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Proverbs 12:25
25 Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down,
but a good word makes him glad.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Good morning, everyone. If we haven't met, my name is Connor Coscree. I have the privilege of working with our students here at Redeemer. And we're gonna continue our series in Proverbs. So if you wanna go ahead and turn with me to Proverbs chapter 12, We're gonna spend all of our time in verse 25.
Connor Coskery:Proverbs chapter 12 verse 25. Let's read together. Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad. This is the word of the lord. Let's pray together.
Connor Coskery:Dear heavenly father, we thank you for your grace and mercy, for gathering us this morning on this Father's Day. Lord, we thank you for Crystal's testimony for, Lord, the father that you are, to all of us. And it's an unparalleled joy to acknowledge that you, father, are truly the father that we've always longed for and needed. And our most loving and engaged followers have been a wonderful hint of what it means to be your beloved children. But they could never be to us what you alone can be.
Connor Coskery:And our most broken and irresponsible fathers cannot rob our hearts of the joys we find in knowing you as father. Thank you for adopting us through the finished work of Jesus. Thank you for freeing us from our slavery to sin, and for giving us the spirit of sonship, a secure place in your family, and an inheritance that can never spoil our fate kept in heaven for us. Thank you, father, for promising to complete the work you began in us, and for always and only disciplining us in love even when it hurts. Father, thank you for the grace to forgive our earthly fathers who have failed us, including those who broke our trust, hurt us, and misrepresented you to us.
Connor Coskery:Continue to heal us and free us from the lingering effects. And thank you for grace to acknowledge our failings as parents, and for promising us the strength we need to humble ourselves before our children, to trust you to write stories of redemption in our families. Please do so, father, to your glory. And lastly, father, we thank you for the spiritual fathers you've given us, the dads of grace who help us discover more and more the incredible love of Christ. We pray all of this in Jesus's merciful and mighty name.
Connor Coskery:Amen. Recently, my wife and I have begun the search for a new car. We're my car is a little bit older, has had a few issues and we're about to welcome our 2nd child and need a little bit more room for car seats. Confession. We're gonna get real.
Connor Coskery:I'm not the best caretaker of my car. I'm embarrassed to admit how often I drive my car down to the last gallon, how often, I look at the tire pressure gauge. And it's telling me they're a little low, but I'm I'll I'll figure that out later. Or, you know the little sticker in the top of your windshield that says when to get your oil changed? That's that's, suggested.
Connor Coskery:Right? And so there's there I'm embarrassed how admit to admit how I don't really take great care of my car. My wife is the is the exact opposite of that. Praise God. So as we've been, exploring this car buying process, she's frequently said to me, Connor, you know if we buy you a new car, you're gonna have to take care of it.
Connor Coskery:And while that sounds like an obvious question, underneath that question is a challenge to wise living. Getting your car checked every 5,000 miles is wise. Keeping, correct tire pressure in your tires is wise. Making sure your oil's changed on time is wise. Ignoring the warning lights on your dashboard, that's not wise living.
Connor Coskery:The engineers have designed and built the cars that we drive with those lights for good reason. They tell us that something needs our attention. They tell us that something beneath the hood is going on, something deeper. Which stands a reason, if you neglect those lights long enough, then your car is gonna gradually stop working to the point where it doesn't work at all. This summer, we're going through Proverbs.
Connor Coskery:And Proverbs is about wisdom. And wisdom is different than knowledge. There's plenty of of really smart people in the world that are not wise. Wisdom is about submitting ourselves to the lord. It's about sitting at his feet to better understand how he designed the world and how we are to live in it.
Connor Coskery:And this morning, we're gonna talk about our hearts and why if we are going to grow in wisdom, it's essential for us to take a deep look at what's going on in the inside. So heart, as we'll see, is really important. God has not created us as a collection of autonomous parts. The Bible speaks of the heart as the complex fusion of body and soul where the heart is the epicenter. Proverbs 4, it says that we're to keep our heart with all vigilance for from it flow springs of life.
Connor Coskery:Everything flows from our hearts. God has created our hearts as the engine of our soul and just, our our drives, our longings, our affections, they reverberate from our hearts. They trickle out from our hearts. Just like the engine of a car moves the car from point a to point b, our hearts, they propel us forward, shaping who we are, where we go. The problem is our hearts are sick.
Connor Coskery:Our hearts are wounded. Instead of life flowing from our hearts, they're deceitful. Calm is replaced with anxiety. Fear for courage, sadness for joy. In In effect, the check engine light is on in all of us.
Connor Coskery:So if we're going to become wise, we can't continue looking past the warning lights. We can't continue neglecting the warning lights. We have to open the hood. We have to take a deep look. The proverb that we're gonna unpack, that we're gonna spend our time in is anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.
Connor Coskery:And it's a picture of the tension that we live in with sick hearts. We want to be joyful and content, but often, our experience is being weighed down. So the way that I want us to squeeze the juice out of this proverb this morning is I want us to take a big picture look at the heart. I want us to look back. We're gonna look back at the beginning.
Connor Coskery:How did God design our hearts to be? How do how how ought it be? And then we're gonna look at how it is, chiefly described in this proverb. This proverb gives a picture of what our experience is today. And after that, we're gonna look at what wisdom instructs us to do about it.
Connor Coskery:And my prayer is that as this unfolds, we'll see that whatever weight that we walked in with this morning, there's a real and present hope. God has a good word for us to hear this morning. So let's begin at the beginning. To experience the beauty of Proverbs, it's helpful to explore them alongside the rest of the bible. Because Proverbs tells us that there's a created order placed into the fabric of creation by its creator.
Connor Coskery:Things are meant, things are designed to work a certain way. God has designed his creation to work a certain way. But Proverbs 1225 gives us this clue right off the bat that things aren't as they should be. It contrasts anxiety with gladness or to rejoice. More specifically, anxiety is opposing joy, rejoicing.
Connor Coskery:Anxiety is weighing us down, preventing us from our natural propensity to want to rejoice. So before we look at what's gone wrong, let's look at how it ought to be. When God created everything, he admired his work. He took a step back and he declared it very good. God formed man from the dust.
Connor Coskery:He breathed he breathed life into his nostrils, and man was a living creature. With Adam and Eve made in the image of God, or given a garden with everything they could ever imagine, everything they could ever need, and they were in perfect relationship with God, their father and creator. This is a picture of wholeness. This is a picture where nothing is lacking. There's infinite joy and gladness.
Connor Coskery:Adam and Eve are in perfect relationship with God their father, perfect relationship with each other, and perfect relationship with themselves. But that state of perfection didn't last. Instead, our first parents disobeyed God's command, and the wholeness that they experienced was shattered into a 1000000 pieces. Sin replaces perfect harmony with brokenness. And there's several aspects to this brokenness.
Connor Coskery:We have, the brokenness between our perfect relationship with God, our father. The perfect relationship that we experienced with each other, with the natural world around us, that's broken. And then our relationship with ourselves is broken. The sickness of sin infects the deepest arteries in our hearts. And at the end of Genesis 3, God casts Adam and Eve out of the garden, and immediately, we see the devastating effects of the sin spiral.
Connor Coskery:We see the murder of, in Cain and Abel. We see the flood where the lord saw that every intention, the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually. We see David who was a, a man after God's own heart, who after committing adultery cries out to God. He's confronted with this sin and he cries out to God. What does he say?
Connor Coskery:He says, create in me a clean heart, oh God. Renew a right spirit within me. God commands his people to love the lord with all of your heart, soul, and strength, and instead, all throughout the Bible, following Genesis 3, we see wounded hearts leading God's people away from wisdom and towards foolishness. And the the wisdom literature, it it really explores this internal dissonance that we experience, this brokenness, with ourselves. And, Ecclesiastes, especially, the preacher in Ecclesiastes, he, he he he looks out and tries to find satisfaction in the world, and he can't find any.
Connor Coskery:And he reflects the lord has put eternity into man's heart. It's this there has to be something more. Our hearts are after eternal things. Deep inside, we realize that this isn't how it's supposed to be, and it isn't. Which brings us back to the proverb today.
Connor Coskery:And we've looked at how things ought to be, how it is, these various dimensions of brokenness that we experience, now I want us to look at this proverb, which is a, a picture, a facet of the diamond that we experience among this brokenness. So we're gonna explore it in 2 parts. The first part, first line, second part, the second line. So part a, anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down. One of the effects of living in a broken world is anxiety.
Connor Coskery:Now, general anxiety is a normal part of living. God has actually designed us with a biological warning system, that that tells us when something isn't right. It tells us, that that there's something deeper going on and it keeps us alert so that we're prepared to act in the face of danger. For example, if my son is playing near the street, it's good that I feel anxiety when I look and I see a car, screaming down the road. That that prepares me that in the event that he begin to want begins to wander into the street, I can act quickly.
Connor Coskery:Anxiety is normal, and it and it fluctuates every day based on what's going on. It's when there's this particular sense of foreboding, when we're dwelling on the what ifs, what may or may not happen that anxiety becomes really difficult to work through. And as I've sat in this proverb, this image of, us carrying around a backpack has, has come to mind. I haven't been able to shake it. So, imagine yourself as you think about, anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down that we're all carrying around a backpack.
Connor Coskery:And everything that we experience, everything going on in our lives is a rock that goes into that backpack. Some of those rocks are gonna feel real really small. Hardly recognize those rocks. But some of the rocks that go into that backpack are gonna be really heavy. They're gonna feel like boulders that weigh us down.
Connor Coskery:The this proverb it's describing the occasions when our general anxiety, the anxiety that is a normal part of living that we all experience, begins to tip the scales and becomes really heavy. So drawing on that picture of the backpack, let's think through what what are some of those rocks that might be weighing us down? Global pandemic. That's a big giant rock that the entire world carries around in its backpack and is still expressing itself, still supplying weight to us in various ways every day. I have the opportunity to work with students and I see consistently this pressure to fit in, to find the right friends, to make good grades, to be involved in the right clubs, to get into that honor society, to excel in that sport, to make that ACT or SAT score so that you can get into that college or to discern whether or not I wanna go to college.
Connor Coskery:Those are rocks. Maybe you're anxious about the future, what your next step's gonna be. You're dealing with friendship drama. You're you just moved to Birmingham, and you're discovering that community is hard, especially as you hold it in tension with the work life grind and the fact that you don't have friends. Perhaps you're in a season where seemingly all of your friends are getting married, and you're really wrestling with your singleness.
Connor Coskery:Those are rocks. Perhaps you're struggling with chronic illness. Your desire for kids is going unmet. Money in your wallet's starting to get tight. Those are rocks.
Connor Coskery:Parents, they want their kids to be happy, healthy, known, and loved in a world that frankly feels really dangerous. Or maybe you're preparing to to move your your first born off to college. And as you're grieving that relational change, you're also discerning how to honor your parents as they grow older. Rocks. These are examples of big rocks.
Connor Coskery:And on top of those big rocks are a bunch of smaller rocks that are being piled on every single day. To some degree, we all experience the weight of anxiety. We realize it shouldn't be this hard, and it shouldn't. The air but it is the air that we breathe in a broken world with broken bodies. I do wanna be really clear that while we all experience anxiety, some experience anxiety in more pronounced and overwhelming ways.
Connor Coskery:And we live in a culture where there can be a lot of shame surrounding why those feelings are there. So if you struggle with clinical diagnosed anxiety, I want you to hear that it does not mean that you lack faith or self control. It does not mean that you are uniquely sinful. It does not mean that those feelings are a punishment or broken. And even the most obedient pilgrims suffer along the journey.
Connor Coskery:And I really hope that you find redeemer to be a safe place where you can be known and loved and cared for. This proverb has become really important to me in my own life as I've been in a season of really unpacking the rocks in my own heart, because my story is filled with really heavy seasons of anxiety. I'm a first born, a first born to the t. I, I grew up always wanting to please the important people in my life. Very much striving to get the good grades, have the great friends, to, excel on the sports field.
Connor Coskery:And when those things didn't happen or when I, perceived failure in those areas, I was weighed down. And then towards the end of high school, my parents got a divorce. And what I did, as a really, really good compartmentalizer, someone who likes control, I'm really good at putting things in filing cabinets, I suppressed all of those feelings. I pushed them down and really convinced myself that I if I left those rocks in my heart alone long enough, that they would finally disappear. Fast forward to today, and I've been confronted with the reality that these patterns of suppressing, how it's affected me, how it's changed me, how it shaped me, Instead of entering into discomfort, when those I care and love for are calling out, crying out for me, I want to run and I want to avoid it.
Connor Coskery:I've become so accustomed to being weighed down that the alternative seems really, really scary. Friends, we aren't meant to live this way. We aren't meant to carry around this weight in our hearts. By God's grace, I've had people in my life who have really called me to courage, and and promised that they aren't going anywhere. I'm I'm really in that season right now of taking out those rocks and taking a a really hard look at them.
Connor Coskery:And friends, it's hard and it's messy and it's really uncomfortable. They really don't disappear easily. But there's a lightness, perhaps to quote the proverb, there there's a gladness that I'm starting to taste. God created our hearts whole, but because of Finn's feelings that he has given us that are meant for our good weigh us down. The engines of our souls is malfunctioning.
Connor Coskery:Our drives, desires, our affections, our longings, they're out of sorts. So what does wisdom say to do about it? Let's shift our focus to part b of the proverb. Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad. Wisdom's answer to our anxious hearts is a good word.
Connor Coskery:The good word is the route to gladness. And while this is surely talking about encouragement, we're gonna talk about that in a second, there's a deeper component as well. Something must first happen to us. Anxiety is a symptom of something deeper going on. Something internal that's not right needs to be fixed and what we see, especially as we explore the scriptures, we see that if we really want to experience the true gladness in our hearts, this heart isn't gonna do it.
Connor Coskery:We need a new heart. And the prophets prepared the way for this. As that sin spiral amplified, it it amplified that need for something more, something foundational to happen, something fundamental to change in us. Ezekiel, the prophet, he described the future hope of God's people as being sprinkled clean and given a heart transplant. Hearts of stone replaced with a heart of flesh.
Connor Coskery:The prophet Jeremiah, similarly looking forward to that new covenant life, where the words of the Lord will be written on our hearts. We'll be totally forgiven, and the the God that we know, he will truly be our God and we will know that he that we are his people. And this is all driving to finally finally Jesus, the good word made flesh, who by his life, death, and resurrection, he sprinkles us clean and he declares us righteous and forgiven. Jesus removes our stony hearts and gives us hearts of flesh that filled with the Holy Spirit desire, are drawn to the wisdom of God that that that really believes and experiences that joy and pleasure is found in his presence. That is the fundamental good word that our hearts need.
Connor Coskery:Sins forgiven, hearts replaced, adopted as children under the king, all by grace. Not by what you've done. By grace, we are saved through faith. Because that that word, that opens the door for freedom and lightness that our hearts desire. So when we place our faith in Jesus, we're bringing them to someone who understands us.
Connor Coskery:We're bringing them to the wounded healer, the suffering servant, the great high priest who's able to sympathize with our weakness. He understands the weight that we carry, and he freely offers us an immovable love and identity that is wider than our worst fears, longer than our what ifs, and higher than our greatest anxieties. It's from that reality, as adopted children that Jesus then begs us to bring the weight to him. And we can trust him. We can trust him because he's not only felt the anxiety that we carry, but he showed us what to do with them.
Connor Coskery:We're given a a vivid example of this in the Garden of Gethsemane when, right before Jesus is betrayed, he says, my soul is very sorrowful. Jesus was anxious. He felt the weight of what was going to happen in the next 24 hours. And what does he do after he says that? 2 simple things.
Connor Coskery:He gathers his friends, and he pours out his heart to God. He put his heart, his pain, his anxiety in the most trustworthy hands. He embodied the way of Psalm 62, which says to trust in Him at all times, oh people. Pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us.
Connor Coskery:Jesus paves the way. He shows us what to do. We bring others into our stories, and it's often hard and messy and uncomfortable. Because there's no quick fix, there's no spiritual pill. The path towards wholeness, the path that our hearts long for, it must be a community project.
Connor Coskery:It must we we need each other. I need you. You need me. And as we do that, perhaps together, we bring our hearts to God in prayer, and we can do that because he's safe. You see that in Psalm 62.
Connor Coskery:God is a refuge for us. He's both close enough and strong enough to handle our most heavy burdens. Friends, he asks for them. He wants them. He can handle them.
Connor Coskery:What's weighing you down? What did you walk in with this morning that's weighing you down? What's what rock is in that backpack that is really weighing you down? And to think of it another way, what what have you become numb to that you you really believe that if I just if I just don't think about it, it'll finally disappear? And is there anyone in your life that you need to invite in, That you need to say, I need help.
Connor Coskery:I hope this community is a place where you feel safe. Where we really do commit to walk with 1 another, perhaps carry one another as we go. It's one of the reasons that we place such an emphasis on church membership, covenant membership. It isn't just so that we can know the names on a roll, but it's we really want to know you. We really want to commit to you.
Connor Coskery:We really want to to know each other so that we can care deeply for one another in community. The path towards gladness, it must begin there, where with new hearts we walk with each other. And as we do that day by day, we're made ready to receive the good words that our souls thirst for. So what are the good words? Now, Jeff's gonna talk about the importance of our speech in a couple of weeks.
Connor Coskery:I'm gonna be brief. But to define, a good word is encouragement, given to comfort, inspire, urge, and foster in us perseverance. A good word is encouragement. Given to comfort, inspire, urge and foster in us perseverance. They're words that motivate us to stand firm, to keep fighting, to finish the race.
Connor Coskery:Words are powerful. Proverbs 25:11 says, a word fitly spoken is like an apple of gold in a setting of silver. Proverbs 16/24 says gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body. Good words go deeper than a compliment. Good words are actually healing and nourishing to our souls.
Connor Coskery:They're specific. They're attentive to what we're going through. They make us feel seen. They make us feel known. Example, a good word might be a simple but profound, I love you to a friend, from a friend.
Connor Coskery:It's pointing out a job well done, especially to those whose work might go unnoticed. It's saying, hey, friend, I see the work that you're doing, and I know that a lot of people don't see it, but the way that you care for your family, that stirs my faith. It's telling your kids that you're proud of them. And kids, it's telling your parents that you're thankful for them. It's rebuking a friend and calling them to turn from sin.
Connor Coskery:That's a hard word, but that's a good word. And then turning around and reminding perhaps that same friend, hey, I'm not going anywhere. I'm here with you. It's worshiping together. Worshiping worshiping together is the communal receiving of good words where we sing, we hear, we confess the good news together.
Connor Coskery:We often think these things, why don't we start sharing them out loud? Who in your life needs to hear a good word? Don't hesitate. Don't hesitate from telling them, because these words, they keep us moving forward. They help lighten the load, and they make us glad.
Connor Coskery:We're called to deliver these words to one another. I love how the author of Hebrews, he really connects all the dots in chapter 10 verse 22 when he says, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, With our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works. Together with true hearts, full of faith, sprinkled, clean, and washed pure, we hold fast to our confession. And while we hold fast, we stir up one another.
Connor Coskery:We give encouragement. We encourage one another to love and good works, and we can persevere. We can do all of that. We persevere because our God is faithful. The Christian life.
Connor Coskery:If you're a follower of Christ, the life that we walk is characterized by this longing for wholeness in the midst of brokenness. Because even with our new heart, Jesus promises that the way forward is gonna be really hard. There's still going to be seasons when anxiety becomes really, really heavy, which reinforces why we can't go at it alone. The body of Christ isn't just a collection of people. It's God's heart extended to us.
Connor Coskery:So whether we're in seasons of lightness or weightiness, all of us are groaning for redemption, to borrow phrase from Paul in Romans 8. We're groaning for redemption, but because of Jesus, we groan with a real and certain hope. The weight that we carry no longer defines us. We are already more than conquerors and we can rejoice that there will be a day when our heart drives, longings and affections will be finally directed back to their proper end. There's gonna be a day, friends, when loving the lord with all of our heart is easy.
Connor Coskery:Or given a preview of that day in Revelation 21 when God promises to wipe away our tears. Wiping away our tears, that's the final step before we enter eternal gladness. And I love how author, to share some more in her book, Prayer in the Night, she imagines that moment. So I quote, someday we will stand before God and hear our life stories, told for the first time accurately and in their entirety, with all the twists and turns and meaning we couldn't follow when we lived through them. Catch this.
Connor Coskery:And we will get to weep one last time with God himself. Weep with the one who alone is able to permanently wipe away our tears. End quote. Church, that day is coming. When the anxiety, the weight that we carry will finally and fully make sense, and then God will wipe away those tears, and we will be ushered into eternal gladness in his presence forever.
Connor Coskery:We will forever rejoice with God as our father. So let's live our lives looking forward to that hope, seeking out growing in wisdom along the way. Let's unpack the anxiety in our hearts. That's wise living. That's being attentive to what's going on and addressing it, but let's not stop there.
Connor Coskery:No. Let's enter in. Let's bring others into our stories because we know it's gonna be a long journey. And as we do that, as we go, let's make sure our speech is flavored with good words for weary saints, Words that push us to rejoice and be glad. Amen?
Connor Coskery:Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace and mercy in our lives. You've never left us. You've never forgotten us.
Connor Coskery:And we know this to be true in Jesus. Lord, we thank you that you have given us new hearts, and I pray that from those hearts, rivers of encouragement will flow to weary brothers and sisters. I pray that the weight that is represented across this room would be lifted. Lord, there are no quick fixes, but you've given us each other. Would you pour out your grace among us that we might truly rejoice and be glad all of our days.
Connor Coskery:The name of the father, son, and holy spirit. Amen.