In today’s culture, marriage is commonly viewed as an old social custom centered around happiness and fulfillment.  This newer view of marriage has also consequentially made divorce more common practice and acceptable.

However, in the Bible, God designed marriage for the ultimate purpose of glorifying Himself.  Marriage is a holy act between two partners and in today’s sermon we’ll look at 2 essential attributes that constitute this sacred practice. 

We continue off from learning that in God’s eyes, worship without justice is worthless. We defined justice as “giving people what they are due, whether it is punishment or protection or care”. This refers not only to personal justice but also to our neighbours.

There are many of us who think if we do right by our personal justice, this is enough. But God is pleading with us through today’s passage that we are called to stand up for those around us and work to make right the things that are unjust in the world. For the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to transform and restore all injustices, brokenness, and forces of evil that are against the people of God.  

We look at the wisdom of justice, for how we respond in the face of injustice reveals a lot about who we are and the God we worship. As Christians, our lives are no longer lived out for ourselves. We care not only about our personal injustice but also the injustice we see from other people. 

Within the biblical context, justice is more than just punishment for doing wrong. The Hebrew word for justice is “mishpat”. Timothy Keller describes this word as “… giving people what they are due, whether punishment or protection or care”. We look deeper into the scriptures to see what justice is and what our role in bringing about justice in the way of Jesus looks like. For worship without justice is worthless. 

As we continue from last week’s sermon on receiving correction in areas of foolishness, we now look at the theological solution.

The theological solution is that we need the Gospel. The Gospel says Jesus Christ is Lord and simultaneously has us surrender our pride to see we are not. With Jesus as Lord and the foundation to our identity, the truth of the gospel gives us the freedom to have room in our hearts to receive and accept correction without feeling personally offended.

It is safe to say that for most of us, if not all of us here today, receiving correction is not something we do well in. From the time we are little children until the day we die, we do not like to receive correction.

Mockers and fools do not accept correction – they resolutely refuse to change their ways.  But God calls us to be wise, approachable, teachable, and humble, in choosing to set aside our pride and live in the way of wisdom.

With this weekend being Mother’s Day weekend, we look into the wisdom of honouring our parents. For some of us, we may have had great relationships with our parents; others of us, not so much.

Why do we do the things we do?  Why do we say the things we say?  Why do we see things and hear things the way that we see and hear?  We tend to think as human beings that if we can change our circumstances, then things will be better.  However, the Bible teaches us that circumstances only reveal what is in our hearts.

“If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” – this is a well-known proverb advising us to be careful of what we say. Words can give life to people through love and spreading the Gospel, but words also have the power to condemn and hurt others. In a society where technology provides a global platform to spread our words to an even wider audience, we need to be even more responsible of what we say than ever before.

Continuing on from last week’s sermon, we know wisdom is rooted in Jesus first and foremost. But even as devoted believers of Christ, we can still find ourselves feeling very lost and confused in the face of difficult decisions, having a tough time asking for help or guidance.

We’ll be journeying into a new book: Proverbs. This book can easily be seen as a great choice for a monthly devotional (31 chapters), or with some of the letters containing wisdom from Solomon to his son, David. King Solomon was one with whom the Lord was pleased with, when Solomon’s one and only request was to have wisdom to rule over the Lord’s people well. This book serves as a reminder to us that by the grace of the Lord, we also have instruction on how to live and mature wisely in our lives.