Proverbs 16, 20. He that handleth a matter wisely
shall find good, and whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he. Now, the first thing that came
to my mind is in this, that there's no promise here that things will
happen the way you want them to. Whatever this matter is That's
mentioned in this verse It's something that has to be handled
It's not just something that happens. It's a matter that has
to be handled something has to be done about it And So if it's an issue that
has to be dealt with Somehow what's the best way? to deal
with any matter? Is there a sort of rule or something
we can follow in every situation? Or do we have to figure something
out every time? Well, no, our text answers that. The best way to handle any matter
is to trust the Lord in it, whatever it is. Now, that may involve
you doing something. It may involve you not doing
something, which is doing something. In this sense that not doing
something is usually a lot harder than doing something When you trust the Lord often
that's all you do in Dealing with a matter or whatever it
is Trusting the Lord is dealing with it And that's why those two halves
of this same proverb are might seem strange on the surface to
be together like that. What does trusting in the Lord
have to do with you handling something that comes up in daylight? Well, it has everything to do
with it. That's why this proverb says what it says. And when you do trust the Lord
in any matter, it says you'll find good. Whoso
handleth a matter that way will find good. Even if things don't turn out
the way you wanted them to in that particular matter, you'll
find good. Doesn't say it's going to happen
the way you wanted it to. This is God's promise though,
you'll find good. You will maybe learn patience,
which is something we very much need to learn. or humility, which
is something we probably need to learn even more than patience, or other things, depending on
the specifics of the matter, whatever the matter happens to
be. And maybe best of all, when you trust the Lord, you'll
learn to trust the Lord. You say, well, wait a minute,
Chris, I already knew to trust the Lord, or I wouldn't have
trusted him. Yeah, but you knew it up here
until you had to actually do it. I know I should trust the Lord,
but trusting him is something else. It's not the same thing. Instead of only believing that
you should trust him, you have to actually do so when a matter
arises. You'll experience what you knew
in your head. You'll experience it, and then
you'll actually know what it is. I like what Scott Richardson
said about trusting the Lord in affliction. I was going to
try to find it. I had it printed out, but I've got it somewhere
and I've never forgotten it. I know the basic thought of it
was this. He said, you may not have another
opportunity in your whole life to honor the Lord in trouble. We don't often You know, everybody
has worries and things every day, but we don't often go through
something big. And it may not ever happen again.
He said, don't miss that opportunity to honor the Lord in it, whatever
it is. Don't act like a fool and miss
an opportunity to glorify God when you're wronged or afflicted. That's the time that's most important
to trust the Lord and to honor Him in that matter. And I'll find that and read it
to you soon. It's just outstanding. I never had looked at it that
way before, and I've never forgotten it since I read that. But don't
miss the word find in our text. He that handleth a matter wisely
shall find good. This word reminds me of some
specific trials that I've been through or that those that I
love have been through. And I didn't see any good in them
at first. Have you ever had that happen?
Something happens and you're like, there is nothing good about
this. Not only just at first maybe
for a very long time. I didn't see any good in it But
the Lord saw to it That I found it. I found the good After some time went by in some
cases long after the trial is over and all the fallout from
The whole matter is settled. I find the good And that's a
great blessing And the Lord promises that you
will. Maybe the good that you find
is just that you trust him. Because here's the thing, even
if we don't ever see why God did something, why he put us
through something, why something happened to somebody we love
or to ourselves, we may never know why it happened. We may
not see the good purpose in it. but we know that it's there.
And maybe that's the good, just knowing that it's there. We know, Paul said, we know that
all things work together for good to those that love God, to them
who are the called according to his purpose. That's enough good right there,
just knowing that. Just knowing that, if you can't
see anything else, If you trust the Lord and His
promises, like that one, all things work together for good
to those that know Him and He knows. Our text says that you're happy.
You're happy. If you trust Him, trust that
His promises are yay and amen in Christ. Our text says you're
happy. What is it, I thought of it this
way, what is it about a trial, something that you go through,
a matter that makes you unhappy? Why does it make you unhappy?
Whatever it is you might be going through right now. You might say, well, it's because
I don't know what to do about it. I don't know what to do about
it. We like to know, don't we? We
like to have a plan of action, something we can do to fix the
troubles that we're in. It's not always that way. And that can be frustrating,
can it? That can be troubling if you
just don't have, you don't know which way to turn. You don't
know, you have no idea what to do. But what if you don't need
to do anything at all? What if the Lord's gonna do it
for you? I'll tell you this, if you're
His, if there's something that you need to do, if the Lord's
gonna use you in the matter, you'll know. Seek Him, seek Him,
ask Him, what do I do? He's not gonna leave His children. But I'll tell you this, don't
rule out that there's nothing for you
to do. that the Lord's just gonna do it for you. Is there a problem
with that? It makes us upset that we can't do anything, but
why would it? If God's gonna handle it for
you, that's kinda good, isn't it? That's kinda good. It'll
just handle itself, as we say. That means God did it. Well, you might say this, what
makes me unhappy about this is I stand to lose something. I stand to lose quite a bit here. This problem is gonna cost me
big time. The Lord giveth and the Lord
taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And that's not just a principle
written down on paper. The man that said that had lost
everything except God. He had lost everything except
the God that had given him everything. And he knew it, he knew he had.
He said, the Lord gave me what I had and he took it away. Blessed
be his name. He still owns everything. He
still loves me with an everlasting love. If I need something, He'll
give it to me. How can you think like that?
It's called trusting the Lord. That's our text. Trusting. What we learn from Job's case,
by God's grace, is that you cannot lose what matters. Not if you're
his. You cannot lose what matters. Well, here's another thing. I'm
offended. Somebody did me wrong. Somebody said something, they
said something terrible about me. But the truth of the matter is,
you're a whole lot worse than they said. They didn't even scratch the
surface. They treated you a lot better
than you deserve to be treated, even if they treated you horribly.
I know that's upsetting when somebody says something behind
your back maybe, or even to your face, or does something that's
just disrespectful to you or worse. But sometimes, you know,
you have to look at the big picture. Yeah, maybe somebody mistreated
me. Maybe they cheated me in some way. Maybe they said something
horrible about me that other people heard and might think
it's true, even though maybe it's not. I'm still doing pretty well for
somebody that ought to be in hell right now. I'm still doing
pretty good. Somebody can't ruin your reputation.
Think about this. Our Lord Jesus Christ, though
he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, made himself
of no reputation. We actually are of no reputation. And he made himself of no reputation
when he took our place. And remember, God said, vengeance
is mine. That's pretty simple, isn't it? Vengeance is not yours. It's
God's. So if somebody needs to be set
straight somehow or another, It don't need to be you doing
it or me. It's not up to us to settle
a score or balance the books. The Lord does that. He does that. And he's a lot better at it than
we are. We tend to overreact to things or misunderstand things. Somebody said something, they
didn't even mean it the way you thought they did. Or whatever,
we're just not very good at it. The Lord is, he's real good at
it. And he never fails to balance
the books in his time. Each person will stand or fall
to their own master. Can you trust the Lord in that?
That's the question. Can we just trust him to deal
with it? That's hard to do, I know it is. I've been there many times.
I've got to do something. In fact, I'm probably one of
the worst, if not the worst, in this whole world about that.
I'll sit there and fume over something. I won't sleep for
three nights trying to figure out how I'm gonna mess somebody
up because they did something to me. Trust. Happy is the man that
trusteth in the Lord. If I do come up with something
hard, some way to really get somebody back, it's not gonna
make me happy. The trust in the Lord will. And
what about this one? Let's think about this. Maybe
this is what you're going through. Maybe this is your affliction.
Somebody that I love is suffering in whatever way. It doesn't have
to be physical suffering. There's a lot more suffering
than that. And I believe this is maybe the worst trial there
is for somebody you love to truly be in a bad place and there's
nothing you can do about it. That's when we're really gonna
find out whether you trust the Lord or not, right there. My daughter is grievously vexed
with a devil. You remember that? What are you going to do about
that? Well, you do what that mama did.
Don't shut up. Don't shut up. Cry to the Lord
and keep crying to him. Turn with me to Mark chapter
nine. And I wanna just look at a passage of scripture that came
to my mind when I was thinking about trusting the Lord in affliction
and in particular, when somebody you love is hurting or suffering or Mark 9, 17. One of the multitude answered
and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath
a dumb spirit, and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him,
and he foameth and gnashes with his teeth, and pines away, and
I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out, and
they could not. Now, think about what this man
did. What do we do? when the equivalent of this is
happening. When somebody that we love is
taken captive by Satan at his will. That's what unbelief is.
That's how unbelief is described in this book. You're taken captive
by Satan at his will. No free will about it. What do we do when somebody is
in this case spiritually? Because that's what this represents.
They're being torn up and they're miserable and they're in a real
bad place spiritually. And there may be some temporal, temporal reality involved with
that too. Well, this man came to the master
and said, I brought unto thee my son. That's a pretty good
start. Can we do that now? We can do that in the true sense
of what this text is teaching. Him physically bringing him was
the least of it. You bring him in your heart. Bring them in your heart to the
Lord. That's what this man is doing.
He's bearing his heart. He's saying, Lord, if you can
do anything, if you can help me, please help me. Well, first in verse 19, the
Lord said, oh, faithless generation, how long shall I be with you?
How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto me. And they brought him unto him,
and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tear him, and he fell
to the ground and wallowed foaming." If you can picture this now,
you can think what it would be like to see someone you love
like that. If we could see with spiritual
eyes, the spiritual condition of those that we love, many,
is way worse than this, way worse than this. This is just a picture. What it's like to be lost without
God in his Christ He asked his father How long
is it ago since this came to him and he said of a child? He'd been watching this happen
for a long time. Don't know how old the boy is
now But of a child He didn't say for about a year, or a couple
of years, he said, of a child, since he was a kid. And oft times
it hath cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy
him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help
us. Now notice that this is different
than a lot of folks that came to the Lord. There was no if
about it. The woman with the issue of blood
said if, but in a whole different way. She said, if I can just
touch the hem of his garment, if I can just touch him, I'll
be made whole. There was no if about whether
the Lord could do this or not. But this man says, if you can
do anything, you can hear the unbelief already, can't you?
And he owns up to it. He admits he's full of unbelief. But he came to the Lord anyway.
I'd say that's pretty good advice. Don't come to the Lord, even
because you think you have faith, come to him for faith. That's what happened here. But look at what the Lord said.
Oftentimes it's cast him into the fire and the waters to destroy
him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help
us. Jesus said unto him, if you can believe, all things are possible
to him that believeth. If you trust me. If you trust
me. Do you believe, he asked those
blind men, that I'm able to do this? This man was full of unbelief. But he had heard no doubt that
the Lord was doing some miraculous things. The Lord said, if you can believe.
He's saying there, it's not a question of if I can do something. The
problem here is not me, it's you. All things are possible to him
that believeth. And straightway the father of
the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe. He didn't come to the Lord with
faith. He came to the Lord for some. Come to the Lord, whether you
believe or don't believe, come to him anyway. But he didn't stop there. He
admitted that he was full of unbelief. Lord, I believe, help. And the Lord has taught me from
this to never say, Lord, I believe, without saying help. Help. Help thou mine unbelief. When Jesus saw that the people
came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit saying unto him,
thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him and don't
come back. I like that. Enter no more into
him, don't come back. And the spirit cried and rent
him sore and came out of him and he was as one dead in so
much that many said he's dead. Well, that would be one way to
solve the problem, wouldn't it? If the Lord just killed him and
took him to glory, that would have been all right too. It's
better than what was happening. But Jesus took him by the hand
and lifted him up. And he arose. That's when we will arise is
when he lifts us up. What a beautiful story. God help
us to trust him no matter No matter what, that's where
happiness comes from. True happiness. Every matter
that needs to be handled, cause us to handle it that way. Trusting
you and bringing everything to you. I've brought my son to you. I've brought my heart to you.
I've brought myself to you. I come to you. I have no other
help, no other hope. And he that spared not his own
son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with
him also freely give us all things?