The Word (Part 1)

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The Utter Sovereignty of God (Part 2)

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No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,
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Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the
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Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse, with no compromise.
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Well, I've been accused of a lot of things in my life as a pastor. One particular accusation that seems to come up on a regular basis is that I engage in bibliolatry, that I engage in bibliolatry, biblion, which means book, and latria means worship, that I worship a book.
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Probably some say that about you as well, that you're a person who worships a book, the book, the
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Bible. That word's thrown around a lot, usually in a derogative form, pejoratively, negatively.
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Some think if you don't believe in tradition, you only worship a book. Back in the 90s, the
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Southern Baptist Church was accused of bibliolatry because they wanted to say the Bible is inerrant, it's infallible.
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Do we worship a book? Professor Mullins said in 1925, this is not to put the literature in place of the
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Redeemer, but only to assert that the literature is a necessary medium for the transmission to us of a knowledge of the
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Redeemer. I think that's right. How about this, to help us as we think, do we worship a book or do we not?
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Mullins said, the telescope is interposed between the eye and the heavenly body.
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The astronomer is not accused of worshiping the telescope or advised to pursue the science of astronomy without its aid.
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That's a good way to think about it. Do we worship a book?
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Do I engage in bibliolatry? Well, we might as well clear it up right now for once and for all.
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Do I engage in bibliolatry? There.
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Turn your Bibles to Psalm 119 before you storm out of the church. As I put my hands up to the word,
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Psalm 119, before we're in 1 Corinthians, I'm just trying to set the stage so we understand what we're after today, what
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I'm after. Psalm 119, verse 48,
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David does something very interesting. He raises his hand to God's word.
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As people would stretch out their hands towards the temple, they know the temple is the localized presence of God and they would reach their hand out in a yearning for God to know who he was.
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And David realizes that Torah, that the Old Testament, that the word of God is the focus of who
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God is and his divine presence. And what does Psalm 119 say, verse 48? I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which
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I love, and I will meditate on your statutes. Do you feel better now? He says,
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God, I want to know you. You cannot know God apart from his word. Jesus was actually called the word.
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One reformer said, we owe to scripture the same reverence which we owe to God. Turn with me if you would to Psalm 138, verse 2,
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Psalm 138, verse 2. We're almost to 1 Corinthians, but Psalm 138, verse 2,
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I'll be reading from the ESV, although I'll quote the King James as well,
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Psalm 138, verse 2. For those that somehow think maybe we ought not to highly revere
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God's word, Psalm 138, verse 2, the ESV says, I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness.
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For you have exalted above all things your name and what?
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Your word. Put right together. King James says, for thou hast magnified thy word above thy name.
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Friends, we are people of the book. God communicates to us today through his word.
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He gives us wisdom through his word, and so shouldn't we want to know his word? If you want to know God, you know him through his word.
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So my purpose this morning as I preach to you from 1 Corinthians is that you would say to yourselves,
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God, thank you for giving me your word. Help me to study it with more enthusiasm, with more regularity, and Lord, I'd like to get to know you better, so help me to do that through your word.
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We sing songs like, Lord, I want to know you. You get to know God through his word.
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Colin Hansen said, Americans love their Bibles so much so that they keep them in pristine, unopened condition.
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George Gallup says, Americans revere the Bible, but by and large, they don't read it, which basically means they don't revere it at all.
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And at our church here, God the Holy Spirit has blessed us with a desire to study the
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Bible, from Sunday schools to Sunday morning to AWANA to VBS to IBS and the list goes on.
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God has given us that hunger, and so today, I want to pour the proverbial kerosene on your fire to say, keep going, way to go, keep studying.
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And I want your attitude towards the scripture to be this, if it isn't already. That seem odd?
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I don't want it to be. Let's go to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Paul is writing this great epistle in love to correct the
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Corinthians. I'm not preaching this passage, nor am I preaching this book because I think we need a lot of corrections that are similar to the ones that 1
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Corinthians, the Corinthians needed. But it's good for preventative maintenance.
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It's good so that we don't slide into this kind of church. And Paul writes 29 chapters to Corinth to tell them, this is our focus.
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Here's who Christ is. Here's who we are. Here's how we live our Christian life. 16 chapters in 1
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Corinthians and the first couple chapters dealing with church unity. So this is specifically dealing with how to look at wisdom.
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If everyone follows wisdom of men, then we're fractured. If everyone follows the same wisdom from God, we all line up.
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We all submit underneath the one and we're unified. So Paul has been preaching and preaching.
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He says, I don't want you to be hypnotized with worldly wisdom. You're getting very sleepy.
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Postmodernism, relative truth. You are the end of the world. Everything revolves around you.
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And the world is good. I can't believe he just did that. Dan Rathbun, his dad's a pastor by the way, just went like this.
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We don't have to somehow buy credibility from the world by following their wisdom.
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Paul says there's wisdom from God revealed through the apostles and then do everything you can
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Corinth and Bethlehem Bible Church to suck it in, to absorb it. Have you ever seen a sponge and you take a sponge and just squeeze it, make sure there's nothing in it and put it in a big pool on top of your kitchen cabinet and what does it do?
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It just absorbs it. And then you squeeze that sponge over the sink and it just all kinds of come, it all just comes out.
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I want to be able to take you after the service and figuratively squeeze you and have Bible verses just flowing out of you.
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Spurgeon said, cut my wrists and out of my blood vessels is going to flow not blood, but bibling.
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Just verses ooze out. And if you'd like to know
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God better, if you'd like to follow him better, it is the spirit applied energized word that is going to help you.
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We have no other resource, no other tool toolkit. So Paul says to the church of Corinth, stop following the wisdom of the world and follow divine wisdom that we the apostles give you.
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And so in chapter two, verses six through 13, I gave you six reasons why you should want to study the
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Bible with continued enthusiasm, fresh enthusiasm, whether you're sick or whether you're healthy, whether you're a new
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Christian or an old Christian, you need to be reminded that there is wisdom in these words.
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Not my words, but these words. The world's going to say, this is ABC stuff, this is infantile, this doesn't work, and Paul's going to say, no, no, listen,
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I might critique wisdom. I might say worldly wisdom is bad, but there is a good wisdom.
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Six reasons you ought to saturate yourselves with God's word. Number one, four of these are in review.
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Number one, you should saturate your mind with the Bible because God's wisdom is always relevant, found in verse six.
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That's the first reason. This is not a fad -driven scripture. Verse six, yet among the mature,
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Paul says, among Christians, we do impart wisdom. I'm not against all wisdom, although it's not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away.
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Literally, Paul says, wisdom we speak. There's a real wisdom that I want you to learn, but it's not temporal, it's not fading.
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Have you ever taken kids' bubbles? My kids are getting older now, and I kind of miss bubbles. You know, it's the cheapest $1 thing, and it's a dollar, it's cheap, and you get the bubbles, and you put the bubble thing in there, and you just blow it, and out comes this cool bubble.
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You can see all the different colors in that bubble, and all of a sudden, it just kind of pops.
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And so here comes Nietzsche's philosophy, kind of looks cool, pops.
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Socrates, pops, it's gone. Michael Foucault, pops. Your favorite philosopher, it just pops.
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Paul said, you run after those, you're going to be split up, so let me give you the real wisdom that never fades away.
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It's always relevant, it's always in. We do impart that.
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Don't forget, when you see the we's and us's here, it's going to be the apostles. He's not saying the
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Church of Corinth and me, Paul, we all impart this wisdom. No, it's the apostles, and we'll see that later as well.
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It's not this temporal thing, it's real wisdom from God that lasts. Well, number two we saw in review last time.
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Why should we saturate our minds with the Bible? A, it's always relevant, and B, or number two, it reveals the eternal mind of God.
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It reveals the eternal mind of God. Verse seven, look with me. But we, apostles again, impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which
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God decreed before the ages for our glory. God's wisdom is eternal, he's saying here.
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It's limitless. Verse six, here's the negative critique of worldly wisdom. It passes away, and God's wisdom doesn't do that.
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So positively, what does it do? It's eternal. I love that, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.
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Why should you study the Bible, number three? Because it will disclose just how wise you really are.
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Or maybe I could put it this way. Found in verse eight, so that you'll see that worldly wisdom isn't neutral.
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What do I mean by that? Show me worldly wisdom, and I'll show you what a crucifixion looks like.
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Verse eight, none of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would have not crucified the
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Lord of glory. Mark this, worldly wisdom isn't neutral.
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Worldly wisdom attacks the scriptures. It attacks God. It attacks Jesus. Show me the pinnacle.
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Show me the very height of, show me the apex of worldly wisdom, and I'll show you a wisdom that says
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Jesus must die. And so when you look at the cross and say, that's mercy and wrath and justice and grace kissing one another,
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I say to you, you're wise. If you look at the cross and say, I can't be bothered, then
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I say to you, you're foolish. It's a good test.
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Show me the smartest Harvard graduate in the world or any other university, and I will show you someone, if they don't believe in the cross, someone who doesn't understand wisdom.
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They crucify, what's the text say? The Lord of glory, talking about Jesus. The essential attribute of God, his heavy glory, the
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Shekinah glory, that's spoken of Jesus, not just the Father. Number four, the fourth reason, final thing in review, reason why you should saturate your mind with scripture, is because it tells you things that you can never come up with on your own.
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You couldn't invent this stuff, only God tells us. And here, as we looked at last time, two weeks ago rather, verse nine, a very misinterpreted verse, because we think that it sounds like heaven.
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It is true of heaven, but the context here is wisdom. What's God's wisdom life?
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Like I'll tell you, you could never come up with it with any of your senses, sight, hearing, tactile touch.
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What no eye has seen, talking of wisdom, nor ear heard, talking of wisdom, nor heart of man imagined, what
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God has prepared for those who love him. The wisdom that God has prepared for you through the apostles is out of this world.
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Trying to think of a good comment there, but I can't. I like crying babies. One man said, we know by the things we see, the things we hear, the things we smell, the things we taste.
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But divine truth is known by revelation. How do you know God? Well, I'm just going to go outside and get to know him a little bit.
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You only know generalities. The only way you know specifics about sin, death, hell, substitution, atonement, resurrection is how?
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A burning in your bosom? No, most bosoms don't burn with,
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I'm a wretched sinner needing the grace of God. Most bosoms that burn don't say like Pastor Steve read today in Isaiah chapter 64 verse 6.
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The best I offer is still like a filthy rag to God. This is not about heaven, although those things will be true of heaven.
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This is about wisdom that God has prepared for us. We receive
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God's wisdom. We don't discover God's wisdom. Maybe that's the best way to put it.
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And now we move on to number five. The fifth reason why you should love to study the Bible, that you need to study the
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Bible, is because you learn the deep things of God. The deep things of God.
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You learn the intense things, the profound things, the weighty things in a world of superficiality, triviality, scratching the surface.
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But here we learn the deep things of God. God, give me the deep truths. You'll find them in Holy Spirit inspired scripture through the apostles.
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Look at this in verse 10. I love this. These things God has revealed to us. The apostles got that information.
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We got these things that no eye could see, no ear could hear, no tongue could taste, but God told them to us.
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For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. This is not just for a select group of people.
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This is through the apostles, now to us. And we all get to know because the apostles are told to tell us what they know.
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By the way, this should tell the church of Corinth. Stop trying to be better than the other person in the church, because everything you know about God is what you came up with.
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You know, I go over here, and I go in the tent, and I make it really hot, and I sit there, and I think about God, and I came up with a few things.
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And then Bernard, he goes over here, and he goes in a tent, and then he just makes it even hotter, and eats some peyote or something.
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Now, he comes up with some things, and I go, I've learned this about God, and it's way better than your Bernard kind of thing.
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But no, it's revealed to us. Nobody's better because we receive. We don't come up with.
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You don't discover truth, you receive truth. Deep things too.
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Just how deep? Look at the Spirit of God, the third person in the Trinity. For the Spirit searches everything.
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Present tense. He searches and searches. It doesn't mean he's coming up with new information because he's
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God. He's never learned anything. But everything he knows, nothing escapes the attention of the
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Spirit of God. Nothing beyond his knowledge. That word, deeps, by the way, I love.
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It is used of the depths of the sea. It means unfathomable.
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You can't come up with what's going on in the bottom of the ocean. I looked up, what's the deepest place in all the ocean?
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Marianas Trench. You could put Everest in there and still have plenty of room to drown. The deepest place.
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They have like bathospheres that go down there to try to figure it out. We don't need a bathosphere to try to figure out the truth from God.
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Because the Spirit of God, who is God, searches the deep things of God. He always searches them. And then he tells the apostles to tell us.
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Who needs a spiritual bathosphere? Is there such a thing as a bathosphere? Sounds good. Today, no clapping, by the way, but today
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I've been married to Kim 21 years. D -day. I'm just kidding.
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Now, sometimes I know what she's thinking. Sometimes I can finish her sentences.
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But there's lots of things that Kim thinks about that I have no idea.
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I didn't say where they came from. I don't understand her. I don't know her omnisciently.
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I can't even understand another person's thoughts. And I've been married to her for 21 years.
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And Paul uses a little illustration here to teach us that only God knows God. The Holy Spirit has to be
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God. And he knows God. And like knows like. And if like knows like, then like can tell us what God's like.
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Verse 11. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him?
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Who knows what I'm thinking right now? Nobody knows except me. What are you thinking right now?
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Nobody knows except you. What is God thinking right now? What has God thought? No one knows except God.
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And here, the omniscient spirit knows what
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God's thinking. You say, I'd like to know what God's thinking. How do I get to know
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God? You get to know God through the spirit of God as he uses the apostles to tell us. So also, verse 11, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.
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Like knows like. What God is doing, only
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God knows. What God is doing, the spirit of God knows. The spirit of God is
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God. Can you imagine this? God has private thoughts.
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I have some private thoughts and you never get to know them. Nobody ever gets to know them. And the only way you get to know my private thoughts, what makes me tick, what
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I do, what I think, they are private thoughts. I owe them to no one. But if I decide to tell you about how
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I work, what I think, what my private thoughts are, what I like, what I don't like. I can decide to tell you, can't
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I? And then you'll get to know me. If I didn't tell you, I didn't tell you. The spirit of God knows owes nothing to sinners.
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And yet he says, I'm going to tell you what I'm like. I'm going to tell you what God's like. I'm going to tell you about who he is, what he's done, what he did in eternity past, eternal decrees, what happens in the future, eternal heavens.
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And I'm going to tell you. So why would you ever listen to human philosophers when you can have what
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God thinks? That's the point. I love these verses for lots of reasons. Here's one before I preach this passage in six to 13 of chapter two.
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I never underlined these verses. My goal today is to get you in your mind to underline them.
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So you'll realize I need divine wisdom. It's found in one place. Who underlines chapters two verses six to 13 before the service?
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Whoever did before this sermon series. Some did always there to prove me wrong. I don't know what's in a person because I don't,
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I can't examine them until they tell me. It's like the guy who said sometime read the
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Bible, but don't read the verses you've underlined. Read the verses you haven't underlined to think that God has given us wisdom.
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What's the beginning of wisdom? Solomon said in Proverbs, fear of the Lord. But he also said, here's the beginning of wisdom.
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Get wisdom, acquire it. Where do we go? It's in the word. And so I am committed to try to tell you with great happiness, by the way, way to go
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Bethlehem Bible Church for your study of the Bible. And as Paul says to the church of Thessalonica, what?
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Say it out loud. We have a few old elect people here.
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Excel still more. Keep going. The world is going to keep on selling you wisdom.
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So don't say, well, you know, I've read through the Bible one time and I'm good to go. The world sells its wisdom and God says it's fatal.
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It passes and it doesn't know what God's thinking. I want to know what God's thinking. What an interesting concept.
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Let's see, what am I going to study today? Geometry, calculus, difficulties, all these other subjects, which are fine to study, especially if you're in school.
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But I think today I'll study the mind of God. Tell that to your unbelieving roommate at WPI.
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What are you doing today? I'm studying the mind of God. The depths of God. He's decided to disclose himself.
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It takes study, yes, but it's worth it. And now number six, the sixth reason found in this text that you should study the word of God is that you get to be taught by the best teacher in the universe, the spirit of God, verses 12 to 13.
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You should study the Bible. It's relevant. It shows the eternal mind of God. It shows just how wise you are.
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It shows you things you could never come up with on your own. It shows you the deep things of God.
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And it teaches you truth from the best teacher in the world, the
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Holy Spirit himself. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.