What does lean not on you own understanding mean? Let’s talk about the answer to your question.
Proverbs 3:5-6
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
God’s Ways are Often Difficult to Understand
The Difficulty
Even God’s prophets struggled. The prophet Habakkuk illustrated this truth. He brought God’s message to the Jews about six hundred years before Jesus’s birth. He wrote just after the Assyrian Empire had fallen and before the Babylonians invaded Judah.
Habakkuk looked around and saw all the injustice among God’s people in his country. He cried out to God, wondering why He didn’t hear and act:
“O Lord, how long shall I cry, and You will not hear? Or cry to You, “Violence!” and You will not save? …
Plundering and violence are before me; strife and contention arise…. and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore injustice proceeds” (Habakkuk 1:2-5).
The Unexpected (1)
God answered, but not how the prophet expected:
“For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe.… For I am raising up the Chaldeans (Babylonians) … that bitter and hasty nation.… They are terrible and dreadful; their justice and their dignity proceed from themselves” (Habakkuk 1:5-7).
God’s judgment on Judah’s wickedness wasn’t slow; it was imminent. God would use the Babylonians to judge His people. They had a reputation as Pagans, idolaters, warmongers, those who destroyed other peoples, and lived by their own ungodly rules. They were worse than the Judeans he complained about!
The Objection
So, the prophet objected:
“Your (God’s) eyes are too pure to look on evil, and You cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously (the Babylonians), and hold Your tongue when the wicked devours the man who is more righteous than he (the Jews)?” (Habakkuk 1:13).
The Solution (1)
But God explained that after He’d used the Babylonians to judge His people, He’d also bring judgment on the Babylonians. And the prophet bowed to God’s righteous ways:
“Yet I will wait quietly for the day when calamity comes on the people invading us” (Habakkuk 3:16).
God judges His people before He judges outsiders. It may not be how we’d do things, but it’s only fair and guards God’s reputation with unbelievers! It’s wise.
The Suffering
The Apostle Paul explained it to the early Church. These believers, Peter’s readers, were going through fiery ordeals and suffering for their testimony for Jesus (1 Peter 4:12-16). They suffered for doing good while unbelievers tortured them without fear.
This didn’t seem just to them. They wondered: Isn’t God just, and if so, how can this be? Once again, we see God’s way:
“For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God, and if it begins first with us, what shall the end be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If the righteous one is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4:17-18).
The Unexpected (2)
If we didn’t know God’s ways, we would lean on our own understanding and judge the ungodly first. When Jesus appeared, even His disciples thought He came to the established spiritual leaders and those they believed God had blessed – like the rich! Yet Jesus taught them that wealth prevented people from entering God’s Kingdom:
“Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”… “They were astonished beyond measure, saying among themselves, “Who then can be saved?” (Mark 10:23, 26)”
Jesus came to save the meek, the blind, and all the disadvantaged. That was the mark of His ministry and His Messiahship:
“For observe your calling, brothers. Among you, not many wise men according to the flesh, not many mighty men, and not many noble men were called” (1 Corinthians 1:26).
The ‘Foolishness’
God’s wisdom is evident in providing salvation through the seeming ‘foolishness’ of the cross. God’s salvation isn’t based on any human merit but entirely on the finished work of Christ, who died on the cross and rose again to provide our salvation. The Apostle Paul said:
“For to those who are perishing, the preaching of the cross is foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent” (1 Corinthians 1:18-19).
What Does Lean Not on Your Own Understanding Mean?
The Solution (2)
The natural man can’t find God through his own understanding, merit, or goodness. God is all-wise, and we are all fallen creatures. We depend on God for salvation and for how to best live our lives. Jesus described how to be a wise man:
“Whoever hears these sayings of Mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on a rock.”
Lean on God’s Understanding
We lean on God’s understanding, not ours, when we read and do His word, the Bible.
