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.