Obtaining Biblical Wisdom Pt. 2

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Proverbs 10: The Acid Test Pt. 3

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So, last time, I mentioned, we mentioned, three things in particular when it comes to obtaining biblical wisdom.

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What are those three things? These are the softball, they get harder.

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Studying the word, thank you very much. Prayer, very good.

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Fellowship, that's right, body life. So, I think prayer was the first one because, as Jake pointed out, we would be in either

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Proverb or James, and this is where I had preached from a couple weeks ago, and so that's where I started last time.

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If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him.

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And of course, afterwards, though, he says, with a caveat, to not ask with any doubting, not to be double -minded.

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And we actually have a study on prayer coming up next week, and it'll be the following weeks, so I'm not going to say much about that except to remind you of that caveat, that we should beware of doubting, beware of double -mindedness, we should trust

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God that he will give us that. But the question is, are we fearful? Or the question is, do we not really want his wisdom, we just want affirmation, confirmation for what we want to do?

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We won't get wisdom if we seek it that way. And then we talked about body life, and I just wanted to revisit that before we got into talking about studying the

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Word, because I thought we had some good comments on that, but there was a couple things

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I wanted to revisit, and I wanted to flesh out some more. So when it comes to body life,

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I'm making it a little bit easier for you, what's our obligation to the body? I wonder.

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To gather. Yes, we have this obligation, right, to not forsake, not neglect the meeting together, as is the habit of some.

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But why do we gather together? What's the purpose for that? For gaining wisdom?

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That's an easy one, it's a gimme, it's like based on the title of this lesson, I'm going to guess.

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Right, so what are the reasons why we do gather together? To encourage one another, yes.

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Spiritual growth. What's another reason why we gather together? Means of grace.

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What do we do when we gather together? We worship. We don't want to leave that part out, that's valuable, right?

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But yes, gathering together, when we read through the scriptures, we see clearly that there's a people of God, right?

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The Christian religion is a personal one, right? There are some who kind of err on one side and go too far and say, oh, it's not a religion, it's a relationship.

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Well, it is a relationship. Jesus calls his sheep by name. It doesn't get much more personal than that.

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He knows us intimately, right? But we are members of one body. So we are we are a people.

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You know, we see Israel in the Old Testament and they are a people. They're occupying, you know, one great big piece of real estate there that in reality is actually very small and in a global perspective.

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But there they are all together. They're all the people of God. Of course, we know how it turned out for them because they did not act like the people of God.

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You know, later on, the people who call themselves the, you know, the true Jews would be condemned as a synagogue of Satan.

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But the church today is both Jew and Gentile, not replacement theology, but expansion theology, where now every tribe, nation and tongue is joined together through Jesus Christ, by the power of the

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Holy Spirit, regenerating us and making us one with Christ and therefore one with one another.

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So we are all members of one body and we are to be living in community.

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Everything we read in the epistles about is how we relate to one another. If you put yourself in a room by yourself, you'll still sin, but it'll be hard to realize it as much because you don't have people saying, hey, ow, you hurt me.

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You know, we're not able to lie to one another or gossip about one another. We're not able to assault one another or do whatever other selfish thing comes to mind when there's other people not there to sin against.

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So we're told this is the old way, put on the new, and this is how we ought to be.

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So we ought to be gathering together to consider how to stir one another up to love in good works.

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We have a purpose when we gather. So there's that. Speaking of gathering and being a people and being in community with one another, it says above all in First Peter, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins.

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Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received the gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.

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Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything

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God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to him belong glory and dominion forever and ever.

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Amen. What do we see here? There's something fascinating here.

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When you think of doing hospitality, would you think about doing hospitality if it was going to cause you to grumble?

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Or you just do the hospitality that wouldn't cause you to grumble? Why would we grumble about hospitality?

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Requires sacrifice. Yeah. Could be requiring some inconvenience of sorts.

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You know, hospitality is not always planned. Sometimes there's a need and we have to be ready.

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I see a hand ready, maybe. No. OK. Sometimes the people that we're being hospitable to aren't always grateful.

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They're not always good guests. Right. But are we always grateful recipients of the grace that God gives us?

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And so we are to love one another as we would love ourselves, to treat one another as we would want to be treated.

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And just as we want God to have grace and mercy with us, he's calling us to do likewise.

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Love one another. Love covers a multitude of sins. So there's little things that we're fleshing out and hopefully as we grow and sanctify, we don't have to pound each other, hammer each other over the head about.

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But if it is significant enough, we do have procedure in place that if your brother offends you, if it's causing a rift in your relationship, you have an obligation to go in and speak with them.

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But here we are called to love one another earnestly, recognizing that sin is going to be involved at times because we're still dealing with that sin nature.

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To show hospitality without grumbling. And then using the gifts that we've received and we talked about this before, each one has a spiritual gift when they're born again, at least one.

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And it's not meant for them. It's meant for the body. And here Peter is saying, use it as a steward of God's grace.

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That gift is what God has given you. So if you're going to speak, you know, on behalf of the

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Lord, speaking the things of God, speak as you're speaking the oracles of God. If you're talking from the word, you are.

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When you serve, serve by the strength that God supplies, not doing it in your own power, like, oh,

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I can barely do this anymore. I'm at my wits end. I'm burnt out. Well, is

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God giving you the strength to do it? Is it a case of maybe you need help, but recognize why we're doing the things that we're doing.

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It's by the power of God and it's to the glory of God. I had mentioned we've mentioned spiritual gifts, and here's a few passages that I'm not going to take the time to read them all.

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You're familiar with them. Some of those gifts were temporary gifts, the sign gifts, things like tongues and interpretation and healing that we don't see as a gift that someone has and can go out and just do today.

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But there's a lot of gifts that obviously still remain each again, each believer has at least one.

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And so you have those who've been gifted to pastor, to shepherd, those gifted to teach, those gifted in evangelism, those gifted at serving, those gifted at giving, those who are gifted in faith.

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They have a faith that is strong and encourages others. I think of George Mueller talking about the spiritual gifts that he had, praying and thanking

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God for what he was going to do. And there comes a knock on the door. If you've ever heard the story about the orphanage, that new information for some, go look that up.

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That's a great story. Mercy, leading, helping, encouragement, administration. There's numerous gifts that we have, and it's for the building up of each other.

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And so as a body, we have an expectation and an obligation to come together and to encourage one another.

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Any questions about that? Even the gifts are, there's an obligation that comes with those gifts in the sense that if you are blessed with the gifts that you should be seeking

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God to see what your gifts are, and some of them are obvious. Yeah. If you're not using them to God's glory, you're actually falling short.

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You're actually sinning. Yeah. We are we are saved for a purpose.

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With that being said, God doesn't leave us without tools for whatever purpose it is.

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I mean, there's the obvious purpose of sharing your faith, but sometimes there's more specific things that we're called to do.

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I mean, you see all through the scripture, all through the Old Testament, where men were inspired by God to do certain tasks.

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And that's something that we need to really take serious. And I don't think we do often enough. Yeah, we're just kind of going about our lives and not really putting to work what

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God has given us for his glory. And we're just trying to make through the day, make it to our vacation, whatever it is.

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And yet we have this high calling upon us. How do you know what your spiritual gift is? Prayer, prayer, prayer.

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Well, it's also your interests and maybe you don't necessarily see what you're good at.

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Like sometimes that's an indicator, but like what you're passionate about, what you're passionate about. Maria? I think you just kind of start doing it, like whatever you find yourself naturally finding a place.

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I think that's how it works for me. Along with your previous question, the fellowshipping together, the others will let you know what your gift is as well.

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That's true. You know, sometimes we have blind spots and sometimes we think of that in a bad way.

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Like, I don't know, you know, I don't know how I'm being obnoxious to other people.

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I need them to point it out to me. But there's good blind spots in terms of I don't know what

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I'm really good at. I don't know what I'm bringing to the table. Like you always encourage me with this. You're always the first one to help.

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You're always the first one to do this. You're every time you get some money in your pocket, you're going and giving it to someone else.

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They might see it and recognize. But as the things that have been said here, yes, we can pray and ask

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God to to make it clear and reveal to us and being in the body could help answer that prayer again by people seeing and also by you.

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What is your interest? You know, if God is going to give you a gift, he's probably going to give you a desire to use that gift.

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You're going to see things and be just drawn to certain things in a way other people may not be in the same way with the same zeal, the same passion.

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And you might find yourself just start doing it, you know, for whatever it is. You're just doing those things and it'll become obvious and manifest what your your gifts are.

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But again, it happens in context. It happens in a body. You can't sit there in a room going,

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I don't know how to serve God. I don't know what my gift is. Well, your gifts should be not staying in that room.

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Get out of the room and go do something. Is there a comment? No. OK, so, yes, that makes sense.

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Was there an additional? Oh, look, there is. I knew it. What you need to realize is your gift is not for you.

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It's for someone else. Absolutely. You have the gift. Certainly you can use it for yourself, but there's other people who don't have those gifts and the other people who, if you're home and not fellowshipping, their gifts are for you.

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So the things that you need are found in the body. Everybody's gifted for a reason. And we share the gifts with one another where somebody have we have good administrative skills.

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Somebody has, you know, the gift that helps and mercy and faith and all these things. And when you come together, that's when it's a whole.

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Very good. OK, and so there's that and that's important.

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That's very important. And then continuing the idea of serving the body, encouraging the body, encouraging one another, praying for one another.

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We talk about things to pray for in the prayer list there. And again, there's all sorts of things, you know, the things that God tells us to pray for, pray for each other and pray for healing and pray for the next generation, pray for salvation, pray for job situations, pray for the government, pray for spiritual maturity.

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It's right there in there that we would. I don't know how many people go through our our list, right, but what does it say that the members of hope would grow in understanding of the breadth, depth and height of God's love and we would continue to grow in maturity and unity.

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These are the things that we can be praying for. And again, as we get to. Hospitality is so important.

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I was really harping on that last time talking about we have an opportunity here to have table fellowship, right?

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Something special about breaking bread with one another, sitting around a table and talking and getting to know one another.

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And so that's a good way to find out about the people that you're covenanted to.

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I remember reminded us that last time. Remember, you become a member. We read that covenant together. We are taking a vow, you know, promising ourselves that we're going to be faithful to one another and faithful to Christ in this local assembly.

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And so we have our obligations right there in front of us. But how do you know? Do you know the people you're covenanted to?

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So talking about getting together and having conversations, talking about mixing up your seating arrangement or inviting someone over for coffee or for dinner or whatever.

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Go have a beer, glass of wine or a form. Get together, talk, talk and speak.

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Everyone gets really excited about that part. It's our gift. And cigars.

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Thank you. Thank you. That's an invitation. I'll be over there tomorrow. I was just waiting. Amen. So, but I did give the caveat, be careful about oversharing, be careful about gossip because we can sometimes just spill over into that.

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Now, don't be scared. There's plenty of things we can talk about and really get to know people without being guilty of oversharing, without being guilty of engaging in gossip.

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When we're sharing things, though, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. If you're going to talk about someone else, there's a few guidelines.

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Right. Is it true? Right. We don't want to misrepresent someone. We want to be careful if we don't know all the facts.

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Right. Is something true? Is it kind? Are we are we talking good things about this person?

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Oh, look, they saved a bunch of kids from an orphanage or they burned down the orphanage. Is it kind?

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Is it necessary? Is this something that has to be shared? Do people have to know about this information?

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That's a question. Those are some of the questions that we can ask. If we're sharing something about ourselves, sharing something, a struggle that we're having, is it requiring us to name names of other people who they don't get to hear the whole story?

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They only get to hear your your view of it. When we're sharing those things, is it something where are we venting?

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Are we just getting something off our chest? Is there a biblical mandate or a biblical permission to just vent?

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Yes or no? A bunch of guilty sounds in here.

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I don't know. I got to go check the concordance or something. Vent. Hold on a second.

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I think it's I think it's in here. That was the HVAC manual. It's wrong. Wrong one.

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Wrong one. If you have to vent.

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Take it to the Lord. Pray. Pour out your heart like the psalmist. Right. And ask him to give you wisdom.

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Are you looking at this right? Are you handling it right? Does he have wisdom to give you, to comfort you, to assure you?

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But we don't vent to talk about other people and what they're doing. Let's be very careful about that, because that comfort that getting it off your chest is not always it doesn't last.

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Right. If you're sharing something. The person you're sharing with it, is it something they can help you with?

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If you have a real problem. And again, we have real problems and we need advice and we need counseling.

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And scripture does say a multitude of counselors brings victory. Right. It encourages us to to get counsel and to get help.

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I'm supposed to move on to the next slide. Just just a couple. There's a thousand of them. But if you need counsel, if you need advice, you need to go to someone who's mature in the faith.

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You know, hopefully you can go to one of your pastors, go to people who you've observed, who seem to have biblical wisdom, who seem to have their house in order, who it seems like they know the word of God and they're applying it to their life and it's bearing fruit.

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Right. Sometimes we go out, we counsel shop, we go around, we wait till we hear someone tells us what we want to hear or we go just to get things off our minds so we can rally up sympathy for ourselves.

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And we have to be careful. We are very likely getting into the dangerous ground of of gossiping, of tailbearing, tailbear, gossip, slander.

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They reveal secrets. He who's trustworthy conceals a matter. A dishonest man spreads strife.

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A whisperer separates close friends. How many relationships are destroyed because people couldn't just be discreet and go to the person they had a problem with?

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Yes, sir. There's the standpoint of you being the person doing that. Right.

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If you're the person who somebody's talking to, your obligation is to stop that. Yes. I don't want to hear this.

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Yes. This is gossip or whatever it is. So please don't share. Right. And then you'll also help your brother.

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Hopefully they'll realize that this is something they need to deal with. Amen. That's that's that's a great reminder because that's the thing.

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On the one hand, we're trying to remind ourselves not to overshare, not to gossip. But what if someone they weren't here for this lesson and they didn't know and they're starting to share stuff with us like, whoa, hold on a second.

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Why do I need to know this? Am I going to be able to help you with this? Are you asking me to help you go and resolve this with this person?

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You know, we have to be very careful. So some principles there.

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You know, is it something that the person can do for us? Give us advice, meet a need, direct us to a resource.

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We need to be careful about oversharing certain things. We can still share our we're struggling with stuff.

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Can you pray for me? You know, there might be appropriate ways to share certain things, but just be mindful of it,

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OK? Any questions or comments about that before I move on? Yes, no.

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OK, very good. One last thing when it comes to serving the body. You know, there's another way we can serve the body.

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So letting the body serve us. You know, we're always I would

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I would bet wager that most of us would be quick to help out someone else if we knew that there was a need.

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But if we were in need, we're like, no, no, no, it's all right. I'll figure it out. I got it.

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I got it under control. Right. We'd be very reluctant to accept assistance. It's not really good up to now, but now you're missing.

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Now you're melon. Ironically, the only time I really had to talk to you three pastors was on the issue of, hey, guys, learn to accept the gift.

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Edit this part out. We don't need this. Am I right? You might be accurate about that.

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I have to go and check the archives to see what just read back the Chronicles to me.

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He said it aggressively. It's true. We're all guilty of it.

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Even pastors can be like, no, no. I don't want to delve too arbitrarily.

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What do we see here? Talking about the final judgment, the king will say to those on his right, come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

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For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

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I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him saying,

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Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothed you?

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And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them. Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me.

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If we have a need and someone in the body is trying to meet that need and we're like, no, no.

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We're taking away the reward. We're taking away their opportunity to serve

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Christ by serving us. And so we need to recognize our pride in those situations, you know, and be humble and give

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God the glory for providing for our needs and providing through his body.

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And it's a testimony to the world by this. All people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

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As I've said time and again, you've heard it time and again here, love is not warm, fuzzy feelings.

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Love is not like, oh, I just think the world of them, like, oh, they must be real

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Christians. That's not it. Love is action. Love is the law applied.

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That's how you show love by doing these things that God told us to do, to show him love, to show our neighbor love.

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And when we do that, when we're sacrificing for one another, going above and beyond for the glory of God, he was like, wow, they're pretty serious about that, you know.

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So that's that's the lesson, let's say about that for now about body life and hospitality and all those things.

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Any questions or comments before I move on to comment? Um, although it should be stated, but I don't want it to be taken incorrectly.

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We have to check our motives also. Both ways, you know, whether, you know, even when we're serving, what are the motives behind it?

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All right. You want to elaborate on that? Well, you could be. Yeah, no, no, no.

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Your sharing of your abilities and gifts is fine and great, but you can also fall into the trap of of looking for praise.

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Yeah, you can fall into the trap of doing it for reasons that would benefit you.

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I mean, past the fact that you're being blessed by God is you just really need to make sure your heart is seeking to really serve and not to gain from doing whatever you're doing.

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It's a good point. You know, Jesus points out the Pharisees who did a lot of good things.

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Right. I mean, they prayed out in the street. How bold. What courage. He goes, they did to be seen by men.

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Truly, they have the reward in full. Because God was not impressed with their prayers. They gave alms.

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They blew the trumpet to let people know they're just encouraging them to give. That's not what Jesus says.

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They did it to be seen. Truly, they have the reward in full. God was not impressed. And so, yes, there's no neutrality as it is.

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You talk about that in apologetics. There's no neutrality. We have the presuppositions. There's no neutrality in anything.

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There's no neutrality in our motives. There's no neutrality in our goals. There's no neutrality. What we do, if our motives are wrong,

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God is not honored by that. He's not impressed with that. I would not tell you to stop doing good things because your motives are wrong.

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I would tell you to repent of your wicked motives and have humility before God and recognize everything

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I have is from you. You are the one who deserves all glory, laud, and honor. I deserve nothing better to be a doorkeeper, you know, than anything else.

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So, yes, check our motives. If we find ourselves being selfish, if we find ourselves being ambitious, if we're looking for praise, if we're bitter, if we don't get praise, if we're saying, well, that's the last time

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I help anyone. You're not serving God, you're serving yourself. So, yes, it is a sobering reminder, but absolutely true.

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OK, any other questions before we move on to our last bit here?

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So this is the third thing when it comes to obtaining biblical wisdom. So obviously, prayer. And we'll get more into that in the coming weeks with study, just praying in general, right?

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Being around the body, the body can help us grow. The body can be examples for us.

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The body can do all sorts of things. That's what we're called to do. And of course, we have the word of God, right?

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I brought this up and I know if I was really good at PowerPoint, I would have just put it all plain and then had a slide with all the highlights on each one to cry for help.

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Proverbs two, my son, if you receive my words and treasure of my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding.

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Yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding. If you seek it like silver and search for it as hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the

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Lord and find the knowledge of God. We've talked about this before, but what do we see here?

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Action. Action. Right. Dependency upon God. Depends, again.

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Yes. I was just going to say making like a diligent inquiry. Of the

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Lord, you know. Right. Being persistent. Right. We've heard it said and have read it ourselves about the value of God's word.

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Right. Gold, silver, precious jewels, hidden treasure. These things are not normally lying on the ground and easily accessible, but it takes some effort to dig to get to obtain.

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And so when we think about God's word, we recognize the value. And for us who are spiritual, not because there's some great thing about us, because the spirit has made us alive.

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And so now we're no longer just in the flesh. We're not the natural man anymore. Now we are the spiritual man and woman.

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We can understand the value that sometimes the world does not see, even if it's right before their eyes.

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So some of these truths are spiritually discerned and God enables us to see it when unbelievers have it right in front of them, plain as day.

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And yet they don't recognize the truth. They don't recognize the value. But there is a danger for believers not recognizing the obligation, the need to search for wisdom.

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And I want to point out that it's not that God is preventing you, preventing me, preventing us from obtaining it.

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But he does make it a little difficult. Why?

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What's what's one reason why it could be? I was going to say he wants us to seek him.

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He wants us to bring it to him. He also wants us to recognize the value of it, right?

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I would argue that he's testing our sincerity. You know, and that's when I say he's testing us for our sincerity.

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We're not open theists here. Right. God's not trying to figure out what we're all about. Testing is not for his benefit.

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Testing is for our benefit. Right. He knows everything. He knows us through and through. And he has decreed all things.

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So there's nothing that takes him by surprise. But he tests us that we would know ourselves. And if we're not sincere, if we're not searching this thing out, we're going to find ourselves coming up short at times.

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And who will we have to blame for that? God? Or ourselves for not being diligent?

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Not. I mean, how many things do we pursue? How many things do we give our time to, our money to, our effort to, our sweat to?

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And this gets left off to the side. It's just not that important. I don't have enough time in the day.

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It's an old Facebook gif, jif, something like your

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Netflix browsing history says that's a lie. Right. It determined that this was not true.

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This was not factual. We say we don't have enough time, but we make time. We make time for the things that are important to us and for everything else.

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We make excuses. It's a simple reality. The blessing is in the labor, not the leisure.

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Right. So as you're doing this work, I hate to use Mr. Miyagi, but it's like that.

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God told Israel, I'm going to bring you into a land flowing with milk and honey. If you know anything about Israel, it was not flowing with milk and honey.

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OK, milk comes from cows and goats. OK, you need it to be a shepherd. A shepherd is hard work in order to get the milk.

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You're going to have to shepherd your sheep. You're going to have to shepherd your calves. Honey wasn't necessarily from bees, but they would pack dates in a jar and press it out and it would come out like syrup.

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So you also had to be a gardener. You had to work the agriculture. So in the work of the agriculture and the shepherd, that would be the work that would that would help them.

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Right. It would strengthen them and then also feed them. Same thing when you're when you're studying the word of God.

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It's not easy sometimes. You know, you're praying, you're laboring to find out what what the author intended in the meaning of the words.

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And there's there's the treasure in the labor. Yeah, very good.

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So he's testing us to. That we would know ourselves and if we need to recognize our guilt and repent or we can see the fruit of our sanctification, we see how

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God is growing us and that can give us further assurance of our salvation, further comfort. It can also be a sign for others about what

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God expects and what God will do. It's a testimony. So as I mentioned, if we find ourselves in a moment, perhaps a crisis, needing wisdom, praying, and it seems like we're coming up empty again, is

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God to blame or are we to blame? Do we need to do some self -reflection and see if we've been searching him out all along?

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Are we in the word? Are we in prayer? Are we making church and fellowship a priority? Are we asking pastors or mature brethren for advice?

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Are we being lazy? Are we keeping the body and arms length away because we don't want the whole commitment? We don't want we only want the help that we want.

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And then we want them to mind their business. Right. So there's the the question there about where is our heart really at?

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So we need to apply ourselves again. The Lord is not trying to keep wisdom from his children. He wants us to have it.

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Right. But it does require effort on our on our part. He's helping us to see where our hearts are truly at and where the correction is needed.

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Any questions or comments about that? Because honestly, our motivation, our priorities, if they're not right, everything else

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I'll say here is just a waste of your time. Right. It's just going to go in one ear and out the other. So where our motivation is that where our heart is, that is really important.

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God's word is of great value. It's priceless. And some things are put out there for us that are plain enough to see.

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There are lists throughout scripture, different expectations and obligations that make it simple enough to to get a head start.

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Like, all right, this is what God expects from us. But they can require wisdom to understand fully how to apply them in all different situations.

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There are things said throughout scripture that sometimes require other portions of scripture to fully understand and then logic and rationale to apply.

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I see it. No. OK, that's all right. So we think of something like the Ten Commandments were given to us. Right. It's a list.

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It's there. Do that. But then God gives all this case law afterwards to show how those ten commandments play out in everyday life.

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You know, what was interesting is that when he when he gave his law and then he set civil magistrates, he didn't appoint legislatures.

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Right. He didn't appoint a legislator to to help make new law to help him out. God bless you.

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He appointed judges to see how his law applied to various situations nowadays because of the hardness of heart of men.

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We have to make a code and give me some other words for code statutes and all these different things to try to nail down every little aspect of life.

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We're just overregulated because we can't trust people to just do the right thing. But he gave judges to help them to apply

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God's law. The Apostle Paul, when he's talking to the church in Corinth, he criticizes them for going to pagans to help sort out their conflicts.

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He says, don't you have anyone wise enough among you to be able to figure these things out, to settle disputes?

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And the idea was he's not making this empty thing and they're gonna come back like, sorry, Paul, we got no one. Of course they have people.

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They just have to recognize their obligation to do that again. You have to be in the body to know who's wise enough to help settle your disputes.

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So we need wisdom, though, in coming to study the word. And even as we have our last few minutes here,

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I actually borrowed, I was talking to Pastor Jensen before,

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I got saved young. You know, I came to faith at an early age and I've just had the benefit of a father who would do

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Bible studies and teach this and teach that and did Bible reading plans throughout the years. I've been under the means of grace, just blessed to hear teaching and preaching and studies.

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And I've listened to, you know, I've listened to books. Yes. Now we can listen to books.

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But I read books back then. But now I can listen to books. I can listen to sermons.

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I can listen to podcasts. If I have a particular interest on studying a particular thing, I can read a book that's been written about that topic and bring all these different scriptures to bear.

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I hand out books like it's candy. Just like here, read this. It's great. Right. And so that's what we do.

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I'm thinking about, all right, if I'm trying to disciple someone who is brand new to the faith, what would I do to go about that?

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You know, there are people who say we've never done family worship before and it's right there in the covenant that we're going to practice family worship.

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So how would we go about that? And so what resources? I said, well, there's a lot of different ways you can go about it.

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It doesn't have to be a one size fits all. It could be five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. It depends on your family, the context.

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But you want to get to the point where you're thinking, I want to be in the word with my family. I want to be honoring God on a daily basis with my family.

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So I've brought a few things just to point out. There's a family worship

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Bible guide. And basically every chapter of scripture has a summary. You know, if you wanted to read through and you're like,

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I barely know the word. How am I going to teach my kids? Vodibachan would say, just be a chapter ahead.

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Read the chapter the night before. Read a commentary if you need to. Come up with some, you know, observations from it and then share that with your spouse, with your children.

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And so here's a resource for that. Something that our family has been doing, the

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Be Thou My Vision, a liturgy for daily worship. And we're really enjoying it. We have prayers from saints of old.

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There's a Bible reading plan here in the back. There's tons of Bible reading plans. We talk about following the

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Christ Kirk one and that's available going through the year. Lots of different Bible reading plans to go through the

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Bible in a year, in three years, in three months, depending on your time and ability.

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There's catechism questions in here. There's all sorts of stuff in here. So this is a great little resource for that.

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If you're brand new to the faith, men's discipleship group, six in the morning,

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Wednesday mornings. And the pastor was doing his own discipleship program.

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But this was a recommendation. And MacArthur, John MacArthur, we have tremendous appreciation for.

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We have some serious disagreements on certain issues. But as far as the fundamentals of the faith, these lessons that he goes through here are basically all stuff that we can agree on.

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And it's a good way to get familiar with just the beginning steps of a new believer.

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And so actually, I have this. I bought it on Kindle as well. And I did some copy and paste to just give some examples of how you go through that.

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Our brother, Pastor Anthony, I don't remember he gave me these. He's very organized.

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He's got stuff for Bible notes, different ways to take observations of things that are going on and take notes that way.

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There's all different ways to start studying the word and getting familiar with it. And because we don't have a lot of time,

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I'm just going to quickly, you know, studying the word, hear the Bible. Faith comes from hearing, hearing by the word.

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When you, yes, you can have it on audio and listen to it. That's very good, very acceptable.

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Coming to church and hearing it read, hearing it expounded upon, read the

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Bible. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear and and heed the things, study. And so the noble minded

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Bereans who were examining the scriptures to see if they were so, memorize the

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Bible, meditate on the Bible. So these are your basic. This is what you do to get yourself familiar with the

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Bible and be able to apply it to your life and have wisdom. So there's a preparation and basically you want to pray.

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There's some verses that give you some idea that, again, you can get this right out of here. I can send you this as a as a note.

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So making observations, trying to interpret, asking questions, trying to figure out the different things that are going on there.

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He mentions Bible study tools as Bible dictionaries, concordances, Bible handbooks, Bible encyclopedias,

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Bible commentaries. And of course, most of us probably have a study Bible with us right now or at home.

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And that's always a good benefit to have just the introduction. They'll tell you all sorts of things about that particular book.

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That particular letter. And then there's notes throughout. Some will agree with some. We won't. But it gives you a start in the right direction.

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And then asking questions about how to apply it. And so there's things there. Are there sins to forsake, promises to claim, examples to follow, commands to obey, stumbling blocks to avoid and then repetition.

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So I'm flying through this stuff, this part. But if this is something where if you need help trying to study the

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Bible, hopefully you're availing yourselves. Most of you are probably very familiar. But sometimes we have people who are new and sometimes

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I hope we have people who know people who are new. If we're sharing the faith with people, if we're interacting with people, hopefully we're coming across people who are new believers, maybe because we share the gospel with them and they believe.

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And so how do you go about discipling them? There's resources. Obviously, you can ask us for more and we can share it to you.

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But study Bible commentaries. There's so much stuff that's free online now. You can get access to like guys like Matthew Henry and John Calvin and others.

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Monadism .com will bring you to all sorts of links and all sorts of other websites. Blue Letter Bible, ReformRookie .com,

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Logos .com. I mean, so some of these things are free resources where you have the world at your fingertips.

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Some of them do have some costs involved. But again, wherever you're at, there's something for you.

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And so that's how how do we know how do we obtain wisdom? Well, we study God's word and we apply it to our lives.

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So that is the nutshell version of obtaining biblical wisdom 201.

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Are there any questions? Comments? The last 10 minutes was a blur.

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can just watch the video and slow it down. Put it at half speed. OK.