what the Bible describes as evil men and evil women, people that have given over to wickedness in their hearts, people that are choosing to ignore the Lord, ignore the ways of the Lord, and, of course, order their behavior according to their own desires rather than the Lord's ways. Now, what we're going to look at today as we read in the first 12 verses is the next big danger that faces the young man. So let's read these 12 verses. My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments. For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. Do not let kindness and truth leave you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones. Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce. So your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine. My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe his reproof for whom the Lord loves. He reproves even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. Now, this section continues the father's appeal to the son. And as I've said before, we should hear the heart and the appeal of. the Father God appealing to each one of our hearts about what it means to walk in this world and to do so successfully. What I mean by success is not just a certain financial outcome, but to make it through the dangers that are in front of us, to not be overwhelmed by them, to not be destroyed by them, but to arrive at the goal that the Lord has marked out for us. And while the second half of chapter two focused on two outside dangers, dangers of wicked people, both men and women in the world, that we will encounter and have to be ready to face and deal with properly when the time comes, this section begins with a third danger. And this is an entirely different kind of danger. And in a sense, it's a greater danger than the two that we talked about last week. As dangerous as As encountering a wicked person in your life is, in terms of the effect and the influence that person can have potentially on you, there's a greater danger that you have to face, that you have to be aware of, and you have to deal with. And that is a danger within. So there are dangers without and a danger within. And when I say within, I'm talking about a danger inside of you. The greatest danger as you walk in this world spiritually is in your own heart, potentially. And what is that danger that the father identifies for a son right from the beginning of this chapter in verse one, my son, do not forget my teaching, do not, but let your heart keep my commandments. So the greatest danger is the danger of forgetfulness. Jerry was talking a little bit at communion today about forgetfulness, about circumstances and events, relationships that are established through those events and how time passes. And you look, you know, you look around and suddenly those relationships are not what they once were. How can that be? How can that happen? He was asking us. Well, here there's a particular danger of forgetting a spiritual forgetfulness that involves, of course, something that if we're going to live a good life, if we're going to have God's purpose fulfilled in our life, if we're going to arrive at the goal that God has marked out for us, this is the one thing we can never dare forget, and yet it's the one thing we're most in danger of forgetting. My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments. How many of you have ever, and if you haven't, I understand it's quite a discipline just to do this much. How many of you have ever once read through the entire Bible? Made it through one time at least, okay. How many of those verses have you already forgotten? All right, somebody tell me quick. Nahum 3.7. What does it say? None of us know. I don't even know what Nahum 3.7 says. You know, what it is, it's an interesting thing. We know, as believers, we learn early on, or we should learn early on, that the single most important thing for our hearts to anchor themselves to, to learn and to embrace and to be soaked in, as I was talking last week, is God's Word. God's Word is the make or break factor in our spiritual well-being. And I'm not talking about just certain knowledge about the Bible, certain factual information that we accumulate over time. You know, because while you may have forgotten Nahum 3 7, I'm sure if I asked you, can you think of any specific verse in the Bible? There's probably verses that you could remember and recount to me. What we're talking about here is is a heart embracing of God's word to where the word itself becomes part of us. And what we're describing here is where having read God's word, having gone beyond reading it, stopping and thinking about it, mulling over it, what what we call meditating on the word of God and considering its precepts, asking questions back to the Lord about what we're reading, praying about the very things that we're reading in that ongoing process. If, as God's purpose is, that is an element in our daily life as we begin our new life in Christ, day after day, spending time with Him in His Word in this kind of way, what happens over a period of time is God's Word begins to change our mind and our perspective about things. God's Word begins to change us. It flavors all of our opinions, all of our thoughts. It even begins to change the way we feel about things, not just the way we think about things. And over a period of time, as that soaking process becomes fuller and deeper and richer, we arrive at a point in which we are safeguarded from the dangers that we will encounter in this world around us. But before we get there, the greatest danger is that we will begin the process of reading God's word, studying God's word, meditating in God's word. And somewhere in the beginning phases of that process, something else catches our attention. It doesn't matter what else it is. And you know how it is with reading God's word, we can all, you know, we can all We could all describe that it would be wonderful if we spent each one of us 10 hours a day reading God's word, but that's just not realistic. And I don't think there's any place that God requires that kind of a discipline of us or that level of a discipline. But at the same time, there should be some amount of time that each one of us spends before the Lord, considering his word, what he is communicating to us, what he wants to get across to us on a daily basis. And in that process of going through this reading, this consideration, this meditation in God's Word, while we know it should be the most important thing to us at that moment. And even as we get up from that moment, because the whole point of meditating in it, not just reading it, is as we get up from our devotional time and we enter out into the world that day, God wants the influences of what we've read, what we've thought about, what we've meditated on, what we've prayed about. He wants those influences to remain with us throughout the day and beyond even that single day. But there's all number of different times of day that you could choose to study. I would recommend that you pick a time that really is most effective for you and most fruitful for you. For some people, that may be in the evening. For some people, it may be in the middle of the day. If you would ask me, though, theoretically, what is the best time you can possibly spend to carve out time in your day, to spend time with God and His Word, of course, what am I going to say? first thing in the morning. Now, why would it be recommended to spend first thing in the morning with God and in His Word? Because it's going to have a better, you're going to have a better hope of it flavoring your day than if at the end of your day. And there's nothing wrong with reading God's Word at the end of the day, I'd recommend that too, as opposed to instead of. But As you're about to enter into your day, you need wisdom for that day. You need understanding for that day. You need to have your heart and mind reoriented to what the Lord is wanting to accomplish in you and through you for that day. You know, I don't know. Different things grab each one of our attention, a little bit different to each one of us. I'll just share one of the things at a certain point in my Christian life that was a distraction to me. What I'm talking about here are things that would take us away from a primary focus on God's Word. There was a time when I was really struggling with which I was going to read first, the sports page or God's Word. Now, why would that be a struggle for me? Now, some of you guys may identify with this. Some of the rest of you may wonder, how in the world could you ever dream of reading the sports page before God's holy word? How could that even possibly happen? Maybe sports is of no interest to you. But sports was big interest for me. And I found a lot of what in sports? Pleasure, enjoyment. I loved it. I liked it. I liked the whole sports thing. I liked following specific teams, keeping track of statistics, and all of that kind of stuff. And so it was easy for me to, when it came time to get up in the morning, there's the morning newspaper, there's the Bible, And I know in my heart I should go toward the Bible and leave the sports page for later in the day if I have time for it, but I found myself gravitating toward the sports page. Now, if I do that day after day, and let's say a year of doing that stretches on, and then another year. At a certain point in time, between point A and point B, I'm going to come to a circumstance where I'm in danger of living out what is described here in verse one. My son, do not forget my teaching and let your heart keep my commandments. You know, there was a time when I could tell you every stat of the teams that were nearest and dearest to my heart because I was prioritizing this Word page and all of the information that came in that. I'm still familiar with some of that stuff, but it's not as high a priority for me as it once was. But maybe for you is something entirely different. I know some people that, and I've occasionally caught myself doing this, that before I crack open God's word in the morning, I'll check my email. You ever done that? No one? Why would you check your email to hear what somebody else has to say before you're going to open God's word to hear what he has to say to you at the beginning of a new day? Somebody's having trouble back there. If you can maintain your undistractedness through that, then I give you kudos. All right. So my son, do not forget my teaching. Speaking of distractions and let. but let your heart keep my commandments." The issue of forgetfulness is the very first danger that we face from within as a brand new believer. So what does the Lord do, or what does He say to this young man to safeguard his heart from the danger, from the tendency? Because the reason the Lord says this, He knows it's the natural tendency of every single one of us. To not focus on God's Word in the way that we should, leading to forgetfulness. And of course, you're going to tend to forget right when you most need to remember. Right when you most need to have your heart and mind focused on what God is saying about the circumstance you've just found yourself in unexpectedly. You really need to remember right then. But the natural tendency is to forget. And so what does God do to safeguard our hearts? He speaks to us. In a particular way, what does he say? Well, first he urges us to respond to that danger by letting your heart keep my commandments. In other words, he urges us. Keep hold of them. Don't let it slip away. Focus on this. Invest time in causing my word to be treasured, as he said earlier in the first couple of chapters, in your heart. And then in verse 2, what he begins to talk about is this. He strings together a little series of statements about what will happen if you don't lose your focus on God's Word. And if you don't forget God's Word, what he does here is essentially encourages this young man's heart with the promised benefit of holding on to God's Word. In other words, and using worldly descriptions of this, what God does is He dangles a carrot out in front of this young man. You know, like a carrot on a stick that would lead the horse forward. He's wanting to motivate this young man in a particular direction. Keep focused on my word. He knows natural tendency is going to be to not value that, to not prioritize that, to not stay with the discipline of doing that. And so what God does, fully understanding our tendencies, is he sets out in front of this young man the hope of a specific reward, not at the end of life. This is not some of the rewards as we've studied before. Some of the rewards that God promises us are after our life comes to an end, when we stand before the judgment seat of the Lord, when we have our life evaluated, and he either grants us reward or withholds reward based upon our obedience or disobedience. But here, he's talking about rewards within this present life. And the rewards are these. This is what he promises to the young man that lets his heart keep the commandments of God. He promises him length of days, years of life, and peace. I'm misspelling that. I'm just going to spell it this way. He promises him long life and peace. Now think about it, why would the Lord promise him these things? One of the two things that the world, people that don't know the Lord, spend their entire life in pursuit of. Stretching their life out as long as they possibly can. You know, every gym in this world exists for this reason. Every health food store in this world exists for this reason. All the self-help books in the bookstore, entire sections that are basically taking over bookstores nowadays, exist for this reason. And, of course, the correlation that goes along with it. People don't just want to stretch their lives out to a long life of misery. They also want a long life filled with peace. And people are searching for peace. They are looking for peace. And of course, they're looking in all the wrong places and all the wrong ways. But God promises to this young man, if you will focus on my word in the way that I'm instructing you to do so, I will give you what you would, if you were ignoring my word, be searching for anyway, you'd just be searching in vain. And this is what I'll give you. I'll give you a long life and I'll give you peace. Now, it's important for me to just clarify this first promise. Because we know that it's not always the case every single time that a believer, a true believer, lives a physically long life. There are occasions when believers die young. But those are exceptions. They're exceptions to God's plan. They're exceptions to God's purpose. And they're exceptions in which God is not absent from those exceptions. He's involved in taking that person's life course in an exceptional direction for some purpose that we can't always see as it's happening. We may not see until later when we stand in his presence and all things are made clear. But what I do want us to see is that even though there are exceptions, where believers will be given shorter lifespans than what we would normally expect. It is God's purpose. It is His intention. It is the desire of His heart to grant to believers in general a long life here on this earth. Now, why would God want to grant us a long life? You look back in the Old Testament and then look at the patriarchs. One of the things that marks almost every patriarch in the Old Testament is they lived longer than average. Why? Because God is wanting to establish his purposes in the earth, to establish and expand his kingdom in the earth. And how is he going to accomplish that? He could, of course, because he's powerful and he's sovereign and he's God. He could do it entirely apart from us. But he chooses not to do that. He chooses to involve us in his plans, in his purposes. And he chooses to work through us to accomplish what he wants to get accomplished in the earth. So how else is God going to accomplish this other than by extending our life and giving us greater and longer and more because longer equals more, more opportunity to serve him in the earth? Like we were praying for Frank and Nancy earlier. I mean, as the world would look at them in their natural age, they might be considered to be in their latter years winding down. But I don't believe God is winding them down. I really don't. I believe God intends to fulfill greater and greater things through them in the years to come than he has in the years prior to this. And how is that going to happen, though? Is this just an automatic for every Christian? Absolutely not. Now, we talked about the exceptional cases, but here's the other principle that goes into play here, goes into motion here. This is one of those. And we've talked about this in the last couple of weeks, one of those conditional promises of God. The words here are not specifically mentioned like they are in other places, but they're clearly implied and it's. An if-then kind of thing, which is, if you will, as it talks about in verse 1, not forget the teaching of the Lord. If you will let your heart keep my commandments, then length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. The operative word in verse 2 is this little word, they. Do you see that if you're looking in your Bible? focus for a moment on the word they. They is what is adding length of days and years of life and peace to the believer. Now, of course, When we're talking about they, we're not talking about God directly. We are talking about God indirectly, because we're recognizing that long life is in the hands of the Lord. Whether we live a long or a short life, that's the Lord's determination. Whether we live a life filled with the peace of God is in the Lord's determination. It's not something people can create for themselves. That's why they're always searching for it and not able to find it. But here, the way that the Lord describes the addition of long life and peace to us is not by His direct hand, but by His indirect hand. Meaning, this is God doing this, but He's doing it to us indirectly. He's doing it like this, if I were to make a diagram out of this. God is acting through His Word upon us. to bring about long life and peace. He could skip his word and just give us long life and peace, no matter what we're doing in relationship to his word. He could do that if he chose to do so. He just doesn't choose to do it that way. He chooses to add these things to our life through the influences of His Word acting upon our hearts and upon our minds and changing us, transforming us from the inside out. If we go through that transformation process, this is what He promises will be the fruit or the result of being changed in the way that God wants to change us. Now, how many of you here want, I mean, unless the Lord has some special plan otherwise, how many of you want to live a long life versus the alternative? Me too. Do you want to live a long life of misery? I mean, if you can choose. And here, what's implied is you have a choice in this process. If you could choose, would you choose peace over misery? And the piece that he's talking about here is the Hebrew word that you're probably familiar with, at least in terms of the sound of the word shalom. You've probably heard that at least once in your life. And what we're talking about here is not just mental peace, you know, peace of mind. Peace of mind is a critical aspect of this. It's an element of what God says when he's going to, through his word, produce a life of shalom for us. But it's not just this, what we call peace of mind. It's peace in every aspect of our lives. It's a full-orbed concept. It means peace in all of my relationships. First with him, and then with all of you. It means peace in my circumstances. So that I'm not at odds with anyone or anything. So that in a sense, I look around at all of the elements of my life, my relationships, my circumstances, and I'm blessed because I'm at peace with all of it. That's what God promises to accomplish as we continue to soak our minds and our hearts in his word. And then that word has its own powerful transforming effect on us from the inside out. So God motivates us with these promises. Sometimes we look at God and we think that He doesn't deal with us in the way that we're used to being dealt with. And it's true that God has His own unique ways. But God does, God is not above motivating us with promises of good things. God sets reward in front of us and He says, you see that good thing? How would you like that? Do you want that? Do you want that to be in your life? Versus the alternative and then he'll show us the alternative. And he intends for us to see those contrasts and to make those comparisons and to be motivated toward him and his ways and his word as a result of that. Now, as I said, this isn't an automatic thing. The danger of forgetfulness is real. I'll just give you one example from God's word. We could probably all stand up and give examples from our own lives. What's significant about and when I say this name, you'll probably anticipate where I'm heading with this. What's the significance of the life of Solomon? Solomon was an interesting individual in the plans and purposes of God. He was given a special blessing by the Lord. Solomon was the first, following David of course, but the first king of Israel to really experience full peace in the kingdom of Israel. And he was given the special privilege of the Lord to be the architect, the constructor, the engineer of God's temple. and he built the very first temple of God in the land of Israel, and was given special blessing as a result of that. And as not too long ago we studied together, Solomon, as we began the book of Proverbs, of course this is the author of the book, that's why I'm using him as the example, Solomon was known far and wide for one thing in particular. What was he known for? Wisdom. And not just, hey, Solomon's pretty wise in comparison with other wise people out there. Solomon was known as the wisest man ever on the face of the earth. No one could be compared to Solomon in terms of wisdom. And yet, what was the end of Solomon's life story? What was the end? At the end of Solomon's life story, let's turn and read briefly as a refresher of the end. 1 Kings chapter 11. And we will come back to Proverbs. 1 Kings chapter 11. And I'll read just starting from verse one. Now, King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women. From the nations concerning which the Lord had said, and where had he said this? He had said this in his law, in his word. From the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, you shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you. Why? Is it because God doesn't like foreigners? No, God likes, He loves all the people of this world. But this particular relationship, type of relationship God had forbidden to His people because of this. For you shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you, for they will surely Turn your heart away after their gods. These people, these women from the nations around Israel, were given over to idolatry, and God had forbidden Solomon, along with the other men of Israel, to form intimate relationships with them, knowing that in the context of the intimacy of the personal relationship, there would be an exchange of ideas, and that one person's ideas would tend to influence, in an adverse way, the other person's ideas. And you would think, well, wait a second, Solomon, he's the wisest person on earth. If anybody is going to influence anybody here, Solomon is going to be the one influencing all these foreign women. By adding more and more relationships, Solomon could bring more and more of these women to the Lord and teach them the right ways of the Lord, couldn't he? It makes a certain kind of sense, right? It's just not the way it actually plays out. The Lord knows this because what ended up happening here, let's read on. For they will surely turn your heart away after their gods. And Solomon held fast to the Lord in spite of these. Now Solomon held fast to these in love. He had 700 wives, princesses, and, as if that's not enough, 300 concubines. And his wives turned his heart away. For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods, and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the detestable idol of the Ammonites. Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not follow the Lord fully, as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the detestable idol of Moab, on the mountain which is east of Jerusalem. as the Mount of Olives, by the way, and for Molech, the testable idol of the sons of Ammon. Thus he did for all his foreign wives. How many foreign wives did he have? 700, right? He built altars for, you know, probably not 700 altars because there were several from each nation. But for however many nations there were that worship these various gods, he built altars to them and didn't just build them for them saying to himself, OK, I'll just do this for my wives and I'll keep that separate from what I'm doing in my relationship with the Lord. Their compromises, their rebellion influenced him and led him astray. And so thus also we did for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. Now the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. And it goes on to describe what happened in those appearances. Solomon started really, really well in his walk with the Lord. And at that point, he was accounted to be by the Lord himself, the wisest man on the face of the earth. At the end of his days, the Lord did no longer consider him to be wise. Now, there may have been people around Solomon that still thought he was great in wisdom, but he had lost, by the end of his days, all of his wisdom. And it was for one reason, one reason alone. He forgot the commands of the Lord. Now, when we're talking about in verse 1, going back to Proverbs, when we're talking in verse 1, chapter 3, where it says, my son, do not forget my teaching. We're not talking here, and that wasn't the case with Solomon, and it's not usually the problem with us. We're not talking about passive forgetfulness. You know how it is, and this works this way more and more as you get older and older. Trust me, as someone that's getting older, it's already starting to happen for me. And if you're anywhere near my age or beyond, you know from personal experience, but if not, just anticipate this is ahead of you. There are some things that you just passively forget, even though you don't want to. I'll find myself trying to recall something and my brain is just spinning and I can't catch on to any particular memory. I can't name that thing or that circumstance or that person. I'll see someone's face that I know. I mean, it's even happened to me walking in here. I'll see your face and I know you and I say, what is that person's name? I don't want to forget your name. I like you. I care about you. But, you know, I just do sometimes I forget what your name is. And it's not because I'm ignoring you. It's because passively I sometimes forget things. The Lord is not concerned here about passively forgetting his word. He's talking about the active choice of disregarding the word of God that leads to a deeper, more serious level of forgetfulness. to where you forget what God's Word meant to you once you reach this place. And once you forget what it meant to you, it's no longer affecting you in the way that it should. It's no longer influencing your choices. It's no longer having the role in your life that God wants His Word to always have. And so he goes on from there, and I'm going to speed up my pace here because so far we're only through the first two chapters, excuse me, first two verses of chapter three. He goes on to add in verse three, do not let kindness and truth leave you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. What we have is a word picture here, which is, all right, with this danger of forgetting my word, how can you ensure that you won't forget it? Here are two practical things you can do. Bind them. Them what? My teachings, my words. Bind them around your neck. How are we going to do this? How are we going to accomplish this? Shall we put a string through it and wear it like this? Is that what he's after? wind the neck, bind them around your neck and write them on the tablet of your heart. These are two what are called Hebrew idioms. Let me just write that word down here, I-D-I-O-M-S, idioms. They're figures of speech that are familiar to the culture that they're spoken in. Every culture has these, and what they are is little phrases or figures of speech that mean something to those people that don't necessarily mean anything much to people outside that culture. I was sharing Wednesday with the Women's Bible Study that Brother Samuel, when I was there in India, I was spending some time with him, of course, and he is learning English. He's in the process. He speaks very well, but he's in the process of really sharpening his English skills. And the biggest thing that he struggles with in his study of English, coming from an entirely different culture, is understanding our idioms, our figures of speech. So I can remember this one day we were driving this little Indian car down this dirt road and he's asking me questions about English and he says to me, Tim, what is this saying? I don't understand. What is this, the squeaky wheel gets the grease? What does this mean? What is this squeak and what is the grease that this is getting? He just didn't understand. Now, do all of you understand what the squeaky wheel gets the grease is describing? I mean, it's describing simply that the person that puts up like that young child in the back room was being the squeaky wheel a few minutes ago. And I'm sure by now it's gotten plenty of grease. All right. It's gotten all the attention that it needed at that moment. But for Samuel, he had no clue what this meant. He had no frame of reference. These are Hebrew idioms that we have no frame of reference for. Binding something around the neck and writing it on the tablet of the heart. The idea here is that in the Hebrew perspective, the neck and the heart are the two focal points of life. This is where life originates and flows from the neck and the heart. The heart is pretty easy for us to understand. It's the, you know, the blood pump. It's the source of physical life in that regard. But why the neck? Why would the neck be there? Well, the neck is the source of life because it is where the throat is. And the throat is what you breathe in or through. So this is all about the breath. And the heart here is all about the blood. And essentially what is being said, and I'm short forming these idioms here, but essentially what is being said, the Lord is saying with every breath you take and with every time your heart beats, I want you to remember my word and I want you to not lose your focus. Every time you suck in some air and your life is sustained in this world for another moment, recognize that it's my word that is really the source of your life. Every time your heart pumps out a little bit more blood, recognize like Jesus taught us later on in history, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God. Alright, moving on from there, let's look at verse 4. So, as a result of doing this, as a result of this kind of intense focus on God's Word, You will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man. This is another promise that God gives to this young man. This is this is the kind of life that you can anticipate God's word producing for you if you will focus on it in the way that you should. And I'm just going to turn over and read. You don't have to turn with me. This is a short description in the book of Luke of the life story of the Lord Jesus himself as a young man. This is from Luke. And I'll be reading chapter 2, verse 52. This is immediately following the adventure when he was 12 years old and he spent the overnight time in the temple in Jerusalem. And he was briefly separated from his parents and they came back and they were wondering what had happened to them. And he described to them that he had to be about his father's business and in his father's house. And then following that it says, but they did not understand the statement which he had made to them. And so he went down with them and came back to Nazareth and he continued in subjection to them. And his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and in stature. and in favor with God and men." Now, what kind of life was Jesus living? He was living a perfect life. The life that God has mapped out that is available to us to live. The kind of life where every relationship is in right order. in good condition, the first and most important relationship of life, of course, between us and God, that he's increasing in favor with God. And to increase in favor means that as the relationship is developing, God is looking at him more and more favorably as time goes on. Now, you would think with Jesus, how could this be? Doesn't God look totally favorably at Jesus from the very first moment? because He is the dear Son of His heart. In one sense, yes, but in another sense, the Scripture very clearly describes that Jesus increased in favor with God. And if He increased in favor with God, how much more does that apply to the potential for us, in terms of our need to increase in favor with God? God, if you belong to Him, if you're His, looks at you favorably, but What's available is that you could increase in that favor. You can grow in that favor. Wouldn't you want to reach a point in life where God would look more and more and more, every time He looks at you, more favorably at you than He did the last time He looked at you? Because if that's the case, you know, then we can anticipate only good things. And I don't mean anticipate only good circumstances. We can anticipate that our life will be fulfilled and it will be everything God wants it to be. And of course, also increasing in favor with other people, because the two main categories of relationship in all of our lives is to be in right relationship with God and right relationship with our neighbor. And both in both relationships, we would be increasing in favor. Now, believe it or not, verses five and beyond are really the meat of what I wanted to talk about today. So I'm stuck here because I'm near the end of when I should be ending. And yet I'm just getting started. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm going to put a stop to the teaching today. I'm going to stop at the end of verse four. We will pick up at verse five, Lord willing, three weeks from now. By that time, I'm sure none of you will have forgotten what I had to say. Exactly. Well, if we have to review a little bit, I will do so. And then we'll pick up in verse five next time. Let's pray. Father God, each one of us is like this young man that's being described in these early chapters of the book of Proverbs. We're just no matter what our physical age, even no matter what our spiritual age, we're just beginning on the pathway of what you really want to accomplish in our lives. And I pray for your grace to be upon each one of our hearts and lives, that we would value you and your word and that we would embrace your word and that we would grow and be transformed and become the people that you desire in your heart. And I thank you for that grace. It's one of those things, Father, that you promised to us that if we ask anything according to your will, we can be very confident about the answer. I really believe this is your desire, your will for our lives. So I'm confident, Lord, you're going to give us the measure of grace that we need to grow before you in this way. Thank you for it. In the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. The copyrighted product of Tree of Life Christian Church of Canoga Park, California. You are welcome to pass this message along to others as long as it is not sold and it is passed along unaltered in its entirety with source credit given to Tree of Life Christian Church.