Saturate with the Word (Part 1)

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Saturate with the Word (Part 2)

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No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,
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Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the
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Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.
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These days I've been consumed with reading the Bible, particularly the book of Numbers.
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When's the last time you read Numbers? When's the last time you got your Bible open and thought,
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I can't wait to see what happens? How God deals with people. How this holy, transcendent, just God is also gracious and faithful and forbearing.
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How does holy God interact with sinful man? I'm reading through Numbers and I'm thinking, this is exciting to think, to watch
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Korah and his rebellion be swallowed up by God. The earth opens up and down they go.
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To watch God use a donkey to speak to Balaam. Israel's complaining, here comes the serpents, they bite the
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Israelites and then Moses told by God to raise up a serpent on a pole and if you look, you'll live.
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Phineas, so jealous for the Lord's jealousy, he picks up the spear and kills people and is commended by God.
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I'm fired up about the Old Testament. I'm fired up about the Bible and my sermon today is going to be this,
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I'm going to try to do everything I can by my power, asking the Spirit of God to use that so you'll read your
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Bibles more. For those of you that read your Bible like Tasmanian devils, good.
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I'm just going to try to pour kerosene on your fire. For those of you that you've kind of been a
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Christian for a while and you remember what it was like when you first got saved, page turning. I lost sleep when
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I was a new Christian because I couldn't wait to figure out what was in this Bible. The God of the universe. What does he do?
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What is he like? How can I know him better? How is it that he has known me? And I would just read and I think sometimes as Christians and even in a church like this where we're not called
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Bethlehem Bible Church without a reason, I think sometimes we can think, oh yeah, the
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Bible. I want you to salivate for the Bible. I want you to realize that you need the wisdom from God and it's found in one place.
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The problem is people don't read. Maybe you read, but the society around you, they don't read.
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One third, according to the Jenkins group, Inc. dot com, one third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
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Forty -two percent of college graduates never read another book after college. Eighty percent of U .S.
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families did not buy or read a book last year. Seventy percent of U .S.
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adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. Probably should amend that except for coffee, right?
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Fifty -seven percent of new books are not read to completion. Seventy percent of books published do not make a profit.
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Bear witness to that. Combine that with television,
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DVDs, Internet, watching things on the Internet. You have an illiterate society.
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And the church at large, I don't think our church, but I think there's some here that it could apply to, is illiterate, biblically illiterate.
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I want you to be readers. And I've heard many, many times people say, Well, I'm not a very good reader.
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I don't really like to read. Well, I've got bad news for you. God likes to write.
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And if you'd like to know God, the days of dreams and visions and pillars of clouds and pillars of fire are over.
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And God has said in his word through Jesus and his apostolic messengers, If you want to know the
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God of the universe, you know him through the written, completed word.
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And now with technology, you don't even have to be a good reader because you can get audio things, can't you?
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I call them audio tapes, audio CDs, audio digital things. Say, Well, I'm not really wired for that.
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You see, you don't know the latest psychology and the latest training and how to learn. I'm a visual learner.
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Well, maybe in everything else in your life you're a visual learner, but God isn't. The way he teaches you is through a book.
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That's how you're to learn. And the sooner you just say, Uncle, to this whole caveat that's just an excuse for your laziness to say,
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You know, I don't learn that way. Well, then today's a good day to start. Because if you want to be wise, it is through this book.
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If you were back in the day where God would be in the garden and could just speak to you, well, then fine.
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But since God has done with that, and in these last days, Hebrews chapter 1, 1 through 3, he speaks to us through his apostles, then we better get used to it.
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By the way, I'm glad I get to preach to you because you love the word. You bring your
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Bibles. And what I guess I'm after today is asking God to give you that compulsion that when you first got saved, you were rabid for the
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Bible. Society doesn't read. The church doesn't read.
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And now to make it even worse, not with just the media, but here's how it's worse. People are mystic, subjective people.
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And here's what they say. Well, God led me. God's leading me to do this. Friends, that's not how you ever talk about providence and God.
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You look back in time and say, I see how God has led me. Past tense.
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I see what he's done. Open doors, closed doors. Busted through doors. Dissolved doors.
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Done all these things. You look backwards and say, that is how God has led me. But you never look to the future and say,
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God is leading me to do this. Because you don't know if it's God at all. Well, God's leading me to get married.
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God's leading me to leave the church. God's leading me to do this, that, or the other. You should just be honest and say,
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I've studied the word of God. I've tried to soak my mind and saturate it with wisdom from God. And then now
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I need to make this decision. But it's not God leading you. You don't know that until you look backwards.
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I see how God has led me. Show me a church that says, God is speaking to me.
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God is leading me. God has laid it on my heart. God speaks to me in a still, small voice.
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And I'll show you a church that is divided. Because if God tells you one thing, and He tells me another, and He tells you another, and He tells people in leadership one thing, and He tells the brand new
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Christian another thing, and He tells an unbeliever another thing, you have a fractured church. Our hearts, even as Christians, are desperately wicked.
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And we can't know them. So why fall into the Disneyland trap, the Disney movie, just follow your heart?
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Churches are full with people that just follow their hearts. I've talked to one in the last week, where people are led, people are lead.
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And it sounds so pious too, doesn't it? God is leading me. So now if I disobey,
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I'm sinning. And if I tell you from the outside, no, He's not, well then, who are you going to go for?
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Here's God and here's Mike. It's this language that says, you know, we're just going to feel, emote, this mystic thing.
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If you look back in your life, I can say, God led me to marry Kim. It's clear as day now. Can't you look back at Providence and see how it all perfectly works?
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But in the future, God is leading me. I'll tell you how He leads you, by using divine wisdom to mold and shape you so you make the right decisions.
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That's how He leads. Yeah, but I've got a still small voice, and I don't think so. Friends, too often, that kind of language is just cloak for laziness.
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I don't want to read my Bible. What's an old, dusty Bible, and all these translations, and Abendroth just now switches to ESV, and there's all kinds of other reasons, and God just,
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He walks with me and He talks with me along His life's narrow way. He lives,
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He lives. Ask me now how I know He lives. He lives because the text tells me. It's like the bumper sticker.
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God said it. I believe it. That settles it. God said it. That settles it.
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I'm glad you believe it. But we live in such a society that our wisdom is determined by our own sinful fallen heart, yet redeemed, and our wisdom is determined by the culture, and there's a way to know
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God and divine wisdom, and it is only through, today it is only through the
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Bible, and if a church doesn't rally around the mind of God found in Scripture, through the
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Spirit's inspiration, through the apostles, it will be a church that is chaotic. I can just imagine being in an
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Elder Board meeting where I say, well, I think we should be doing this, guys. Sorry, God just told me we shouldn't.
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If somebody ever said that to me, I'd say, well, God just told me what you told me wasn't right. Now, where do we go?
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We've got to have a common source that we all say, you know what? I submit to. I bow to.
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This is what rules and reigns. There is an authority over us, and for us, it's the
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Word of God. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 2. If you're a reader of the Bible, great.
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If you're struggling, then I'm going to be asking the Lord that he would use this text to increase your desire for the
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Word of God. We aren't legalists. We aren't just, you know, we pull up ourselves by our own bootstraps.
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We just have to try harder. I don't mean that. I mean, Lord, use your Word to change people's hearts so that from the inside, they wake up in the morning, and they say, you know, as good as that cup of coffee is,
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I think my Bible time is better than the cup of coffee. Sometimes at night, it's about midnight, I can't go to sleep, and I'm up, and I think,
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I can't wait to have a cup of coffee in the morning. I just, if I could sleep with caffeine,
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I just have one right now. I'm longing for the morning just to have that cup of coffee. It's fine.
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You can drink a cup of coffee to the glory of God. Amen? Hallelujah? Of course you can.
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But when the psalmist talks about, thy word is like, it's like honey. It's more precious than gold.
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And the Bible begins to use words to describe itself like, a fire, a hammer, a light, a laver, a sword.
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We should be people of the book. And I think as a congregation, we are. But the problem with Corinth is they weren't.
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And they were basing all their philosophy and all their wisdom on everything but divine wisdom. And God says, through Paul, you're saved, you're redeemed, many of you.
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But now we need to have a focus on divine wisdom, because if everyone is lined up under divine wisdom, you won't have church splits.
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Show me a church split, and I'll show you not everyone lined up under divine wisdom. And so chapter one and chapter two, church splits, disunity, factiousness.
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And Paul says, we're gonna get rid of worldly wisdom. Wisdom that has the wrong worldview.
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And we're gonna focus now on divine wisdom, because that will help us when it comes to church unity.
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And so last time, we looked at 1 Corinthians 2, verses six and following, and we're there again today.
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Six reasons from 1 Corinthians 2, six to 13, that you ought to completely saturate yourselves with the word of God.
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And for those of you that do, so that you'll continue to do that very thing. All of us can read the
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Bible more. All of us can say, Lord, give me the same kind of desire for your word in the morning that I have for coffee or breakfast.
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God, make me mesmerized, captivated with the word of God. The first reason you want to saturate yourself with the word of God, notice all these have nothing to do with mysticism, subjective,
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God told me, God said, God opened the door, God shut the door, all these other kind of things. Here's something tangible, objective, real wisdom.
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The first reason you ought to saturate your mind with the word of God is because God's wisdom is always relevant. Verse six, it's always relevant.
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I didn't say we make it relevant. It is relevant. It's my job to show you how it's relevant, but it is relevant.
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And he says in verse six, remember from last week? Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom. You think
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I'm trashing all wisdom, Paul says? There's a good wisdom. It's just not the wisdom of the world.
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There is a good wisdom. You can hear the critics say to Paul, yeah, yeah, you know, wisdom is good and you think all wisdom should be thrown out.
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No, Paul says there is a real wisdom. Yet among the mature could be irony, but most likely the word mature just means you're initiated into a group.
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Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom, although it's not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.
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Paul says we apostles speak divine wisdom. It's not going to pass away.
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It's eternal. It's relevant. It's relevant in India today and it's relevant in Afghanistan a thousand years ago if they called it that then.
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We do speak real wisdom. He says, you know, there's a wisdom that's bad, but we speak the good kind, the kind that lasts.
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Now the rulers of this age don't think that Satan or demons, although they're probably driving this worldly wisdom.
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This is just people. The rulers of this age and they're doomed to pass away. Their philosophy of the world is ineffective, powerless.
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It hasn't lasts. We're the great thinkers of the past. Even if it comes to medicine and science, how long does that last until they've been found wrong?
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They're doomed to perish. So let's study the Bible. Number two, the second reason why you ought to saturate yourselves with the
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Spirit's inspired word is because it reveals the eternal mind of God. Verse seven.
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Verse six may be more negative. Verse seven more positive. This is why you should study the word of God. But we, the apostles, impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which
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God decreed before the ages for our glory. Other wisdom destroyed, come to naught, frustrated, and here we have this eternal wisdom, the eternal mind of God.
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See that word secret in the ESV? Here's the Greek word, and I bet you you'll guess what the English word probably should be best translated.
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Mysterion. It's a mystery. He doesn't say we're speaking mysteriously.
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He says we speak a mystery. What was a mystery back in those days? A mystery was something that someone knew, but didn't tell anybody.
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Someone knows something, some details, some facts, and it's a mystery. We don't know it. The only way
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I know a secret from someone else is if they tell me. God has revealed that. It's a secret wisdom.
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It's a hidden wisdom of God, not of the world, but now it's open. It's like the temple veil. When Jesus died, the temple veil was ripped from top to bottom, and it remains ripped open for what?
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Permanent access. It's like the mind of God, as it were, were ripped open so we all have access because now we know the mind of God through the apostles.
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It's hidden, but now it's revealed. It's secret, but now it's known. And that was a big deal because you have people who are unbelievers and their minds are what?
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Blinded by Satan. They can't understand. We'll learn in chapter 2, verse 14, they don't accept, they can't understand.
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Here's God ripping open the encyclopedia of knowledge, of wisdom of the world and says, here it is for all to know.
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Not just a few inside people, not just for the big givers, not just those who serve, for everybody.
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And what's so great about it? Look at, when did it start? God decreed this before the ages, before time began.
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One of my favorite things about God is this. There are no flow charts in the mind of God. No plan
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B's, no if then's. Can you imagine, I mean, okay, just imagine going on vacation for the summer.
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All the things that you have to do and then the contingency plans if things don't happen the way they're supposed to happen.
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Can you imagine the mind of God for all eternity, which included the cross, which includes glory, which included the fall, which included
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Babel, which included the Abrahamic covenant and you just go down the list. Everything in this world from God's perspective is singular.
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It is a decree of God, not decrees. It is the purpose of God, not purposes. It is the plan of God, not plans.
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Everything was planned beforehand the way everything would go. Men responsible for sin? Certainly, but decreed by God.
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I think to myself, that's beyond me. Who wants to study some kind of little local
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God of the mountains someplace, some kind of sun God? How about the God who determines everything for our glory, for the apostles' glory and for ours too by application.
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Reason number three. You ever preach a sermon and then you could just spend all the time preaching just the points that you already preached because there's so much stuff in here.
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I could tell you all new stuff and we'd still be on point two. The third reason you ought to study the word of God, the spirit -inspired wisdom through the apostles is because it will disclose just how wise you really are.
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It will disclose just how wise you really are. You think you're wise? If you're an unbeliever, you're not.
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Now with God's wisdom. What you do in your mind with the cross determines if you're wise or if your minds are foolish.
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And the same thing happened with these rulers, the rulers that crucified Jesus. Look at verse eight. Here's the pinnacle of divine wisdom.
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The Messiah, the hope of Israel on a tree, crucified, cursed by God. That's divine wisdom.
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But you know, if you like proof that people, unbelievers, don't have God's wisdom, look what they did to Jesus.
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Verse eight. None of the rulers of this age understood this. This great mind of God.
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This great wisdom from God. For if they had, they would have not crucified the
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Lord of glory. When you reject
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Jesus Christ as the only means of salvation, you reject divine wisdom and show yourself as foolish.
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I don't mean stupid. Remember in the Bible, the fool has said in his heart, there's no God. This is not an
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IQ issue. This is morally foolish. This is, I've got to construct something in my mind so I can sleep at night because my conscience is killing me.
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I know I'm a sinner kind of foolishness. Show me the smartest person at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.
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Combine them all and I'll show you someone if they reject the hope of Israel, crucified on a tree, receiving the full wrath of God in the place of sinners, confirmed by the resurrection, and I'll show you someone who is the opposite of wise.
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If these people would have known, they wouldn't have given God the stiff arm.
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They wouldn't have put him in a straitjacket. They wouldn't have killed him. It's obvious you don't have the divine wisdom if you kill wisdom incarnate.
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How can you get divine wisdom if you say, but I'm not going to look to the cross? You can have as many seances, as many
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Ouija boards, as many conjugars, as every, sages, can't figure it out.
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How do you come up with this on your own? At the cross, the holiness, the wrath, the power, the grace, the love of God and more, all together came to kiss one another, to say that at the cross, the holiness of God was taken care of, the justice of God was taken care of, and God still loved people.
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How do you look at the cross and say, that's the justice of God? By the way, you think, oh, justice is not that big a deal.
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I was listening to S. Louis Johnson this week, and here's what he said. There was a lady on her deathbed, a dear old saint.
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Someone came up to her and they said, how you doing?
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And she said, I'm trusting in the justice of God. Oh, you know, you might be a little delusional all the pain medication and everything else.
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You mean the mercy of God, right? You mean the love of God? You mean the grace of God? No, I'm trusting in the justice of God.
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Because if Jesus Christ paid for all my sins at Calvary, the just God would never require me to pay for sins in hell.
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That God could keep His justice. He doesn't just overlook sin. We'd hate judges who are real judges, earthly judges, who overlook sin.
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Where justice and mercy and holiness kiss, it's the cross. And if you say, I don't want that, give me everything else.
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Just give me the, you know, it's like when people say, I really like the Sermon on the Mount. I don't like Paul's words, but I like Jesus' words, the
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Sermon on the Mount. I think, you've never read the Sermon on the Mount. God's holy and just and requires sin to be paid for.
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So how can you look at the cross, the justice of God, blazing forth for all to see and then go, you know what?
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Nah. 30 ,000 other Jews got crucified and He was just another man. A good man, a wise man, a good teacher, but He was a good man.
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This whole thing, God's angry. We can't even say it as Christians today. We say things like this. Well, you know,
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God really, you say to an unbeliever, God really hates your sin, but He loves you. Well, there could be some truth to that.
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The love of the creation, yes, God the Creator loves, but the Bible says that what?
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Wanting to extract it all that we might. We might want to extract it all. We might not like it. But Psalm 5 -5 makes it clear.
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He hates wicked people. He hates their sin. What? Sin is some kind of orb that's, you know, right here.
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This is me, but this is my sin. No, because the sin is interlocked into the fiber and nature of the person.
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The person is a sinner. There's not, well, I have sin. I have luggage and I have sin.
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No, you are sin and God hates sin. So how can you look at the cross and say, nah, it's no big deal.
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Here's what happens at the cross. God treats His Son like He hates Him enough to execute
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Him. And may I say it? Damn Him. God, the
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Father, damns the Son. And it's not like Jesus is like, you know, in eternity past, you mean
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I really got to go do that? I don't know if I really want to. Go. No, the Father says, in love, go rescue this bride.
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The Son said, I will gladly go and lay down my life to rescue the bride. The Spirit says,
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I will gladly help the Son go lay down His life to rescue the bride. And then you look at the cross and you go, eh, stupid.
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No big deal. Christians are ignorant. They're exclusive. You know, all this evangelical right stuff.
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Whatever people say about that, they've forgotten the wisdom of God found at the cross.
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If you will not think to yourself that this is the pinnacle of God's attributes, all of them simultaneously, then you've proven that you're not wise.
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at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.