Tethered to Christ

INTRODUCTION
(Ways of the Wise)
Good morning! My name is David Sorn, and I’m the Lead Pastor here at Renovation Church.
This morning in our study of the Book of Proverbs, we have come to what are perhaps the two most famous verses of the Book of Proverbs
In fact, the Book itself could probably be summed up by these two verses.
Others have called these two verses the “North Star of Christian life”
Meaning that you can’t really live the Christian life if you don’t understand the principle contained in these two famous verses.
SO….it’s a big day…with some important verses!
Shall we get right to it?
Proverbs 3:1-8
Page 434
If you are new around here (welcome), we are continuing in our teaching series through the 1st 9 chapters of Proverbs, called, “Ways of the Wise”
Before we jump in, let me remind you that the advice in the Book of Proverbs is indeed “proverbial”
Which, as we said in week 1, means that it is generally true, but not always true.
It’s still the true word of God…but a proverb is not a law, it’s a proverb…it’s a general truth.
And we’re going to see this right away in our passage.
Let me show you.
(Proverbs 3:1-2) – NIV
My son, do not forget my teaching,
but keep my commands in your heart,
2 for they will prolong your life many years
and bring you peace and prosperity.
(keep up page number)
This is a good example of what a Proverb is.
This is not a set-in-stone law of the universe.
The Bible is not saying, “If you keep God’s commands in your heart, you will live a long life of prosperity, and you are guaranteed to die peacefully in your sleep at 100 years of age”
No, this is a proverb.
There is general wisdom in it.
For example: If you live by God’s commands and forgive those who sin against you (rather than let bitterness build up for decades)…
…you are significantly more likely to live in peace…and honestly, even physiologically, you are more likely to live longer.
…because bitterness and resentment are proven to shorten life spans…as they increase stress, which can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, which can lead to a lower life expectancy
So, YES, this proverb has great wisdom and is generally TRUE!
But…we all know stories of very Godly people who God chose, in His sovereignty, to bring Home to their Eternal Reward in Heaven sooner than we would have ever wanted.
And that doesn’t mean they weren’t following God’s commands.
Because remember, this is a proverb.
It’s advice that is generally true, but it’s not a universal law.
Okay, let’s keep reading.
(Proverbs 3:3-4) – NIV
Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 Then you will win favor and a good name
in the sight of God and man.
This is another general proverb.
When you treat people with love, and you are faithful in your relationships, you will most likely win good favor with the people around you.
Okay, now, we’ve come to what are perhaps the two most famous verses in all of the Book of Proverbs.
Verses 5 & 6, and we’re going to go all the way through 8.

(Proverbs 3:5-8) - NIV
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
7 Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord and shun evil.
8 This will bring health to your body
and nourishment to your bones.
(Ways of the Wise)
Now, this is a long chapter, so we’re going to do much like we did last week, and I will teach through verses 9 through 26 in our House Church video this week.
So, get to a House Church this week.
Great place for deeper relationships, but also to get more Bible content and go deeper as well!

TRUST IN THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART
Well, a couple of weeks ago I was able to accomplish one of my major life goals that had eluded me for what felt like much of my life…and I was finally able to run a marathon.
(Marathon photo)
Anyway, while I was running the race, at about mile 12, I came upon two runners..
And I noticed they were tethered together by their wrists.
And as I got closer, I noticed one had a sign on their back that said visually impaired, and the other had a sign that said “Guide”
And I thought, “Wow!”
It’s an amazing feat to run with no sight alongside a guide for a mile
…but to do that for 26.2 miles.
Absolutely incredible feat! Inspiring!
Just so you can picture what this looks like really well, let me show you a quick 20 second news clip of a visually impaired man training for the Boston Marathon.
(Visually Impaired Runner Video)

(Ways of the Wise)
I Love this imagery of the runners being tethered together because it’s a beautiful picture of our passage today.
Verse 5 says:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.”
The runner who is unable to see must have complete trust in their guide.
When their guide says, “Make a 40 degree turn to the right,”
…they can’t say, “I feel like left makes more sense”
When their guide says, “put your arm out and take the water that will be handed to you”
They have to put their arm out.
They can’t say, “It feels like it’s too soon for another water stop”
They have to put their arm out. Why?
Because their guide sees everything.
(Tethered to Christ)
And it’s the same with our relationship with Jesus Christ
He’s all-knowing and all-seeing.
He sees the road ahead in your life.
He knows where you need to go!
And so you shouldn’t just trust Him.
You should, as the Word of God says, Trust Him with ALL your heart.
Like you are blind, and He can see everything.
But the challenge is that many of us are trusting God with half of our heart…even right now.
Think about what’s coming up in your life…or what’s going on in your life.
Does God have your full trust?
Are you truly saying,
“God whatever is coming up, I want you to tell me what to do.”
Are you saying:
“I’ll live according to Your ways, to Your morality, even if that decision will cost me.”
Are you saying:
“God, I don’t any part of this possible promotion if you’re not in it.”
“God, I don’t want to be in this relationship, if you’re not in it.
“I trust your direction only!”
See, we rarely talk like that (even though folks in the Bible talked like that)…
…because most of us only trust God with “half of our heart”…not ALL of our heart like verse 5 says.
Most of the time we don’t really call on God until something breaks, or we need Him.
For many of us, God is just our “back-up plan”
But only half-trusting in God will get you nowhere.
As the Puritan John Trapp once said:
“He that stands with one foot on a rock, and another foot upon quicksand, will sink and perish as certainly as he that stands with both feet upon quicksand.” - John Trapp
You’ve got to plant your whole heart upon the ROCK!
You can’t SEE the future. You can’t see Reality like Christ can see Reality.
You’ve got to fully trust Him.
(Tethered to Christ)
And so grab a tether and tether yourself to Christ.
Let Him guide you, and don’t let go!

LEAN NOT ON YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING
And that’s what the next part of verse 5 is getting at.
It says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
Verse 7 says something really similar:
Do not be wise in your own eyes.
This is tough for us as modern-day Americans.
Once again, our culture is working against us.
From an early age we are taught to:
Trust our instincts
Trust our gut
We’re told: “Nobody knows you and your life better than you”
Well, except for who?
The One who made you.
And listen, I doubt there are few people in the room who disagree with me that God knows you and your future better than even you do…
But that doesn’t mean in real life that we actually act like we believe that.
Most of us just continue to lean on our own understanding.
And I’m sure at times even the visually impaired runner feels that temptation from time to time…to lean on their own understanding.
For example, when I was in high school, there was a visually impaired student in our school named Bob
And the thing about Bob, similar to many people with visual impairment, is he had absolutely astounding hearing.
What often happens is the brain will enhance other senses when one sense is deficient.
I can remember one time, I was talking to a friend (it must have been 100 ft away), and he said, “David, is that you?”
His range and perception of auditory noises was absolutely incredible!
And so I’m sure that there actually is a temptation for the visually impaired runner think, “Yes, my guide is telling me to drift to the left, but I thought I heard something on my left?”
But when the guide says, “There is no one on your left.”
Who are they going to trust?
The world says: You can only trust yourself!
The Bible says: Trust the One who sees everything!
When you have 2 options in front of you in life:
And you feel like it makes by far the most sense in your life to take opportunity A, but you feel like God keeps putting opportunity B in front of you and leading you in that direction…
…who are you going to trust?
Especially if opportunity B doesn’t make much sense to you or your friends around you?
Who are you going to trust sees the situation more clearly? You or God?
Whose understanding are you going to lean upon?
And also, this is a Bible passage not just for situations like, “Should I move here or there” or “Should I take this job” or “marry this person” as we very often connect this passage to.
Yes, that’s part of it.
But contextually, much of this chapter, and much of this book is actually about the moral decisions we all make.
Do we trust God when we have to make difficult moral choices?
Like, should you live with the person you’re dating, or trust in God’s Word not to do that?
Should you act with absolute in integrity at work (like how Jesus would act if He had your job)….or should you act like everybody else in the world?
Should your family put church first? And Youth Group first?
Or do Youth Sports reign supreme above everything else on your calendar like the rest of the suburban world?
See, we all have moral decisions to make every day.
And in those decisions, we are to not lean on our own understanding.
We’re not to say, “I know what’s best for me and my family” (as verse 7 says, “don’t be wise in our your eyes)
We’re not to say, “Well, this is what everyone else is doing, and if I want my kid to keep up…….”
We’re to Trust only in God’s ways.
Because He can see what you cannot see.
We are to TETHER OURSELVES to CHRIST…
…and say, “Jesus, I really want to go this way…but if you say, “Go that way,” I am tethered you.
“Guide me. You have my trust above all things!

IN ALL YOUR WAYS SUBMIT TO HIM AND HE WILL MAKE YOUR PATHS STRAIGHT
And when we talk of submitting our moral choices to His Wisdom, verse 6 then starts to make a lot more sense.
Look at verse 6 again:
In all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight
And this first part of 6 (in all your ways submit to Him) is the part of this famous passage that people usually try and say really fast, so they can just get to the last part about God making our paths straight! 😊
We like that part!
Because that part means that God will remove the obstacles from your pathway.
The phrase literally means “cuts a highway”
So it’s like there are all of these trees and roadblocks in front of you, but when you let God lead…
You won’t be wasting so much time going around on painful detours or getting held up by difficult obstacles.
Because God is the WAYMAKER…
He will come through and bulldoze a path for you to walk on.
And we hear that, and we go, “YES! AMEN!”
Ohhhhh….we want that last part of the passage!
But unfortunately, Many Americans ONLY want the last part of this famous passage.
They just want a God who will direct them to their next pay raise, or a new house, and make their paths straight and easy!
But they want almost nothing to do with that pesky first part of verse 6 that says “In ALL YOUR WAYS SUBMIT TO HIM”
But listen to me: if God is going to make your paths straight…you can’t neglect the 3-step process that He just laid out for that to happen:
You first need to:
1) Trust in Him with all your heart
2) Not Lean on your own understanding
And 3) Submit every part of your life to Him
Think again to the visually impaired runner.
What is it that makes their path straight?
That allows them to finish their race and win the crown (or medal in this case)
Which is what we want as Christians! To finish our race and receive the crown of life as James chapter 1 promises!
So what makes the visually impaired runner’s path straight?
They have to submit everything to their guide.
They have to tether themselves to their guide…and trust their every word.
And when you do that with Christ…
And you say, “I’m going to walk in the ways of the wise. I’m going to trust and obey your word…even when it’s really hard, even when my flesh disagrees with it…even when it causes me pain”
“I will die to myself, and my own desires.”
“I will get off the throne
“I’ll develop radical trust in YOU, my King
“I’ll live for you Jesus Christ…”
That is how you walk with Christ…
And when you do that, and ONLY THAT, He begins to make your paths straight.
But most Christians don’t want to do that.
Truthfully, they don’t even like the sound of it.
In fact, can I be embarrassingly honest with you….
I need to tell you that when I was running the marathon and I first came upon these two runners tethered together, can I tell you what my brain first thought?
For a split second, I actually thought they were chained together.
And then my brain went, “No, no, that can’t be right”
And I looked harder, and they were just tethered together by a running tether.
But it’s an apt illustration, because some of you are wrongly looking at full obedience to Christ like it’s a chain.
Like it’s slavery that leads to death.
But that’s the opposite of the truth!
Look at Romans 6
(Romans 6:20-22) – NIV
20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
He’s saying that when we say “NO” to full submission to God…
…when we say, “God, I want you to help me out when I need it, but I’m just not interested in submitting all my ways to you…”
“I don’t want you to tell me what to do.”
When we live like that (and we do sometimes…sometimes for too long)
When we live like that…it’s like running blind in darkness.
We’re saying: “I don’t care! I don’t need a guide! But at least I’m not tied to anyone else. I’m my own person! I’ll live how I want to live! And go where I want to go!”
That’s running in the darkness.
And my dear friend, it does not lead to straight paths without obstacles.
Romans says it leads to pain, and shame, and death.
(Tethered to Christ)
But the Word of God says that the Christian is to be no longer a slave to sin and darkness, but a slave to Christ…
…that means as Christians, we tether ourselves to Christ…
…and we say, “You lead me. Where you go, I will follow!”
And the Promise is…that He will lead you to holiness, to paths made to straight, to eternal life!
My friend, get in the tether, hold on, and don’t let go!
Tether yourself to Christ!!

GOSPEL
And these truths are not just for the person who is already following Jesus, but also for those of you that are thinking about it.
It reminds me of something I read last year in the biography of one of my all-time favorite pastors, Timothy Keller.
One of his formative teachers early in his walk with Christ was an Inter-Varsity Leader named Barbara Boyd.
And Keller often shared his most important learning from Barbara Boyd.
He said, Barbara Boyd would always say to us students:
She would say: “If you want to invite me into your house, and you say, “Come in Barbara! Stay out Boyd! I wouldn't know what to do because I'm Barbara Boyd. That’s my name. That’s me!”
“In fact, I couldn't even say this half is Barbara and this half is Boyd, so I'll just bring this half in. No, I'm all Barbara and I'm all Boyd, so I'm both. If you want me to come in, you either get all of me or you get none of me.”
Then she said, “So likewise, if you say, ‘I would like the loving Jesus to come in, I would like the Jesus that can slay my giants and help me through the hard times, but I don't want the holy Jesus, I don't want the Jesus who would tell me which paths to walk on…
If you say that, no Jesus is going to come in.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the one who came and died for you…dying in your place for your Sins.
And He can forgive you of your sins, give you eternal life in heaven if you invite Him in as your Savior and Leader.
But there is no option where you get to invite half of Him in.
He is who He is
It’s all or nothing.
And trust me, you don’t want half anyway.
He’s ALL Good.
You want everything.
You want it all!
And so if you need to invite in the Real Jesus to be your Savior…all of Him.
I’m talking truly surrender to Him…
I want to give you an opportunity to do that right now.

Let’s just have everyone, just for a minute, close your eyes and bow your head.
If you need to make this decision for the first time today…to tell Jesus that you need His forgiveness for your sins…to make Him the Leader of your life…to accept His gift of Eternal life…And to invite Him in to have a relationship with you
In just a minute, I’m going to ask you to raise your hand.
No one’s going to be looking at you at all, that’s why we had everyone close their eyes.
But sometimes in life, we just need to make a clear, definite decision in life.
To say, “God I’m believing in you today.. I want to follow you TODAY”
If you need to tell God for the first time today that you do believe, and you want to follow Him and be forgiven.
Then I invite you to raise your hand where you are right now
The Bible tells us that in this moment we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths.
Repeat after me
Dear God
I confess to you, that I have sinned against you.
But God I believe, that you sent your Son Jesus, to take my place
And God I thank you, for forgiving my sins.
And now I commit, to following you, with my life.

(NEXT STEPS on NEXT PAGE)
As everyone still has their eyes closed, for those of you that raised your hands, you just made the most important decision of your life, and I believe that requires some more information…
I want to give you some extremely important resources & next steps to get you started on the most important journey of your life
And I want to personally get that to you.
So what I’d like you to do now is to start walking out through those double doors, and I’ll come meet you there in a second to get you some resources and you’ll be able to come back in the service after that.
All right, I’m going to pray, and I’ll meet you there in a sec.
Go ahead. Let’s pray