An Appointment with Christ: Proverbs 3 (Part 3)

We dedicated our last program to a kind of praise of the word of the Lord. We challenged our listeners to become scholars of the word of the Lord, to treasure the Bible and not underestimate its teachings. We talked about the fact that the events of history clearly prove to us that the Bible is the word of God.

In this passage that we are studying Proverbs Chapter 3 the writer says: “My son, do not forget my law and your heart keep my commandments”. I want to tell you that if you want to live according to the Lord's commandments you have to make an effort not to forget God's law. When the writer of Proverbs says do not forget my law, he is saying "Make an effort to remember my law."

Do you know that it is so easy to forget the word of God through the affairs and labors and worries of the day, it is so easy to forget the teachings of the Lord. It is so easy when the pressures of life, problems and difficulties come, perhaps to look for a shortcut and violate the word of the Lord, to forget the moral precepts of the Bible and look for an easy solution to life's predicaments. But the Lord tells us: Do not forget my law, that is, keep it, make sure that you always remember the law of the Lord.

When the events of life tempt you to violate and forget the law of the Lord, remember it. It says: “...may your heart keep my commandments”. How important it is that we treasure the commandments of the Lord in our hearts, where our will resides. When the Bible speaks of the heart, it speaks of that central place of the human personality where the emotions, the thoughts, the will, the very core, the very substance of the human personality. It is there, in that central place of being where we have to bury the word of the Lord.

If we do not place the word of God at the very center of our lives, it is very possible that we will forget it. We have to make a decision to treasure the word of the Lord and put it in the deepest place in our lives and to give that word primacy in all things. We have to study the word of the Lord, memorize it, review it, repeat it continuously in such a way that that word becomes part of our personality, that it becomes the very essence of our being.

When a man or a woman has reached that level of rapport with the word of God, then we can truly say that they have become a man or woman of God. For many people the Bible is simply something they hear from afar, that they respect in a general way, but it is not what defines their lives. The people that I have seen have the most impact in the spirit world, those men and women that God uses in a powerful way, who conquer great victories for God, who know the mysteries of the Lord, who have power through prayer, and who see miracles done in their lives, are people who have a very deep intimacy with the Bible. They get up in the morning and the first thing they do is take their Bible and search a passage and find out what God has for them through that passage. And at night before going to bed, they open their Bible again and try to pull out some profound teachings again. During the day they are continually meditating on the concepts and principles and advice of the word of the Lord. That is why the writer of Proverbs says: "My son, do not forget my law and your heart keep my commandments", in other words we have to keep the law in our minds but we also have to keep it in our hearts, we have to keep it with the reason, but we also have to keep it with the feelings. And in this way, all parts of our being will be covered and penetrated by the principles and teachings of the word of the Lord.

The writer adds something very interesting: “...because length of days and years of life and peace will increase you.” Do you know that the Bible can help you live a long life? That means that when you keep God's commandments and when you let yourself be guided by the word of the Lord, it is much more likely that you will live a longer life. How many people meet with a premature death, because they did not keep the commandments of the Lord. How many people today, for example, lament the fact that they are infected with AIDS and that they are doomed to a premature death, because perhaps they practiced a lifestyle, or visited places or committed acts that the word of God forbids. If they had made sure to follow the Lord's advice, they probably wouldn't be in the sad condition they are in.

The Bible is a source of advice, it frees us from dark places, it frees us from situations in which we can fall into traps. How many people have perhaps died in an accident because they violated the teachings of not getting drunk, or not driving too fast and respecting traffic laws. When we keep the word of the Lord, that word assures us length of days and years of life. The word says that when we let the wisdom of God enter our hearts, discretion will keep you, intelligence will preserve you to free you from the bad path, from men who speak perversities, who leave the right paths to walk on dark paths, who they rejoice doing evil, who are stuck in the perversities of vice whose paths are crooked and their ways crooked.

If you really want to walk on righteous paths, and want to have a long life, a life that comes to an end, it is important that you learn to respect the word of the Lord. Many people because of their arrogance, because of their disobedience to the word of God, many times because of their ignorance, not because they are bad at heart, but because they simply ignore the word of the Lord, end up in situations of unnecessary suffering. I have met men in the prisons of this state of Massachusetts who are there and when I treat them, I discover that they are not bad at heart, they are not necessarily perverse or evil people who want to hurt others, but simply given, out of ignorance of their mind and their heart, because they were not attentive to the commandments of the Lord, they committed acts that unnecessarily led them to jail or to unnecessary suffering. If only they had paid attention to the word of the Lord.

The writer says: “...because length of days and years of life and peace will increase you”. If you want to live a life that not only has long years, but also a life of peace, in other words, we not only want quantity but also quality. We not only want a long life, because certainly there are many people who reach an advanced age and yet do not love life, they would rather die, and regret having reached old age. For them life has been continuous suffering and suffering and loneliness and total boredom, and they do not love old age. But those who love God, those who love wisdom, those who love the word of the Lord and allow themselves to be guided by his advice, generally when they reach old age they have the sweetness and wisdom, and the lucidity and conformity that cannot be had. a person who does not know the word of the Lord.

That is why when reading the Bible it says: years of life will increase but also peace, because when we have God in our hearts and when we know that we have peace with God, then we also have peace within ourselves. Because it is not possible to have inner peace if you do not have peace with God and it is not possible to have peace with God if you do not have adequate knowledge of the word of the Lord. So do not forget the law of the Lord, keep it in your heart, keep his commandments and remember that by doing this you will have length of days and years of life and not only that but you will also have peace. May the peace of the Lord be with you. Until next time.