“Finding Peace and Prosperity”

Proverbs 3:1-18

January 4, 2009  

Wisdom comes from God through His commands.  

Wisdom bears fruit and if the church is following God’s wisdom there are some things we should expect to see:

 1. A heart full of God’s commands is also a heart full of love and faithfulness; the two virtues that win the favor of both God and man.

Love is measured by how gracious and generous we are to people who do not deserve either one.  

Worldly wisdom has no connection with love or faithfulness.

Scriptural wisdom is bound to love and faithfulness.  

2. A heart full of God’s commands is also a heart that fears God and shuns evil.

 Wisdom puts all things into their proper perspective including sin and evil.

 Wisdom tells us that God abhors the evil of gossip and that we will answer for every careless, slanderous or libelous statement to a judge who passes out the maximum sentence for every single offense.

Wisdom tells us that our own anger at others makes us as guilty as any convicted murderer.

Jesus wisdom tells us that our forgiveness will be rescinded if we do not forgive others.

3. A heart full of God’s commands cherishes and seeks the Lord’s discipline.

The life I live here will make heaven a worse place if I live it there, so I need God to train me so that I can stay in His house.  

4. A heart full of God’s commands honors God with everything it possesses.  

Honoring God begins with the firstfruits (our tithes and offerings), but it includes everything that we do with everything that comes into our possession:  

What we do with our wealth is a sure sign of what kind of wisdom we follow: either we honor God with all that we have or we dishonor God by hoarding and using it for our own pleasures.  

The world says, “It is yours do with it what you please.”

Wisdom says, “It is not yours, you have been given possession of it to invest it and use it on God’s behalf and He will reward you based upon how well or how badly you have served Him.”  

So long as I love my possessions more than I love God I am forfeiting the prosperity, honor, peace, love, faithfulness, righteousness, blessing, and life that are packaged with wisdom.

Poverty and shame, oppression and affliction, envy and bitterness, darkness and death take their place.  

Invitation: Come to the source of wisdom… to Jesus Christ who offers us the eternal prosperity, honor, peace, love, faithfulness, righteousness, blessing, and life that are packaged with wisdom.