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Winter Quarter 2023-2024: Faith That Pleases God
Unit 2: Learning About Faith
Sunday School Lesson for the week of January 14, 2024
By Jay Harris
Lesson Scripture: Proverbs 3:1-8
Key Verse: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. (Proverbs 3:5)
Lesson Aims
- To introduce the link between faith and trust and what we can learn from it
- To set our scripture passage in the context of the Book of Proverbs
- To imagine the relationship between you and God as a Teacher-student bond
- To consider the bond that is created by cultivating the virtues of loyalty and faithfulness
- To contrast trusting in the Lord with all your heart with relying on your own insight
- To ponder how acknowledging the Lord more in your life can make your paths straight
- To reflect on the idea of fearing the Lord and seeing this as a positive experience in the end
- To assess the benefits of finding our safety and healing in the bond of trust we have in God
Faith and Trust
We are continuing our Winter Quarter Theme, which is “Faith That Pleases God.” In the first unit, we featured various “profiles in faith.” The focus for the second unit is “Learning About Faith.” Each week in this unit, we are pairing the subject of faith with another interrelated subject. Last week, we learned about the way faith and righteousness are interrelated. This lesson pairs faith with trust.
How does talking about trust shed light on our understanding of faith? Think about the fact that faith is a noun and not a verb. Some nouns can also be verbs, but faith is not such a word. We do not say, “I faith in God.” What verb can we use in talking about faith?
The word we come to most naturally is the word “believe.” We say, “I believe in God.” Belief is most certainly involved in faith. Believing in relation to faith can be understood too narrowly though. The believing that happens in relation to faith is not merely giving mental assent to a certain set of beliefs. We can argue that “believing beliefs” is an important part of faith, and we would be right.
Is there more to faith than believing beliefs? The answer to this question is a resounding “yes.” The best word we can use together with “believe” when talking about faith is the word “trust.” In fact, the word “believe” can also carry the meaning of “trust.” To say, “I believe in my spouse,” for instance, means more than saying that I believe she exists. It means that I put a lot of trust in her. We got married because she believed in me enough, and I believed in her enough. Believing in one another created a bond of trust that translated into marriage and a family.
The same is true in our relationship with God. When we say, “I believe in God,” we are saying more than the fact that we believe God exists. We are saying that we trust in God enough to give our lives over to God. Somewhere along the way, our belief in God created a bond of trust with God. In this lesson, we are going to explore what trusting in God looks like and how our bond with God is created. When we have done this, we will have added an important dimension to our understanding of what faith is.
For you, what is the link between believing beliefs and the believing that has to do with trust? How have you experienced faith as a bond between yourself and God?
The Bond Between Student and Teacher
The scripture passage for our lesson comes from the Book of Proverbs. The Book of Proverbs is a book of wisdom teachings. Most of the proverbs in the book are attributed to King Solomon, who was known in biblical times for being the wisest person in the known world. People would travel great distances to hear his wisdom. He was thought to have composed three thousand proverbs according to 1 Kings 4.
Generally, a proverb is a short saying that delivers a teaching of wisdom on a particular facet of life. From the tenth chapter until the last chapter of Proverbs, we find many specific examples of these wise sayings that end up covering an amazing variety of life situations. What we find in the first section of Proverbs, the first nine chapters, is an introductory teaching that makes the case for wisdom, the nature of wisdom, and its value. Our scripture passage for this lesson, found in the 3
rd chapter of Proverbs, is a part of this first section on the value and nature of wisdom.
1 My child, do not forget my teaching,
but let your heart keep my commandments,
Notice that the reader is addressed as a child. The wisdom being given is a fatherly wisdom. The author refers to the student as “my child.” The language is highly relational. Are we to read this as coming from Solomon? I imagine Solomon feeling very fatherly as he delivers his teaching. Perhaps the father is Solomon, but often in Proverbs, wisdom itself is personified, as if wisdom is the father.
I also find myself reading this as if God is the father. In verse 5, however, the “Lord” will be referred to in the third person. I can hear the verses of this scripture coming from a fatherly human voice, but it is clear that both teacher and student look to God as the ultimate Teacher and Father of us all. The teacher is passing on what has been learned from the ultimate Teacher. The teacher is passing this wisdom onto a student who is a child in the faith.
When I read this scripture, I see myself as a child, but not necessarily as a juvenile. I am 59 years old, but my Dad recently turned 80. No matter how old I get, I remain my Dad’s child—an adult child, but my Dad’s child nevertheless. I, also, will always be God’s child. I gain something precious when I acknowledge the highly relational tone of the scripture.
As we hear the fatherly voice in this scripture, the role of Teacher is very prominent. Therefore, I see myself as not only a child, but also a student. I am hearing the admonition not to forget the instructor’s teaching. How do we avoid forgetting someone’s teaching? We keep the teaching continually before us.
There is another element, however. I must allow my heart to keep the teaching as if the teachings are commandments. Are the “commandments” (to which this scripture is referring) to be understood as the Mosaic law (commandments of Moses)? Or, are the commandments the wisdom sayings of Solomon? I think it is safe to say, “both.” Thinking of these teachings as commandments gives them a force that might not otherwise be there.
The best way not to forget these teachings is to let my heart keep them. What does it mean for my heart to keep them? It means to cherish them. It means to hold them close. It means that they become a part of me. It means that they are seen as commandments rather than suggestions. It means that they are getting translated into action, whether consciously or unconsciously. They are becoming a part of my spiritual “muscle memory.”
What forms between Teacher and student is perhaps best described as a bond. This bond between Teacher and student is what we mean by faith.
2 for length of days and years of life
and abundant welfare they will give you.
The words of verse 2 come right out of Solomon’s own personal experience. According to 1 Kings 3, when a young King Solomon took the throne, God urged Solomon to ask God for anything. Solomon thought about it, and asked God for wisdom. God commended Solomon for his choice. God noted that others in his place might have asked for a long life, or riches, or power over his enemies. It is easy to see a ruler asking for those things.
Solomon asked God for the wisdom to govern God’s people. God gladly granted Solomon’s request for wisdom, and also granted him the long life, resources, and the long peace-time reign that Solomon did not request. The idea is that wisdom gets you those things. They are the intrinsic blessings that come from divine wisdom. As Proverbs 3:2 affirms, keeping the commandments gives you “length of days and years of life and abundant welfare.”
In your experience, in what ways has being a student of scripture contributed to the feeling that God is your Teacher in a personal way? In what ways has this experience created a bond for you between yourself and God? How might God’s commandments contribute to a longer life or a better quality of life?
The Bond Formed by Cultivating Loyalty and Faithfulness
The bond that faith creates extends beyond the Teacher-student relationship. There is a virtue (and the pursuit of that virtue), that also contributes to this bond.
3 Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you;
bind them around your neck;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
Loyalty is a virtue that is strongly associated with creating bonds. I am drawn, because of my personality, to the concept of loyalty. One of the ways I am learning to understand my personality is through the Enneagram, which is based on nine personality types. When people go around saying that they are a number between 1 and 9, they are referring to the Enneagram. Please know that I am not an expert in the Enneagram, but only a beginner.
As I am understanding it, I have a “5 wing 6” personality. As a “5,” I am an “Investigator.” I love to learn, to be curious, to investigate things, and to put what I learn into systems of thought. Your personality can be limited to one number, or you can have a strong wing (a secondary personality type next to your primary personality type). The “wing 6” part of my personality is that I am also a “Loyalist.” My loyalties run deep. As I learn about the Enneagram, I am understanding that the drive within me to be loyal is a part of my personality. In my context, I am loyal to my intimate circle of friends and relatives, to the team I work with, and even to institutions, such as my denomination. A “5 wing 6” is nicknamed the “Guardian.”
So, when I hear the phrase, “Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you,” it both speaks to me and challenges me. The “loyalist” part of me recognizes what loyalty feels like. I am challenged when I ask myself, “Am I as loyal to God as I am to my tribe?” Because I am a loyalist, I know that I can naturally “talk the talk.” The question is whether I can also “walk the walk.”
In our relationship with God, loyalty should always be paired with faithfulness. Loyalty is the feeling we have and the drive that compels us. Faithfulness is the virtue that must be coupled with loyalty if loyalty is to be real. Faithfulness is walking the walk. It is walking with God and walking in God’s way. “Faithfulness” is a covenant word. We understand that we are in a covenant with God. A covenant is a relationship bound by promises.
Covenant is first and foremost a relationship, but there are obligations to fulfill in order to make the covenant real. This is when the “walk” matches the “talk.” What about when we fail to fulfill our obligations? This is the really important question, because it is most certain that we will fail, and fail often. Covenant faithfulness requires that we are always examining ourselves, our behavior, our motives, our commitment, our conscience, and our consciousness of God. When we fail, we are examining, confessing, expressing our deep remorse, caring about the rupture we caused in our relationship with God, repenting, resolving to make amends, and resuming the path of faithfulness and desiring to please God in a life of faith. This is what it means to live in covenant faithfulness.
Ponder the imagery in our scripture: binding loyalty and faithfulness around your neck and writing them on the tablet of your heart. This is not one, but the combination of two metaphors. Loyalty and faithfulness should be thought of as a yoke that we accept with the commitment that it will always be worn. Wearing this harness, we are submitting to be guided by God. Having loyalty and faithfulness written on the tablet of your heart means that we are defining something about our core.
If we live this way, there are bound to be results.
4 Then you will find favor and high regard
in the sight of God and of people.
A life lived in covenant loyalty and faithfulness will be rewarded. We will find favor with God and with people. Both our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationships with our fellow human beings will be all well. We will be held in high regard. When our relationships are running well, it is well with our soul. The longer we live, the more we understand that nothing could be better than when it is well with our soul.
How have you thought of loyalty and faithfulness as spiritual virtues? Can you relate the bond between you and God to times when your loyalty and faithfulness have been strong and when they have not been as strong? How do you see loyalty affecting the regard people have for you and the favor you are shown by God? How are loyalty and faithfulness the same and how are they different? How do loyalty and faithfulness complement each other?
The Bond of Wholehearted Reliance on the Lord
Are you sensing the power of faith to create a bond with God? Are you beginning to put together in your mind the ingredients that contribute to this bond? There is more.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own insight.
The 5
th verse gets to the “heart” of the matter in more ways than one. Only wholehearted trust in the Lord will do. Think of a trust fall. A trust fall is an activity in which a person deliberately falls, trusting the members of a group to catch them. You often hear of it being used as a popular team-building exercise in corporate training events.
The notable thing about this activity is that there are consequences depending upon whether or not the group catches you. You are absolutely committing your fate to the ones you are trusting. You are trusting yourself into their hands quite literally.
When you trust in the Lord with all your heart, it is not unlike a trust fall. You are depending upon the Lord to support you in life. You are trusting in the consequences of such a relationship. The hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” celebrates “what a fellowship, what a joy divine” it is when we lean on the everlasting arms of God. The hymn also describes the “blessedness” and the “peace” that is ours when we trust in God to support us in life.
Verse 5 goes on to say that we should not rely on our own insight. You might ask why anyone would not want to trust their own insight. The idea is that our own insight is not as trustworthy as trusting in the Lord for direction. What might lead our own insight astray? We might choose immediate gratification over the long-term consequences of an action. We might take the path of least resistance rather than the path that requires more discipline but leads to personal transformation.
We also must come to terms with the degree to which our insight is affected by our bent toward self-interest, self-centeredness, self-promotion, and self-indulgence. We all must admit that our insight is limited because we sin and often fall short of the glory of God.
Remember when the Apostle Paul talked about the inability to trust his own actions. He said,
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want… it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:15-20)
What Paul had going for him was that he had grown mightily in the self-awareness of his limitations. I think Paul would agree that his insight was not entirely trustworthy. He knew that his insight suffered from the mixed signals being sent to it from his sinful nature.
Learning to trust wholeheartedly in the Lord and in his ways gives us the insight we need. The more we learn about the Lord and his ways, and trust in them, the more our own insight is informed and replaced by the insight that our faith gives us. What remains is no longer just our own insight. Wholehearted trust is based on wholehearted reliance on the Lord. Wholehearted reliance on the Lord is like living a daily kind of “trust fall.” We fully rely on God.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Our “ways” are the patterns of our behavior. They include the motivations that drive what we do. The more we acknowledge the Lord in our ways, the more our ways are informed by the Lord and his ways. To acknowledge the Lord means to keep him before us, to learn his ways, to become accustomed to his voice, and to always be walking toward him and not away from him.
When we trust in the Lord in this way, we are trusting God for the consequences. We believe with all our heart that we will make straight our paths. God is absolutely trustworthy. When we fail, it is not because God did not uphold his side of the covenant. When we fail, it is because we took our eyes off God. We failed to acknowledge him.
How does the negative view of relying upon your own insight challenge your thinking and perhaps how you have lived your life at times? How would you convince another person about the limitations of relying on his or her own insight? What does trusting the Lord with all your heart look like in everyday life? How would you set out to acknowledge God more in your life? How can you see this making your paths straight?
The Bond of Finding Our Safety and Healing in God
The next verse continues the current thought but adds another dimension. It is into this other dimension that we want to lean.
7 Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
Being wise in our own eyes is the same as relying upon our own insight. Being wise in our own eyes is doing what we think is best apart from any direction from the Lord. For all the reasons that we just mentioned, we don’t want to be wise merely in our own eyes.
The other dimension that the scripture introduces into our thinking is the idea of fearing the Lord. This may be a hard concept to get one’s mind around. Should we not love the Lord instead of fearing him? Should we not be drawn into the love of the Lord? The answer is yes, but at the same time, we should fear displeasing him.
The scriptures often speak of the wrath of God. “Wrath” is a really strong word, and as many times as I have heard it, I still want to clarify the meaning according to the context. For those in scripture, who used this word
wrath, what they had in mind were the consequences of being disobedient. This is not unlike the wrath of a parent toward a disobedient child.
The consequences of living a way that is opposed to the ways of God are real. When people are living the consequences of their actions it feels like punishment even though the punishment was self-inflicted. Why do we associate the self-inflicted consequences of our own actions with God’s wrath? We do this because we believe God is a relational God. We think that we are relational beings? Multiply that! God is a relational God who wants a relationship with us. When we live in a way that does not acknowledge him, God does not remain aloof in the matter. God is hurt. God’s love has been rebuffed.
I fear the consequences of my stupid actions, and when I stop fearing that, God help me! There is more going on here than suffering the consequences of my actions. Just as we talk about pleasing the Lord, we should also talk about
displeasingthe Lord. I fear displeasing him, and when I stop fearing that, God help me! Although God’s love is relentless, and although God will never give up on me, I fear the prospect that I could fall out of love with God by ceasing to acknowledge him.
Yes, I want to “fear the Lord and turn away from evil.” By doing this, I am choosing safety. I am choosing safety in the Lord. I am choosing security in the Lord. I am choosing for my satisfaction and contentment to come from the Lord. I am choosing for my peace to come through the Lord.
8 It will be a healing for your flesh
and a refreshment for your body.
After having said all that I have said, the truth is that I still walk into evil. I still choose to walk outside the will of God and the ways of God. I completely identify with Paul when he said that he could not understand his own actions. I still displease God.
I am well acquainted with the spiritual practice of beginning again. I have had to begin again many times. That means remembering the poor insight that got me into disobedience and its consequences. It means repenting of my actions, and declaring again my trust in the Lord, acknowledging him again, relying upon God wholeheartedly again, and living in this way.
When I do this, then I find the words of verse 8 to be so true: it is a healing for my flesh and a refreshment for my body. It is not only healing for my soul, it is healing for my body which is the container for the soul. When we sin and get into conflict with ourselves, other people, and God, our body remembers. The turmoil, into which we get ourselves, registers in our body. To be restored in my relationship with God brings healing and refreshment to body, mind, and spirit.
This whole scripture passage has been helping us to understand how the bond of trust is developed that is at the heart of faith. It is the bond between Teacher and Student, heavenly Parent and Child. It is the bond cultivated through the virtues of loyalty and faithfulness. It is the bond created through whole-hearted reliance upon the Lord and the Lord’s ways. It is the bond of trust created by finding our safety and healing in God.
Has the idea of fearing the Lord ever turned you off? How are you perhaps thinking more positively about the benefits of fearing the Lord? How do you, personally, experience safety and healing by trusting in the Lord and walking in his ways?
Prayer
Gracious and loving Lord, Your wisdom comes to us through Your Word and through Your voice in our prayers. Help us to trust in you with our whole heart and not rely on our own understanding, so that our paths will be made straight and so that it will be well with our soul, through Christ our Lord, who reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.
Dr. Jay Harris serves as the Superintendent of Clergy and District Services for the South Georgia Conference. Email him at jharris@sgaumc.com. Find his plot-driven guide to reading the Bible, the “Layered Bible Journey,” at www.layeredbiblejourney.com.
