Proverbs 2:1: Clean your room and you’ll get a cookie!

“My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you,”
-Proverbs 2:1

I sort of live life according to a reward system. It’s a rather simple thing. If I complete a project or do really well at work, I may buy myself a CD or something. And normally I won’t buy myself those things UNLESS I have done something worthy of it. When I got my Masters degree, for example, I bought the fifth season of Babylon 5. When I sold my first essay, I bought a guitar effects processor.

Basically, it’s the adult version of “You can’t have dessert until you clean your plate.”

Solomon here explains the benefits of following the Lord, and it’s tempting to think of this passage as a reward system, as though God were bribing people to become His friends. “Follow me and I’ll give you some ice cream,” it seems to be saying.

But that’s not quite it. The promise here is more in line with this one: “Work hard in school and you’ll have the skills to succeed in life.” See, God is not promising to buy you stuff when you do a good job. He is offering to change you into something better.

But we need to take a role in this change.

Our first part in this process is to receive His words and treasure His commandments. What does this mean? Well, God’s word is the Bible, so that’s a good place to start. If we receive it, that means we hear it, or read it. Which means we need to open the Bible and take a look.

Then we have to treasure it. So it doesn’t just mean reading, but also studying it, memorizing it, meditating upon it. It means following what it says.

And most of you are cringing at the thought.

You shouldn’t, because the story the Bible tells is a story specifically for YOU. It is about how all of us got caught up in rebellion against God when we went after our own desires, lusts, pride, anger, and greed, but how He sought to save us anyway. God came to earth in the form of a man to help us back. In His death on the Cross, He took the penalty for our rebellion.

The Bible tells of God’s great love and mercy for you. It is a story I never grow weary of.

We’re going to look at all the rewards of this in the coming entries, but they do not mean anything without Jesus. Only through Him can we escape death. Repent and turn to Him now, and begin this journey into life.