Listen:  149.4

Let’s read Proverbs 3:1-4, “My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.”  What an important passage for us to learn and follow!  As we consider the edict to “let not mercy and truth forsake thee”, we are reminded in John 1:14, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”  May we never be so careless as to let His truths slip from our lives.  May we be faithful to learn of Him and follow His teachings.  We are exhorted in Proverbs 4:13to, “Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go: keep her; for she is thy life.” 

In Proverbs 3:4, we find the Lord referred to as ‘God’.  The Hebrew word for ‘God’ here is ‘elohiym’, which means ‘supreme’.  There are many names in scripture for our Lord, so the fact that He is here referred to as God, “the supreme one” is important.  The word ‘elohiym’ is used over 2000 times in the scriptures to reference the Lord.  In fact, the Word begins in Genesis 1:1by saying, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”  The word here for God is ‘elohiym.’  One remarkable truth about this word is that it is plural.  In the very first verse in the Bible, the seed is planted to help us understand that we serve a triune God. 

As we consider the truths given to us in Proverbs 3:1-4, we are brought to consider that we are to live to please Him who is supreme above all other people and governments.  Our allegiance is to be to Him, the One who is above all.  We are encouraged in Proverbs 16:7, “When a man’s ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.”  The Apostle Paul exhorts us in 1 Thessalonians 4:1, “Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.”  (149.4)