[0:00] Proverbs chapter number 15. That was so beautiful. You know, when we say that singing prepares your heart for preaching, that doesn't elevate preaching. It just diminishes how important music is.
[0:11] Music proclaims truth, and I'm so thankful that it does. And I'm thankful for what that just proclaimed. We will praise you in the storm. What a beautiful song. I just love how it was sung.
[0:22] Proverbs chapter number 15, verses 13 through 22. I'm going to preach you a 30-minute message in the next 15 minutes. It's nobody's fault but my own, but I just love everything about church.
[0:33] And if I could honestly put together a service like I would want, we would be here every night until midnight, because I just love every part of it. I love everything that's happened, and don't regret a minute of it. It just means I'm going to have to talk a little faster than I normally do, but I'm more than able to do that.
[0:47] All right? And so I hope you'll stick with me here, and then we'll see how far we get into this proverb. The first part of chapter 15, we went to a lot of those verses as we were looking at one's sensible approach to speech in our lives and how to be prudent.
[1:00] And now we look towards the last part of the chapter, which has some verses that will teach us three things, and we'll see how far we get to. The first one is, a good countenance made possible by a merry heart.
[1:12] I've alliterated for you, Greg. All right? A good countenance made possible by a merry heart. Then we'll move into a godly contentment that protects us from great sorrow. And if time allows, we'll look at a guided constraint from anger by God's wisdom.
[1:29] And that's why I don't like alliteration. That third one was kind of forced a little bit, Greg. All right? But I did it for you. And so we'll see how far we get into it. But I'm going to read verses 13 through 22. A merry heart make the cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.
[1:43] The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge, but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness. All the days of the afflicted are evil, but he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.
[1:55] Better is little with the fear of the Lord when great treasure and trouble therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. A wrathful man surtheth strife, but he that is slow to anger appeatheth strife.
[2:08] The wrath of the slothful man is a hedge of thorns, but the way of the righteous is made plain. A wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish man despiseth his mother. Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom, but a man of understanding walketh uprightly.
[2:23] Without counsel purposes are disappointed, but the multitude of counselors, they are established. First of all, a merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.
[2:34] To have a good countenance, one must have a merry heart. I alluded to a time where Greg came to me during the time of the riots, and it reminded me of a time of Nehemiah. He saw the destruction of the city, and he was broken, and it was on his countenance, and it was appropriate that his countenance had changed because something was happening in his heart.
[2:54] But our homes ought to have us with a merry heart. Many of you would know that this summer, we went without a kitchen. We kind of had some pipes break, and we went without a kitchen. And I jokingly told a lot of people, if you're thinking about buying a house, make sure you get one with a kitchen.
[3:08] And it's a very nice feature to have in a house. You know, I could do without some other rooms, but you really need a kitchen, and I am glad to have a kitchen again, all right? And so of all the things that you could have in a house that is nice, that is there, you know, and I have the in-ground swimming pool in my basement, and I have the tennis courts.
[3:27] I'm just kidding, all right? But of the things that I could have in a house, the things that if I want to remodel that I must have at the center of my home is a dad and a mom with a merry heart.
[3:40] That's what I want more than anything. It's not something that my kids have always had, but it's something that's more important than anything else that I could give them. I hate this question that the doctors will ask. Does heart disease run in your family?
[3:52] I always hate that question, because then it means I have to say yes and give a long story. But as my uncle, who's in his mid-70s, said, Trent, don't pay no attention to that. That was their heart. That's not your heart, all right?
[4:03] And he doesn't like that. That question, but heart disease runs in all of our families. Sin runs in all of our families. The question that we must ask is, are we having a merry heart?
[4:14] Are we having a continual feast? A heart that feeds on God's wisdom and not foolishness in this world. If you want a merry heart, verse 14, the heart of him that understands this seeketh knowledge, but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness.
[4:27] Merry hearts are those that get their understanding from God's Word. If you are fed by anything outside of God's Word, you will not have a merry heart.
[4:38] In the words of Uncle Sam Paxson, he doesn't like reading the paper, it just makes your hands dirty and your heart sad, right? If you find your feeding of your heart in anything outside of God's Word, you are going to find that you will not have a merry heart.
[4:51] An upright heart allows for delightful prayers, verse 8, but the prayer of the upright is his delight. If you have a merry heart, then you're going to have prayers that are unto God that are delightful to Him, that are biblical.
[5:05] You're going to be thinking biblically. If you're not praying to God, then your heart is not merry, because a merry heart leads to delightful prayers. God says that there's a type of sacrifice that is wicked.
[5:17] So much detail for sacrifice in Old Testament, but now you're telling me that I can make a sacrifice to you, and it wouldn't be accepted unto you, but I could say a prayer and it would be delightful to you, because God looks upon the hearts of us.
[5:30] You will not have a merry heart if you do not have anyone to talk about your problems in this world. If you can't go to God in prayer, I can guarantee you, you cannot have a merry heart, because everybody has to unload the burdens of their heart, and there's nobody in this world that you can hand those over to except the God of heaven.
[5:50] If you come to me with your heavy heart, and you only want to hand them to me, you're going to find that when you leave, I'm going to have to hand them back to you to take with you. But if you will come to God, and you will talk to Him about it, you can leave them with Him, and you can leave with a happy and a merry heart.
[6:07] How would a person lose their happiness? Psalm 1, 1 and 2, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and His law doth he meditate day and night.
[6:21] So what does it mean to be blessed? Better than a dictionary usage of it, let's look at the Word of God. Psalm 32, 1 and 2, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
[6:33] Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and whom spirit there is no guile. Psalm 34, 8, O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in Him.
[6:44] Psalm 65, 4, Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest and causest to approach unto Thee, that he may dwell in Thy courts, and we shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple.
[6:57] Psalm 89, 15, Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound. They shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance. A blessed man is a delighting man. He's not just doing the right things, but he's meditating, and he's enjoying, and he's treasuring the things of God.
[7:14] And that allows for a merry heart. And so his delight is in the Lord. Walking, standing, sitting. He's not walking with bad counsel or taking their paths.
[7:25] He's not standing or participating in the way of sinners. He does not sit around thinking about this world as sinners do. But a happy man is one who avoids this progression that starts with listening to bad counsel.
[7:37] Happy to not have his sins covered, yes, but also blessed and married to not be participating in them as well. A merry heart is a person that turns to God and says, I need you as my counselor.
[7:50] Adrian Rogers says, there's three things that every family should give children. Life, love, and laughter. Sounds like a sign that you'd put above your fireplace, right? Think about that commercial where that person says, I need this sign.
[8:01] And say, no, you don't. You know, life, love, and laughter. Everybody loves that. But that is a gift that every home should have in it. Just like every home ought to have a kitchen, there ought to be life, love, and there should be laughter.
[8:12] You know, God has made people laugh before. Genesis 21, 6, and Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh so that all that hear will laugh with me. A good laugh is like sunshine to a home.
[8:24] I was going to ask some kids to come up here and tell you some jokes, but we don't have time for that, and that would scare all of you parents if I gave open mic night to the kids, right? I love a good joke. My favorite joke right now is that tennis is very discouraging because no matter how good I get at it, I'll never be better than a wall.
[8:43] All right. Stephanie's right. It isn't very funny. I think it's really funny. All right? No matter how good you get at tennis, you're not going to be better than a wall. It returns it every time. All right? All right.
[8:54] A merry heart is a great gift to a family. A merry heart does good like a medicine. A broken spirit dries up the bones. The ability to laugh is a gift that you can give.
[9:04] I'm sure that you want to hand it to your children. I've shared this story before. My mom raising me and my brother and my sister and living across the world from the school with not a lot of means, she pulls into school, and I'm out there, and I see her, and her car catches on fire.
[9:19] And so there we are in the parking lot with our only vehicle on fire, with everything against us in all of the world. And what does my mom do? But she laughs. She laughs in the face of it because she says, well, we've got to see what God's going to do because we don't even have a car now.
[9:34] And I laughed. The guidance counselor thought it was weird. Everybody thought it was weird. But you don't think it's weird at all, do you? It's a beautiful thing to laugh when nobody else can laugh. That was a gift that she gave me, is that I can laugh in the hardest of days.
[9:49] It's a gift I want to give to my children, is to have a merry heart and a good countenance, and to laugh when nobody else understands why we're laughing. Unlike my joke, which I was laughing by myself a second ago.
[10:00] So God has purpose for our hearts. Hell and destruction are before the Lord. Hell and destruction are before the Lord. He has a purpose for them. How much more the hearts of the children of men. God has a purpose for your heart.
[10:12] And so there's different seasons in our lives, and we should not want to miss any of those. To everything there is a season, a time and every purpose under heaven. And there are times our countenance cannot be what we want it to be, because our spirits are broken.
[10:27] A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken. Just like my kids who are always coming to me and saying, Dad, I broke this, can you fix it?
[10:38] Same as us. We've got to be going to God and saying, God, my countenance is broken because I don't have a merry heart. This is what I did with my heart. I let it be fed by other things. I listened to the things of this world, and my heart now is broken.
[10:50] I'm going to hand it to you. Would you fix this? Would you put batteries back in it for me? Would you do whatever needs to be done so that I can be restored? Now, godly contentment, that protects us from great sorrow.
[11:01] Proverbs 15, 16, Better is little with the fear of God than great treasure and trouble therewith. I got to preach in Chile some years ago, and before I preached, I preached the message that I was motivated by reading a book called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs, and so I preached the message on the necessity of contentment, and then the person after me preached why we should never be content, all right?
[11:25] And it was confusing, all right? If you spoke English or if you spoke Spanish, you felt like we were contradicting one another, but there is a contentment that we are to have that is in great gain. Yes, there's more we want to do for Jesus.
[11:38] Yes, there's more land we want to take for the King, but there is a contentment that ought to stay with us at all times. Covetousness will never be great gain to us. Covetousness is desiring something that is so much more that we lose our contentment in God.
[11:52] It's as simple as that. Have you been covetousness? Have you been involved in covetousness? Have you lost your contentment in the things that God's given you? If the answer is yes to that, then the answer is yes to the other question.
[12:04] Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and a hatred therewith. So covetousness will never give satisfaction. Jonathan, a side salad is better than a Pittsburgh filet mignon when we are content.
[12:20] You know, the man spoke the other day about Johnny Cash and that Pittsburgh filet, and it made me quite hungry thinking about it. That sounds like a great way to eat a steak. Anybody else in agreement on that? Burn it, leave it in the inside? Sounded wonderful.
[12:31] But a side salad, a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therein. We must teach our kids contentment. If we want in our home, they need to have a kitchen, they need to have contentment, and they need to have ability to rest in Him.
[12:49] Covertousness will never give us satisfaction. When goods increase, they are increased that eat them, and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes? A modern understanding of that is with every new iPhone comes a need for new chargers and for new cases.
[13:04] That no matter what you get, it always comes with more upkeep the more that you get. And so covetousness tells us that we will find our identity in stuff. Jesus warns us in Luke 12, 15. Jesus knows us better than anybody because He is our Creator.
[13:16] And He said, And He said unto them, Take heed and beware of covetousness. And then here's an answer to covetousness. For a man's life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.
[13:27] He knows that you're going to try to find your identity in the things you own. And He says, Don't do it. So if you want to invite trouble into your house, don't teach your kids to be content.
[13:38] Teach them to be greedy for more. Proverbs 15, 27. He that is greedy of great trouble with his own house, but he that hateth gifts shall live. If you want to hate your house, then teach your kids to be greedy and discontent with everything.
[13:53] If you want your kids to be discontent and the house of the righteous is much treasure, but the revenues of the wicked is trouble. Let them see you never happy with what you got. Let them see that when you got that one thing that you wanted something else as well.
[14:06] A lack of contentment or a love for money leads to many other sins. 1 Timothy 6, 10. For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
[14:21] Such strong language for covetousness. But when our home does not have a spirit of contentment, we're inviting trouble into our home. We're inviting great sorrow upon our family because they're going to look for the world from contentment and they're never going to find it.
[14:36] So how do you help your home have a contentment feature about it? How do you have a kitchen in your home? How do you have contentment? In closing, Psalm 119, 36. Incline my heart unto thy testimonies and not to covetousness.
[14:52] What should our kids see as we would sit around together at the end of the day? They ought to say, thank you, Lord, for the meal that we have tonight. God, thank you for paying our bills. Thank you for the vehicle we have.
[15:03] It could be burning in the parking lot again, but it's not, Lord. We have vehicles. We have two vehicles. And they should hear stories of God's goodness. And that contentment in their heart is going to save them from so much trouble.
[15:17] So much sorrow comes upon so many people. And we can't understand where it comes from. But if we were to identify it, it came when they could not learn to be content with what God gave them.
[15:28] And so by unlawful means, they reached for things that did not belong to them. So two things tonight. Before we pray, I give you a chance to respond. First of all, is I'd ask you about that merry heart.
[15:41] Do you have that? A good countenance is made possible by a merry heart. Examine your heart. Is it there? If not, ask God for it. And he tells us, if you want to be blessed, look to him, delight in him.
[15:52] If you're not delighting in him, then your heart's not going to be merry. It's not going to be in good condition. Delight yourself in the law of the Lord. And then secondly, godly contentment protects you from great sorrow.
[16:04] You know, we work very diligently to get a kitchen back because we need it. But my family is much more in danger if there is not contentment in my home. Because I'm inviting trouble and sorrow upon us.
[16:16] And so I ask God, help me be content with all the good and things that you have given me. Help me be so content that it overflows in my heart and I share that with my family and you provide protection to them through that.
[16:29] Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, I ask that you would be with my brothers and sisters tonight, Lord, as they may work as I want to work in remodeling our home. Help us be people with a good countenance and merry hearts.
[16:42] Help us be people that are content looking for our protection only in you. With every head bowed and every eye closed and we'll take a moment as Charlotte plays the piano, only just the piano playing.
[16:54] I just want you to talk to the Lord. Ask Him if it's there. Only it's between you and God. You know what level of contentment or a merry heart that you have. Don't leave here the night dissatisfied with your Creator.
[17:06] But leave here the night content and grateful and with a merry heart unto Him. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[17:17] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[17:28] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. inspired and amen. Hallelujah. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[17:38] Amen.