Let's recite this together. Martyr's blood stains each page. They have died for this faith. Hear them cry through the years. Heed these words and hold them dear. Indeed. Well, let me invite us this day, it is almost afternoon, we'll turn to the book of Proverbs. As I mentioned, this is one of our memory verses, so we're in Proverbs chapter 3. This is, of course, a short. Reading but full. Of application to us in Proverbs chapter 3. And verses 5 and 6. Trust in the Lord. with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. So beloved, therefore, God has spoken by his word to his people. Let's rejoice in that, but ask his help as we continue this day, shall we? Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we're so very thankful for every word that comes forth from your mouth. We thank you that the Lord Jesus Christ also spoke in parables. Lord, we realize that these things are good and beneficial for us. And this proverb that sometimes seems dark to us, parabolic in nature, is yet a great help to us. We pray that by your spirit, you would lead us to all truth, To know, heavenly Father, not just in our heads, but in our hearts, what it is you say to your people. Bless your church this day, we pray again, asking in Jesus' name, amen. So dear congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as I now say to us the third time, this text is one of our memory verses for this year, 2024. We selected it for a few reasons. First, familiarity. You probably, maybe likely, memorized this text years ago. Our children should be memorizing it now. So familiarity. Secondly, simplicity. This text is not complicated. And we need sometimes these simple passages that are so rich and instructive to teach us the simplicity of biblical faith. So familiarity and simplicity. Third, use in our Christian living. This text is incredibly practical, and each of us, no matter our level of spiritual growth, we can learn, we can apply, and we can put it to use for great benefit spiritually. But finally, people of God, finally, people of God, this familiar and simple text, when put into practice in our daily walk, will have us to live in awe of our great God through the mercies of Jesus Christ by the leading of the Holy Spirit. Catch that. Will have us live in awe. This is what the church needs. To again live in awe of our great God through the mercies of Jesus Christ by the leading of the Holy Spirit. This text gives us God word eyes. Godward eyes. Now let that settle into your heart a minute. Because the rest of the sermon is going to flesh that out. What does it mean for us to have, so that we can live in awe of God, what does it mean for us to have Godward eyes? Well, that's what we need to know. By our humble seeking for God's wisdom, he makes our life path to be straight. By our humble seeking for God's wisdom, he makes our life path to be straight. Well, then the first thing is trust from the heart. You've heard me mention many times in the last number of months this matter of experiential Christianity. I wonder if When you heard that the first time from the pulpit for me, maybe you heard about it in years past, maybe you jotted it down and you wondered, what exactly is pastor talking about? Experiential what? Experiential Christianity? Well, this is, it means to walk with God in a heartfelt way. It is to sense, it is to experience that you are a Christian. The Hebrew word, which begins verse five, is 100% experiential. We get it in the NIV, trust. In almost every other English rendering of the Hebrew, it's translated into English as trust. I know why they did that. But as is often the case with Hebrew, the Hebrew word is much more picturesque. Hebrew is a picturing of things. And so the original Hebrew word might better be translated this way, feel safe in the Lord with all your heart. Feel safe. Now, as I say that, you might realize something, which I'm hopefully getting across from the original language again, that this is a command. You get that, of course, and maybe that's why the English picks the word trust, because you kind of get that sense with the word trust, you know, like, children, says the parent to the child, children trust dad, trust mom, it's a command. But here we're being commanded to feel safe, feel safe in the Lord with all your heart. So there's an assumption, of course, that undergirds, that's below, beneath the text, and it goes something like this. The assumption is that the one being commanded knows the Lord and loves the Lord. But now ask your heart this question. We who know the Lord, we who love the Lord, however you might want to categorize that for yourself, ask yourself this question. Do I feel safe in the Lord in my heart? Do I feel safe? Now we're gonna need to flesh that out if we're gonna say what it means to live in awe of him. So dearly beloved, to know God's clear guidance for our lives requires that we feel safe following his leading, no matter the issue or trial before us. He works by his word and spirit so that we feel safe in our heart following him. Now there's a lot more we need to say. And it's significant that we do so. In fact, three other major issues from the text await our attention in a moment. But I want you to notice that the divinely inspired structure of the proverb is to put, God's way of structuring it is to put the call, the charge, the command up front. Feel safe in the Lord with all your heart. So do you trust God such that you feel safe following all that he says in the Bible? Isn't that a basic issue? If you're driving from point A to point B and you've never been to point B before, generally this is how it works now. It used to be that you pulled out your maps. Remember you used to get those and unfold the tri-fold and try to figure out how to fold it back up when you're done and just throw it in the back. Now we plug in the address to our GPS, right? And we say, take me to point B because I've never been to point B before. Are you the whole time questioning, is my GPS right? Is my GPS right? Is my GPS right? No. We assume, sometimes wrongly, that it's gonna get us to that point B we've never been to before. Well, here's something much richer, beloved, to feel in our hearts safe in God. Do you feel safe in your heart that God is going to lead you to heaven one day? that he is trustworthy in his promises to bring you out of this world and to glory, and that we don't really doubt him on that score. I think that's probably the case for most Christians. But what about the day to day? You see, once we've understood that, that is to say that God is going to, without any doubts in our hearts, lead us to glory as true and believing Christians, you see, that opens the door to feeling safe in the Lord all of life. And we're gonna come to that next. People of God, pray to the Lord for his work in your heart so that you are fully persuaded that his way is the only good way for us. Well, what then does that mean next? Secondly, it means reject the inclination to second guess simple scriptural wisdom. This is addressed to Christians, to us. when the text says in 5B, and lean not on your own understanding. It is really part A of a two-part knowledge-based dynamic. or to say it differently, we need knowledge and understanding, but our own thinking, our own self-confidence must never be the basis of our decision-making and our doing. Rather, we want to lean on what God says, what God teaches us. We want to know what God says about his nature and his ways in scripture, and then be able to apply that to the issue, the problem, the dilemma, the opportunity that faces us. In other words, don't lean back on your own reasoning. Now listen, when your own reasoning would go contrary to the simple and clear teaching of God's holy word. We are to feel safe in the Lord by leaning on the simple truths of the Bible. And so we ask questions like, can I be confident about my choice of a job, a spouse, a major purchase, of whether I should move to a different part of the country or not move and stay put? We can be confident about those kinds of issues and all the rest of the issues, When what we do is embrace the clear, simple teaching of God's word as his word applies to those matters. To look at it from the negative, rejecting what God plainly says in the Bible and leaning on your own understanding is the same thing. Do we see that? Again, I say to you, this is addressed to Christians. Now I might pause here and say at this point, this is exactly why so many quote churches and quote denominations in our day have gotten themselves into such horrendous trouble. Because though the teaching of the scripture about the issue they're addressing, whether it's gay rights, homosexual marriage, transgenderism, or whatever else it is, the issue is in the scripture abundantly clear What they choose to do rather is to lean on their own understanding from whatever source that understanding comes and the results are always catastrophic. But we need to go from that and say, what about me? So dearly beloved, leaning on our own understanding and inviting ruin happens whenever we reject what God clearly says in his word. So feel safe by agreeing with the obvious when it comes to the scriptures. Do you see how now we just added something to what we said from verse 5a? Feel safe in the Lord in your heart. What's the first step to doing that? Well, by agreeing with what is obvious when it comes to the scriptures. Let's use what should be a really simple example. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 6, 2 Corinthians 6, the Bible makes it clear that we should not be unequally yoked. For centuries, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, Christians from all over the world and of all varying intellectual abilities have seen that text in 2 Corinthians 6 to be applied such that it teaches that Christians should marry Christians. Obvious, right? But then to do the opposite, which in the history of the church many have done and are today doing in large numbers, is to lean on one's own understanding. Oh, this person, though they not be a Christian, is better for me than some Christian. And you can apply that example in all kinds of other relationships, business relationships. Should a Christian businessman go into business with an unbeliever? Well, no. Well, why not? Because the results are going to be catastrophic. because their foundations of authority are absolutely different. And we could multiply the examples on and on and on. Let's look at it a different way. The Bible clearly says that theft, cheating, adultery, pornography, murder, selfishness, pride are all wrong. You cannot reject that on any of those issues or any other issue. You cannot reject those clear teachings living the opposite way, contrary to the simple scriptural wisdom, and at the same time, feel safe in the Lord in your heart. There are no Christian bank robbers. There are no Christian murderers. You see the point. There are simple things the Bible gives to us, And we have to come to the analysis of saying, either the Bible is lying about this or that issue, or my heart has deceived me about this or that issue. Which one do you think is correct? People of God, we are safe in making decisions that agree with what God says in his word, rather than deciding a contrary path will end in peace. Because the contrary path, opposite to what God says is in his word, never ends in peace, or righteousness, or goodness, or holiness. So that brings us thirdly to verse six. In all your ways acknowledge him. Study God's word with ferocious intensity. Verse 6 in the original language is also a command. It begins with a command. Remember how we said verse 5 is commanded to us to feel safe in the Lord. That's a command. You Christian, you're commanded to feel safe in the Lord. Well, in verse 6, you're commanded now in all of your ways to do something. Well, what? Well, If I could put it negatively again for a moment. We are commanded to not be directed by false thinking. We are commanded to not be directed by false thinking. So the positive way of understanding the command here in verse six is this. Know God, K-N-O-W, know God. I wanna drill down on this a minute, like we did with the word in verse five. Again, most English versions say, in all your ways, acknowledge him. Well, acknowledge is a perfectly legitimate word, except for how that word has come to be understood in our current conversation. The word acknowledge, as it is commonly used in English conversation now, often means something like this. Admit it is. Admit it is. Let me give you an example. When a person comes near to us, we acknowledge they exist by a common greeting. Often, we'll shake hands. We'll say, hey, how you doing? What's going on? We acknowledge one another. Now, my point is insane to us that this word in the English has come to be softened from what it means in the original language. It means much more in the original language. It is a command to know God, to discover His will, to recognize His wishes. You see what's being said to us here? In all of your ways, have a Godward eye. In all of your ways, look up and say, what does God want? Now we can use acknowledge then in this sense. I want to acknowledge his word and his rule and his ways in everything I think about, in all of my decision making. Well, how do we do that then? It brings to us a certain burden and responsibility, doesn't it? Which we accomplish only by grace, by the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is this we only accomplish knowing God's leading and will for our particular decision by a ferocious study of what he has revealed. And so I ask us again today, what is experiential Christianity? From this text. It is two commands. You feel safe in the Lord in your heart by knowing God's will from his word. This is an absolute. You must know the scriptures. So dearly beloved, by a ferocious study of the Bible, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, You can know God's will for all of life and feel safe in our heart about his care of all our days. So if you hadn't picked up on this yet, already you've begun now to perhaps perceive this. We're saying, believer, we've got to know the scriptures. Christian, we have to be reading our Bible. Well, then there are several ways to ramp up your study of God's word so as to know God's will. Allow me for a moment to teach three, three ways. First, when you are reading your Bible at home, follow the footnotes trail. When you're reading your Bible at home, follow the footnotes trail, or maybe it's column notes for you, somewhere on the page. Now, why do I say that? I'm gonna make an application of what I just said in a moment, but why do we say that? We say that because scripture interprets scripture. I could turn your attention to Belgic Confession Articles 3 through 7, which would elucidate that, which would unfold that a little bit more. But I think we already understand and believe that the Bible interprets the Bible. If we want to know best how to understand one passage, we look at other passages. So follow the footnotes trail. Now, that's going to require two things. First, this should be probably obvious, a study Bible of some sort. If you don't have one at home, and I'm not suggesting you have to have a study Bible to know the Bible well, and you can't just use a regular and plain Bible, that's of course good, but if you're gonna do what I'm suggesting and follow the footnotes trail, you're gonna need a Bible that has footnotes, cross-references, right? There are several good ones. The Reformation Study Bible is a good one. The older NIV Study Bible is another good one. The Thompson Chain Reference Bible, if you've never heard of that, I'd be happy to talk to you about it. They will show you all kinds of related verses to the one that you're studying. And this is going to be important for the next couple in a moment. So you're gonna need a good study Bible, but second, and maybe you've sensed this, a second requirement to doing this is time, time. Oh, the pastor's trying to dictate our schedule again. No, I'm trying to say open up more time in your day for the study of God's word. What does the text say? Trust in the Lord, feel safe in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways, know him. We get to know God by knowing God's word, and that requires time and effort. Beloved, it simply does. So that's the first thing. When you're reading the Bible at home, follow the footnotes trail. But the second thing, make a prayer applications list. I like abbreviations, a PAL, P-A-L. As you're reading, make a prayer applications list, your PAL. What that means is this. You're reading through a passage, you're following the footnotes path, and by the Spirit's work, what comes into your mind is a question, or a concern, or a delight, or a fear, or whatever it is that by the Spirit from the text comes something you want to bring to God in prayer. And so you take out your PAL, your prayer applications list, and you jot it down. Use something that's a little bit more valuable or hearty. This is a book that I use. I'm not saying you have to use this exact one, but this is a little bit more substantial. It's gonna last. It's got good paper. It's got a good binding. It's got a tag. By the way, I use this for congregational prayer as well. I could turn back to any one of these pages, about which we've had for congregational prayer, And I could mention some things. Let me just mention this one. So back in May 14th of 2023, about a year ago, for congregational prayer, we prayed for the Folkerts family to be able to return safely from Uganda. Do you remember that? The missionaries, the Folkerts who were in Uganda and they were attacked and they were beaten literally and they were injured. We prayed for their safe return back from Uganda. Now he is back, and he's received a call to one of our URC churches in Canada. Their family is doing much, much better. My only point is, we're reading through things in the Bible. We make a note. And that's one of the benefits of doing that. You can look back, and you can say, look at how the Lord has answered our prayers. So as you're reading through the scripture, keep your PAL, your prayer applications list, next to you, and make those indications. so that you'll pray, so that you won't forget to pray, so that you will pray. Thirdly, this is gonna seem obvious, but I'm putting this now on your plate. Thirdly, make preaching apply to you. Make preaching apply to you. That is, come to church well prayed up. Now there's a phrase we don't often use. Come to church well prayed up, expecting that God will meet you in the sermon. So that you're listening with an open expectant heart. Whoever's preaching. Put, as it were, some of that responsibility by the Spirit back on your own shoulders. Say, Lord, I want to feast on this Word preached to me today. Help me to listen. Help me to notice the things that You by Your Spirit are showing to me. What is it that we're doing when we make such a request? We are saying, verse 6, I want to know God. I want to know Him by His Word. I want to listen therefore as I'm coming to the sermon with an open heart. I'm not suggesting that we aren't. I'm not being negative as, come on people, get with it. I'm saying this is something that we can assume to be our own responsibility to make preaching apply to me. So people of God, if we read, if we read following the footnote trail, read with a prayer applications list, your pal, and make preaching apply to my life, we will more and more know God's will for our lives and feel safe in him. Which leads us, fourthly, to assess our ever-changing life situation under His Word. And, verse 6b, He will make your paths straight. The second part of verse 6 names the goal. It's the focus of our attention. It's the result that we're looking for. It's the result, I'll say this again, which every Christian desires. I believe we all want this. So I said this text, this sermon, is to Christians. God, please make my way straight, we say. The word way is also fairly translated stretch of path or righteous level walk. And the contrast to that is the world that we're currently living in. It's an uneven world, to put it mildly. It's a twisty road people are walking on. And we are tempted to do the same. It is our sinful tendencies. So we are to walk every day desiring to be straight, to go in a righteous way. And do you notice that what we're doing is asking for God's intervening help in doing that? This was Israel in the old covenant. The pillar of fire, the pillar of cloud. The cloud by day, what did God send the pillar of cloud to do? Remember? Lead. The pillar of fire at night, what was the purpose? God was leading his people. This is what we're asking for. So that what we do is we look at every possible path in life, look at each of those possible paths in the light of his word, so that each choice we make keeps us walking straight, righteously. Dearly beloved, it is God's shining word which keeps us living righteously in an ever-changing situation, in the ever-changing situations which come before us in a fallen world. Now, I could have begun the sermon with what I just said, and you probably would have nodded in agreement, at least in your heart. You may not have nodded physically. Sometimes some of you nod, I see that. But probably if I would have begun the sermon that way, you would have said, well, of course. But look at all that has gone into that in terms of our understanding of this text. But let's come at this in one final way today. What do you do with the word make? in 6B. And He will make your paths straight. Are you a robot? Let me finesse that a little bit. Do you wish, and you've all seen the cars now, you go past certain places in town and there's the car plugged in. My crazy brain thinks, well, what's being fed into that? Well, it's electricity, but what else could be fed into that, right? Do you wish that you could sort of plug in to the AI all-knowing source? And an AI program could be uploaded into your brain, and God could just remotely control your choices. Is that what we wish for? I'm now an AI creature. I'm divinely controlled by God so that I'll never pick the wrong path. That is not how he has created us. You get that. As the old language of our confessions put it, we're not stocks and blocks. We're not robots. So what does make mean? He will make your path straight. It means that his word by his spirit will lead us. In earnest prayer, which follows ferocious study of the Bible, We'll come to conviction about what God means for us to do in this or that situation. Oh God, make me to walk righteously on Monday and on Tuesday and on Wednesday and the rest of the week. Well, how does that happen? He doesn't just snap his fingers like some genie and shazam, we do everything perfectly right. It doesn't work that way. We study the word ferociously. We ask God daily, many times a day, and prayer to lead us. I was working on the sermon and I thought immediately at this point of an illustration, a memory in my life, which I have to share with you. So I was a young baby Christian living in Northwest Washington, as far north and west as you can go in the continental United States. Any further west, you'd fall in the Pacific Ocean. Any further north, you'd be in Canada. Growing up there in the very beginnings of my Christian walk and with a solid church planted there to bring the gospel in that unchurched community that I was living in, many of them older believers who had a lot going for them, wonderful Christian people, they had their doctrine right. I didn't know it at the time, but there was something else, though, lacking. in their wonderful doctoral life. At least it seemed that way outwardly. And I'm going to explain that with my memory, which happened to me. One day in those times, a man moved from the African continent. He wanted to bring his family there, but he was there first to kind of settle things out and see if he could get a job to support his family. He was there from one of the countries in Africa that speaks good English, and he was there as a fiery Christian. He was a fiery Christian. He was on fire for the Lord. Well, he arrived at our little church plant on the next Saturday. We wanted to take him to a couple of stores to help him get some things to get started, and so we all agreed that we were gonna meet in the church parking lot on a Saturday morning. We all arrived there, and there he was waiting for us, and we jumped into two cars to carpool to these stores, and he walks up to the car, and he looks at us strangely, because we're waiting, ready to go. And he says, but aren't we going to pray first? Okay, so we're sitting in the car ready to go and he prays, Lord, give us safe travel to the store and help us to not have any trouble on the road. I mean, it was only a few miles. Wonderful, so he jumps in the car and we drive and we get to the parking lot of the stores and we all hop out, we're ready to walk into the stores and he looks at us like we're from another planet. Aren't we gonna pray? I don't have his brogue or his African speech, so it's a lot better if he were saying it, but like, how would you walk into a store without praying first? So we gathered around in the parking lot right there in front of everybody in a prayer circle, and he leads us in prayer. Lord, help us to only buy what's needed. Help us to not buy anything that's ungodly. Help us to do so in a diligent way and faithfully use the monies that you've given to us, that sort of a prayer. And off we go into the store. Well, lunch comes next, and you know what's gonna happen then, don't you, in the mall, store. What do we do? We pray in front of everybody. And the same thing happened all the way home, so that when we get back to the church parking lot, we're thinking, We really should submit everything to God in prayer. We should know God through His Word and bathe every decision, no matter how simplistic it might be, in prayer. You might do that by praying first thing in the day, Lord, give me direction through this day, keep me safe, help me to do things in a godly way. Great, fine. So long as we are praying from his word about our situations, that's what the text is saying, and he will make your paths straight. People of God, staying in his word, and being close to him in prayer is how God makes our daily path a way of holiness. We will feel safe in Christ on a path that is good for us and brings God all the glory. Amen. Our Father in heaven, we want nothing more than to feel safe in you with all our heart. We want nothing more than to walk in a way that is upright and pleasing to you. And so, Lord, we want to know you and your ways, your will, your desires from your word. And Lord, we want to submit our knowledge about you and your ways from your word to our situation of life. Help us to do that. Give to us, O heavenly Father, to trust you with all our heart, to not lean on our own understanding, but in all our ways to acknowledge you, knowing that you then will make our paths straight. Be with your church for this spiritual life. To the glory of Jesus Christ, we pray in his name, amen. Well congregation, let's respond this afternoon from our red songbook. 229 or word of God incarnate from our red. Songbook 229 and then our doxology will also be from the Red Book 575.