Sermon Tone Analysis

Proverbs 3:5, 6

 

! Introduction

I would like to express my sympathy to you, Levi and also to the rest of the family.

When you were wondering what life would be like without being able to drive wherever you wanted to, now suddenly you need to think about what life will be like without Mary.

After 61 years of marriage, it will take some getting used to for you to learn to live without her companionship.

For you as children, you have always had the one who gave birth to you in your life and now to think that you will not be able to call her or enjoy her smile, will be a change in life for you as well.

These changes are hard, especially when they are forced upon us so suddenly.

It seems like such a short time ago that we heard that Mary was having problems with her stomach and now she is gone.

Yet even though you grieve, you also recognize that for Mary this is a blessing.

She feared what life would be like without being able to drive and she feared that dementia could also be a problem for her.

She did not suffer long with the cancer and today is set free from all pain and all limitations.

We think that she is dead and we are alive, but she is more alive than any of us.

She is now alive eternally.

John 14: 1-3 encourages us, "“Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Trust in God; trust also in me.

In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.

I am going there to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."

Jeanette, you suggested that Proverbs 3:5, 6 were verses that were important to your mother.

She had given them to you as a word of encouragement and challenge.

As I thought about these verses and about her life, I realized that they are indeed verses which fit well with her life, what she believed and what she experienced.

In these verses we read… As we reflect on them in the context of her life, may they encourage us also to follow Him.

!

I.     Trust in the Lord

These verses call us to trust, but what does trust look like?

Trust has an element of hope.

It points in the direction of God and tells us that there is hope in that direction.

It has an element of confidence.

It reminds us that God is faithful and that we can count on Him.

It has an element of rest.

When we trust, we don’t have to fret and worry but we can rest knowing that though there may appear to be turmoil, we can be at rest because of whom we trust.

In which areas can we have this hope, this confidence, this rest?

!! A.  Trust for Salvation

We can trust that God has accomplished salvation.

The gospel story is a wonderful story of God’s actions.

It was God who took the initiative to redeem when we were utterly lost.

Disobedience to God had broken our relationship to God and resulted in a separation from God called death.

The fact that Mary has died is a consequence of that sin and separation.

But God took the initiative to do something about that.

God sent Jesus to die on the cross in order to take our sins upon Himself and so to make it possible for us to have all our wrong doings forgiven.

God took the initiative to raise Jesus from the dead in order that we also can receive eternal life.

This was God’s great gift to us.

It is available to any person on earth who believes in Jesus.

When Proverbs 3:5, 6 calls us to trust in the Lord, this is the first and most important area in which we need to trust Him.

Mary trusted God for her salvation.

As a young girl she received Jesus as her Savior and she lived in trust for that salvation for the rest of her life.

She was very concerned that other people also receive that gift from God.

She supported Union Gospel Mission and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

They were important to her because she desired to see many others also trust in the Lord for salvation.

!! B.  Trust for Assurance

A second important area in which we are called to trust in the Lord is in the confidence that having begun with Him and having received salvation, we can have  hope that He will keep us and bring us to the eternal life which He has promised.

There are times when Satan tempts us to doubt.

There are times when he accuses us that we are such terrible sinners that we can’t possibly deserve the gift of salvation.

Yet the Bible is very clear that we can know that we are God’s children. 1 John 5:13 assures us when it says, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life."

To trust in the Lord is to live with assurance and to be able to rest in the confidence of God’s promises of forgiveness and eternal salvation.

This assurance was important to Mary and I want to talk a bit more about it in a moment.

It was important to her because she did not grow up in a home where assurance of salvation was taught.

You mentioned that she was determined to have a home in which there was such trust in God.

!! C.  Trust for Life

If we trust in the Lord, for salvation and live with the assurance we can have because of the grace of God, then we can also go through life with trust in God.

Life often throws us many challenges.

We expect certain things, but instead we need to face things which are not only unexpected, but hard for us to deal with.

Yet if we know that God has demonstrated such love for us that He sent Jesus, we know that we can also live with trust in Him in all the rest of life.

How did Mary live her life trusting in God?

There are so many ways in which we see evidence of a life of faith.

You mentioned that when you as children were young, your parents took you to an Alliance church in Winnipeg.

It demonstrated a faith in God that He was bigger than just the experience of faith that you had in Rosenort.

I wonder to what degree having a clean house was an expression of her faith.

You mentioned that even though she liked a clean house, yet she was always welcoming of your friends and you could play in the house.

The house was not a museum, but to be lived in even though it was also to be kept clean.

You also mentioned that she was very strict about honesty and insisted on it in all of life.

You also spoke about how she had to be both mother and father because your dad was often on the truck.

All of these things point in a direction of a life lived by trust in the Lord.

Not only that she did these things, but also that she did them in a way by which she sought to obey the Lord.

So when we read “Trust in the Lord” it means that we are called to trust Him for salvation, for assurance and for all the details of life.

!

II.

Complete Trust

In this verse there are also a number of statements which talk about the quality of that trust.

It is intended to be a compete trust.

!! A.  Trust Statements

The trust we are called to is to be a “with all your heart.”

The word heart speaks of the deepest inner part of us.

Today kitchen cabinets and furniture is sometimes made of sawdust or chip board with a veneer of wood.

If you scratch it, or if the veneer comes off there is not much you can do to repair it.

Real wood furniture is different.

It is wood all the way through.

If the surface is damaged, it can be resurfaced.

If we claim to trust in God, how do we respond when trials and difficulties and distractions come into our life?

If trust is a veneer of respectability, these things will reveal that there isn’t trust deep within, but if trust remains, then it can be seen that we trust God with all our heart.

The text also calls us not to lean on your own understanding.

This is interesting in the light of the rest of Proverbs where we are called to gain understanding and seek wisdom.

What is the difference between the understanding that wisdom brings and the understanding that undermines faith?

I think the difference is in the word “lean.”

The Bible and Proverbs in particular call us to seek God given wisdom.

But if we don’t recognize the source of wisdom as coming from God or if we begin to trust in our perception of things instead of in God, then we may begin to lean on our own understanding.

What this phrase calls us to do is to lean, to rest our whole weight completely on God and not on what we can figure out on our own.

We need to live by the understanding that God can see farther than we can.

A further thought about complete trust is that it happens when our focus is set on God.

The text says we are to “acknowledge” Him.

The actual word here can mean several things.

It can mean to gain knowledge, to know by experience, to be acquainted with or to confess.