Sermon on July 9 by Pastor Roland Eskinazi

Scripture:  Proverbs 3:9-35

When life is sweet, trusting the Lord seems unnecessary. When it is bitter, it feels impossible….
Now is the time to:

1. TRUST GOD WITH YOUR PLENTY!
• Honor the Lord with your best, not your least.. (v9)

The command is to give from our best. Are you giving the Lord and His work the first-cut?
If all we have needed God has provided, then only unbelief will keep us back from generous giving.

• ..So you may do more, not less (v10)

If we simply gave to get more from God (prosperity theology), God would feel used, not honored.
We give with the assurance that as we do God gives more so we may give away more (Luke 6:38)

‘God will bless you with an increase of that which is for use, not for show; for giving away – not for hoarding. Those who do good with what they have shall have more to do good with.’
(Matthew Henry)

2. TRUST GOD WITH YOUR PAIN!
• Pain is the finishing touch of His wisdom.. (v11-18)

When you suffer, God is re-investing in you to prepare for something you could not imagine (Heb. 5:8)

‘If perfect sight were offered to me tomorrow, I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and distracting things around me.’
(Fanny Crosby, author of over 8000 hymns including ‘Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine’.)

• ..the same wisdom that is keeping your world together (v22-26)

Can the Lord pick up millions of pounds of water from the sea and bring it down to water the crops? Can He bring it down again without crushing the crops, but through little drops?
Will the wisdom that is behind the clouds dropping the dew will make a single mistake in any detail of your life?

3. TRUST GOD WITH YOUR PURPOSE!
• Do all the good you can, as you can (v27-30)

Sin is not just the bad things we do. It’s also the beautiful things we withhold. Now is the time to do good…

• Be as happy as you can, without envy (v31-35)

Even if life does not work out as you wish, the final curtain has not come down.

Remember! Only the Cross gives us a worldview that makes sense of the world.
It alone defines who the wise are, who will inherit honor and who the foolish are, who will be shamed.
Would you rather have Jesus than silver or gold? Now is the day of salvation, now is the time to trust in God’s wisdom in Jesus!

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Photo credit FreeImages.com/Hohl Laszlo