Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Way of Wisdom | The Writings | Proverbs 3

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Who are you becoming? What does it look like to trust God? Why should I trust God? In today's episode, Jeff looks at Proverbs 3, showing us that God's wisdom is worth trusting with everything we have. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Proverbs 3

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Sometimes one minor miscalculation can make a monumental impact over time. Back in 2015, a flight going from Sydney, Australia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was preparing to take flight. Before takeoff, the pilots entered the coordinates for the destination into the plane's navigation system. the coordinates were 0.519.8. Now, while the flight was safe and comfortable for the passengers, it turned out to be about seven hours too short. Instead of taking a nine-hour flight to Malaysia, this flight took a two-hour

journey to Melbourne. What happened? Well, it was a relatively minor miscalculation. The pilot entered the coordinates of 05109.8, which is so, so close to the coordinates for Malaysia, but not quite close enough. What the pilot should have entered was 15109.8. If you're paying attention there, the pilot was just one number off. But the difference between coordinates that begin with a zero and coordinates that begin with a one, well, that's the difference between Malaysia and Melbourne. Think about that for a moment. The flight was just one number off in coordinates, but it created a positional error of over 11,000 kilometers. That's 6,835 miles for those of you trying to figure out the imperial distance. Now experts chalked this scenario up to a simple

data entry error. The distance between that zero and that one in the coordinates, it seems small on paper, but it was an immense difference over the course of the journey. It's the distance between two totally different destinations. And that poses a question for us. What if we have a data entry error in the direction of our lives? What if we're trusting the wrong set of coordinates and won't notice it until we're somewhere we never meant to go? Until we become someone we never meant to be?

This takes on different forms for everyone. Days go by and you find out that you've slowly flooded your calendar until you don't have any margin to connect with the people you love. Weeks progress and you end up quiet quitting at work because you've lost all drive to grow in your vocation. Most of us experience this kind of data entry error in our day-to-day lives. But for many of us, our miscalculated coordinates often show up in the realm of character. You get through a stressful stretch with a drink every night to help you unwind, but eventually you find it hard to go to bed without alcohol in your bloodstream.

You chase the emotional high of connecting with a co-worker only to find yourself on the precipice of an affair months later. You numb the pain or boredom of the day with a small online purchase here and there but become trapped in a hidden cycle of credit card debt. You withhold the truth from a spouse or a friend and years later you come to realize that you've actually withheld yourself from them. Usually these big destination changes happen slowly. over time. It's not an overnight decision to end up in those places. It's the destination created by confused coordinates. While they seem small in the beginning, they can sometimes take us somewhere we never wanted to go. The wisdom of Proverbs in the Bible regularly addresses this tendency toward misguided direction, calling us to consider where we're going and most of all

who we're becoming. And the third chapter of Proverbs demonstrates not only where, God's coordinates take us, but also why they're worth trusting. As we approach God's words together now, let's pause and ask for His grace to move through our time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath, and thank you for your word. Jesus, help us abide in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in Proverbs 3. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us in Jesus' name. Amen. Early in Proverbs 3, we see the command to trust in God's direction for our lives. Verses 5 through 6 are among the Bible's greatest hits. They say this, trust in the Lord with all your

heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. In the Bible, the heart is the seat of someone's ultimate desires. It's the core foundation of what they long for, what they live for. It includes your emotions for sure, but it's also about your entire embodied self, your thoughts, your affections, and your actions. And Proverbs is calling us to trust in the Lord with all of that. Instead of leaning on our own understanding, our own coordinates, we're meant to lean on God. And verse 6 takes this even further. Depending on the translation of the Bible you're using, the word here is acknowledge or submit. The most literal translation of this verb, Yadah, is no. I love the simplicity and the depth of that. In the Bible, to know God, it includes

what you believe about him, but it also includes how you walk with him. That's what Proverbs is talking about here. To know God is to lean on him and not yourself. It's to trust in his coordinates, more than than the coordinates of this world or the narrow and shallow personal desires that we have. So from the get-go, Proverbs 3 brings us to a fork in the road when it comes to the direction of our lives. You can either go with the trajectory of your own understanding, your own desires, or you can submit to, acknowledge, know the Lord. For me, I'm convinced that one of my biggest problems isn't that I want to take the full dive into my own way, though at times I do wrestle with that. One of my biggest problems, and the problem for so many of us, is that we want to go God's

way and our way simultaneously. I want to lean on God as long as he gives me the life that I want. I want to know and submit to him as long as my paths are relatively comfortable and safe. Think about your life and where your heart is with God right now. How would you finish that sentence? God, I'll lean on you as long as, blank. God, I'll know and submit the coordinates of my life to you as long as what? Proverbs 3 is calling you and I to have the kind of trust in God that drops the as long as. And simply says, God, I will lean on you. I will know you and submit to you.

It's this kind of trust in God's direction for our lives. that leads to a very different kind of living with him. Verses 13 through 18 of Proverbs 3 describe the kind of blessed, flourishing life that we have when we live with the wisdom that God gives us. Verse 13 says this, Blessed is the one who finds wisdom and the one who gets understanding. For the gain from her is better than the gain from silver and her profit is better than gold.

She is more precious than jewels and nothing you can desire can compare with her. Long life is in her. right hand. In her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. Those who hold her fast are called blessed. Now notice the value of wisdom described here. The way of wisdom, the way of God's coordinates for our lives, is not drudgery or obligatory rule following, knowing and submitting to our creator is better than any precious thing we can imagine. It leads to the kind of flourishing portrayed by the tree of life in the Garden of Eden in the beginning of the story of the Bible. This kind of

life? Well, it's the way that life is meant to be. This is a beautiful portrayal of biblical wisdom. Yet the end of Proverbs 3 protects us from the misunderstanding that this flourishing life is all about our personal happiness. The last stretch of verses outline the various ways that living and the direction of wisdom impacts our relationships with other people. Various aspects of the human experience are addressed here. Generosity, conflict, peacemaking, and humility. The image here is of human flourishing extending into our lives and into the lives of other people. This kind of coordination, reorientation may appear in seemingly small moments at first, yet it eventually creates a very different kind of life for us and for others. It's about where we're going, but it's also about who we're becoming together. And all of that

is rooted in the unending goodness of our creator. Verse three says it this way. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. The vivid imagery here reminds us that the direction of wisdom is rooted in divine love. Not in our performance. It's not rooted in our ability to suck it up and become better on our own power. This is the good news of Proverbs 3. The coordinates of our lives don't start with us. They start with God's steadfast love and faithfulness. But in addition to that, the coordinates of our lives don't end with us either. They end with the flourishing of other people. As you prepare to head into the rest of your day, consider the coordinates you've been using lately.

Where are you going? Who are you becoming? How can you lean on God's wisdom and set of your own in a way that doesn't include an as long as for the life that you want? How does God's steadfast love and faithfulness free you to know him and submit to him in ways that used to seem impossible? Heavenly Father, help us to see you as you are, full of steadfast love and faithfulness. Jesus, we pray that living in wisdom would lead to the extension of your glory and your love in not only our lives, but in the world around us. Holy Spirit, help us live in the freedom of following your direction for our lives in this day. In Jesus' name, amen.