Year 5, Day 312: Proverbs 21

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Approval

• Approval: We all need to feel as though we are accepted.  When we seek the approval of God, our Up is in the right place.  But when we seek the approval of other people besides God, we open the door to pursuing false gods and risk putting someone or something other than God in our Up position.

I am often captivated by certain verses – especially certain topics.  One of my favorite topics is just how many things that the Old Testament tells us that God loves more than animal sacrifices.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that the sacrifices are wrong.  Clearly the Levitical Law tells us that sacrifices are a joy to the Lord when done the right way and for the right reasons.  But that doesn’t mean that the Lord doesn’t love something more.

In Proverbs 21:3 we have such a captivating verse.  Doing righteousness and living out justice is more pleasing to the Lord than sacrifice.  I think it is worth my time today to dive deep into this particular verse at the expense of the rest of the chapter.  It is always a good pursuit to determine what is pleasing to the Lord.

The reason for these verses is quite simple.  When we live righteously, we demonstrate to the Lord that we know His expectations and we live up to them.  When we seek justice we demonstrate to the Lord that we value what He values.  It should make much sense to think that the Lord would prefer us to value what we values before we speak or act than to have to apologize and rectify that we made an error!  Who wouldn’t want to have the people choose to share values before acting than to have to repent and change in retrospect?

Thankfully, we can seek forgiveness when we make mistakes because our Lord is forgiving.  But if we truly want the approval of the Lord, we need to learn to value what the Lord values and live that way.  People may say that “it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” but in truth it is easiest to live by assimilating the Lord’s culture and being able to live without needing to ask anything because the Lord’s ways already are our ways.

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