When You Do Not Know (Part 1)

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When the future is uncertain and unpredictable, what do you do? The answer is both wonderful and surprising!

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When You Do Not Know (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry, my name is Mike Ependroth and we are here in the studio.
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I'm live, I'm alive and we'll see what happens with this new
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Rodecaster Pro 2 as we fade to black.
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If you don't know about No Compromise Radio, we talk about Jesus who never compromised, we talk about Christ for pardon,
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Christ for power, duplex, gratia, et cetera, law gospel, covenant of redemption, covenant of works, covenant of grace.
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That's kind of what we're about. If I want to put the music back, I just do this. Don't you like that?
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I had another song, but I thought I liked this one better. So this is what we're after now, No Compromise Radio.
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If you'd like to order Gospel Assurance, 31 -day guide for Gospel Assurance, you can online and if you want to order 10 or more, email me mike at bbcchurch .org
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and I can get them to you for probably around 10, 11 bucks, something like that, depending on how many you buy.
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I'm also working on that book, condensing it into a 31 -day devotion, so every chapter, every day would be no longer than two pages and it would be a little simpler.
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Some of the articles in the first book may be too hard to read. People get bogged down.
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They want shorter devotionals. It does not going to take me much to just make it shorter. So I think there's going to be Gospel Assurance, a 31 -day guide, that's what we have out now, and a 31 -day devotional.
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So that's going to be hopefully coming out, I don't know, early in the year. I wanted to try to do it this year, but I was busy.
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Thank you for the prayers for my little grandson, Amos. Amos is feeling pretty good.
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I got to hold him in my arms and play around with him. I mean, six weeks old, how much can you play?
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But hey, they're fun now. I can imagine how much fun they get when they get older.
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What else here is going on, No Compromise Radio? I finished a series called Gospel Assurance for AGTV, American Gospel Television, five parts, so that makes five parts on law gospel, five parts on monardistic sanctification, and five parts on assurance.
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That's all I've got in my wheelhouse. I've got nothing else.
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That's it. That's the only thing Abendroth's got. That's all he talks about. I guess I could do something on the life of Christ.
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Something about preaching and teaching or something like that. But anyway, I am glad you're listening.
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Coming up this January is West Cal's conference,
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Westminster Seminary Escondido's conference. I think it's the 13th and 14th, and we are going to have a couple hours before the conference starts a room at West Cal, and Pat Abendroth of the
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Pactom, Justin and John of Theocast, Scott, R.
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Scott from Heidelcast, and myself, Mike Abendroth, we're all going to be together in a room recording some live stuff.
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If you'd like to attend, you may attend. We'd love to have you. All right.
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I'd like to talk a little bit about not knowing. Is it okay not to know?
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Well, if someone asked me, what about eternal life, and do you know how
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I could be forgiven, and I would say, I don't know, that'd be bad.
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It would be bad if I was, Tim Keller asked on a platform, what about homosexuality?
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Is it a sin? Are they forgiven? Whatever the direct question was, I can't remember. I think Martin Breshear asked him the question, and Keller said somewhere in his answer regarding that it's above my pay grade.
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If I said that, that would be a bad, I don't know. But I don't know isn't always a wrong response.
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Sometimes it's a good response, and that's what we want to talk about today on No Compromise Radio.
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I could frame it this way. What will happen tomorrow, and what will happen later today?
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What's going to happen next week? What will happen next month? What will happen next year?
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What will happen in the town you live in in the next week? What's going to happen to the United States?
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What's going to happen in the Middle East? What's going to happen in China? Plagues, bombs,
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Lord's return, power grid goes out, pandemics. We simply don't know.
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We don't know. I don't know. You don't know. Since we don't know, shall we be paralyzed with fear?
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Shall we sell everything and move to Jerusalem? Shall we become
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Amish? Shall we hunker down, quarantine, become like monks and hermits?
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I mean, if you don't know, is it encouraging that you don't know, or is it discouraging? Everything's uncertain out there.
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Are you encouraged? Are you discouraged? I mean, we don't know. What do we do as Christians when we don't know the future?
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What do we do as believers in Christ Jesus when we know God's providentially working everything together for good, but we don't know the future?
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Today, I want to talk a little bit about what to do when you don't know, bluff, parade around like you do know, and I guess we could even go this far.
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If you don't know and you'd like to know a little bit more, should you listen to the media? Should you listen to entertainers?
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Should you listen to, I don't know, the Wall Street Journal? Should you listen to philosophers and listen to Socrates and Plato, good old
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Socrats? Just watch
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TV so we can process everything properly, read a bunch of newspapers, or could we go to get some wisdom from wisdom literature?
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Don't you think that'd be better? I think that'd be much better. I don't want to sit around and think to myself, you know what,
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I have all the answers, somebody else has all the answers. Well, I don't know a lot of things, but I do know that God's wisdom literature found in the book of Ecclesiastes is going to help.
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It's going to help me realize that there's a God, that He's active, that He's providentially working, that He is sovereign, that He judges, that He saves, that He encourages, and even though life is fleeting, even though life is frustrating, even though life is vexing, when do you ever say the word vex, vexation, vax, vaccination?
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Are you allowed to talk about vaccinations on No Compromise Radio Ministry? Did you get your flu vax? I got my shingles vax a few years ago,
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FYI. I want you to realize it's okay to say,
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I don't know. It's okay. I give you my permission. I give you my permission to say,
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I don't know. We come to the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 11, and you're going to see that's something that is a regular occurrence.
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You don't know. You don't know. You don't know. You don't know. And when the writer is saying, you don't know, that includes me, of course.
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I don't know either. I want to sing the Ben Withers, Bill Withers song, I know,
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I know, I know, I know. It's not called I know. I know. I know that it's not called I know.
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You know? Why anybody ever listens to this show, I have no idea.
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I don't know. Anyway, speaking of Ecclesiastes, I found a few great quotes about Ecclesiastes in general as a book.
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Herman Melville in Moby Dick said, the truest of all men was the man of sorrows,
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Jesus. And the truest of all books is Solomon's Ecclesiastes.
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That's pretty good. One man wrote, Ecclesiastes is fine hammered steel of woe.
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One man wrote, Ecclesiastes speaks to people in tough binds, people with vendettas, a bone to pick, no dog to kick, the sour grapers, the hurt, those who've never shucked off their adolescent angst.
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Well, there you go. What do we have here? Do we have any kind of, some kind of special chimes?
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Oh, all right. One last quote on Ecclesiastes. Of all that I've ever seen or learned, that book
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Ecclesiastes seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man's life upon this earth, and also earth's highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth.
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I'm not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one,
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I could only say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I've ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it, the most lasting and profound.
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Wow, Ecclesiastes, that great wisdom literature found in your Bible, like in the middle of your
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Bible, that teaches you that God intends your life as a Christian to be satisfying, fulfilling, full of joy as you focus on the triune
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God with an eye toward fearing Him. Really, truly great news for modern man in the midst of life under the sun as we strive after the wind.
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And if you don't lift your eyes above the sun, right, we're striving under the sun.
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If you don't lift your eyes above the sun, life is going to be very, very depressing.
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You should enjoy your life, Christian, in the fear of God, and you should enjoy your life as a gift from His hand.
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Remember, Jesus said, the thief comes only to steal and to kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and they may have it or might have it abundantly.
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I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And in a world of vanity, of vanities, all is vanity.
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Everything seems to be perplexing and enigmatic and futile and unbeneficial and transient and fleeting.
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Everything seems to be vanity. What do we do? Well, we're coming to the climax of the book of Ecclesiastes, and we're in chapter 11 now.
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And basically, here's what he says. You don't know. I know.
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Nobody seems to know, do they? When you don't know, what do you do? And that's the book of Ecclesiastes chapter, that's the chapter 11 of Ecclesiastes.
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You trust God and you rejoice. Or if you really need a daily affirmation, you can get that,
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I guess. I declare you will experience God's faithfulness.
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You will not worry. You will not doubt. You will keep your trust in him, knowing that he will not fail you.
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You will give birth to every promise God put in your heart, and you will become everything
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God created you to be. I just hit the turn off on my
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Joel cube and it said, goodbye. When you don't know, you still can honor
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God out of gratitude with the response of walking by faith and rejoicing.
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That's Ecclesiastes chapter 11. 10 verses in chapter 11, today and tomorrow,
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I think I'm going to try to work through that. The first response is found in the first seven verses, excuse me, the six verses.
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What am I doing? Good thing I looked at my notes here because otherwise I would have messed it up when
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I was preaching. Verses one through six of chapter 11, you can trust the triune
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God. I know what you're saying. What's all this I know stuff? I don't know stuff. I know,
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I know. What about all that? Do you see in chapter 11, verse two, you know not.
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Chapter five, you do not know. Chapter five goes on to say, so you do not know.
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Chapter six, you do not know. Life is unpredictable.
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The future is uncertain and in our eyes, of course, not the Lord's and we don't know.
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So what do we do? We walk by faith and you're going to see that in these first several verses of Ecclesiastes 11, cast your bread upon the waters for you will find it after many days, give a portion to seven or even eight for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.
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Well, when you don't know, when you're uncertain, when you can pretty much figure out that some bad things are probably going to happen because it's a fallen world.
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What do you do? Here he gives some commands, some funny ones it seems.
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Cast your bread upon the waters. It's a command. I mean, in my mind,
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I think to myself, I'm going outside to the river, you know, a little stream or the lake and I'm just going to throw a bunch of pieces of wonder bread like Frisbees.
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I don't know what good that's going to do. They're going to get soggy and sink.
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I think that's what's going to happen. Regularly at home now, since it's just Kim and I, since it's just me, since it's
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Kim and me, the bread goes bad. Somebody gives us a homemade loaf of bread and we eat a lot of it.
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But if you don't eat it right away, you know, the good news about homemade bread is it tastes so much better.
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The bad news is it doesn't have all the preservatives, so it didn't stay fresh as long. And so then
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I'll, instead of throwing it away, I throw it out and maybe some wolverines can eat it.
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Some lemurs. I'm hoping owls do it.
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That's my favorite animal these days is an owl. And at our house,
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I have a stuffed bear head that was my mother's, so that's up. And there's a, we have a deer head, stuff like that.
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I didn't shoot any of these. I just have collected them. And I'd like to have an owl, but I think it's illegal to stuff an owl.
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So I think you have to have one already stuffed and I don't think people can sell them. But I'd like a stuffed owl, so I usually don't ask for money on No Compromise Radio Ministry, although you can go to Patreon and do that.
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I think we have about one fourth of the support we used to have. So the more I talk about Jesus, the less support we get, which is fine.
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But if you have an owl, I'll take that. I'd like a stuffed owl. You can ship it to me. I won't tell anybody who shipped it.
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What's he talking about here? Well, the bread wasn't like a slice. Probably thinking pita bread here, as we say here in New England, pita bread.
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And you think, okay, this kind of thin cake and you just throw it.
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I mean, probably what's happening is not, this is not literal. Remember, it's wisdom literature. It's a different genre, and you know, depending on who you want to study, there's different interpretations here.
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Sometimes Jewish and even Christian interpreters thought this is, you know, you give to the poor.
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You know, this is philanthropy. You share with people that need.
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That's what casting upon the waters means. There's an Arabian proverb that says, do a good deed and throw it into the river.
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And when it dries up, you shall find it. And they think, you know, like Jesus said, give and it will be given to you.
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Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, and will be put into your lap. They think it could be that. Not so sure, although the principle is true, right?
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And Beal's book, right doctrines from wrong text or something like that.
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There's another thing that you could think about, and that is, well, you know what? In Egyptian agriculture, you put seed in the
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Nile River when the river's at its lowest point. And then as it, the river starts rising, then the seed gets the water and it starts to grow.
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And so, in essence, they're trying to say, you know, you should just be industrious.
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You should sow seed. You know, you should work. Yeah. Okay.
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That probably is true. When you don't know, what do you do? Well, you give to the poor, you work.
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But what is most likely happening here is if you think of Solomon and all his ships,
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I think what we've got here is trade. I think what we've got here is international trade. 1 Kings 9,
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King Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezean -Geber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the
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Red Sea in the land of Edom. And Hibram sent with the fleet his servants, seamen who were familiar with the sea, together with the servants of Solomon.
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And they went to Ophir and brought from there gold, 420 talons, and they brought to it King Solomon.
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Chapter 10, that was chapter 9, chapter 10, for the king had a fleet of ships of Tarshish at sea with the fleet of Hiram.
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Once every three years, the fleet of ships of Tarshish used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.
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Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom.
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Well, he did trade. He was, you know, had ships. And the metaphor of casting bread, probably most commentators think that it's like the proverb that we have, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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So remember, the big picture is you don't know the future. So just wall yourself up.
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No, no. You use your capital for trade. You're sensible.
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You aren't literally throwing water, but you're going to maybe do something risky, like send your ships out.
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I mean, sometimes the ships don't come back. Sea trade is tough. It's hazardous. And you don't know if they're going to make it back with a profit or if they're going to get sunk or what's going to happen.
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As Mike Leet said, cast demands total commitment and has a forward look to it.
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You will find. Okay, see what he's doing there? He wants you to walk by faith. He wants you to continue to work, even though we know the
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Lord's going to come back. What we do is not in vain. First Corinthians chapter 15, verse 58,
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Luther said, if Jesus is going to come back tomorrow, I plant a tree today. And he's wanting people to live a bold life, a trusting life, looking to a
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God who can do exceedingly abundantly beyond what we can ask or think. Not knowing what we don't know is fine, but we do know that your labor in the
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Lord is not in vain. That's one thing that we do know, knowing that. And even though things don't always work out, even though it's kind of perilous, even though maybe only one out of the 10 ships come back, as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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He goes on in verse 2, but my point here, dear listeners, we don't know what's going to happen in the future.
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So be busy for today, honor the Lord today, as you know, the paradigm is guilt grates gratitude based on what the
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Lord has done for you. Be busy today, work today. You might be dead tomorrow. You know, you might have the
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Lord come back tomorrow. There could be a disaster tomorrow. There could be, you know, poverty or riches tomorrow.
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We don't know, but we need to do something to honor Him. Verse 2, give a portion to seven or even to eight, for you do not know what disaster may happen on earth.
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More commands, seven or even to eight. This is just a formula in Hebrews.
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It happens once in a while in, it's a formula in Hebrew rather, excuse me. It happens in Proverbs, happens in Amos, and it's
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XX plus one, right? And what XX plus one means is there's a lot and more than a lot.
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And probably what he is talking about here is, you know what, you don't know what's going to happen. So even the
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ESV study Bible, it is financially more prudent to explore multiple avenues for making one's living and investing one's resources.
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So you have a portion here and a portion there, and it's a diversification. Sounds good to me, right?
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Sounds right to me, but that doesn't make it right to anybody, does it?
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But I think that's probably what's happening because otherwise, what are we going to do with this wisdom literature? Just say we don't know.
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We're going to diversify. We're also going to be generous, right, and give.
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We don't know what the future is going to be. We don't want to be careless. We don't want to be paralyzed, and we don't want to put, as almost every commentary says, don't want to put all our eggs in one basket.
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We say, we don't know, but we're going to work. We don't know the future, but we're going to be diligent.
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We don't know when the Lord is going to come back, but we want him to come back and find us honoring him.
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We do know that the grace of our Lord Jesus, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you, by his poverty, might become rich.
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Of course, for us as Christians, we can say there's something that we can't do in heaven that we can do on earth.
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Well, sin would be one of them. Be tempted would be one of them. Have a trial would be one of them, but there's another thing that in heaven you can't do, but you can do now.
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That is be, as John Gershner calls us, calls them spiritual capitalists, that you can store up treasure in heaven now.
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Once you're in heaven, you can't store up any more. Oh, you can still honor God in heaven, certainly, but we want to do work on heaven, work on heaven.
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I looked down at my notes. We want to do work on earth because we can't earn anything in heaven in terms of rewards.
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We just want to not lay back and let God. We don't want to put laziness as our middle name.
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All right, what are we doing in our note, Compromise Radio Ministry? I have no idea. He goes on, some agricultural situation.
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Bad things could happen. I don't know if you can do anything about it. If the clouds are full of rain, they emptied themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, that's a mirrorism for everywhere, anywhere.
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In the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.
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We don't know what's going to happen. Better not do anything. Better wait for a better day.
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I don't know. Could snow. Better not go out. Might be slippery roads.
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I don't know. It's cloudy. I mean, you're a farmer.
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You think, okay, when do we plant? When do we sow the seed? There's going to be some kind of risk someplace, isn't there?
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And so you're just going to have to make your best guess, your best estimate, and you can't sit around and do nothing.
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If you're looking for an excuse for doing nothing, you can find one, one writer said. Isn't that true?
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And that goes for lots of things, evangelism, work, everything else.
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If you're looking for an excuse for doing nothing, you can find them. We want to walk by faith, don't we? The just shall live by faith, trusting
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God, taking God at his word, looking to the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who loved us and gave himself for us.
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Always afraid of storms, always afraid of this, always afraid of COVID, always afraid of that.
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We're not going to go do anything. We're just going to hunker down. No, that's not what we're to do. That's not what you're to do.
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God is in control. We don't know the future. We trust in him. Isn't that good?
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Makes it so much easier in life. Makes it so much easier in life just to rest. What's guaranteed?
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Death and taxes, the Lord's return. Well, there's quite a few things, but hey, if we never sow, we're never going to reap.
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So, we need to do things. There are risks. Derek Kidner said, it's better to fail on launching out than in hugging one's resources to oneself.
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It's a good picture. Well, my name is Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry, and we want to make sure here on this show that we direct you to the
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Lord Jesus Christ. This morning I was reading Luke chapter 7, and I just thought, there's nobody like Jesus.
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This is an amazing chapter with an amazing Savior. We want you to focus on Him.
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You can get our website address. It's www .nocompromiseradio .com.
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Tell your friends, and everybody's been saying, give us high ratings. So I guess you need to do that too. God bless.