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These days, I've been consumed with reading the Bible. Particularly, the book of Numbers. When was the last time you read Numbers? When was the last time you got your Bible open and thought, 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. How does holy God interact with sinful man? I'm reading through Numbers and I'm thinking, this is exciting to think, to watch Korah and his rebellion be swallowed up by God.
The earth opens up and down they go. To watch God use a donkey to speak to Balaam. Israel is complaining. Here comes the serpents. They bite the Israelites. And then Moses told by God to raise up a serpent on a pole.
And if you look, you'll live. Phineas, so jealous for the Lord's jealousy, he picks up the spear and kills people. And is commended by God. I'm fired up about the Old Testament. I'm fired up about the Bible.
And my sermon today is going to be this. 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 Bibles more. For those of you that read your Bible like Tasmanian devils, good.
I'm just going to try to pour kerosene on your fire. But for those of you that you've kind of been a Christian for a while and you remember what it was like when you first got saved, page turning. I lost sleep when 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? 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 Bethlehem Bible Church without a reason, I think sometimes we can think, oh yeah, the 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. The problem is people don't read. Maybe you read, but the society around you, they don't read.
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. Forty-two percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
Eighty percent of U .S. families did not buy or read a book last year. Seventy percent of U .S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. Probably should amend that except for coffee, right?
Fifty-seven percent of new books are not read to completion. Seventy percent of books published do not make a profit. Bear witness to that. Combine that with television, DVDs, Internet, watching things on the Internet, you have an illiterate society.
And the church at large, I don't think our church, but I think there are some here that it could apply to, is illiterate, biblically illiterate. I want you to be readers. And I've heard many, many times people say, well, I'm not a very good reader.
I don't really like to read. Well, I've got bad news for you. God likes to write. And if you'd like to know God, the days of dreams and visions and pillars of clouds and pillars of fire are over. And God has said in His Word through Jesus and His apostolic messengers, if you want to know the God of the universe, you know Him through the written, completed Word.
And now with technology, you don't even have to be a good reader because you can get audio things, can't you? I call them audio tapes, audio CDs, audio digital things. Say, well, I'm not really wired for that.
You see, you don't know the latest psychology and the latest training and how to learn. I'm a visual learner. Well, maybe in everything else in your life you're a visual learner, but the way He teaches you is through a book.
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, 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. If you were back in the day where God would be in the garden and could just speak to you, well, then fine. 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'd better get used to it.
By the way, I'm glad I get to preach to you because you love the Word. You bring your Bibles. 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 Bible.
Society doesn't read, the church doesn't read, and not to make it even worse, not with just the media, but here's how it's worse. People are mystic, subjective people. 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. You look back in time and say, I see how God has led me. Past tense, I see what He's done. Open doors, closed doors.
Busted through doors. Dissolved doors. 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, 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. 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, I've studied the Word of God, I've tried to soak my mind and saturate it with wisdom from God, and then now I need to make this decision.
But it's not God leading you. You don't know that until you look backwards. I see how God has led me. Show me a church that says, God is speaking to me. God is leading me. God is laying it on my heart.
God speaks to me in a still, small voice. 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 a brand new Christian another thing, and He tells an unbeliever another thing, you have a fractured church.
Our hearts, even as Christians, are desperately wicked. And we can't know them. So why fall into the Disneyland trap, the Disney movie, just follow your heart? 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 leading. And it sounds so pious too, doesn't it? God is leading me. So now if I disobey, I'm sinning. And if I tell you from the outside, no He's not, well then, who are you going to go for?
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. 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? 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.
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 cloaked for laziness. 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 walks with me and He talks with me along His life's narrow way.
He lives, He lives. Ask me now, I know He lives. He lives because the text tells me. It's like the bumper sticker. God said it, I believe it, that settles it. God said it, that settles it. 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 God and divine wisdom, and it is only through, today it is only through the Bible.
And if a church doesn't rally around the mind of God found in Scripture, through the Spirit's inspiration, through the apostles, it will be a church that is chaotic. I can just imagine being in an elder board meeting, where I say, well, I think we should be doing this, guys.
Sorry, God just told me we shouldn't. 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? We've got to have a common source that we all say, you know what?
I submit to, I bow to. This is what rules and reigns. There is an authority over us. And for us, it's the Word of God. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 2. 1 Corinthians 2. If you're a reader of the Bible, great.
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 Word of God. We aren't legalists. We aren't just, you know, we pull up ourselves by our own bootstraps.
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, 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, I can't wait to have a cup of coffee in the morning. I just, if I could sleep with caffeine, I just have one right now.
I'm longing for the morning just to have that cup of coffee. It's fine. You can drink a cup of coffee to the glory of God. Amen? Hallelujah? Of course you can. But when the psalmist talks about Thy Word, it's like honey.
It's more precious than gold. And the Bible begins to use words to describe itself like a fire, a hammer, a light, a laver, a sword. We should be people of the book. And I think as a congregation, we are.
But the problem with Corinth is they weren't. 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, 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.
Show me a church split, and I'll show you not everyone lined up under divine wisdom. And so chapter 1 and chapter 2, church splits, disunity, factiousness, and Paul says, we're going to get rid of worldly wisdom, wisdom that has the wrong worldview, and we're going to focus now on divine wisdom, because that will help us when it comes to church unity.
And so last time we looked at 1 Corinthians 2, verses 6 and following, and we're there again today. Six reasons from 1 Corinthians 2, 6 to 13, that you ought to completely saturate yourselves with the word of God.
And for those of you that do, so that you'll continue to do that very thing. All of us can read the 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.
God, make me mesmerized, captivated with the word of God. So let's look at the first two in review, and then we'll move along to the third one. The first reason you ought to saturate yourself with the word of God, notice all these have nothing to do with mysticism, subjective, 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. The first reason you ought to saturate your mind with the word of God is because God's wisdom is always relevant. Verse 6, it's always relevant. 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. And he says in verse 6, remember from last week? Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom. You think I'm trashing all wisdom, Paul says? There's a good wisdom.
It's just not the wisdom of the world. 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. No, Paul says there is a real wisdom.
Yet among the mature could be irony, could be a little, you determine if you're mature or not. And you say, but wisdom we do speak among the mature. So Corinth, and now you have to say, yeah, I wonder if I'm the mature one.
But most likely the word mature just means you're initiated into a group. 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.
Paul says we apostles speak divine wisdom. It's not going to pass away. 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.
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. Now the rulers of this age don't think that Satan or demons, although they're probably driving this worldly wisdom.
This is just people, the rulers of this age, and they're doomed to pass away. Their philosophy of the world is ineffective, powerless. It hasn't lasted. 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?
They're doomed to perish. So let's study the Bible. Number two, the second reason why you ought to saturate yourselves with the Spirit's inspired word is because it reveals the eternal mind of God. Verse seven.
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 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. 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.
Mysterion. It's a mystery. He doesn't say we're speaking mysteriously. 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.
Someone knows something, some details, some facts, and it's a mystery. We don't know it. The only way I know a secret from someone else is if they tell me. God has revealed that. It's a secret wisdom.
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? 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. 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? Blinded by Satan. They can't understand. We'll learn in chapter 2, verse 14. They don't accept. They can't understand.
Here's God ripping open the encyclopedia of knowledge of wisdom of the world and says here it is for all to know. Not just a few inside people, not just for the big givers, not just those who serve, for everybody.
And what's so great about it? Look it. When did it start? God decreed this before the ages, before time began. One of my favorite things about God is this. There are no flow charts in the mind of God.
No plan Bs, no if-thens. Can you imagine? Just imagine going on vacation for the summer. 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.
Can you imagine the mind of God for all eternity, which included the cross, which includes glory, which included the fall, which included Babel, which included the Abrahamic covenant, and you just go down the list.
Everything in this world from God's perspective is singular. It is a decree of God. Not decrees. It is the purpose of God, not purposes. It is the plan of God, not plans. Everything was planned beforehand the way everything would go.
Men responsible for sin? Certainly. But decreed by God. I think to myself, that's beyond me. Who wants to study some kind of little local 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.
Reason number three. You ever preach a sermon and then you can just spend all the time preaching just the points that you already preached because there's so much stuff in here? 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. It will disclose just how wise you really are.
You think you're wise? If you're an unbeliever, you're not. Not with God's wisdom. What you do in your mind with the cross determines if you're wise or foolish. And the same thing happened with these rulers, the rulers that crucified Jesus.
Look at verse eight. Here's the pinnacle of divine wisdom. The Messiah, the hope of Israel on a tree, crucified, cursed by God. Now, that's divine wisdom. But you know, if you'd like proof that people, unbelievers, don't have God's wisdom, look what they did to Jesus.
Verse eight. None of the rulers of this age understood this, this great mind of God, this great wisdom from God. For if they had, they would have not crucified the Lord of glory. When you reject Jesus Christ as the only means of salvation, you reject divine wisdom and show yourself as foolish.
I don't mean stupid. Remember in the Bible, the fool has said in his heart, there's no God. This is not an 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.
I know I'm a sinner kind of foolishness. Show me the smartest person at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. 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.
If these people would have known, they wouldn't have given God the stiff arm. 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.
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 Ouija boards, as many conjugars, as every, uh, uh, sages. Can't figure it out. 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.
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. I was listening to S. Lewis Johnson this week, and here's what he said. There was a lady on her deathbed, a dear old saint.
Someone came up to her and they said, how you doing? 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. 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. Because if Jesus Christ paid for all my sins at Calvary, the just God would never require me to pay for sins in hell.
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. Where justice and mercy and holiness kiss, it's the cross. And if you say, I don't want that, give me everything else.
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 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.
So how can you look at the cross, the justice of God blazing forth for all to see and then go, you know what? 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.
This whole thing, God's angry. We can't even say it as Christians today. We say things like this. Well, you know, God really... You say to an unbeliever, God really hates your sin, but He loves you. Well, there could be some truth to that.
The love of the creation? Yes, God the Creator loves. But the Bible says that what? Wanting to extract it all that we might. We might want to extract it all. We might not like it. But Psalm 55 makes it clear.
He hates wicked people. He hates their sin. What? Sin is some kind of orb that's right here. This is me, but this is my sin. No, because the sin is interlocked into the fiber and nature of the person.
The person is a sinner. There's not, well, I have sin. I have luggage and I have sin. No, you are sin and God hates sin. So how can you look at the cross and say, nah, it's no big deal. Here's what happens at the cross.
God treats His Son like He hates Him enough to execute Him. And may I say it? Damn Him. God, the Father, damns the Son. And it's not like Jesus is like, you know, in eternity past, you mean 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. The Son said, I will gladly go and lay down my life to rescue the bride. The Spirit says, 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. No big deal. Christians are ignorant. They're exclusive. You know, all this evangelical right stuff. Whatever people say about that, they've forgotten the wisdom of God found at the cross.
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. You don't have divine wisdom. When you can look at the pinnacle, the apex of Christianity and say, you know what?
You give me the strongest proof of Christianity, Jesus Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, I can't be bothered. Just like, look back in verse 8, the rulers of the age, if they understood this, for if they had, they would have not crucified the Lord of glory.
They wouldn't have done it. This ignorance that they have, they didn't understand the divine plan. Oh, they weren't ignorant of killing an innocent man, but they were ignorant of this divine, eternal decree of divine wisdom.
They didn't know about all that. You can ask Paul in his testimony in 1 Timothy 1, verses 12 and 13. There's this testimony of ignorance. Not because he's not complicit, because he just didn't know the program.
He didn't understand. Peter, Acts 3,. And now, brethren, I know that through ignorance you did this, as also did your rulers. I know you don't understand, Peter says, that God works out this plan through your ignorance, through your sin.
One man said it this way, their knee-jerk reaction is to kill. And the rulers knew full well what they were doing. They did not know, however, that they were playing into the hands of God and that their evil butchery would lead to their undoing and humanity's salvation.
If they would have known that, they wouldn't have done it. You see what Jesus is called here in verse 8? The Lord of what? Glory. You know, the Father is said to have glory. You know, this is a title used of God, the epithet glory.
I thought God isn't supposed to give His glory to another. Remember, God is not some kind of like a Baal God. Let's use an illustration for Baal, but let's use it here. Let's say Baal is a god here. There's the Baal of Lemonster.
There's the Baal of Auburn. Excuse me, Auburn. There's the Baal of Leicester. And they're all quite happy to just have their little areas and they share their glory because they can't have it all because they're just the God of Fitchburg.
But there's a God of the universe who's the God over all and He will not share His glory with another. He doesn't share glory. It's all His. He made it all. And He stands over it all. So my question is this.
If the Father will not share any of His glory, how is it that the Son receives glory? How is it that He's called the Lord of glory? Because we are triune people here. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit all worthy of glory.
There are times that the Son submits and will not use His privilege of deity. But if you don't believe in the Father being God and the Son being God, then I ask you, how can God share His glory with the Son, the Lord of glory?
What a great title. The Lord of glory. Is there any higher title for Jesus? The Lord of glory. In the Old Testament, God the Father is called the King of glory, Psalm 24. The God of glory, Psalm 29. Depicted in the New Testament as the God of glory, Acts 7 .2.
I love James 2. Do not hold your faith in our Lord Jesus Christ with partiality. And then it calls Jesus the Lord of glory. Lots of ways to think, am I wise or am I not? If you don't believe in the substitutionary atonement, Christ Jesus and His resurrection, the Lord of glory, laying down His prerogative to exercise divine attributes, dying in the place of sinners, then you're not wise at all.
Number four. Number four. More to be said? We need to stay on target. The fourth reason you want to saturate yourself with the Word of God is because, number four, in God's wisdom, you will see what you could never come up with on your own.
You will see you can't invent this. You will see things that humankind can't invent, realize, manufacture, or come up with. You're going to have to see that God gave it to you. Now, if I had a drum, I'd do a drum roll.
Here comes one of the most misinterpreted verses in all the Bible. It might be a good radio show. Misinterpreted Bible verses. Things have context. What's said of this verse is often used to talk about how great heaven's going to be.
Is heaven going to be great? No doubt about it. It even seems funny because sometimes in the Bible we hear more about hell than we do heaven. It almost seems kind of backwards. Heaven is going to be great.
It's going to be great for lots of reasons. Mainly because Jesus will be there. The incarnate Jesus with His wounds. The myriads of angels and other people swirling around singing His praises worthy of the Lamb that was slain.
But this verse has absolutely nothing to do with heaven. If you apply it to heaven, the application is correct. But the intention of Paul, the intention of the Holy Spirit coming to this verse has nothing to do with heaven.
But, verse 9. Remember our context here. Divine wisdom. It's relevant. It's eternal. The other stuff passes away. People show that they don't have it. They crucify Jesus. But, as it is written, what no eye has seen.
I think he's talking about wisdom in this chapter, don't you? Nor ear heard. I think he's talking about wisdom. Nor the heart of man imagined. I think he's talking about wisdom. What God has prepared, I think he's talking about wisdom for those who love Him.
This isn't the wonders and the spectacular nature of heaven. This is the wisdom God has prepared for you believers. And you can use all your senses to try to concoct divine wisdom and you'll never be able to do it.
Think, I'm going to learn about predestination and the eternal decree by my smelling my nose today. I'm going to kind of sniff around and figure if I can figure it out. No, you know what I'll do? I want to try to figure out justification by sight.
Just kind of look. I'm going to try to think about propitiation, reconciliation, double imputation, about kind of my feeling. Tactile response. I had to look up the five traditional senses. They are sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.
I think I'm going to learn about the holy standard of the transcendent God by my taste buds. I did find out there are additional senses according to the internet. There is... No, that wasn't a joke. Gnosisception, that is the sense of pain.
Equilibrioception, the sense of balance. Almost sounds like a biblical word here but it's not. Proprioception. Kinesthesia, joint motion. The sense of time. Thermo-perception, the temperature differences.
And some even think the sense of direction. Magnetotoception. Well, I don't even know how to pronounce them but I do know this. None of them will help. If you want to try to figure out the mind of God and you're going to use your senses, you can do it.
That's why when we fall into this language, well, I feel God is this way. I feel my God is this way. Well, maybe your God is felt that way but it's not this God. I feel... Sometimes people use feel for think.
But when you really mean, I feel God should be this way. You can't get to know God by feelings. I think when you get to know Him, your feelings are affected. We are not robots. We have love and joy and all kinds of those things.
But those are responses to divine truth, not ways to apprehend divine truth. I just feel God is that way. I'll tell you, if left to my feelings, I would be another John Stott and I would deny hell. I would say it's too bad.
I can't get it. I have loved ones. I have people who are grandparents and a father and others who did not, to my knowledge, repent and bow their knee to Christ Jesus. And I feel like there can't be a hell.
But my feelings don't determine what's true and what's not. That's the problem with our society today. The Bible says there's one way to salvation and unless you trust not in yourself but in Christ Jesus, you will burn forever with a body created by God especially for eternal burning to never be consumed forever.
And in one billion years, when you think, oh, you know what, I only got a billion more to go, there won't be one more billion to go. There'll be billions. Now, who could come up with that by the way with your senses?
Because even for people like Hitler, if you could glimpse hell for just two seconds, you would not say Hitler deserves it. You'd say, I can't believe it's that bad. I can't determine what's right and wrong based on my, to use Cayce's term, gizzard.
I can't use my guts, my feelings, my perceptions. You want the wisdom of God? It's revealed by God through the apostles. You want to get wise? You have to study the Word. And Paul does what he often does.
He says, what's the text say? It is written. Sometimes he quotes directly from the Old Testament, Septuagint. Sometimes he just loosely quotes. We think this is a looser quote. It's a freer quotation probably from Isaiah 64 and 65.
Some people see a little bit of Isaiah 52 in there. Maybe a little Psalm 31 in there. Some people think this is a quote that Jesus said on earth but wasn't written down. Sometimes he just loosely quotes and I think that's what he did here.
What no eye has seen, the wisdom from God prepared for believers. Nor ear heard, the wisdom of God that used to be secret, but now we get to understand. Nor the heart of man imagine what God has prepared for those who love Him.
The pride of man says I will get to the bottom of this with empirical rationalization. I'm a scientist. And by the way, I'm going to determine if there's a God or not with my titration analysis and my beakers.
You can't do it. That shows not the inadequacy of God and His wisdom. That shows the pride of man that says I can find you out and I will quantify you. And I will use my five senses to say this is how I describe you.
And God says in His Word, you can't know me that way. Here's the only way you can know me. Through the Old Testament of course, but now in the New through is inspired apostles. There is no search for truth outside of Scripture that is admirable.
It's beyond nature. It's a different time zone. It's a different stratosphere. Paul is saying, church of Corinth, you have to be glad that God told you who He is and what He does. He didn't have to. Your organs can't figure out who God is and His wisdom and how to get saved.
By the way, you can look at creation and say God is wise and powerful, but you can't look at creation and say I'm such a sinner that the only way I can get saved is by a lamb slain in my place. You don't live your life and say, you know, I think the wages of sin is death and I think blood is the only way that I can have sins forgiven.
God cannot be weighed, or titrated. I don't know why I use titration. In chemistry class in college, I always did titration analysis. They give you some white powder in a little thing and then you have to figure out what it was, down to I don't know how many significant figures.
It's like that cosmonaut, that Russian cosmonaut. Remember when he went up to space? First guy up to space there? I think he's named Titov. There's no evidence for God. I've been to space. There's no God there.
Well, the only way you're going to find God in space is if you open your Bible. Or as one man said, just go outside your space shuttle for about ten minutes. You'll find God alright. It's a different dimension of sight and sound, of hearing.
You can't invent God. You say, well, I think I'm going to try to find the God within me and I'll just take a bunch of peyote and go to a sweat tent. That's what I'll do. But friends, that's just as foolish as any other way to understand God outside the Scriptures.
It's the exact same. I don't want this book. Show me someone who says they believe the Bible and then they begin to live a morally decrepit and corrupt life. I'll show you, the first thing they do, they attack the Bible.
Because they don't want this divine wisdom to rule over them. Happens all the time in ministry. Somebody says they believe the Word, they preach the Word, they're under the Word, and they go, you know what, but I like my sin better.
What do they have to attack? They have to attack the Word so they can live. And for me and for you, I'm just glad His divine wisdom is in here because He didn't have to tell us anything. It would be just of God for Him to say, you've fallen, and by the way, you don't get any more special revelation.
You get to know that I'm powerful and I'm wrathful and I'm wise because of creation and everything else I'll see at judgment day because you're sinful. But God has said, here's how I'm gracious, how I'm merciful, how I'm long-suffering, how I'm humble, how I'm submissive, here's Christ Jesus.
Show me a church that's focused on divine wisdom incarnate Christ Jesus and I'll show you a church that doesn't split apart but they all come together. Friends, I want you to read your Bible. And I want you to run from this silly notion that you can understand the infinite mind of God through the lens of your feelings.
I didn't say you have to be emotionless. If you read about hell and you are grieved and sorrowful, good. If you read about heaven and realize how you're so sinful that only through Jesus' death and burial and resurrection you get to go to heaven and you're joyful, good.
But if you say, I'm going to determine my life and how to run it. Who to marry, what job to go to, what church to leave, what church to go to, and everything else by mysticism, you aren't wise. Let me rescue you from a life of trouble.
Let me rescue you from the way of the transgressor is hard. Let me rescue you from having a life that's run by yourself but you say it's God making the decisions for you. God led me. God told me. How are you going to disobey God?
Why don't you just say, I've examined the Scripture. I've poured through the wisdom of God. Asked God to give me wisdom. I've asked other people for wisdom. And now I'll make a decision. And I will make the decision, let's do this as a family.
And if you're the wife and you think it's a dumb idea, say, honey, with all due respect, it's a dumb idea, but if you're willing to go, I'm willing to go. And then your next option wife is this, duck.
That's it. You want to be a mystic? Then read current evangelicalism. You want to be a mystic? You read Beth Moore. She'll teach you how to be a good mystic and how to do exactly the opposite of everything I told you today.
You want to be wise? Devour the Word of God and say, Lord, if you let me live long enough, I have a systematic way to look through the Scriptures and I want you to give me a heart that desires the Word of God and I want to be a maniac.
I want to be a fanatic. I want to just look in the Bible and say, you are the wisest God. You are the best God. Give me wisdom. Sometimes I find Bibles here. It's Monday or Tuesday I come in and I find your Bible sitting in your chairs.
Bad news is most people have 15 Bibles in their house now. I almost wish that wasn't the case because I love to go up to people and say, how'd your Bible study go this week? They're like, oh, really good.
I'm thinking, your Bible's at church. I probably should say now, how'd your Bible study go this week? Oh, really good. What translation are you reading these days? It sets you up. By the way, if you are a person that has trouble reading, I think if you ask God, God, I have a hard time reading.
Could you please help me understand the Bible? Do you think the Spirit of God would be pleased to do that? Do you think it'd be good if you said, well, the Lord is leading me to go take an English class?
No, just say, I think I should go take an English class. I think I should go take an English class at Wachusett Valley or whatever they call it. I don't know what it is to learn the Bible. As Luther would say, God first clothed Himself with humanity and now He clothes Himself with Hebrew and Greek letters.
We have English Bibles and we can know everything we need to know about God. If you want to be wise, if you want the church to grow, if you want unity in the church, unity in the family, it's all underneath divine wisdom that is eternal, relevant, decreed from God before all eternity.
We'll show you if you're wise or not and it will tell you everything you know about the world. Life, death, marriage, everything else. One of the things I'm glad for in this church, might as well just tell you, this church will do two things in the hearts of people here.
It will either motivate you to study the Bible. Ever seen anybody wake surf behind a boat in just a little wave and you don't even need a rope and it just kind of sucks you under? Sucks you under, sorry.
Sucks you behind the boat? I guess you haven't seen it. But if you're a Christian here, here's what the desired response is. Everybody else is studying the Bible. Some people are memorizing. They're studying IBS.
God, just help me just get sucked under with that wake and help me just go along. That's the desired effect of all this. That you'll catch the vision of everyone else and you'll be around other people who study more and you'll just kind of fall right in.
Yeah, that's what I want to do. I want to be wise. But I know there are other people who realize that if they want to stay lazy when it comes to Bible study, they thought they were big shots at their old church and they want to be big shots at this church.
But at the old church they didn't read their Bible and at the new church they didn't read their Bible. This church will basically part the ways for you and you won't be able to take it unless you're humble and say, today's a good day that I want to read the Bible.
The way you are wise, the only way you are wise is through the Spirit of God ministering to you this truth. There's no other way. I want to be wiser. I know you want to be wiser. Let's pray. Our hope in ages past, Father, we thank You today.
Father, without Your Spirit not one thing today could be understood, followed up upon, grasped, or done. So may Your Holy Spirit, may the third person of the Trinity who has not just inspired these words from Scripture, not just revealed these words from Scripture, I pray that He would illumine our minds and then help them to do it.
Father, I pray for this dear church. I pray that You'd encourage the Bible readers and I pray that You'd encourage those who wish they could read the Bible more. But for whatever excuse, time, literacy, whatever it might be, Father, You're great enough to overcome all those things.
And so, we know we don't deserve anything, but would You work in spite of our hearts? Would You give the dads leadership to teach the family the Scriptures? Would You give moms encouragement to come alongside and help the dads?
Would You give single people just a desire, not for entertainment all the time, but for wisdom? And Father, if there's one person here who is not a Christian, who is not born again, who is morally and intellectually foolish because they've rejected the cross, grant them repentance and eternal life today for Your Son's glory.
In Jesus' name, Amen.