The Wisdom of the Wise

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Amen. Well please turn your Bibles to Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 29.

00:15

Today we'll be looking at verses 13 and 14, verses 13 and 14, both quoted by the

00:22

New Testament. And just as a reminder, once again, chapters 38 through 35 are about the folly of trusting in the nations.

00:33

The land of Judah has trusted in Assyria, Assyria has turned against them and is now attacking them, and they're considering trusting in Egypt.

00:41

And so that's the crisis that these chapters are prophetically talking about. Eventually in chapter 36 it switches to narrative, speaking of what happens there.

00:51

But that's what's going on in the background of these chapters, is the people saying they trust the

00:56

Lord, but actually they're trusting in Egypt instead. So please stand for the reading of God's Word and we'll look at Isaiah 29, verses 13 and 14.

01:10

And the Lord said, because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men, therefore behold,

01:25

I will again do wonderful things with this people, and wonder upon wonder, and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.

01:36

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this rich passage that you've given us to consider this morning.

01:48

I pray that we would not just consider this in an intellectual sense, placing ourselves above your

01:56

Word, but that we would submit ourselves to you and to your Word, and that we would be measured by it.

02:02

Lord, I pray that you would weigh us out, that you would test us, that you would try us, that you would purify us, that you would make us excellent, that you would, that you would, through the righteousness of Jesus Christ, make us ready for that day where we will stand before you.

02:23

In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, so the passages that we have looked at earlier in this chapter have spoken of Judas' hypocrisy.

02:36

Let me just read some of these verses. Verse 1 said, Ah Ariel, Ariel, this being another name for Jerusalem, the city where David encamped, add year to year, let the feasts run their round.

02:50

Let the feasts run their round, he's talking about the religious feasts. And then, as he spoke in verse 9,

03:01

Astonish yourselves and be astonished, blind yourselves and be blind, be drunk but not with wine, stagger but not with strong drink.

03:09

For the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes, the prophets, and has covered your heads, the seers.

03:17

So he's talking about the spiritual blindness of the people. The people, through their hypocrisy, have become spiritually blind.

03:25

And that hypocrisy is, in particular, the hypocrisy of claiming they trust the

03:31

Lord but not trusting the Lord, honoring Him with all the outward actions and religious rituals, but in reality, they do not trust the

03:42

Lord because they have instead trusted in Egypt. God has promised to deliver them from their enemies. They do not trust

03:47

Him. They instead trust another. Today is the case that God has promised to deliver everyone who trusts in Him from the great enemy of death and destruction, and yet people do not trust in the

03:59

Lord. They trust in other means. And so the Lord has an answer to this hypocrisy.

04:05

And what is His answer? His answer is a very surprising one. His answer is salvation. His answer is such a great and glorious salvation that it shows, it exposes the hypocrisy of those who claim to trust in the

04:20

Lord but don't. They claim to trust in the Lord, and God saves in such a great and glorious way that they are confused by what just happened.

04:29

And it shows, well, they didn't trust in the Lord. If they had trusted in the Lord, this would not be something that confuses them.

04:35

This is something that they would readily embrace as the work of the Lord. But no,

04:40

God's salvation is designed to be great in such a way that it confounds those who hypocritically claim they trust the

04:49

Lord. So let's begin here in this first verse, 13.

04:57

And the Lord said, because this people draw near to me with their mouth and to honor me with their lips.

05:07

So the people of God and Judah, they honor Him with their mouth, they honor

05:13

Him with their lips, but nothing more. You know, this is going through the ritual.

05:19

This is, for an analogy for our time, would be going to church, doing the things you're supposed to do, showing up at all the events, outwardly living a righteous life, but inwardly having a deceitful heart that does not truly trust in the

05:36

Lord, that does these things not because God has commanded them, not on the authority of God, but rather on the authority of man for cultural reasons or other reasons.

05:50

Now, why does he speak of the mouth or the lips? In James 3, 2, it says, for we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.

06:03

The tongue is this small thing, but it is the rudder that steers the whole ship. Those who claim they trust in the

06:12

Lord, but do not, they honor God with their tongue, but inwardly, they are empty.

06:18

Inwardly, they are deceitful and evil. And so the tongue, the tongue is the way that we are to honor

06:26

God. But if it is only with the tongue, if there is not a heart behind it, it is empty, it is meaningless.

06:33

And so this is, this is how people engage in hypocrisy, it's by outwardly doing the things that they're supposed to do, saying the things that they're supposed to say, but not believing them, not acting on them.

06:45

If you believe in something, you will act on it, but a people who does not believe does not act on it.

06:53

And this is frequently something that's cited by many who are not part of the church as the reason that they're not part of the church is because of hypocrisy, because these people preach one thing, but they do another.

07:05

They say they trust in God. They say that you ought to live this life on God's authority, but I've seen the way they live.

07:12

They don't actually believe these things. Now, sometimes, most of the times, almost every single time, this is a terrible excuse.

07:21

This is a terrible excuse not to come worship the living God because there are hypocrites.

07:27

Yes, people are hypocrites. Every single person fails to trust in God as he ought.

07:33

At the same time, while anyone who rejects the Lord on account of hypocrites will bear their own sins, their blood will be on the hands of those who actually engage in hypocrisy and so cause them to stumble.

07:48

So consider that as you, as you think about how your actions match the words that you speak regarding God, whether your actions truly do trust in the

07:59

Lord, whether your actions truly do obey him when you call people to obedience to him, because the world is watching.

08:08

They see the hypocrisy. They see how little we match up to what we say, and it's important to acknowledge our own sinfulness, our own brokenness in the eyes of God, and that what we are claiming is not that we are, not that we are perfect people, but that we are sinners that are justified by the righteousness of Christ.

08:30

And if that's what we're claiming, then we're claiming the right thing.

08:35

If that's what we're claiming, then any of those who would point to hypocrisy as being the reason they do not want to be part of such a kingdom, then their blood is on their own hands rather than ours.

08:47

But remember that as you consider whether or not your profession matches up with your actions.

08:56

Now consider also how much folly it is to be a hypocrite.

09:02

You know, Jesus speaks of those who, who pray to him, or who pray to God, and they only do it for outward glory.

09:10

They do it so that others can hear their prayer. He says they already have their reward. You know, if we are serving

09:16

God, hoping to receive his favor, hoping to, to be in line with his wisdom, in line with him so that we might receive all his blessings, how, how foolish is it to say such things outwardly and not do them inwardly?

09:37

You know, have you ever heard of quiet quitting? It's kind of this new thing. You know, there's this whole anti -work movement that's just very against work, and one of the things they propose is that you should quiet quit your work, which is where you kind of just do less and less at your work until, until people notice that you're not there and you're, you're not showing up, and to see just how much you can get away with.

10:00

Now imagine if you were quiet quitting on commission. Okay, that is, that would be the, a similar folly.

10:08

If you were quiet quitting on commission, you're doing less and less, but you're not getting paid for any of this, so what's the point in going through the routine?

10:14

The whole routine of trying to keep up appearances accomplishes absolutely nothing. The same way hypocrisy is like quiet quitting on commission.

10:23

There's nothing that you're, that you're accomplishing. You're going through many motions. You're doing many things outwardly that are taking up your time, spending your energy, and there is zero reward in all of it.

10:34

There's zero reward in making your prayer so that men hear them. That outward glory, that is a big bucket of nothing.

10:41

That is, that is worth nothing in the end. It is only, it is only in the eyes of God that we must be found to be true to our profession.

10:54

Now, it continues on here, saying, while their hearts are far from me, and the fear of me is a commandment taught by men, their hearts are far from him.

11:05

So their lips say one thing, their hearts are elsewhere. They claim one thing, they believe another, and this is the case with many people.

11:14

Many people in even other religions other than Christianity, they believe various things just because men have said them, or they do various things just because there's cultural reasons for doing so, and there's no, there's no authority of God that is being submitted to.

11:33

If you believe the Christian faith, it is not enough to believe it on account of man's wisdom, on account of some argument that you have heard.

11:42

It is only enough to believe it if you believe it on the authority of God and what he has claimed in his word.

11:51

First Thessalonians 2 .13 speaks of the Thessalonians, and Paul says that he rejoices that they have believed the things that they received, not just as man's word, but as the word of God.

12:06

You know, there are many people who believe what the Bible teaches in various ways, but if they do not believe it as it is the word of God, if they do not believe it on the authority of the word of God, it is not true saving faith.

12:21

It is not true saving faith. You know, I believe I mentioned this earlier in the catechism teaching, but real faith is being weighed by the

12:31

Lord. If we are weighing him out in our hands, if we are the judge putting him in the scales, that's not real faith.

12:37

That's the false faith that Jesus describes of the seed that is sown on the rocky soil.

12:44

It springs up for a little while, and then later it's just blown away because its faith did not take root.

12:49

That's not faith at all. There are all kinds of people who end up believing Christianity, but not trusting in the

12:57

Lord, and that is not a saving faith. Those people float away. They float away when the rains come.

13:04

I've seen it many times. I've seen many people claim to have faith in the Lord, but it's only been an intellectual exercise to them.

13:12

It's only been on their own authority, counting themselves as the judge of the universe, deciding whether or not

13:20

God is true. And ultimately, they're only going to hold that for a little while. No one's going to put

13:26

God on the throne while at the same time claiming to be on the throne in such a way. Eventually they will unseat him for something else.

13:35

It is only when we recognize that God is the one on the throne and not us, and not us, that we will, in submitting ourselves to him, have a real faith that honors him, not one that is outward, not one that is as taught by men, but as one that is on the authority of the

13:54

Word of God. Now, Jesus speaks of this in Mark 7.

13:59

He also speaks of it in Matthew, but the account in Mark is a little more elaborated.

14:05

So please, please turn to Mark 7. And I'd like to read this whole passage because it's all very relevant to what

14:18

Isaiah is saying here. Verse 1. Now when the

14:23

Pharisees gathered to him with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled.

14:31

That is unwashed for the Pharisees. And all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders.

14:40

And when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.

14:52

And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?

15:00

And he said to them, well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

15:10

In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. So it's interesting because what

15:17

Isaiah was addressing was believing the right things on the wrong authority, right?

15:23

These people are honoring God with their lips. These people are going through all the feasts and all the ceremonies, but they have believed it on the wrong authority.

15:32

They haven't held God up on the throne. Rather, they've put man on the throne and are only obeying and believing such things on the authority of men, not submitting to God.

15:43

But now Jesus speaks of something that goes beyond that, right? Jesus uses this passage to speak of someone who's believing the wrong things on the wrong authority.

15:53

Not the right things on the wrong authority, but who has added extra rules and betrayed the liberty of conscience that God has given us so that we're not subject to the doctrines or commandments of men, but only to his word, and they have added something in addition to that.

16:08

So now there's this slope that you begin seeing here between believing the right things on the wrong authority and believing wrong things on wrong authority.

16:17

And then he continues on in verse 8. You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.

16:24

And he said to them, you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.

16:31

For Moses said, unto your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.

16:38

But you say, for man tells his father or mother, whatever you would have gained from me as Corbin that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down and many such things you do.

16:56

So what Corbin is, is basically this way that someone could pledge their belongings to the poor or to some cause, right?

17:04

And once you've done that, you can't use your belongings to help your parents because you have to hang on to them until you die and give them to another.

17:13

So it seems very selfless, but in reality it's very selfish, because you're saying, I'm going to keep these until I die and don't need them anymore.

17:21

So what's happened here is we've seen further slide down the slope. First, right things, wrong authority, wrong things, wrong authority, and now wrong things against the right authority.

17:34

So it's going further and further down the slope. Jesus points out this one thing that they've brought up, but then he shows them the extremity of where it's gone to.

17:43

And this is, this is the slippery slope. If you believe the right things on the wrong authority, then that wrong authority will lead you astray.

17:53

Eventually, if not immediately, you begin believing things that are wrong on that wrong authority, and then you believe things against God on that wrong authority.

18:03

And this is why every person who claims to trust in God, who does not trust in him, not trust in Jesus Christ on the authority of God's word, but rather on some other authority, ultimately ends up falling away.

18:15

Because that slippery slope is indeed slippery. It's not a fallacious argument. It is indeed a slippery slope, and if you start going down that, you will fall.

18:26

You must believe the truth of God on the authority of God, not based on some other authority.

18:32

And this is something that's just really prevalent in our world right now, as people are seeing just all the, all the chaos in the world, all the folly of man, and they want wisdom.

18:43

And there are a lot of people examining the Bible and going to the Bible for wisdom, but they are doing so in a way where they're still not submitting to the wisdom of God, but rather evaluating it by their own standards.

18:55

There's all kinds of secular philosophers that are presenting the Bible as some kind of, some kind of great source of wisdom, but they're doing so in such a way where it's still substandard to their wisdom by which they are evaluating the wisdom of God.

19:12

And this is something to watch out for. It's something to watch out for. It might be exciting to see so many people interested in the

19:18

Bible, but the way they are interested in it is a way that undermines its authority entirely, and that's, it's very disturbing to me to see how frequently that's happening.

19:33

Jesus continues, or excuse me, Isaiah continues in chapter 29. Therefore, behold,

19:41

I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder.

19:48

Okay, so what's his response to the hypocrisy of the people? It is the incredible response I've already mentioned.

19:54

He decides that he is going to save them in such an extraordinary way that it will defeat their wisdom.

20:02

He is going to save this people. So they have Assyria coming against them. They're thinking about whether or not they should trust in Egypt, and what is

20:10

God going to do to show their folly? He is going to save them in an astounding way, and I've mentioned this before, and I'll probably keep mentioning it until we get to that chapter, but what he ends up doing is that the night when the

20:22

Assyrians are camped outside the gate, he takes out 185 ,000 of their troops, just enormous quantities.

20:30

Can you imagine that many people just dying all at once? He takes out this massive number of people from their troops, and this ultimately points to the salvation we have in Jesus Christ.

20:47

The salvation we have in Jesus Christ is one that's much greater. God has worked this in a way that is designed to confound man, to confound man's wisdom.

20:57

God has a greater mind than we do. A lot of times people think of God as being of our kind, of our species, in a sense, and so sometimes we might think, well, that doesn't seem very wise of God, or that doesn't seem very

21:14

X of God. No, God is the standard of all wisdom. He is the one who gives wisdom to others.

21:21

There is no standard of wisdom that he conforms to. He is that standard, and so he, in fact, designed the world in such a way that he could reveal our wisdom to us so that we would see that his wisdom is greater than ours.

21:37

Anyone who thinks they may have outsmarted God, they may have found a flaw in his system.

21:43

The incredible folly of that, because it's not just there, it's often the case that less intelligent men will find flaws in the systems of more intelligent men, but if your intelligence is only a vague, a shadowy derivative of God's intelligence, how could that possibly be the case?

22:02

Anything that you know, you only know by his grace in giving revelation through creation and directly from his word.

22:11

These are the only things we would know, and so anyone who thinks they may have found a flaw in his system or something that he has done that's not right, they do not realize that he is absolute.

22:22

He is the standard, not some other standard that they appeal to, and so God's act of salvation is, yeah, it's wonderful and it's grand, and something that I've been trying to stress in the past few weeks and a few times through Isaiah, I'll stress again, is that basically

22:47

God's wisdom in ordaining sin, okay, think about this, think about what would have happened if God had not ordained that man would be blind in this way.

22:58

Remember, he had commissioned Isaiah to go preach to the people in such a way that they would be given over to their own hardness of heart and blinded, right?

23:06

He decided to do that very intentionally. Now, if he hadn't done that, there would be no cause for him to save in such a glorious way.

23:15

In fact, if he had not allowed sin into the world at all, there would be no cause for him to save at all.

23:21

God is incredibly wise in ordaining sin. It's not something that a lot of people think of.

23:26

In fact, a lot of people think that the evil that exists in the world is evidence that God doesn't exist or evidence that God isn't well -intentioned or evidence that God isn't all -powerful, but in fact, according to his word, it is evidence of all those things.

23:41

In fact, the reason why people don't find it that way is because they have these hard hearts that are confounded by his wisdom, but God has ordained sin in such a way so that he will save his people from sin, and more than that, he has ordained sin in such a way that people would, in their own wisdom, fail to trust

24:01

God, and God would save in a way that goes beyond anything that man could imagine. So God is wise not just in his salvation, but even in his ordaining of sin that would warrant such a great and glorious salvation.

24:20

You know, as I said in the very beginning, it exposes the hypocrisy of man who would claim to trust

24:25

God, who would claim to be wise and isn't wise. It exposes it when they are confounded by what God is doing.

24:31

Well, I didn't expect him to do that. You know, if you're familiar with the Old Testament and you know the story of the medium of Endor or the witch of Endor, most people would understand that, well, okay, so what happens is that King Saul comes to her and asks her to speak to Samuel as a dead man.

24:52

Samuel's dead at this point, to raise up Samuel and speak to him, and she does, and she's astounded when she ends up speaking to Samuel, and she realizes that this is

25:01

Saul in disguise that's come to her. Now, what a lot of people understand that's going on there is that it's never worked for her before.

25:09

She's never actually talked to a spirit before, and then suddenly it works. You know, she claims to have all these abilities, and then it actually happens, and she's astounded.

25:19

That's what you see here as God saves the people from Assyria. They claim that God is almighty, but then they're absolutely confounded that he would actually be almighty.

25:27

You know, people claim that they believe in a god or some kind of powerful being, but the idea that he would be so incredibly powerful that he could enter his own creation via the incarnation and save his people from their sins through the cross, this is something that goes beyond their wildest imaginations and confounds them, but this is the way that God has decided to save.

25:57

He says, and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning is hidden.

26:04

God's ways are not like our ways. That's what it says later on in Isaiah. His wisdom is far higher than our wisdom, and Paul quotes this in 1

26:16

Corinthians, so I'd like to read from 1 Corinthians 1, beginning in verse 18. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

26:29

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.

26:36

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not

26:42

God made foolish the wisdom of the world? God has made foolish the wisdom of the world, and how has he done that?

26:50

He has done that through the cross, through something that is so unexpected, so far beyond the wisdom of man, something that seems to man as utter foolishness, but in fact is just so incredible that man cannot fathom what

27:06

God would accomplish through such a thing. He goes far beyond all expectations.

27:16

Now I'd like to go back to Mark 7, so go ahead and turn there, because there's one more thing

27:24

Jesus says here that I believe is very relevant. And as you're going there, as you're going there, just consider the great wisdom that God has in saving through, not just, not just a cross that confounds man, but even through the preaching of the cross that confounds man.

27:47

That's what Paul goes on to talk about. He didn't decide that he would save through a magic book where you read it and then, you know, automatically you get transformed by it, but the primarily, primary way that his word goes forward is through something that seems even weaker.

28:05

It's through the preaching of the word. It's a fallen person like me who stumbles over his words, who has trouble putting a lot of his thoughts together and even understanding

28:14

God's word, expressing it heart to heart to you, that this is the way that God decided the word would go forward.

28:20

Not only the, the apparent weakness of the cross where Christ is dying shamefully, not, not just staying in the dead for three days, not just through, through word as opposed to military might, but even through ordaining that humans would be the primary instruments through which that word would be proclaimed.

28:42

That is, he has, he has decided that his word would go out in such a way that appears so foolish that would utterly confound the wisdom of man.

28:51

But there is great wisdom in doing it this way because it is in doing it this way that, that man, that man's wisdom is de -elevated and God is held much higher, right?

29:04

If you, if going back to this issue of God ordaining sin, if Adam had not sinned, if he had done everything right, would we praise

29:15

God? Well, we would praise God, but we wouldn't praise him for his mercy. There'd be no reason to. What mercy would he have ever shown the world?

29:21

There would be no need for Jesus Christ. There would, in terms of his sacrifice on the cross, there would be no need for, for God's mercy extended to us.

29:30

And so, we wouldn't know him fully. We wouldn't praise him fully. But God has decided to demonstrate salvation in such a way that it shows how foolish man is because man cannot fathom the wisdom of God and so that we have every reason to praise him all the more.

29:48

And so, Jesus continues in this, this passage in Mark. And he says, and he called the people to him and again said to them, hear me, all of you, and understand.

29:57

There's nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.

30:04

Now, in context, the reason why he's bringing up this up is because this whole discussion had started around washing hands, right?

30:11

And that's very, while it was a wrong tradition, I'm sure it was well -intentioned. You wash your hands so you don't have anything unclean, so you don't end up ingesting anything unclean.

30:21

Jesus says, and when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable.

30:28

And he said to them, then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart, but his stomach, and is expelled?

30:40

Thus, he declared all foods clean. Thus, he declares all foods clean. I actually had the opportunity to speak to someone who had been raised

30:49

Jewish this past week and explain this verse to her, and she was surprised by this because she never knew why, why it was that Christians who believed in the

30:57

Old Testament, you know, ate, ate foods that would be unclean to Jews. And so she realized that, oh, okay, so Jesus did say something about that.

31:05

Yes, indeed, he did. But now consider, in light of what Jesus had just been teaching, how wild it is that he would, he would say that, right?

31:14

He's just told people that you're hypocrites, that have strayed from, strayed from God. You, you have this wrong authority of man that you're going to, and so you believe wrong things, and you believe things against God.

31:25

And then here Jesus is, the same one who in, you know, Matthew 5 said that, that he wasn't doing away with the law and the prophets, now declares all foods clean.

31:39

He's saying you must submit yourself to the wisdom of God. You cannot submit yourself to the wisdom of man. Those two are in competition.

31:46

You can't have both. You must submit yourself to the wisdom of God. And then he goes, and he changes one of the ceremonial regulations that God has for a people.

31:56

What does that say about who Jesus is, who, who one second is saying that you can't, you can't decide over God's wisdom.

32:04

You can't, you can't go to man's authority instead. You have to, you have to submit yourself to God's wisdom. And then he changes what

32:10

God's regulation is in that ceremony. He is the wisdom of God. He is the wisdom of God.

32:15

He has the freedom to change what that ceremonial regulation is, because he is the one from whom it comes.

32:23

He is, as scripture says, the word of God. He is the, all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him, as it says in Colossians.

32:33

And, you know, if you, if you read Proverbs 8 and you see the way it describes wisdom, most

32:39

Christians through the ages have understood this to be referring to Jesus, that Jesus Christ is the very wisdom of God.

32:46

He is the word of God. He is the one who comes from God. He is the wisdom of God. And so we must go to this wisdom.

32:57

We must submit ourselves to Jesus Christ. We must not trust in the authority of man, but rather in the authority of God.

33:04

We must trust in his Son, Jesus Christ. And if we, and as the people in Isaiah's time, who did not trust in God as they claimed to do, they were amazed, they were confounded.

33:17

And on the prophets, the false prophets, the false seers, they're all confounded by what God does when he actually fulfills

33:24

Isaiah's words. And it was the case at the cross that there are many who are confounded by the way

33:29

God saved through Jesus Christ. And what happened to them? They missed the boat. They missed salvation.

33:35

And one day Jesus will return and he will save in such a great and glorious way that once again it will confound those who hypocritically say they trust in God, but do not trust in him.

33:45

Do not be that person. Trust in him for real. Don't just say you trust in him, actually trust in him.

33:51

Believe that he is all -powerful and that he is capable of the greatest things. He is capable of the greatest things.

33:57

And I would go to him in prayer. We pray to him knowing that he is capable of the greatest things. We submit ourselves before him in prayer because he is capable.

34:07

But if you are one who says that he is almighty but does not believe he is, then you will be confounded on that last day as well.

34:16

So let us be those who truly do trust in the Lord. And though we be in awe and amaze, let us not be confounded.

34:24

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the wisdom from on high that you have given.

34:32

We thank you for Jesus Christ. We pray that as we trust in him, not on man's authority but on your authority, that we would have a great assurance of the forgiveness of sins, a great assurance of our future hope of resurrection, and a great assurance of your working in the world, the expansion of your kingdom, as we pray to you and as we regularly tell others of your good news.