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It's time now for the chapel
hour, coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University. Our speaker is Dr. Greg Mazak,
Chairman of the Division of Psychology at BJU. The title of his message
is, Obedience and Blessing. The text is from Proverbs chapter
3, verses 1 through 10. Well, good morning. I welcome you to summer school. And I hope you're off to a good
start. I was preaching out at church last night at Trinity,
and as I was greeting people as they left, somebody said,
hey, Pastor Greg, are you going to be able to have a little bit
of a break? And I said, yeah. As soon as I said, now that the
sermon has ended, my summer officially begins. And the woman said, well,
that's wonderful. She said, how long till you have
to start teaching again? And I said, oh, about 12 hours.
And so I had a 12-hour summertime. And I know some of you feel the
same way. But what a blessing it is that
the Lord gives us opportunities to pursue blessing. And I want
to talk today, this morning, just briefly about the topic
of obedience and blessing, because I don't think there's a person
here that doesn't want the Lord's blessing, right? How many people
here would say, I want a crummy life, right? Anytime God wants
to bless me, I would just as well say, no, give it to someone
else, right? I mean, I hope I can make it
through life with zero blessings. None of us would say that. Every
one of us, I think, would say, I want a blessed life. And those
of us that are parents would echo what your parents, no doubt,
would think, that we want our children to have a blessed life.
You say, so how do we enter the blessing of God? And it's on
the path of obedience. Now, I have to be cautious because
obviously this could be misunderstood. Obedience does not make me God's
child. It's all grace that puts me in
a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. If I could use a family
illustration, my daughters, I have three, are my daughters. And
frequently, they disobey me. I mean, just the same with frequently
in the sense that you disobey your parents, right? Frequently,
in the big picture at least. When they disobey me, they don't
cease being my daughters, nor did they become my daughters
when they first obeyed me. There weren't a bunch of kids
hanging out on our street. And I walked up and down and
said, hey, you do this. And they all ignored me. One
finally said, OK, I said, OK, you're my daughter. That's not
how it happened. Right. They were birthed into
my family. And now that they're my daughters,
they know that if they obey me, it results in blessing. And sometimes
when they don't obey me, they find out that there is a lack
of blessing. The path to blessing is the path
of obedience. And one of the places we see
this is in Proverbs chapter 3. I'd like to just remind us of
some verses that are fairly well known, but I hope will encourage
you. I wanted to bring something encouraging to you this morning.
Let's open up to Proverbs chapter 3. and take a look at this principle
of obedience and blessing. Now, even the blessings that
follow obedience are still all a result of God's grace, but
yet we see a very clear link between obedience and blessing.
Open your Scriptures up to Proverbs 3, please. I know this first
day, maybe you didn't bring a Bible and someone close to you would
be kind enough to share with you. Look at verse 1, for example,
in Proverbs 3. Forget not My law, but let thine
heart keep My commandments." What is that? That's all about
obedience. Here's a father saying to his son, obey. You say, why? Because verse 2 is filled with
blessing. For length of days and long life and peace shall
they add to thee. You want the blessings of verse
2. You find it on the path of obedience. Verse 1. We'll see
the same thing in verses 3 and 4. Look at verse 3. Let not mercy
and truth forsake thee. Bind them about thy neck. Write them upon the table of
thine heart. These are things we should obey.
A father here commanding his son. And you say, what's the
promise to those who obey? Look at verse 4. It's a blessing.
So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight
of God and man. You want the blessings of verse
4? They're on the path of obedience in verse 3. You want the blessings
of verse 2? Walk the path of obedience in
verse 1. You want to have a blessed life? Obey the Lord. Because if you walk in a path
of obedience before the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll experience
a life of blessing. Proverbs is very clear on that.
Now, you might be thinking, could you be more specific? Proverbs
is more specific. In fact, we're going to see three
specific commands all tied to blessing. And the first in verse
5 and 6, the second in verse 7 and 8, the third in verse 9
and 10. In fact, if you underline in your Bible, you might want
to underline a phrase in verse 5, verse 7 and verse 9, and that'll
be the three points of our simple message this morning. In verse
5, you know it well, you see the command, trust in the Lord. In verse 7, you see the command,
fear the Lord. And in verse 9, you see the command,
honor the Lord. What are the three commands that
God gives to us in this text? Verse 5, trust the Lord. Verse
7, fear the Lord. Verse 9, honor the Lord. And
God promises that if you do these things, you will experience a
life of blessing. Let's say them one at a time.
Number 1, trust in the Lord who blesses with success. Verse 5 says, trust in the Lord
with all thine heart and lean not into thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge Him. We have to trust in the Lord.
How? We have to trust Him completely.
It says, with all thy heart. Not just a little bit of your
heart, but the whole thing. Trust Him completely. But not
just completely, trust Him exclusively. Because it says, lean not unto
thine own understanding. Don't lean on yourself. It's
kind of a nice picture of what does it mean to trust? To trust
is to lean, right? If you lean on something, you
trust it. We were, you probably wouldn't have noticed this, but
we were in graduation yesterday, the faculty walk, and you probably
noticed that we were in fact, you know, graduation. We were
there, but you wouldn't have noticed there was a bad railing
along one of the entranceways. And as we marched in the side
of FMA and we came down, there's a place where the railing had
been damaged. And we were warned publicly,
hey, faculty, make sure when you come by that place, you don't
lean on the railing because you'll go down. And that would kind
of take away from the reverence of the occasion, a bunch of faculty
falling down. And so what happens? When we
got near there, we were all cautious not to lean on that railing.
Why? Because it wouldn't support a person's length. When you face
challenging times, you have to lean somewhere. And every one
of us has to make a choice. We can lean on ourselves or we
can lean on the Lord. Now, some of you, especially
if you have unsafe friends or even unsafe family members, you've
had people say to you, you know, you're one of those born again
people, you're one of those safe people. Christianity is a crutch
for weak people, right? And how do you respond to that?
What would you I've had people say that to me. Christianity,
a crutch for weak people, right? And my response is what? Amen. No argument for me. You want
a weak person, you're looking at them. You want someone who
can't make it through life alone? That's me. Why would I be ashamed
to admit it? If you don't admit it, you're
simply proud and don't realize you need a Savior. Guys, none
of us can make it through life alone and really lead a successful
life. We're all going to lean on something. You can lean on
yourself, you're going to fall. You can lean on the Lord. And
there's a promise of blessing. We'll see that in a little bit.
But first, we need to trust in the Lord completely, right? With
all thine heart. Trust in the Lord exclusively.
Not on your own understanding. Trust in the Lord personally.
Look at what it says. It says, verse 6, "...in all
thy ways acknowledge Him." You know what the word acknowledge
means? It means to know. In all your ways, know your God. Know Him. Just know Him and give
the right opinion of Him in everything. You just know Him. Why can I
lean on Him? Because I know Him. And you know
what I know about Him? He never lets me down. Never
lets me down. I don't know how you guys learned
to swim, but I still remember my dad teaching me to swim. We
would go to Colby Park up in Ohio where I grew up. And my
dad would stand in the deep section. Now, the deep section of the
pool was, I think, four feet tall. But at the time, I was
less than four feet tall. And I couldn't swim. And my dad
would stand on the side of the pool and he would say, Greg,
jump. And I would come right up to the edge and kind of curl
my toes right over the edge. And he would say, son, jump.
And I would think I'm going to jump. And then I would look at
the water and think, I don't want to drown. And he would say,
jump. I'll catch you. And I would think,
I don't want to jump because I don't want to drown. But then
he would say, I will catch you. You can trust me. And I would
think, this is my dad. This is my dad. I mean, he coaches
my ball team, right? He buys me clothes. He gives
me food. He has a track record. I know
my dad and I can trust him. And guess what? I thought my
dad would never say jump and just drop his hands and go, huh?
You know, he would never. He would never do that because
he's my dad. And so what would I do? I would
jump and he would catch me. You know, people sometimes say,
I struggle to trust the Lord. I would say, well, then you just
get to know Him better. Because to know Him is to trust
Him. It's not a hard thing to trust
the Lord. And even my dad has failed me
at times, leading into my next comment. There's only one person
I know who's never failed me one time. His name is Jehovah. His name is Jesus Christ. Trust
Him. Lean on Him. That's the command.
And you say, what will happen? You'll experience blessings.
Look at the second half of verse six. Obedience brings blessing. You trust in the Lord, not yourself.
And he shall direct thy paths. You say, what's that about? It's
about blessing. It's about success. Some of you
have something like this in different translations or in the margin
of your Bible. He will make your paths smooth
or level. It's the idea of God guaranteeing
you a successful path by making that path level. Removing all
obstacles so that you can get exactly to the place of blessing,
which is where God wants you to be. Which, of course, implies
guidance as well, which is the King James rendering. How many
of you were here when the big ice storm hit a year ago Christmas? It was during exam. Okay, most
of you. I came in and I gave my exam that day. And then it
was time to head for home. And of course, some of the covered
walkways had come down and some of the trees were down. And I
thought, well, I'm just going to head for home. I gave my exams.
So I jump in my truck and I start heading for home the way I always
drive home. Next thing I know, there's a
big yellow truck in the road that stopped traffic. So nobody
would go over the power lines that were down. And I thought,
you know, that's OK. I'll just go home a different
way. So I did a U-turn. I started going another way.
There was a phone pole down right across the street. I thought,
hey, that's not a problem. I can go home more. There's more
than two ways to get home. I started going on a detour around
another way. And what did I see? An oak tree
across the street. And this happened four or five
times. I thought, you know, my wife's going to be wondering
where I'm at. I'll pick my cell phone up and I grab my cell.
I dial it. I can't. There's no phone signal
at our home. I can't call home. And I'm thinking,
this is interesting. You know what I was facing? I
was facing a frustrating journey. And every one of us will face
a frustrating journey if we lean on ourselves. You want to have
a life of blessing. Trust in the Lord completely,
exclusively, personally. And you know what He promises?
He will bless you with success. Trust in the Lord who blesses
us with success. Number two, fear the Lord who
blesses us with personal prosperity. Look at verse 7, please. It says,
Be not wise in thine own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from
evil. What is the command here? It's
a command of humility. A humility towards self. Don't
be wise in your own eyes. You say, what does it mean to
be humble? Maybe this way. Have a low opinion of your own
opinion. I think that's a wonderful definition of humility. Let me
repeat that. Having a low opinion of my own
opinion. I have opinions about a lot of things. You have opinions
about a lot of things. But we need to be careful about
these opinions. That's humility. So don't count
yourself wise. That's humility. What should
we do instead? Fear the Lord. That's reverence. And then thirdly, it says, depart
from evil. That's repentance. So what do
we see in the command? Humility, reverence and repentance.
If I will be a humble person, not thinking that all knowledge
is stopped with me and I know everything. If I will show reverence
to God, fearing the Lord, And if I will show repentance as
I turn from Mabel, you know what I'll experience? Great blessing. Look at verse 8. It shall be
health to thy navel and marrow to thy bones. Now, most of us,
health to thy navel, that just seems like an odd thing. Health
to your navel. What does that mean? Well, your
navel would just be the idea of your whole body. Perhaps the
outside of your body, and marrow to thy bones, perhaps the inside
of your body. You want to be blessed physically,
inside and out, the whole body. God says, I will bless you with
personal prosperity if you what? If you fear the Lord. There are
blessings on the path of obedience. God blesses His children who
obey Him. with personal prosperity. And
then number three, if we trust the Lord, He blesses us with
success. If we fear the Lord, He blesses us with personal prosperity. If we honor the Lord, He blesses
us with material prosperity. And some of you, you hear that
and you think, wow, that's not what I'm used to hearing. That's
what I see on TV, on these health and wealth TV shows, right? You
know, send in 20 bucks and watch your bank account grow. Is that
in Proverbs? Well, not exactly. Let's take
a look at it. Honor the Lord, verse 9, with
thy substance and with the firstfruits of all thy increase. You say, what are we supposed
to do? We're supposed to honor the Lord. You say, how do you
honor someone? By giving him first place. Right? Some of you, maybe you had moms
and dads down for graduation. And what did you do? You gave
them first place. You honored them in maybe many
different ways. For example, maybe you were showing
your mom and dad your dorm room, if that kind of thing happens.
And when your mom said, hey honey, let me see the room. You didn't
just barge into the room. You let your mom go first. You
gave her first place. is you met your friends. You
didn't at first just talk with your friends as you met them
after graduation or whatever. You would first greet your parents.
You gave them first place. What do we do? We honor the Lord
by giving Him first place. But notice it does say, with
thy substance. That's talking about material
blessing. That's talking about, for most
of us, money. That talks about the money you're
picking up right now. Some of you have part-time jobs.
You might work on campus. Some of you may be clean houses
and you babysit and you say, I've gone to school and I'm in
debt. I don't have a lot of money. That may be the case. The Bible
doesn't say you have to honor the Lord with a lot of money.
It simply says with the first fruits of all nine increase,
you say, what's that all about? An agricultural concept, right?
It's harvest time. And what do you do? You go out
and start harvesting the first fruits and you offer them to
God. Why? Because God owns it all.
But as we give Him just the first fruits of our harvest, it's a
demonstration that He's number one. If I could put it practically,
you should be able to open up my checkbook. I know everybody
doesn't keep check registers anymore with debit cards and
such, but let's just assume we all had a check register. You
should be able to look in my check register and you would
see Bob Jones University deposit, Trinity Bible Church deposit.
And the very next thing you would see would be Trinity Bible Church
love offering, this missionary and that missionary. Why? Because
the moment I get paid, it's, Lord, it's all yours. But I'm
going to show you, to honor you, that you're first in my life.
And before I pay an electric bill, a phone bill, before I
put gas in my truck or whatever, before I even put food on the
table, Lord, You come first, because You are my God and I
honor You." You could be babysitting on weekends, picking up 20 bucks
a week, and still obey this principle. You say, what happens? You'll
have a life of blessing. Look at verse 10. So shall thy
barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out
with new wine. You say, so this is like the
televangelists said. No, no. We're not giving to get. We're giving to honor the Lord.
But there is a promise. And the promise, it's sitting
right here looking at me. I can't explain it away, nor
would I try. I will be materially blessed. God promises it. And you can have that happen
in your life if you put the Lord first. Because the bottom line
is there are blessings on the path of obedience. So trust the
Lord who blesses with success. Fear the Lord who blesses with
personal prosperity. Honor the Lord who blesses with
material prosperity. Now, some of you are thinking,
sounds great, but it doesn't always work. Because I know someone,
if my church, who always honors the Lord, and he got cancer or
his business failed or his wife passed away early, it doesn't
always work. Perhaps so. Which is why in the
wisdom of Scripture, we have verse 11, which I think is helpful
for all of us. My son, despise not the chastening
of the Lord, Neither be weary of his correction. The bottom
line is there are times where the blessings don't come and
we experience the chastening hand of God. That can be a health
reversal. That could be a financial reversal.
That could be a relationship reversal. And we experience God's
hand of correction in our lives. You might be thinking, every
time something negative, if I can put it that way, happens, should
I view it as God's hand of chastening? My response would be yes. Because
who in this room would say that I am not in need of God's hand
of chastening? Would any of you be so arrogant
and proud as to say, Brother Greg, I've already become like
Christ. I need no chastening. So if something
happens in my life undesirable, it obviously couldn't be chastening.
It couldn't be God training me because I'm already so much like
Christ. I got nowhere else to go. I mean,
I'm there. Glorification, it's me. Who could
say that? None of us could say that. Every
one of us are so far from the image of Jesus Christ. And so
every time something happens negative in my life, I don't
look at it and say, hey, God's judging me for my sin. But I
do look at it and say, Lord, you obviously in your providence
want to use this for my chastening. You say, well, how does that
help you rejoice in God? It's very simple. Verse 12, Because
whom the Lord loveth, he correcteth, even as a father to son in whom
he delighteth. Even when God is correcting and
chastening me, it reminds me that I'm the object of his love. Praise God that he would correct
me. A simple illustration. Today,
after school, I'll be driving home and as I go home, I'll see
little kids maybe on the side of the road. They'll be riding
their bikes or riding their skateboards in the road, and it's dangerous.
Will I stop and correct them? No. Well, I pull my truck to
the side of the road and say, hey, you kid, I don't know you,
but don't do that. You could die. Do I do that?
No. Why? I don't care about him. Right. They're just not. And
I know some of you laugh and say that you don't do it either. Right. Every time you see a guy
riding his bicycle in an unsafe way, do you stop your car, get
out and say, young man, I don't know you, but we need to talk.
I'm concerned for that. No, you don't do that because
they're not your kids. But if I were to be, now my girls are
older now and this illustration doesn't apply to them where they're
at, but at least in the past, if I were driving home and I
were to see my daughters riding their bicycles in the road in
an unsafe way, I would immediately pull over in my truck and say,
hey girls, let's have a talk because I love you very much.
And even if there's discipline and chastening, it's just a reminder
that they have a dad that loves them greatly. So even when God
brings tough times into my life, with His hand of chastening.
It's just a reminder what a blessing that I'm loved by God. So even
when everything's not gravy, I still praise Him. Because even
His hand of chastening just reminds me how incredibly wonderful He
is to His kids. People like you I trust. And
people like me. Do you want to have a life of
blessing? The Bible makes it simple. Trust in the Lord. and
he'll bless you with success. Fear the Lord and he'll bless
you with personal prosperity. Honor the Lord and he'll bless
you with material prosperity. And sometimes when you're not
experiencing the blessings like you would hope for, just remember
that a loving God chastens his children because he loves you
very much. I hope that will be an encouragement
to you as you begin school this summer. Father, we thank you
for being wonderful to your children. You have laid out explicitly
and specifically, so clearly and plainly, the path of obedience. Father, by your grace, help us
to walk it. And as we experience the blessings,
may we turn them into praise for your glory. I pray that you'd
bless these students. I pray that you'd help them to
have the best summer ever. That you would be glorified in
their lives. You've been listening to the
Chapel Hour, coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University. Our speaker was Dr. Greg Mazak,
Chairman of the Division of Psychology at BJU. For a cassette or compact
disc copy of today's message, send a check for $6 to Campus
Store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina 29614.
Be sure to mention the name of the speaker and today's date.
The Chapel Hour has been sponsored by Bob Jones University.
Obedience and Blessing
| Sermon ID | 5130720286 |
| Duration | 25:20 |
| Date | |
| Category | Radio Broadcast |
| Bible Text | Proverbs 3:1-7 |
| Language | English |