Proverbs 3:1-8
Feast of St. Bartholomew | 24 August 2025 | A Sermon on Proverbs 3:1-8 by Samuel David Zumwalt |
Proverbs 3:1-8 Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved
My son, do not forget my law,
But let your heart keep my commands;
2 For length of days and long life
And peace they will add to you.
3 Let not mercy and truth forsake you;
Bind them around your neck,
Write them on the tablet of your heart,
4 And so find favor and high esteem
In the sight of God and man.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.
7 Do not be wise in your own eyes;
Fear the Lord and depart from evil.
8 It will be health to your flesh,
And strength to your bones.
[In his “On the Councils and the Church, Martin Luther identified seven marks of the Church. The fifth mark is the holy ministry. Our overarching sermon theme for this year is that fifth mark.]
HOLY PASTORS: TRUST IN THE LORD
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today, we remember St. Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael, one of the twelve apostles, whom church tradition says was martyred in Armenia for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is often pictured in Christian art with his skin having been flayed from his body. It is fitting that we remember him this Rally Day as adults encourage one other and especially our children and youth to imitate our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom St. Luke wrote: “And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him” (2:40).
3:7 Wise חָכָ֣ם ḥā·ḵām (Don’t be shrewd or cunning in your own eyes.)
What do we usually think of when we hear the word “wise.” Perhaps, that teacher or professor who was so advanced in his or her field that he or she was intimidating when lecturing or especially when asking Socratic questions. My old seminary roommate Roy used to say about one undergraduate professor: “We watched his thoughts flying over our heads for an entire hour at a time.” I can still remember 49 years ago having my first case of hives. It was my first year of seminary, and I was so overwhelmed by the jargon that I constantly had to keep referring to a standard Webster’s dictionary that really wasn’t much help. I suspect there will be more than a few students this week who will feel pretty much as I did back then. My undergraduate degree had not prepared me for the specialized vocabulary of a Masters of Divinity program.
But it’s not just academic programs that have their own specialized vocabulary. My nineteenth summer, after my first year of college, I worked at a farm and ranch center. Whether I was learning to pack ball bearings with grease for trailer chassis or to mix a specific liquid fertilizer combination to deliver to a farmer, I had to learn new words and new procedures. My A’s in English, history, anthropology, and German weren’t any help to me in that setting. They could have cared less what I had learned at college. They wondered if I could learn what I needed to know to do the work and, then, to keep up. Wise? There are a lot of people acquiring expensive pieces of paper that won’t mean a thing in the real world. Learning a trade like plumbing, electricity, or carpentry will be a lot more valuable to others and more lucrative than any number of degrees.
So, Solomon wrote, “Don’t be wise in your own eyes,” by which he meant don’t think of yourself as shrewd or cunning in the ways of the world. But we often don’t listen when we’re young and on the hunt. Every generation has to learn the hard way, it seems. Too easily, we confuse innovation or technological advances as making us wiser than previous generations. The social sciences are filled with multi-degreed people who still believe the myth of progress. Some never seem to learn that just because we can does not mean that we ought. Children have been mutilated as a result of those who insist, like the citizens of Babel, that we can make a name for ourselves… that we can be whomever or whatever we want to be. To those who are wise, shrewd, cunning in their own eyes, Rabbi Saul of Tarsus, the Apostle Paul, wrote: “… The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).
If you’re a parent, you need to be in Bible study along with your kids. If you are a young adult, you need to be in Bible study. If you are an older adult, you need to be Bible study. Why? The Word of God is the antidote to the stinking thinking that bombards our senses 24/7/365. The Lord Jesus warns us constantly about the dangers of falling in love with a dying world. He warns that the father of lies comes constantly to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Want to be wise? Everyone needs forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation. Only Jesus can give these gifts!
3:5 Trust בְּטַ֣ח bə·ṭaḥ (Trust in the LORD with all your heart.)
Martin Luther teaches that to have a God is to cling to Him above all others. Thus, our tragic flaw as human beings, our root sin, is precisely that we do not fear, love, and trust God above all people or things. We surround ourselves with idols, even beloved idols, even precious idols, whom we foolishly place above God in deed even when not in word. We say with our lips, “I believe,” but with our bodies, our calendars, and, yes, our wallets, we say, “I don’t trust you, God.”
What’s the most foolish thing you did this week? I’m not asking you to share. This isn’t show and tell like some person who has no shame and no sense or awareness of his or her slow descent into evil. There’s far too much of that tawdriness in the world around us. Whatever you foolishly did or failed to do this week gave witness to your lack of trust in God. Let me say that differently. Where you went, what you did or did not do, what you spent, what you wasted, whom you hung with, your behavior gave testimony to whom or what you fear, love, and trust the most.
You need Jesus. I need Jesus, because He alone perfectly and completely trusts His Heavenly Father with His daily living and with His excruciating dying. If you have been baptized with water in the name of the one true God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), you have been joined to the saving death of the only One, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who could die your death in order to give you His eternal life and right relationship with His Father. In the Bible, there is never forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood. What can wash away my sins and yours? Nothing but the Blood of Jesus. He does what you and I cannot do. He trusts in the LORD with all His heart. You don’t, and I don’t. But Jesus does! And He marvelously does for uswhat we, at best, do imperfectly. Trust is a gift that the Holy Spirit gives through God’s Word written, spoken, and enacted at the baptismal font and at the altar where we are actually joined to Jesus.
3:1 Commands וּ֝מִצְוֺתַ֗י ū·miṣ·wō·ṯay (But let your heart keep my commands;)
The Lord Jesus, who grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, calls everyone to come to Him. His death on the cross is not just for a select few. He died for all that none might be lost and all might be saved. He called Nathanael, Bartholomew, and the man followed Jesus and following Jesus changed him little by little. Like you and me, he failed often to understand, to really listen, and to trust Jesus. He lost heart and hope when Jesus was arrested, crucified, suffered, died, and was buried. Then, Bartholomew was changed forever when he saw: “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!” Then, fifty days later, Bartholomew and the others including Matthias, Judas’ replacement, were filled with the Holy Spirit. Then, he gave testimony to Jesus even unto death. Bartholomew trusted faithfully unto death, because he knew Jesus is LORD!
Each week, we say those words, “I will strive …” and the word strive is an action verb. Strive doesn’t mean, “I’ll think about it,” or “If I’m not too busy” or “If nothing better comes along” or “If can get around to it.” Strive means “I will follow Jesus,” because there is no place else we can go, and there is no one else to whom we can go but Jesus. Every time you get really hurt, really foul up, really make a mess of your life, really hurt those who love you and need you, you learn that there is a God-shaped hole in your soul that only He can fill. So, like any skill development, you practice this faith by showing up daily as a child of God: by praying daily, worshiping weekly, reading and studying the Bible, serving at and beyond this congregation, being in relationship to encourage others and, yes, to experience spiritual growth, and giving of God’s time, talent, and resources. Baptized, we have been crucified with Christ, and the life we live is His and not our own (Galatians 2:20). And that’s a slow, slow, one step forward and one back, daily dying-to-self journey that won’t be done until our casket or our box of ashes is parked there next to the baptismal font where we were crucified with Christ and raised to a new life in Him!
In the early days of computer programming, they used to say “Garbage in, garbage out.” That still holds for every human being. What we put into ourselves, what we look at, what we listen to, where we go, whom we’re with … it all really matters. Garbage in. Garbage out. The Word of God in us is, as the Lord Jesus teaches, like yeast. It grows. It leavens. It changes us by writing on our hearts what our Father wants for us and for all. The Spirit of God works through God’s Word to shape us, however imperfectly, more and more into the likeness of the Servant Son, Jesus Christ, who gives us Himself in the Host and Cup at the altar. Yes, Change is hard. When you got up and showed up here today, the Holy Spirit worked change in you. Keep showing up.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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©Samuel David Zumwalt
St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church (AALC)
Wilmington, North Carolina USA