Proverbs 27:1-2

Proverbs  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
0 ratings
· 2,058 views

God is after being present with what's in front of you

Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
View more →

We’re in the final week of a series where we’ve looked at the a bunch of different Proverbs. We’ve seen that the proverbs speak to so much of what we experience in a daily life. They speak about money, sex, power, words, relationships, family, and so many different topics.
We’ve talked about the reality that God created the world with Hokmah or wisdom and that this means He created the world with an innate sense of how things work and don’t work. In light of that, the Proverbs specifically, and the Bible at a macro level provide a clear picture of what it looks like to live wisely in God’s good world.
So last week, we were in and we talked about what’s known as the ‘The Sayings of the Wise’ or a series of proverbs that were collected and edited from the Egyptian sage ‘Amenomope’.
Tonight, if you turn the page to the left and look at the beginning of Chapter 25, you’ll read this:
Proverbs 25:1 ESV
These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied.
So we saw that at the very beginning of our series that we learned from Solomon in part 1, then we heard some more from Solomon in Part 2, and we’re closing our series with Solomon as well.
Turns out that he knew a little bit about what it means to be wise and what that means in our world.
In fact, we read this about Solomon in 2 Chronicles
2 Chronicles 9:22 ESV
Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to have that be true of me. I guess that’s while it won’t ever happen.
So tonight, we’re going to look at some more Proverbs that Hezekiah (who was an Israelite king) arranged and put together for our benefit.
Tonight, as we get started, we’re going to see that these Proverbs point us to a couple of simple, yet profound realities
1.) God wants us to be present where we are
2.) God is calling us to be people who don’t boast
These are two things that luckily come really easy for us… said no one ever!
Ok, so now that we know these things are impossible, let’s read our text for tonight and we’ll allow the Scriptures to teach and instruct us regarding how we can go about doing these things.
Proverbs 27:1–2 ESV
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.
Pray

God wants us to be present where we are

This is one of those really interesting phrases and topics for us because we live in this moment in time where everything in how our society and culture is structured seems to be geared toward future thinking.
So let’s think about this for a second
School- preschool—> Kindergarten—> elementary School—> Junior High—> High School—> College or workforce—> moving up in company—>Retirement
So much of our lives are placed in this moment where we’re always looking ahead.
So let’s unpack what he’s saying hear and develop a framework for how we can go to war with this.
The word used for boasting here is HALAL. So this is fascinating because this word used elsewhere it can be use to mean praise. In fact, if you look at Vs. 2, it’s the exact same word.
This is interesting because we can that word in front of God and it’s used that way. When we read, “Praise the LORD”- the word there is a halaleujah- which is short for the personal name of God.
So to praise something is to make a big deal about it. To brag about it. To celebrate it. So there are things in life that we should celebrate while there are things that we shouldn’t.
So first of all, what does it mean to boast in the future? What does this look like?
One Scholar puts it like this:
To ‘boast of the morrow’ means trusting in one’s own powers rather in God’s.
Another one says this:
Boasting in the future would entail a claim of one’s control over the future, and as w already learned in Proverbs, though one can plan the future, the future is ultimately in the hands of God (, , , )
I want to just take a minute and share a couple of stories from my own life about what this means and how it’s played out.
So I’m in junior high. I’ve finally hit my growth spurt and I’m growing out of being the kid that nobody like and was interested in. 8th grade rolls around and I feel like I’m at the top of the world. I had started making plans about what high school was going to look like. I would obviously continue my social prowess and remain one of the popular kids. I would play football and basketball and be the star of the show.
I would get to date the girl that I desperately wanted to be with. Things were going great. So we went on this 8th grade field trip and my mom was a chapperone. I still haven’t forgiven her for the timing of this, but she broke the news to me that we were going to be moving.
The rest of the trip is a blur and me trying to block out the news that I had just received and pretend to go on with my day. I had high school planned and was sure things were going to work out.- For you do not know what a day may bring.
Fast Forward a couple of years. I was a senior in high school and had worked really hard on my grades. I had grown up in church my whole life and had dreamed about how awesome it would be to go to this great Christian college.
My parents had bought a house right before things went crazy with the market and they lost close to $100,000 dollars when we moved. Going to a Christian school that was really expensive was out of the picture.
I’ll share one more. And it has to do with Lindsey. Karyne yelled at me last week because she wanted to know how LIndsey and I actually got together and I shared that I haven’t told most people that I actually broke up with Lindsey first. So after we broke up, I changed my mind and decided that I needed to be with her. So I tried time and time again. And she rejected me time and time again. I don’t want to lose the sensing that you guys feel sorry for me in this.
So one day, I had the idea to tell her that I love her. I figured that had to be the silver bullet. I had such a confidence in what I was going to say. i was boasting about the outcome of what was to happen. So I told her I was in love with her and first response was ‘Why?’ you don’t even know me. Well, that didn’t go the way I thought it would.
I share these stories because I want you all to see that what the Proverbs say rings true. There are countless other stories in the room where we were absolutely sure that things were going to work out in the way we wanted and that just doesn’t happen.
The Scriptures have a lot to say about this as well
1 Kings 20:11 ESV
And the king of Israel answered, “Tell him, ‘Let not him who straps on his armor boast himself as he who takes it off.’ ”
Proverbs 16:1 ESV
The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.
Proverbs
Proverbs 16:3 NIV
Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.
Proverbs 16:9 ESV
The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
Jeremiah 9:23–24 ESV
Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”
eremiahJ
James 4:13–16 ESV
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
So that’s great Jake. It’s clear that I shouldn’t boast about tomorrow, but if that’s the case, what should my response be? I’m glad you asked
Let’s allow the Scriptures to answer that question for us.
Matthew 6:31–34 NIV
So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:31-
So there’s a couple of things I want to talk about here.
We don’t need to boast about tomorrow because we know that Jesus is with us today. As we read about Jesus equipping and sending his disciples to be missionaries, he says that I will be with you always. If you’ve chosen to follow Jesus, You have God’s Spirit living inside of you.
You
That means that regardless of what happens in your life, You have the God of the universe present with you in each of every circumstance. That, by itself can give us confidence that we don’t have to have these grandiose plans about the future, because our ultimate future is already secure.
We don’t need to boast about tomorrow because we know that Jesus is with us today. As we read about Jesus equipping and sending his disciples to be missionaries, he says that I will be with you always. If you’ve chosen to follow Jesus, You have God’s Spirit living inside of you. Y
The trouble with boasting about tomorrow is that we miss out on what God has for us today.
The reality is that each one of you is an incredibly strategic position exactly where you are. There are things that God has placed in front of you that He wants you to put your hands to.
Maybe that’s a friendship he wants you to invest in.
Maybe it’s a job where you can be a blessing to your employer
Maybe it’s that you need to learn what it means to work hard in school to learn life skills.
I’ve been challenged in this recently when I think about my daughter. It’s so easy for me to look at some of my friends with babies who are running around and giggling and talking. It’s easy for me to get to a place where I want Reese to be there. But the issue here is that I’m missing out on days that I’ll never get back with her. I have the awesome privilege to sit and feed her a bottle and have her look me in the eyes. This is an incredible gift that God has given me right now.
This is one of the hardest things for us to grasp because everything we’re presented with says we need to be thinking about our future and taking steps towards that.... Absolutely you do.
This Proverb isn’t saying that we can’t think about the future and make plans. What it is suggesting is that we need to have an open hand with that. We need to recognize that God has us where He does right now for a reason and we need to be faithful to that. Because tomorrow isn’t promised. So we need to be asking ourselves, how can I be obedient right now to the things that are right in front of me?
So this is fascinating because it ties directly back into what we talked about last week as it pertains to trusting God. The reason we don’t have to boast or brag about the future is because God is faithful and we can trust him for what we need today.
An Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke says this and it’s so good!
The wise live day by day, trusting the outcome to God and being grateful to God for whatever he grants. Moreover, the wise trust God to shape their destiny in conformity with righteousness and to frustrate human plans that are not conformed to his righteous rule.
So this leads us to our second Proverb
“Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.

God wants us to be people who don’t boast

This is another one that’s really hard for us.
It’s hard because we’re so inundated with the idea that we need to stand out.
We need to be special
We need to be unique
We need to be noticed
So again, this ties back in to what we said last week about trusting God. I believe that a right understanding of God views you is really important when it comes to not boasting.
Here’s why: When we believe that what God has said about us is true, that sets us free from having to feel like we need to prove ourselves by talking about how awesome we are. So what I want to do tonight is to put a number of ways that the Scripture says God views you.
If these things are true, we really don’t need to be people who boast about ourselves or try and puff ourselves up.
You are an adopted son or daughter
You are redeemed
You are an heir with Christ
You are called into the family of God
You are viewed as blameless
You are forgiven
You are chosen
You are a saint
You are God’s work of art
You are reconciled
You guys. This is from one small section of Scripture. If you read throughout the entire thing, you’ll find countless other examples of the different ways that God views you.
You don’t need to boast about yourself. You have everything you need in reading what God has just said about you.
You don’t need to boast about yourself. You have everything you need in reading what God has just said about you.
Let other people say those things about you.
So tonight, when we talk about being present where we are and being humble, the reason that we can do those things is because God is faithful and trustworthy.
We don’t have to boast about the future because we know who’s with us now. We know who will be with us when the future comes.
We don’t have to boast about ourselves because we know how God views us.
As we close tonight, take some time to talk to Jesus. Maybe you need to confess that you’ve been living in the future too much. Maybe you need to confess that you’ve been anxious about the future. Maybe you need to ask for boldness to be present where you are now.
Maybe you need to confess that you’re someone who feels the need to bolster themselves by how they talk about their accomplishments. Maybe you’re someone who feels like they always need to be the center of attention. Confess that tonight and ask God for the confidence to trust that what he’s said about you is true.
Related Media
See more
Related Sermons
See more