Win Favor and a Good Name

Believe and Receive Better Returns:

Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. - Proverbs 3:13-14

I am curious to know if you believe this ancient proverb. Do you believe that wisdom yields better returns than gold? Think about what is being said.

You can get some pretty good returns on gold. Gold brings something like $1,300 per ounce. Gold mines in South Africa and elsewhere are booming. Gold is a “precious metal.” It is rare but useful and even beautiful. My wedding band is made of gold.

Now consider wisdom. Wisdom is applied knowledge that conforms to the character of God. That is my definition. I say “applied” because wisdom is not simply information. It is information that we act upon by changing our lifestyle, by developing disciplines that conform to that information.

Discipline is the application of knowledge. We use the word “discipline” to describe habits of life that we practice to achieve long term returns.

• Disciplines are often corrective in nature. We have been doing something that yields poor returns, and so we change our lifestyle to get better returns. This is illustrated easily in diet changes and exercise routines. We start to eat more raw vegetables even though we love potato chips. We get up early to exercise even though we love to sleep.

• Both of these illustrations of discipline—diet and exercise—actually involve your physical life. We implement these changes to achieve a healthier and longer life.

Our physical bodies and our eternal spirits are bound together in an inextricable and inexplicable unity. You are an emotional being. You are an intellectual being. You are a spiritual being. You are a physical being. You cannot put your body in one room and soul in another. You are a single person who exists in the unity of body, soul, and spirit.

Therefore, what happens to the body affects the spirit and vice versa. When we are weak or sick we cannot serve others as we can when we are strong and healthy. And we regret that loss of spiritual/physical capacity.

This unity of the physical and spiritual explains why religions including Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity include regulations and recommendations concerning physical behavior. Your relationship to the material world affects your spiritual condition and vice versa.

 

Hear Wisdom's Counsel:

My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart. - Proverbs 3:1

The six verses of our text are divided into three couplets. Each couplet recommends a discipline and each describes a return on that discipline. The disciplines are parallel behaviors. The returns are parallel benefits that result from the disciplines.

The disciplines are described in verses 1, 3, and 5. The returns are described in verses 2, 4, and 6.

Each of the disciplines involves your heart.

• The word that is used in the Bible most frequently to point to the unity of the human personality is the word “heart.” This word occurs more than 500 times in the NIV that I am using today. But in the more literal KJV it occurs more than 800 times including 78 times in Proverbs and three times in today’s text. In the Hebrew it is leb; in Greek it is kardia. Jesus used this word 14 times as recorded in the book of Matthew.

• “Heart” describes the physical organ that circulates the blood in your body. When your heart stops, you stop.

• I watched Dr. Denton Cooley perform heart surgery in St. Luke’s Heart Institute in Houston. I spent four hours in the observation room and actually at the bedside of heart patients. I saw a heart beating in a man’s open chest not 18 inches from my face. I watched as those teams performed the miracle of heart surgery.
• “Heart” is also the word for the real you, the essential you, the inner you. It is both a physical and a psychological term in the Bible. We use the word “heart” in our day in the same way with this double meaning.

These disciplines must take root in the inner you.

 

Practice These Disciplines for These Returns:

 

The Discipline of obedience:

• “keep my commands in your heart.”

• Do not forget these commands as people often do. Keep them means practice them; also cherish them. These commands are here in the book of Proverbs.

The return is terrific:

• The commands of wisdom will “prolong your days” and “bring you peace and prosperity” (Proverbs 3:2). Now there is a return that all of us could celebrate!

• These are the returns we most long for. We want to live out our lives to old age. And we want to live out all our days experiencing peace and prosperity.

• Peace is the ability to fulfill our purpose in this world.
• Prosperity is the blessing of sufficiency and abundance.

The Discipline of love and faithfulness:

• Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.

• These commands could leave you. You need to tether love and faithfulness to your heart. You need to hang them around your neck. You need to write them on your inner being.

• Shorthand response when in the world: “love and faithfulness.” Everywhere you go; everything you do; every situation you encounter.

The return: you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man

• This return is better than gold. This is a better return for your investment of life and energy and resources. You will enjoy a good name. You can’t buy that with gold. And you will win favor before God and man. “Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man,” (Luke 2:42). We follow our Lord Jesus as we reap these returns.

The discipline of trusting in the Lord.

• This is a discipline that moves the center of your world outside of yourself and on to the highest plane of existence. It anchors life in the Creator God who is eternal. This is a discipline about life perspective.

• It must be done “with all your heart.” You cannot be half-hearted about your trust in God. You must be all in. This would include all the difficulties and problems of life from bereavement and pain to sickness and death. You must trust in the Lord with all your heart when you are on your sickbed or a loved one is on his sickbed.
• Even though you have invested for long life and good health, you have no certain guarantee that you will enjoy either one. These are proverbs—general principles of life. They are not promises that will without fail come to you. This is just like economics. If you make wise investments, you are likely to benefit from good returns—unless the Great Depression sinks everything or your own health fails.
• What is the certain reward? “He will make your paths straight.” Without trust in God you are destined to meander in this world, going in circles, passing the same places and making the same mistakes. Your paths will not be straight.

• Nothing straightens life up like trusting in God. All of a sudden, your path leads straight to heaven’s gate. You have no fear. You take no detours. You have set your course by the North Star, and you will not lose your way no matter what comes.