An Appointment with Christ: Proverbs 3 (Part 4)

On this occasion I want to continue our study about the Bible, the word of God. In our last session we discussed the fact that if we truly want to follow the Lord's commandments we have to make an effort not to forget God's law, that means we have to try to keep God's word continually running through our mind. We have to read the Bible every day, we even have to learn a few verses of scripture that we can repeat in order to keep it running through our minds. It is important to attend church and listen to sermons that teach us how to interpret God's word and that teach us how God's word applies to the events and issues of normal human life.

We also remembered that the word of God that we have to keep the Bible in our hearts. Keep the commandments of the Lord in the heart, where the affections are, where the emotions are, because in fact the relationship with the word of God is not only a matter of the mind, memorization or study, but it is also a matter of the heart, of feelings, of emotions, of loving the word and delighting and enjoying it and keeping it in that central place of our personality.

And we also saw that some of the benefits of keeping the word of the Lord is that it will give us length of days and years of life, that is, effectively keeping the word of the Lord lengthens our life, because it allows us to avoid situations and conflicts that often lead to premature death. But also the Bible that not only will keep the word of God give us long years of life, but it will also give us peace, and certainly the word that man has with God is a peace that is very different from the peace that men try to achieve. through money, or friendships or professions, or the vain things of this world. In fact, the Lord Jesus Christ said: "Peace I leave you, my peace I give you, I do not give it to you as the world gives it", in other words the peace that Christ gives is a peace that is not like the peace of the world but rather that it is a peace that does not depend on circumstances or events or circumstantial things, but depends on the presence of the spirit of God in us. And that spirit of God comes to dwell in us through that communion with the word of God.

“Length of days and years of life and peace will increase you.” And there in Chapter 3 of Proverbs the writer continues advising us and says: “Never let mercy and truth depart from you. Tie them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart”, again there is a call in this passage to stick to the word of the Lord in a very powerful way. Do you know that Jews keep passages of scripture attached to their clothing? Pious Jews, orthodox Jews, write passages of scripture and stick them to their clothes, in the sense that they keep them close to their hearts and close to their bodies as a sign that they want to be in total compenetration with the word of the Lord. . Pious Jews also embed portions of the word of God on the doorsteps of their houses, remembering that their houses should also be directed and governed and blessed by the word of the Lord.

That is why the writer says: Never depart from you... We have to reach a point of such reverence for the word of God, that that word never departs from us and for me that is the true measure of if a Christian loves the word of the Lord. There are many people who call themselves Christians but do not know the Bible, do not know the word of God and I believe that the distinguishing mark of the believer is loving, respecting, keeping, being close to the word of the Lord. That is why you will often see Christians with the Bible in hand on the street, going to church. Obviously this does not guarantee that a person is pious, it is not the fact that they physically carry the Bible, but it is the fact that these people take their Bible to church where they open it, where they study it, where they scrutinize it. I have seen the Bible of Christians who have it marked with different types of ink and some people would think that this is irreverent, but no, quite the contrary, the Bible was made to be scrutinized. There is no kind of irreverence when a person marks his Bible, on the contrary, that means that he is giving it the attention and respect it deserves. Scrutinizing it deeply like a student marks his book because he knows that the truth is contained therein.

There has to be that level of attention to the word of God so that it can render all its teaching to the human being. That is why the writer says: Never depart from you mercy and truth. And here there is also another element that I am interested in pointing out, and that is that it says mercy and truth. Mercy is what we have towards our neighbor, it is an attitude of goodness, benignity, love towards our neighbor. Do you know that the Bible is not only a book to be known theoretically or intellectually, it is a book that we have to apply. And one of the things that the Bible helps us to do is to treat our neighbor with mercy and with kindness, with justice.

Actually a person cannot obey the word of the Lord without having love and care and attention towards his neighbor. This is very important. If you are truly going to live the word of the Lord, then your treatment of your fellow men has to reflect that mercy. You must behave towards others with love, with tenderness, be generous with your money, help the poor, the needy, have a word of consolation for those who need it, worry about the well-being of others. The person who loves the word of God is a merciful person, he is a person who, when he sees the defects in others, instead of criticizing them and instead of judging them and treating them with contempt and feeling superior to them, sees them with mercy, with the love, tolerance, patience, benevolence with which God sees human beings.

The person who loves the word of God is a merciful person, he is a person who loves others despite their defects, he is a person who is tolerant and who is always ready to give a word of advice, to build to others instead of making them fall when he sees them in a position of weakness. Mercy means that when you see a person in a position of weakness you try to strengthen him, whatever that weakness or whatever that handicap is. The merciful person is a person who is a servant, who is always ready to serve and to give himself to others, he is a person who always sees himself as an instrument of God's grace, he is a person who lives and walks on earth. to do good to others, is an instrument of God's love and mercy. It is in other words, an extension of the person of God here in the world.

If you are truly a lover of the word of God you have to be a person of mercy. There are so many people who instead of being agents of mercy are agents of judgment, criticism, condemnation or arrogance, instead of being people who show mercy and love towards others. The Bible says: Tie them around your neck, mercy and truth never depart from you. We have to make the intimate part of our heart. We have to make a firm decision to be people of mercy. He says: "...write them on the tablet of your heart", and what is the result of this attitude, he says "...you will find grace and good opinion in the eyes of God and men".

The merciful person is the person who lives according to the truth of God, is a person who will be attractive to others, will have grace, and will have a good opinion in the eyes of God and men. God will have mercy on them and men will also be able to distinguish the grace, the mercy that is in this person and they will also give him their respect and admiration. May God bless you and may He want to make you and me men and women of mercy and truth.