How Can You Be Sure God Loves You?

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come this morning to one of the most profound texts in Proverbs, and really, in the entire Bible. I feel hopelessly inadequate to preach this text, for it tells us to be content when suffering. In our culture, which no longer recognizes any difference between discipline and abuse, the message of Proverbs 3:11-12 is radical, and indeed hateful to many. The passage tells us that God inflicts suffering on His children, not as punishment to satisfy His justice, but rather as discipline or chastening, to benefit them and make them into the kind of people they ought to be. God had one Son without sin but He has no sons without suffering! And so, as our passage makes abundantly clear, God’s chastening is for sons. It is administered in the context of faith, hope, and love. And you simply must work with it, rather than against it. Don’t resist it. Don’t reject it. Submit to it, for it is a mark of His love.