Last Sunday I was preaching for week two of a month of Sundays at Bolney Village Chapel.
It was one of those rare occasions when I decided to change my text for the sermon. In the original planning I had chosen Proverbs 26:1–16 about fools and the sluggard. I had a sense that this was not going to land well for this occasion. So, I swapped texts to Proverbs 3:1–12, which contains some of the best-known verses in the Book of Proverbs:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”(Proverbs 3:5–6)
Swapping texts at a late stage is not something I have done that often in my ministry. I work on the assumption that the Spirit can lead me months in advance as well as at the last minute. I have found that many of my thoughts about swapping texts have arisen from me getting cold feet about preaching a challenging text, rather than being moved by the Spirit.
This week the person leading the service shared something of the difficult challenges she had experienced during the previous week and added that Proverbs 3:5–5 were some of her favourite verses. Her grandmother had written them in a Bible she had been given as a child and they continued to be very precious to her.
Those little signals help the preacher to feel that they might be on course with the approach they have adopted for the sermon.
The sermon began with the observation made by Tim Keller that “wisdom is a pathway not a door”.
With a door all you need is the secret key and you are in. It is merely a matter of learning three simple techniques and you are wise. By contrast with a path, you need to be ready for a long steady walk because you realise that it takes a lifetime to gain wisdom. Wisdom is acquired by every day, repetitive and predictable actions repeated one after the other.
Perhaps the aspect of the text from Proverbs 3 that is so striking for us in the 21st Century is the idea that we are not to lean on our own understanding. Someone has likened this to relying on a thimble of wisdom, when in God an ocean of wisdom is available.
The other aspect that strikes me is the idea of God making our paths straight or directing our paths. God is the ultimate GPS system for life. Yet my passage concludes with a rare reference in Proverbs to suffering (Proverbs 3:11–12). The writer reminds us that life is a combination of the rough and the smooth. Life as a disciple includes our heavenly father leading us through tough times, some of which include his fatherly rebukes.
I ended my sermon with a Portuguese proverb:
“God writes straight with crooked lines”.
Sometimes we need to learn how to lean in on that understanding of how God leads us along the path of wisdom.
Photo by Iryna Kozhyna on Unsplash