Proverbs 4: Happiness and Wisdom

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Today, we're going to be looking at the pursuit of happiness, okay, and just a little bit of a review.

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Remember that Proverbs is wisdom literature, which has some very specific connotations in biblical interpretation.

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The purpose of the book is to make one wise, and we know, we've already seen this in chapter one, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of wisdom. There can be no real wisdom apart from fearing

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God. And then remember that Proverbs uses many different types of literary devices, and one of the problems that we have in the church is the misinterpretation of Proverbs based on trying to interpret it like you would interpret any other book, and it's different.

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The way it's constructed is different, its goal is different, all right, and there are not too many absolute promises given in the book of Proverbs.

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Proverbs tells us it's very practical, and it tells us the way things are, and then it gives us wisdom in general terms.

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It can get specific, but what I mean by general terms is that, well, you'll see as we go that some of the promises that we're going to see even today are not universal in the sense that it's guaranteed in this life.

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All right, so the text for this morning, continuing along is Proverbs 3, verses 13 to 18.

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How blessed is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding, for her profit is better than the profit of silver, and her gain better than fine gold.

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She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire compares to her. Continuing along, long life is in her right hand, in her left hand are riches and honor.

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Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who hold her fast.

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All right, it's interesting, I put up here the

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Declaration of Independence, it's almost ironic that I should do that in light of the recent election.

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But here's how the second paragraph opens, all right?

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We hold these truths to be self -evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their

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Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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Now notice the three specific unalienable rights that the Declaration holds forth.

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All right, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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And I don't want to get into the politics of it, but this nation has certainly been blessed since its founding with these rights.

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And again, we can argue how much they're going to remain with us or not, but that's not my point this morning, okay?

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If we are endowed with these rights, the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and you have to say that this nation is obsessed with the pursuit of happiness, all right?

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If that's the case, and that's a right that we have, and people are pursuing it, why is there so little real happiness in the country today, okay?

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People are pursuing happiness in all the wrong ways, all right?

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That's really the answer. But you have to look and say that they certainly are pursuing it when you look at the size of the entertainment industry.

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When I was a kid, just to give you a little example, when I was a kid, we had one movie theater in town, and it played one feature all week long, and you didn't have choices.

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And because chances are, if you went to the next town over, that movie theater was playing the same one that you were playing, that was in your town.

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Now, within a short driving distance of where I live, there are numerous multiplex theaters, and we have a choice every week of about 10 to 12 movies that you can choose to see.

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So, it's amazing, and then look at the variety of television.

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Again, when I was a kid, we had, I think, like nine channels on a TV, and now,

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I mean, it's into the hundreds of stations. So, let me ask you a few more questions.

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Okay, how is it that people are pursuing happiness in all the wrong ways?

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And with this advent of all this entertainment and amusement, and, oh, by the way, do you know the actual root words that come together to be amusement, amuse?

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No thinking. All right, so, anyway, and also, at the same time we have this big influx of entertainment, we have an increase in clinical depression.

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The counseling industry is multi -million dollars, all right? So, what we're seeing, the answer to this question is people are pursuing happiness in all the wrong ways, all right?

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Money, fame, power, drugs, relationships, anything else that people pursue, and what are they pursuing?

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They're pursuing happiness in all of these things, and it all winds up. They might get a degree of temporary relief, but none of them lasts.

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So, the question is, then, how does one find true happiness? And, of course, the scripture, specifically

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Proverbs, tells us, How blessed is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding.

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Now, notice, this is a beatitude, all right? Most often when you mention beatitudes from scripture, people think immediately of what?

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Matthew 5, all right? And that's true, you have a whole chunk of them there, but the

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Bible is filled with beatitudes, and here's another one. How blessed is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding.

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Now, some translations say happy instead of blessed, and it's not that it's wrong, it's just that the blessedness is much more than just happiness.

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It includes happiness, but it is, in fact, very much more than happiness.

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Blessedness is a state of being related to your standing before God. If you go through the beatitudes in Matthew 5, or any of the other beatitudes, who is the blessed man?

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The blessed man is the one who has come to Christ, all right? And that's a very important distinction to make, because your state of blessedness is not dependent upon the emotional status of the individual, all right?

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You can, your blessedness does not change because you go through tough times, all right?

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Happiness, on the other hand, is an emotion or an emotional state which can go up and come down, you know, dependent upon your circumstances, all right?

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So the fact that it's a positional state, the blessed man may find himself in a position where he has great sorrow in his heart, and yet he's still a blessed man.

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So who is the blessed man, all right? Look at the text.

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How blessed is the man who finds wisdom, all right? He's the one who finds wisdom and understanding.

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Now the question then is, what does that mean? Well, throughout our study, even so far in Proverbs, we've seen that wisdom is personified in Jesus Christ.

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You can't begin to talk about wisdom and gaining it without talking about Jesus Christ.

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And we've seen in the ninth chapter of Proverbs, we see the same exact words as used in this.

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So look at this. Who is the man who finds wisdom and understanding? Proverbs 9, 10. The fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Notice the same two concepts, wisdom and understanding.

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And how does one find that? Only in the fear of the

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Lord. And so the blessed man is the one who, first and foremost, has come to Jesus Christ.

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He's the one who recognized that the wisdom of men is foolishness at best, and he has bowed the knee to Jesus Christ.

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And he's the one who has repented of his sin and acknowledged that Jesus Christ is

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Lord of his life. That's the beginning of wisdom. There can be no understanding of wisdom apart from that.

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Continuing with this, the man who finds wisdom and understanding, we see the same thing in the very first chapter.

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Remember when we went through this first chapter of Proverbs. Wisdom shouts in the street, she lifts her voice in the square.

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At the head of the noisy street, she cries out. At the entrance of the gates in the city, she utters her sayings.

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How long, O naive ones, will you love simplicity? And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing and fools hate knowledge.

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Turn to my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you. I will make my words known to you.

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Notice again how important it is. You cannot find true wisdom apart from Jesus Christ.

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Jesus Christ is the answer to depression, to despair, to all the answers, all the questions of life.

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All right. So he is the one, in fact, who has his sins have been forgiven and he is now a child of God.

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So the state of being blessed is realized with faithfulness and obedience. What I mean by that is simply this.

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Many Christians don't find themselves in a state of joy and rejoicing, but find themselves at times in a place of despair.

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The quote Christian counseling industry is is unbelievable in how large it has grown and with the problems.

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Unfortunately, many churches don't even have what they call Christian counseling. And they send their people out for counseling.

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All right. And so it's become this great enterprise and it's making money for many people.

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All right. So many people are missing. Keep this in mind, every

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Christian is in a state of blessedness, but not all Christians enjoy the blessings to the fullest degree.

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There's the sad part of it. To be in a state where you can receive all of this and then not receive the benefit of it.

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Okay. I, I, I'm using this just as an example. This, this is not a one to one relationship, but I chose the assurance of salvation because how it's related in our confession.

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Assurance of salvation is part of the blessings that we receive as we follow

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Christ. But yet not every Christian has assurance of salvation. And that makes a difference.

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When you are assured that you are saved, you are more bold. You don't have a problem going out.

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And if people come against you, you're fine. What happens to the person who's waving? I don't know if, you know, I'm not,

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I'm not sure if I'm safe. They're timid, they're shy, and they are not experiencing the blessing.

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So the London Baptist confession, chapter 18, paragraph four says this.

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Okay. True believers. Now, now, again, this is just on assurance, but it applies.

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The same principle applies to all of the Christian life. True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways, shaken, diminished, and intermitted.

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Okay. Your faith can be shaken as by negligence and preserving of it by falling into some special sin, which wounded wounds the conscience and gives this given by the

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By some sudden or vehement temptation by God's withdrawing the light of his countenance and suffering, even such as feared him to walk in darkness, tend to have no light yet.

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They are never destitute of the seat of God in the life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty out of which by the operation of the spirit, this assurance may in due time be revived.

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And by the, which in the meantime, they are preserved from utter despair.

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I just love that paragraph because it's so descriptive of the basic Christian life that was written in 1689, 1677, actually, and yet how appropriate it is today, we can waver in our faith.

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Why not? Because of God, but because of us. And unfortunately, many Christians are, you seem, you know, and in fact,

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I've even described it sometime, some churches, it's like they have a churches, churches full of Eeyores, you know, you know who

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Eeyore is from Winnie the Pooh. All right. How's it going today? Not so bad, if I can say so, you know, just doom and gloom.

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Yeah. Thanks for noticing. Not that it matters, you know. Uh, whereas if you are diligently using the means of grace and, and gaining biblical wisdom, uh, this is what we have promised.

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We can have the assurance of salvation. Assurance of salvation is equated with maturity in Christ.

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The more you are sanctified, the more assured you will be. Okay. So the next thing we're going to look at is the value of wisdom.

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All right. We've looked at who is blessed. Now we're going to look at the value of wisdom. And the scripture says a lot about this in verses 14 and 15, uh, which is we're following right along in our text for its profit is better than the profit of silver and its gain than fine gold.

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She is more precious than jewels and nothing you desire compares to her. Now notice how profit is very difficult to try to outline.

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It's it doesn't follow the normal course, but you find these sections, which are so logically consistent.

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First, how, who is the blessed man? That's it. And then it tells you, all right, the man who gains wisdom.

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And now we find out, well, how valuable is this? All right. It's better than the profit is better than the profit of silver.

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All right. Notice the comparison to precious metals and jewels.

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All right. Um, she's more precious than jewels.

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Nothing you desire compares with her. Notice that nothing you desire compares with her.

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Just, I want you to think about that just for a second. All right. And ask yourself, what are the desires of your heart?

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If you had a minute, you know, let's, let's do one of these little exercise. Just put all of the thoughts aside for a minute.

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And if you had, what are, what is the overriding desire of your heart? The one thing in this life, temporally

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I'm talking about now in temporal sense, what is the one thing that you would desire more than anything else?

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If you had your choice, don't, I'm not looking for hands or anything else. It's a rhetorical question.

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All right. Rhetorical question is, you know, question you don't have to answer. I sometimes

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I give rhetorical answers. They just don't need a question. All right. But, uh, that was actually

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Tommy Smothers who said that. All right. So what are the desires of your heart?

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All right. Whatever it is, according to this, look at what it says. And nothing you desire compares with her.

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Whatever you desire, nothing even comes close to the wisdom you receive from Jesus Christ and the state of blessedness that you find yourself in when you are with him.

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All right. Um, all right.

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I just, I just did get a little ahead of myself here. Okay. So, so there's the value of, of wisdom, which we see so very, very clearly.

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But then we move on to, uh, the last section of this, which is the rewards of wisdom.

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All right. And this is, this is where you have to be very careful as we go through this.

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All right. The text specifies four specific blessings for the man who finds wisdom.

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Okay. And here we have it. Verse 16, 17, long life is in her right hand and her left hand are riches in honor.

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Her ways are pleasant ways and all her paths are peace. Okay. Now long life.

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Riches in honor. Pleasant ways, paths are peace.

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Now here's where you have to be very careful and understand how Proverbs teaches, not everybody is going to be a millionaire just because you come to Christ.

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Not everybody is going to live to be 105 just because you come to Christ. All right.

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So we need to understand something. Same thing with pleasant ways and et cetera. We know that because Christ has promised that in this life you will have tribulation.

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So what is going on here with Proverbs? Well, you need to understand again, how Proverbs works.

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These are general principles of life, but God does not necessarily put everybody through the same path in this life.

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All right. But, and ultimately, and this is what you have to look at too.

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Ultimately, all the temporal blessings of Proverbs become exemplary, not only exemplified, but amplified in the eternal state.

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All of these are ultimately fulfilled to perfection in the, in the eternal state.

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That being said, all right, so there's, there's the fourth four rewards of wisdom, long life, riches in honor, pleasant pleasantness and peace.

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And again, we can look and see that ultimately there will be, think, think about heaven, if you have a long life in heaven, it's eternal, all right.

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Riches in honor, you're going to be casting crowns at his feet. They mean nothing.

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You're going to be walking on gold. Okay. Pleasantness. What can be more pleasant than being with, with all the saints throughout all eternity and peace that ultimate peace is what it's always, when you ever see peace in scripture, the ultimate meaning is peace with God.

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Okay. So the very concept of heaven is, is synonymous with peace.

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All right. So there you have all, all of these ultimately reward in heaven.

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But that being said, there are also temporal blessings. These are blessings that you can get to some degree and in some measure, even here in this life.

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And this is where Proverbs comes in. How do we know this? Well, what's the first reward? The first reward is long life.

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Okay. Ephesians six, one to three. Children obey your parents in the

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Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with the promise so that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth.

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Clearly that is talking about temporal blessings because it's talks about living long on the earth. All right.

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And that is something for children. Got a couple of young guys here today. Keep this in mind.

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You want to have things go well with you. You want to live a long life. Very first thing is got to honor your father and mother obey your parents.

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That's some head shaking over there. That's good. Yeah. From the dad. All right.

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Um, so, but now, but what about the fact that not everybody who's an obedient child or not every

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Christian's opinion lives long, sometime that life is cut short. What is the promise of scripture?

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Whatever you give up, whatever you forfeit in this life for Christ, you get what in fourfold in the future in the, in the eternal state.

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And that's why understanding, gaining wisdom and understanding.

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That's why it's so important. Otherwise people look around and they, and they, they look around and say, well, Hey, you know,

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I did this and that, and I didn't get that promise from scripture. You know, you have to wait.

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Sometimes it takes time. And, uh, yes. Doug Wilson says, uh, everybody uses the principle of reaping and sowing, but they don't realize that's an agricultural term.

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You plant the seed. You don't go back an hour late and say, where's the fruit? I do. It takes time.

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You got to weed it, you know, cultivate the ground and, and over time, then the plant grows and bears fruit.

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It's not an instantaneous thing. Yeah, absolutely. It, patience is one of the biggest virtues.

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And we've, I think even in one of our lessons in Proverbs so far, I think this is the eighth one we've done in the men's breakfast, but we've seen how, um, how part of the wisdom developing biblical wisdom is taking a long view of, of the world where, you know, people are only so concerned with here and now there's such a thing,

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I don't know who coined the phrase, but generational pride, okay.

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Or generational egotism. What I mean by that is everybody thinks that the, our generation who's alive now, everything revolves around us.

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We look back at history that brings us up to this and all futures going, but every generation sees this.

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What did the general, when the year 1000 turned on the calendar, you know what happened?

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Christians flocked to Rome because they believed that that was the end of the world because the world couldn't pass, go pass a thousand

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AD. Okay. What happened when the year 2000 came? Same thing.

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What happened when gunpowder was invented? Same thing. Okay. Cause we, we look at everything from our eyes and we're not looking long term.

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Okay. And so we, we have to develop that biblical wisdom that the world doesn't revolve around us.

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It revolves around God. And to him, time is irrelevant. It's important to us, but it's irrelevant to God.

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Second reward of wisdom is riches and honor. Psalm 37, 20, 25.

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This is Psalm of David. And he says, I have been young and now I am old. Uh, I could have written that good day.

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Uh, I have been young and now I am old yet. I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread.

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Okay. Now, again, that's a general truth. All right. You can't hold that's, that's what

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Proverbs is. It's proverbial wisdom in general. This is true. It's not true in every single circumstance.

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All right. And one of the things that we need to understand is what is the biblical view of wealth?

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And I think this more than any other verse has really struck me. This is some, uh,

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Proverbs 30. This is from Proverbs of Agur. All right. He says, two things I ask of thee.

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Do not refuse me before I die. Keep deception and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches.

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Feed me the food of my, that is my portion, lest I be full and deny thee and say, who is the Lord? Or lest I be in want and steal and profane the name of my

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God. In other words, the biblical view of wealth is Lord, please just give me enough.

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Just meet my needs. You know, give me my daily bread. That's what we're to pray for.

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No more, no less. All right. And, and we learn how to be content.

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It was the attitude that the apostle Paul, uh, developed in Philippians chapter four.

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He says, I know what it's like to get along with a lot. I know what it's like to get along with nothing.

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He says, I've learned the secret of being content in any and all circumstances, uh, in which

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I find myself. And the reward of wisdom is riches and honor.

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And the same thing with honor. You may, uh, you may receive honor in this life or you may not.

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But, and again, do we have to be content with what Jesus said to the disciples? Remember James and John, what they want to do?

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I want to sit in your right and your left. Right. And what did you say? That's not for you to determine.

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Be content, you know, live in integrity, do what's right.

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Don't worry. You can't, you realize too, you can't guard your reputation. You can't guard your reputation.

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All you can do is guard your integrity. Keep you, keep your heart doing, doing what is right in each circumstance.

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And God will honor that. If not in this life, in eternity. Just think of how many people have had their lives cut short, had everything taken away from them in this life.

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And you imagine what's going to happen with them when they get, when they get to heaven, you know, the best story

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I ever heard on this, it was a true story. A missionary couple were coming back from Africa, having spent 50 years ministering the gospel.

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And they happened to be on the same ship. Cause this is going back a ways when Teddy Roosevelt was coming back from one of his safaris.

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All right. And they get to the port of New York, huge parades and everything else and people and shouting for Teddy Roosevelt.

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You know, he was very popular president and all, and they come off and they have one little old man greet them to take them to a dingy little hotel room until they got back to their home.

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And the man was, was kind of depressed over that. He says, here, we we've labored for God for 50 years faithfully.

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And what do we get? Nothing. He says, Teddy Roosevelt comes back to the United States and, you know, and look at, look at what he's done.

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And all he did was kill animals, you know? And his wife turned to him and says, but dear, we're not home yet.

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We're not home yet. And imagine, imagine what would happen when they get to heaven.

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Okay. Pleasantness. Pleasantness and I'm behind myself.

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I'm talking ahead of my notes there. Okay. Okay. Pleasantness.

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Uh, let me just set this up for a minute. There's so many things in scripture we could turn to, to demonstrate what pleasantness is, but I've chosen to take a quotation from Charles Bridges in his commentary on the book of Proverbs.

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I just, of all the Proverbs commentaries that I have, and I've got a slew of them. Uh, Charles Bridges is my favorite and he just says things so well, he says, talking about pleasantness.

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He says, it is saying far too little that the trials of these ways are not inconsistent with their pleasantness.

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They are very, the very principles of the most elevated pleasure. The verdict of Christ says,

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Dr. South makes the discipline of self -denial in the cross, those terrible blows to flesh and blood, the indispensable requisite to the being his, to being his disciple and yet paradoxical as it may appear in this deep gloom is the sunshine of joy.

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So basically what he's saying is regardless of how we're treated, uh, those ways can be pleasant.

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And, uh, and so for the true disciple, the road to the celestial city may be hard.

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It may be difficult, but it will always be pleasant. And then that brings us to our last one, uh, to peace.

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Uh, and what a glorious blessing this is. And of course we know ultimately you always have to think of this in scripture that whenever you see peace, first and foremost, the concept of peace is that we have peace with God.

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Remember we are all at enmity. We're all enemies of God until we come to Christ and then we have peace with God.

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And, you know, it's become a joke. What is every contestant at Miss America or Miss world and Miss universe?

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What, you know, what are they? Uh, oh, and most, most of all, I want world peace, you know, I mean, it's becomes, it's become a cliche now.

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Everybody wants peace, but we need to understand something and look at what Christ said.

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Peace. I leave with you my peace. I give to you not as the world gives, do I give to you. So let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.

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In other words, the peace that we have with God is not, is not what the world is searching for. Everybody wants, you know, can't, why can't we all just get along, you know?

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Uh, but here the peace that we have with God comes in the midst of warfare.

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We are in spiritual warfare. All right. And the fact is though, that the

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Christian should be at peace, uh, mostly at peace with God and at peace with your neighbors, so long as it depends upon you, remember what the apostle

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Paul says, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. All right. But this peace can only come with the knowledge of God.

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When you understand his sovereignty and his goodness and his power, then no matter what comes your way, um, you can still be at peace.

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Uh, I think of the words of that hymn. It goes, Oh, what peace we often forfeit.

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Oh, what needless pain we bear all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

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So who is the happy Christian who is pursuing happiness?

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Well, not the reality is that all Christians are not happy and Bridges makes this very point, but I want to, so I'm going to quote again from his commentary, you may not always be happy, but you are, if you are a true believer, you are always in a state of blessedness that cannot be taken from you.

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So let's just look at one more quote from Bridges. Nor again, though wisdom's ways are the ways of pleasantness or that wisdom's children always happy.

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Sometimes a naturally morose temper gives a gloomy tinge to religion. Professors forget that it is no matter of option, whether they should be happy or not, that is their obligation, no less than their privilege to be so that the commands of God on this duty, carry weight and demand obedience, the prophets in the burst of their rapture, search heaven and earth, bring forth the most beautiful objects of nature may call the inanimate creation into glowing sympathy with the joys of the gospel.

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A rejoicing spirit is the character of the servants of God, especially in affliction is then thy happiness clouded.

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Has there not been some deviation from wisdom's path that God calls thee to search, to humble thyself, to return again, that was

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Charles Bridges. So is everybody happy?

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If not, perhaps it's because you're pursuing happiness in our own places. And the admonition from Proverbs is not to pursue happiness because you will never achieve it by pursuing it.

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The goal is to pursue wisdom. When you pursue wisdom, you gain understanding of God.

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And when you do, you get wisdom similar to what we see right here.

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Look at how Proverbs ends this. Talking about with the pursuit of wisdom, she is a tree of life to those who take hold of her and happy are all who hold her fast.

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All right. She is a tree of life. Now we're going to be looking a lot more at that throughout our study in Proverbs.

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That symbolism is something, but think about it. What Adam lost, we gain.

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Adam lost the tree of life. That is regained in our salvation. And here is one, the last quote from Bridges.

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This lovely description of wisdom's blessing is no fancy picture, but divine reality. Rest not till thine heart is filled with its substance.

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Take it to the Lord in prayer. Ere long, thou shall rejoice in thy portion.

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Any questions? Yes. Yes. Could, can we use happiness and joy interchangeably or is there a difference?

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There is a difference. There is a difference. Um, when the

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Bible talks about joy, I, well, let me clarify that. The way, the way our society uses them, they can probably be, they're usually in the interchangeably, but not the way the

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Bible looks at it. All right. Happiness is definitely an emotion. All right.

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It's an emotion that I can be happy now and sad five minutes from now.

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Based upon my circumstances, the joy, when you enter into the joy of the Lord, it's like entering into his state of blessedness and that nobody can see.

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Nobody can take your joy away from you. You can lose it. All right. Uh, but nobody can steal.

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I've heard people say, oh, he steals my joy. No, you gave it away because the, you know, somebody says something hurtful within, even within the context of the church, somebody could say something that is very hurtful.

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You think Christians are capable of that? We can say some things are very hurtful. And how do

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I respond to that is the key. Am I going to say, oh, woe is me.

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Poor me. Look at me. And then I tell everybody what somebody else said about me. So I can get what sympathy.

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So it was, I want to feel better. It's the wrong response. Just cool fire down from heaven.

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That appeals to my flesh. Yeah. Yes. I just want to make one comment. This, when

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Jesus says, you know, my peace, I leave you not as the world live, give you, you know, but my peace, um, let not your hearts be troubled.

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I think, especially considering what we're in the midst of facing today, you know, with, with our country,

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I think he's referring back to Deuteronomy 20, when he, when it says this, when you go out to war against your enemies and seek horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them for the

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Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And when you draw near to the battle, the priests shall come forward,

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Jesus and speak to the people and say to them here or Israel today, you're, you are drawing near for battle against your enemies, let not your heart be troubled.

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Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them for the Lord. Your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.

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He's preparing the apostles to go out into the world. It's going to be this big fight. And it's the same thing that we have to remember today.

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A battle is not against flesh and blood. You know, we don't use carnal means. This is a spiritual battle.

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We cannot be afraid. We have to go and take dominion like he commanded us. Very well said.

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Yes. I see joy very, very closely related with our hope.

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Anytime I think of joy, I'm, I'm always thinking back to the hope that we have within us.

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Yeah, that's what gives me the joy that even though I may not be happy about a situation, maybe

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I'm using secular way of, you know, using happy, but even though I may not be happy about a situation

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I'm in, I still have that joy that I have within me. Yeah. And, and that's a good point because remember one of the dangers in, in exegesis is isolating texts, you know, and all of these concepts are related.

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I mean, we, we looked at four specific things. Why did we look at those four things? Cause they were in a text, right?

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Not that they're not related to other scriptures and even other concepts because there are other promises that we get from scripture when we come to, when we come to Christ.

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And so, uh, but no, that, that, that's good. Good insight. Yeah. I would imagine, uh, verses 16 and 17 with the four blessings are, uh, versus that the health and wealth pull right out of the text.

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Absolutely. They are definitely. And that's why I cautioned. I can see them saying, Hey, look, it says this, you know, but meanwhile, they're, they're not interpreting.

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No, because again, it's wisdom literature. These are not, uh, you know, direct on what's the, you know, uh, they're not unrestricted, uh, promises that in every single case, because we, we know that the disciples were, look at the promises

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God gave the disciples. And yet they come to him and say, yeah, but we've given up everything. He says, don't worry. Anything that you've given up in this life, you'll receive.

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I don't know if it was fourfold or tenfold in the life to come. This is where you have to read the entire

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Bible. Yes. Because once you, and knowing what Proverbs is, that it's wisdom literature.

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Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the warning is in that Proverbs 38, nine, lest I be full and deny you because you think that you have enough.

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And that played out exactly to a T in John chapter six, Jesus was feeding them, feeding them, feeding them.

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And they kept coming back because they wanted food. Then when he gave them a spiritual truth, you know, if you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you're none of mine, or you, you cannot, no one can come to me unless the father sent me drowsing, they turned away.

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They denied him yet their bellies were full right there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Of course, there's some reform camps. I feel that they push so much against the prosperity gospel that they end up, they end up like sort of adopting an early

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Gnostic view material, everything material in that, that's another thing we have to avoid, you know, there's a balance.

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Yes. And all of scripture is, is, is there's a balance.

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You can fall as Francis Schaeffer said, you can fall off the road on either side into a ditch if you, if you take it out of balance and, and you're absolutely right, there are some people, we call it pietism, okay, who are so concerned that the physical needs are just pushed aside completely, and if you're focusing on them, you know, you're, you're, you're not doing the right thing.

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All right. And then on the other side, people so involved with the social gospel that the gospel itself is, is, is denied.

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It's both end, you know, and even how do you, how do you view the great commission?

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Some people say the great commission is spiritual only. All right. Other people say, oh no, it's, it's social only, you know, but no, what is it?

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It's the, the gospel of Jesus Christ when it comes in and converts the hearts of men must of necessity have an impact on the society in which it is.

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And which is exactly what we've seen in the modern missionary movement. So it's both end, it's not either or.

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Yes. Uh, two other promises that tie in with all of this and, uh, your joy might be full.

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Yep. And, uh, so those things are all wrapped up in this, uh, Proverbs, uh, legend and that would, that would, that should be our, our pursuit.

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That what is this abundant life? What is this joy that might be full?

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And how did that, what problems is, uh, is about that term abundant life in the

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Septuagint, uh, comes right out of Daniel. So now think about where Daniel was. He was in Babylon.

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He's not even in the land of Israel. Right. And he's living in abundant life, even though he's not in the promised land and he's teaching people, right.

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He's obeying God's law. He's living in abundant life, even in exile from the land that he was promised to be in.

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So an abundant life does not mean having all these, you know, worldly treasures and blessings around you.

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That's terrific, but you can have an abundant life without all those things, right? Give me neither poverty nor riches.

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That's that balance right in the middle. I can live an abundant life, whether, whether living in plenty or living in want.

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I learned the secret of being content in all things. So it's an inward, uh, attitude of our heart, an attitude of gratitude.

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We love what God gives us. Thank you. We know that it's serving his purpose and it's for our benefit.

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Sure. And the same thing goes with honor. You know, you have certain men like take

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Daniel or, or take Nehemiah who standing by their principles were honored by their rulers.

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All right. You have others who stood by their principles and they were executed for their principles.

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All right. That's all in the province of God. Yet the promises of honor are still there.

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It's just a question of when that honor is revealed and that's in God's purview.

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It's not up to us. If we are seeking honor in this life, we may get it, but it may have a big detriment on our spiritual condition.

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All right. And so what are we to pursue? Pursue wisdom, which is pursuing

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Christ, pursuing Christ. And then whatever happens in this life will be worked out by God in the proper measure, in the proper order.

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Okay. Yes. And also, uh, in Hebrews 11, speaking of Moses, it says that he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.

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So he was looking to the reward, you know, that's just like that understanding that, like what's our modern day treasures of Egypt, you know, what are the things that we treasure so highly in this yet, yet we have to like Moses consider it nothing compared to the, rather being part of the reproach with Christ, you know, no, that's greater.

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I mean, that's, um, and it even says in Colossians that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, you know.