Proverbs 3:1-12, God’s Copybooks!

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January 26, Proverbs 3:1-12

Matt. 11:27-30; 2 Cor. 3:2-3, 18:4-6 “Whose adorning let it not be outward but the hidden man of the heart.”

God’s Copybooks!

In our next couplet (v.3-4) we meet Mercy and Truth, the inseparable “Twins of Grace.” They are such a pair as will either lodge together or leave together (Bp. Hacket).

  1. The Divine Creator: God alone is the source of mercy and truth (v.3). They are distinctive of the Covenant-God of Sinai. They reflect His glorious perfection in unified action, mercy in the promise to Abraham; truth in the performance to Jacob (Mic. 7:20). Mercy and truth have kissed each other (Ps. 85:10) in the Mediator. Thus they reveal the redemptive character and purpose of the Creator, who in mercy and truth, shone forth on His redeemed, in the face of His Son. It is, therefore, only in Jesus Christ that man can know God truly. Scripture affirms that grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:17).
  2. Mercy (chesed): What a grand, all-encompassing word this is! Two entire books have been written on this divine word. It appears some 250 times in the OT, and in all 26 verses of Psalm 136, for his mercy endures forever. It includes such concepts as faithfulness, loyalty, kindness, fidelity, goodness, devotion, steadfast-love. If we had only one word to describe God, Mercy could be that word!
  3. Truth (emeth or amen) implies accuracy, reliability, dependability, firmness. The original was first in the heart of the Divine Creator, but is now transcribed on the heart on man by His gracious Hand.
  4. The Divine Creation: a. Bind them about thy neck (v.3). Why? Because God “desires to see a miniature of his own likeness impressed upon his children” (Arnot). Again why? Is it not to avoid the folly of forsaking the guide of our youth, the teaching of godly parents? Bind them to thee as an outward testimony that will be both attractive and genuine to all. The literalism with which later Judaism treated such texts as Deut. 6:8, 9 is sadly misapplied. Here they are to be, not tied on hand or head, but bound to the heart, and not for one day but every day. Many observe the letter but tragically ignore the spirit, and what wretched Pharisees this has spawned right up to our own day!
  5. Write them on thy heart as an inward treasure (v.3). This is a specific command, and a sign of a regenerated heart is a heart transformed and inscribed by the finger of God. Just as God wrote His law on tablets of stone, He now writes on the fleshly tablets of the heart. What He writes there is most true, most plain and most abiding. What man has written, time defaces, but what the finger of God writes on the heart eternity cannot erase. “It is Christ clasped to a softened heart, that will re-imprint the image of God upon a sinful man” (Arnot). Surely there are not to be ornaments of hypocrisy, but “a yoke by which the harnessed ox draws its burden” (Maclaren). Jesus said, Take My yoke upon you. Only then are we fit for His service. Paul spoke of a true yoke fellow (Phil. 4:3). God grant that we might be His copy-books known and read of all men.

Thought: There is a yoke of bondage and a yoke of liberty. Which have you taken?

Prayer: Reserve, O Lord, the tablet of my heart for Thy Hand alone.