So, we want to look at the theme of the beauty and function and limits of God's Law as presented to us in the Proverbs. Proverbs reminds us that it is vital for us to love, to listen to, to celebrate God's Law. God's Law is not given to rob us of the good life, but so that we would thrive! I love this.
Think about when the Law of God was initially given. God had redeemed His children from four-hundred years of suffering and slavery in Egypt. But these recently liberated slaves had no idea how to live, and so God, in an act of abundant love and amazing grace, gave His Law to them. It was not to wreck their lives, to restrict their lives, but so that, in the boundaries of what God had laid out for them, they would thrive because God loves His children. You know, life doesn't work without boundaries. Every good thing in life needs boundaries, and so God set boundaries for His children.
Think of the power of the Law; you really get this in Proverbs. The Law does an incredible job of exposing the foolishness of sin. I mean, if you can read the Proverbs and not feel exposed; you don't get down on your knees and say, "God help me, God help me, God help me, I have a hard heart." Because the Proverbs just exposes the foolishness of sin; the Proverbs is meant to bring you to this point of personal, spiritual awareness and confession.
Now, we need that because, let's be honest, sin doesn't always look sinful to us. When I'm eating the third piece of cake in an act of gluttony, I'm not thinking danger; I'm just thinking how beautiful that piece looks and how great it tastes in my mouth. If you're at the mall, lusting after a woman, you're not thinking of the danger and rebellion of that act; you're seeing something that's beautiful to you. So, we need something that exposes to us the sinfulness of sin.
But the Law does something else. It is a wonderful guide for our living. The Law guides us. I need that guidance; because as long as sin lives inside of me, there will be artifacts of foolishness in my heart. And so, I need to be told how to live and reminded again and again how to live, and you see that beautiful guidance on every page of the Proverbs. How elaborately and how expansively and how repeatedly God repeats His guidance to us in Proverbs. Those are wonderful functions of the Law to expose sin and give us a guidance for our lives.
But the Law has limits. The Proverbs highlights those limits because the Proverbs teaches us the centrality of the heart, that my problem is not just informational, and my problem is not just relational, and my problem is not just situational; my problem is the sinful condition of the heart. That's why, in Proverbs 4, the father says to his son, "Above all else guard your heart!"
And what the Proverbs never tells us is that God's Law has the power to transform our hearts. It has the power to expose our hearts, but it takes grace to rescue and change the heart. That's why Jesus had to come. If the Proverbs could rescue and transfer my heart, Jesus would've never had to come. And so, the Proverbs presents to us the beauty of God's Law but the limits of God's Law as well. If all we needed is God's Law, then the coming of Christ, His righteous life, His acceptable death, His victorious resurrection would not have been necessary. Celebrate God's Law, but know its limits!
