[Steve Myers] There's a passage in the Bible that's often used as a graduation scripture. It's found in Proverbs 16:3. And you'll recognize right away why this is often quoted to graduates, and maybe you'll even see it in a graduation card. And it says, "Commit your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established." Short, little succinct, little phrase that certainly seems to say it all. In fact, some of the translations will say, "Commit whatever you do to the Lord, and your plans will succeed." So it definitely sounds like one of those types of graduation scriptures that would encourage grads to go on and really put their life in God's hands. Now, one of the things in this particular passage that you might overlook by just relegating it to a nice little catchphrase is this word commit. Commit your works. This particular word is the Hebrew word galgal, or sometimes it's translated as galal.

Other times, the form of this word, the base word, is also translated gilgal. And in the New Testament, you can find this same base word in Golgotha because it carries the connotation of rolling away. Rolling away. Galal, in this particular passage. Roll away your works to the Lord, which is this implication of what happened when ancient Israel came into the Promised Land. When they came into the Promised Land, they started at Gilgal, and God says in Joshua 5, "Here's when I rolled away the reproach of Egypt." And we have that foreshadowing of what Christ would ultimately do when He rolls away our sin at the crucifixion and the resurrection. Because that place, Golgotha, the place of the skull where Christ was crucified, literally was that time, with that sacrifice, that our sins were rolled away. 

So imagine this now with Proverbs 16. We have this concept of rolling away our works, rolling away the sin in our lives, committing ourselves to God, and what would be the conclusion of doing that very thing. You see, when we put our life into God's hands, and we are repentant, and we are people who are forgiven that stand before him, our plans will succeed. And so what a beautiful passage that really does say it all when it comes to our commitment to God.

That's BT Daily. We'll see you next time.