Sermon - Wisdom From Above: The Hope of Wisdom

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If you would open your Bibles to Book of Proverbs, Chapter 2,

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Proverbs, Chapter 2. If you're new to the Bible, that's in your

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Old Testament, right next to the Book of Psalms, Proverbs, Chapter 2.

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We're going to try to do the entire chapter today. It's really all connected and really sort of one full discourse.

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It changes a bit as you move through the Book of Proverbs here and there. But this is really one full story before us about wisdom, guarding us in the hope of wisdom.

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And as you guys are getting there, I announce for those of you guys who are getting baptized, immediately following the message, we'll go to communion.

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And right after communion, make sure you're up here to the side so you're meeting me down there for baptisms. So Proverbs, Chapter 2, starting in verse 1.

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Hear now the word of the living and the true God. My Son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the

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Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom, from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.

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He stores up sound wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of His saints.

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Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path.

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For wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will watch over you and understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.

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So you'll be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her

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God. For her house sinks down to death and her paths to the departed.

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None who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life. So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous.

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For the upright will inhabit the land and those with integrity will remain in it.

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But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

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Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray. God, we pray, you bless us today as we look to you for wisdom.

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Lord, you say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

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So we come before you as your people that you've redeemed. Sons and daughters of you. We're crying out for wisdom.

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We're crying out for wisdom. God, give us wisdom. Teach us. Renew us in our minds, in our hearts.

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Give us the strength to pursue your truth and wisdom. Speak, Lord, through your word today by your spirit.

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Heal your church. Be glorified in the light that shines from us because of your wisdom.

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In Jesus' name, amen. So, we started this series going through the book of Proverbs.

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God's book of wisdom. Wisdom from above. This is wisdom from God. So, this is what's really important.

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As we approach the text, it's important for us to remove from our hearts and our minds, from the depths of our souls, that sense of being jaded to the

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Word of God. What I mean is we have such easy access to the Word of God, we read the

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Word of God, that maybe at times we fall into that very bad creaturely habit of forgetting what an enormous gift we have before us.

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The God who created zebras with a word.

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The God who spoke and the oceans leapt into existence. The God who speaks and He spreads the universe out.

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It's just by a word. He doesn't sweat. He doesn't grow weary.

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He doesn't get frustrated when He wants to create. He speaks and it comes into existence.

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He has perfect knowledge. It's amazing. If you look at just the human form, just human beings, the image of God, and contemplate how glorious this is.

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What comes from the image of God, the ability to reason and have emotion, the ability to create and make beautiful things.

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We're not robots. Just machines. There is so much that is so powerful about the human being, the image of God in the world, and it's just one aspect of the world.

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God speaks into the world and He holds everything together, and it's not just that God creates and it becomes a mess or chaos or out of His control.

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He is the one with an active decree. He determines what. He determines who.

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He determines how. He is the sovereign God. The only God. There is none before Him.

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There will be none after Him. He is the true and living God. The all -knowing God. The one who needs no instruction.

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He is the very foundation and source of knowledge and wisdom. And that's the word you hold in your hands right now.

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It is revelation from Him to you. This is the very speech of God.

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God is speaking. And so here you're going to learn that God is saying to us, wisdom will guard you.

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Wisdom will bring peace and security. Wisdom will do all these things if you pursue it like this.

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It's amazing too when you think about humanity in terms of our idolatry and the pursuits of false gods and the pursuits of false teachers and false prophets.

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They're a dime a dozen. They're everywhere. And we go to these people seeking for knowledge.

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You see people who are so lost and darkened in their hearts. They're following a false god, and yet they can't help but pursuing knowledge, understanding, justice.

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Because they're in the image of God, but they won't look to God for it. They'll switch God for something else. Some substandard

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God for bootleg worship. And they go to the guru who will give them wisdom and understanding.

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Insights and knowledge. There's two specific things I can think about when I think about that particular problem of humanity of the pursuit of the guru, the one who has the wisdom and the knowledge.

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You can think about... Some of you guys have maybe seen the documentary about the hot yoga guy.

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What was the name of that guru? You know what I'm talking about? You see the hot yoga stuff? Bikram. Bikram yoga, right?

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Super powerful fast fad that hits the nation, right? Like going into a place, and he turns the heat way, way up.

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And you go in there into this box with a bunch of other human beings, which would have made the room hotter anyways.

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Turn the heat way up, and everyone's just sweating crazy, stinking that room up. That room must have smelled foul.

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But it's popular. And you see Bikram yoga all over the place. And like, oh, he's the knowing guru, and he has so much insight and so much knowledge.

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And then you see, as time unfolds, you see that this person who's the prophet, he's the guru.

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He's the one who has the understanding. He's abusing women. Right? I mean, it's amazing to me to see some of the places still up in retail spaces that have

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Bikram yoga on them. Like, that's brave. If you know the history and the story of that guru, that one with wisdom and insight and knowledge, you can see that they don't really know as much as they pretend to know.

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Or more recently, the documentary about Warren Jeffs. Warren Jeffs, the false

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Mormon prophet in Utah, well, Arizona, Utah, sort of polygamous communities.

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So he's the one. He has the understanding and the knowledge. I must yield to this fallible creature.

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He knows. So I'll take instruction from him. What was the thing he instructed the women with constantly?

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What was it? Keep sweet and pray and obey. Keep sweet and pray and obey.

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Ah, he knows. He knows, and then you find out the man was a disturbing, disgusting abomination of a man.

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The kind of abuse that he perpetrated upon young women, girls. It's horrifying.

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But we have that within us. We are made in the image of God. We know that there is this source of wisdom and knowledge.

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There is such a thing as truth, and so we're clamoring for it and clamoring for it. So we pursue the guru and all the rest.

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And it's just a creature. And they fail constantly. And yet you have here, we have in our hands, the

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Word of the living God, who is the foundation of justice and righteousness and holiness and truth and beauty.

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It's all in God. And so God is telling us here, with His Word and wisdom, if you pursue wisdom like this, then this is what will happen.

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So I hope that challenges us. This sermon is first preached to me. It's first preached to me.

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And then to you. Challenges us to understand as God's people that God is telling us, wisdom will guard you.

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Wisdom will keep you secure. Wisdom will keep you in the land. And this is how you get it.

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It's tough to preach a message like this in the context of the 21st century West where we want the quick fix, right?

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I mean, think about all that we see in terms of like, you want a new body? You want to be in shape? Well, here's how to do it.

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You don't have to eat better or work out. Just take this pill, right? Everyone loves the quick fix, right?

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I don't want to work for it. I don't want to sweat an ounce. I just want you to give it to me by osmosis, right?

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Or upload it. Maybe I can sort of do the AI thing and just put an opening back here and you can just upload the information into me back here.

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We love that idea. People really love it. Like, we can just upload information. You want to learn Kung Fu?

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I know Kung Fu, right? Just upload it. That was a matrix. You got that right. You knew that.

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Yeah, it's good. Okay, sorry. I know he likes the matrix. But that's what we want.

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We want the quick fix. We don't want the hard work. We don't want the labor. But God says wisdom is available.

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It'll guard you. It'll secure you. It'll bless you. And here's how you get it.

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So to start, if you're new to this study, the difference between knowledge and wisdom, and it's interesting too because you do find at times, and this is at times jarring in terms of like, well, where are we going exactly with this?

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You'll see at times there's an interchangeableness between knowledge and wisdom, even in the book of Proverbs, sort of like knowledge as a foundation with the assumption that wisdom is going to come from that.

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But there is a difference. As Charles Spurgeon said, wisdom is the right use of knowledge.

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To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal and are all the greater fools for it.

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There is no fool so great as a fool as a knowing fool.

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But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom. So wisdom is the application of knowledge.

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You have to know something. It has to be true. And then the application of that knowledge is the skillful use of that knowledge.

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That's wisdom. Not just that you know things. Not just that you have information. And this is one of the things

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I want to keep challenging us on in terms of the reformed community. We have to speak to our own people. It's often a difficulty within reformed churches at times with younger, very zealous reformed people is to say, wow, there's so much knowledge here, so much truth here, and so we sort of pack that knowledge and that truth within us and we want to know as much as we can.

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We're good debaters, but we don't know how to live. We don't know how to love people.

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We don't know how to have equal weights and measures. We don't know how to treat one another. We don't know how to be patient.

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We don't know how to receive accusations or even reject accusations. We need wisdom.

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Wisdom is not just knowing things. There's knowledge and then the skillful application of it.

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So I was thinking about how to sort of apply this. I was thinking back to my days of driver's ed in public school, driver's ed.

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I was so excited to be able to drive, so very excited to be able to drive, and I learned how to drive on the

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Washington, D .C. Beltway, so I am like, when it comes to driving, I have gangster -level skills.

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I am up there, right? I mean, if you can drive in Washington, D .C. and just survive 24 hours, like, you know how to drive.

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Well, that's where I learned how to drive, and I saw it growing up. I saw how dangerous it was, and, you know, if you're living in D .C.,

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you know where the potholes are that will destroy your entire vehicle. Like, you know who lives there because you see them anticipating and swerving, and you see the tourists, kaboom, and then, like, their tire blows out.

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So I was, you know, excited, but also I knew this is a deadly endeavor to drive here in Washington, D .C.

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It's a tough place to drive. So it's very exciting, and I took it seriously in driver's ed. I vividly remember all those classes.

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I don't remember half of my high school education, but I remember driver's ed because I was very excited. Loved it.

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I wanted to learn all the details. How do you drive? And I remember back in my day... Oh, gosh, I'm getting old saying things like that.

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In my day, you had that film that they would play to you in driver's ed. They played it to all of us.

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What was it again? It was Blood Runs... What's that? Something blood runs red on the asphalt or the freeway or whatever, and it was like this...

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It's good to do, to show something like this and say, hey, this isn't a game.

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There's consequences here, and they would show you vivid images and video of car accidents and death, and so you need that.

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You're going to get into a car that will kill somebody and yourself. Here are the possible consequences.

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I remember that video. I remember IPTI. IPTI. Identify, predict, decide, execute.

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Right? I remember that. IPTI. Identify, predict, decide, execute. I was in my bedroom, and I was in front of the mirror like, identify, predict.

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I was rehearsing it so excited, and I remember I'd never touched a car yet. Never got into one.

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I was learning. I remember the books. I remember a class, and you just sat there for 45 minutes talking about if this happens, this is the way to do it, and I was soaking it all in because I knew

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I was out there on that road. I could die, and then I remember getting into the car at school with the teacher.

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She was a piece of work. She would punch you, punch your arm, punch your leg if you did something wrong.

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I like that. That's hardcore. You remember this. You're going to die. Don't do something that stupid.

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And so we're driving. I'm not saying do that to your kids. I didn't know her. So I remember learning.

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I'm going slow, and you're mostly in a parking lot, and you're driving around the school sort of a thing, but I had all this knowledge, and now was the time to start applying it, different from the classroom where it was textbook, instruction.

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I know what to do. I know IPTI. I know where the stuff is in the car, left indicator, right indicator.

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I know how to do this to play this game, and now I'm in the car, and you're doing things like parking lots and just driving around the school, and then

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I passed and got my driver's license, and now I'm on the road. My first day on the road.

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Listen, I praise God for this, and all glory to God. I am 44 years old. I have never been in an accident in all my years since driving.

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16 years old, got my license. As soon as it turned 16, I got it. I have never once been in an accident that's my fault.

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Not once. I've had people hit me a couple times, but never once been in an accident my fault.

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Not ever. But that first day I was driving, I was with a friend in the car.

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My dad said, First day driving, make sure that you're careful. He trusted me. I got in the car, went to school just fine.

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Came home from school. It started raining. And I thought, I could take this turn.

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And so I started taking that turn, and I literally slid across the road, two lanes, just missed a big vehicle, and slammed into the curb, popped the curb sideways in the vehicle, and bent up both tires up front.

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They were completely off the alignment to drive straight. The wheel was turned the other direction, just to drive straight. So it was my first day driving.

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I had all this knowledge, but I had no skills in how to apply that.

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No skills. I just knew stuff, but didn't know really how to drive. And so, I had to come home and tell my dad,

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Dad, how are you? I've basically destroyed the vehicle.

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Thank you for trusting me. And I remember teaching my kids. My oldest son,

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I got on the road with him. By the way, it's one of the worst parts of a parent's life when you have to teach your children to drive.

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Can I just get an amen? Amen, yes. Terrifying. Well, it's his first day. He's doing all right in the parking lot, so he's excited to drive.

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We're coming up rural from the 60. He pulls off to go left, north on rural.

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Now, as everyone knows there, there's a northbound side, and there's a southbound side. Where do you think he turned?

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He turned not to get in the northbound side to go where all the other cars are going. He decided to turn left and give his father a heart attack at a young age, driving straight towards oncoming traffic.

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And I had taught him not to do that, okay? He definitely had the information from dad, the knowledge from dad.

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Don't do that. Oncoming traffic, avoid that, right? But when it was his day to start driving, he didn't have the skills to apply it.

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He didn't know what to do. My daughter, Sailor. Sorry, Sailor. We're in the parking lot together.

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She's a great driver now because she's got skills. She's practiced. She knows how to apply that knowledge. She's in the parking lot at Fry's.

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She decides to just start driving over the curbs in the parking lot.

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And while it was happening, I would say, what are you doing? What? And she's like, what? Boom, boom. Boom.

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And it's crazy because she studied so hard. Sailor does, when she wants to get something, she goes all in.

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She studied so hard. She knew you're not supposed to drive over curbs in parking lots, but she just didn't know how to apply.

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Like, I've already driven over one. Let's do a couple, right? I suppose that's what it was. Or my family, you know, will drive on long trips, you know, minister trips or whatever.

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Even going to Salt Lake City recently. Salt Lake City. And my family's just so comfortable with dad driving and everything's fine.

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And I think my son, Stellar, said, hey, that was an easy trip. I said, yeah, you almost died four times in that trip.

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You just didn't know. Like, the dads are driving, right? We don't announce to them, hey, everyone, you almost died just now.

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Guy almost killed us. Usually we're avoiding because of skill. Because of skill, we can identify there's going to be a problem.

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This guy's going to pull something he shouldn't do. And so I start anticipating. I know what happens when that happens, so I'm going to make sure

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I'm ready to go. And you avoid being killed because you have skills. Not just book knowledge.

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You know how to apply it. You can do it. You can accomplish it. So we need to talk about gaining wisdom here.

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You need knowledge, yes, from God, but you need wisdom. How do you live? Proverbs 1 -7, foundation again.

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Get it rooted into our hearts. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

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All this talk today out there about what's true and what's beautiful and how you ought to live and how do you live and how do you run a country, run an economy, run a family, all that talk out there, apart from Jesus Christ, is meaningless.

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It's not justified. It's not true knowledge. It's not true wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

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Fools despise wisdom. They despise wisdom and instruction.

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They despise wisdom and correction. So notice how it starts off. It says, It says, There's a hope here.

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Let's talk quickly about the hope. Notice what it says here. The hope and future of wisdom go from 1 -29, or sorry, 1 -21.

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It says, But the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

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That's connected to what was already said in chapter 1. Go back to chapter 1. Chapter 1 says, verse 29,

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Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof.

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Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and have the fill of their own devices. You're going to get what you asked for.

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For the simple are killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them. But whoever listens to me, wisdom, will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread of disaster.

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You're seeing a theme here. Chapter 1 ends with a promise of the security and the blessing of wisdom. Chapter 2 ends with a promise that it is the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it, but the upright will inhabit the land.

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It's a common theme throughout Scripture and even in the teachings of Jesus. Chapter 3, you see more of it.

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Chapter 3, verse 23. Look at the promise. Then you will walk on your way securely and your foot will not stumble.

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Look at verse 35, chapter 3. The wise will inherit honor, but fools get disgrace.

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More promises of wisdom. But there's more that's being said here and it's said repeatedly.

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You see this a number of times through the first couple of chapters. You see this theme of the paths.

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The paths of the righteous. The paths of the wise. The paths of the wicked.

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There's the promise of hope, security, guarding and protection of wisdom. There's the promise of the future.

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The blessing and wisdom. And then there is this constant theme throughout of the path. Look at it here in chapter 4.

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Chapter 4, verse 18. Look what it says. But the path of the righteous is like the dawn of the day which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

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The way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know over what they stumble.

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This is thematic. You're going to see it numerous times in Proverbs and throughout the Scriptures. This concept of the path of making a decision of where you're going to walk.

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What road are you actually on? And the way it describes it here in chapter 4 is the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn.

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That's like the start of the day which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

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If you pursue wisdom, God's promising, if you pursue wisdom, if you are on that path, the path of the righteous, it's like the dawn of the day.

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It's like that sun rising. One of my very favorite memories in my life, in my life, those moments where it's like that was true beauty.

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And so amazing is we have a church plant commitment to the island of Kauai. It's a very difficult place to plant a church.

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It's actually hard. It's a hard, hard place to live. If you go vacation there and visit there, you're not seeing the reality of the island, how dark it is, how much opposition there is to the

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Gospel. It is extraordinarily expensive to live there. It's a painful life living in Kauai, believe it or not.

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A very painful, painful life. But I'll tell you what, when we first started investigating the island as a team with our church to go and ask questions to figure out where do we plant this church?

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Where can we have the greatest impact? Where do we need to be? Where is everyone who has the addictions? We were there on the island.

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You guys remember the beach when the sun was rising. Just going out to the beach and watching the sunrise in Kauai is one of the most amazing experiences of this life,

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I think. It's amazing because it's just dark. And like walking out to the beach at one point, you don't realize that you have to watch where you're stepping because it is dark.

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The sun's about to come up and there are seals littered across the beach. And so when we were out there with our team, we were ready to hit the ground running that day for our mission and we almost stepped on this seal, which is a big sin in Kauai.

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You can get in a lot of trouble for touching the seals. But we just didn't see him because it was too dark. Couldn't see him. He was sleeping.

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So we step over this seal and we all stand there and we're watching the sunrise and it just starts to peak and it's amazing because just that little bit of light is so glorious.

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It's so beautiful. It's amazing what an artist God is. He just does this like it's nothing.

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Just splashes out this artistry all the time. And it's happening all over the world.

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And in this moment you see just this little orange ball just break above the waves across the horizon and there's a little bit of light that starts to spray out and light things up.

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And then you're like, oh, there's a seal there. Oh, there's where I can have my footing and there's where this is. So this is saying that the path of the righteous is like the dawn of the day.

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As you're on that path, as you pursue that light, yeah, it's just a little light, but man is it beautiful.

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And as the day proceeds, what starts to take place? As the sun rises and you're on that path with that little light to start with and that beauty, what do you see by midday?

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Is that sun is washing over you. That sun, that light is wrapping you up.

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There's no escape from it. And that's the path of the righteous. This is where wisdom takes you. You're on that path.

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It's like the dawn of the day. Maybe you pursue and you're just seeing a little light, still beautiful.

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It's only a little, but by midday the path of the righteous is light wrapping you up.

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It is all around you. That's the promise of wisdom. That's the promise of the path of the righteous if we pursue it.

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In verses 26 -27 of chapter 4, it says, Ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure.

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Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil.

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There's that concept of the path again. The path of the righteous. The pursuit of the wise.

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Jesus said the same thing. You're familiar. Same thing. When wisdom was walking among us, when wisdom was incarnate among us, how does

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Jesus describe his kingdom? What's he say? There is a broad path and a what?

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A narrow path. Matthew 7, 13 -14. You know it. Broad path and a narrow path.

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There it is, wisdom giving us the same story. There is wisdom. There is guarding. There is security.

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There's the path of the righteous. There's light there. But there's darkness on this other path.

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You can't even see what you're stumbling over on that path. But you do have to choose the path. And so Jesus is saying there's a broad one.

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He says many people find that one. And he says over here is this narrow one. It's got this very small gate you have to almost squeeze through.

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And that path is narrow. But Jesus says it leads to life. That's the outcome of that path.

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You step on that path. It's narrow, yes. But it leads to life. That broad one's easy.

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There's no squeezing through that gate. It's like one of those people movers at the airport.

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They're basically useless. But you get on it. There's not even a lot of work you have to do.

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You just stand there. And as a person who's on that dark path, not the righteous, not the pursuer of God's truth and wisdom, you're just being brought along naturally.

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You have to do nothing. It's a broad path that leads to destruction. When wisdom was incarnate, he talked about it in exactly the same way.

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But what's being said here clearly over and over is that this path is something that you commit to.

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You're on one or the other. So in chapter 2 as it starts, it says,

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My son, my son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, chapter 2.

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My son. Keep your finger there. That's chapter 2.

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Now move over one chapter. Chapter 3. Look how chapter 3 starts. My son, do not forget my teaching.

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Now chapter 4. Hear, oh sons, a father's instruction. Chapter 5.

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My son, be attentive to my wisdom. Chapter 6. My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, chapter 7.

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My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you. Isn't it amazing that in this glorious Word from God you have wisdom being given to people and the relationship of the teacher is a relationship as like a father to a son.

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We're all children. We need this instruction. And it comes in a paternal way.

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A fatherly way. My son, if you listen. My son.

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And this is something that's really common to the Scriptures. You hear often the biblical writers referring to the old teachers, the prophets, those representatives of God as our fathers.

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There's that paternal relationship of respect. You taught me this. And even in the New Testament, same thing happens in terms of the relationship of a spiritual father in the faith to a son.

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But wisdom comes here as a teacher to the children. And there's an intimacy there and a level of respect and honor that has to come where it says, my son, if you do this, you'll get this.

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Now here's what we have to pay attention to today. If, then. And we don't like that, let's be honest.

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Right? I like to keep the then. Give me the then promises. Give me all the stuff on the backside of the then.

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Give me the reward. Give me the blessing. We love that. We are such a culture of weak and lazy people with such a lack of wisdom.

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We don't want the efforts. Right? I just want to be the godly mom. Right? I just want to be the godly wife.

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I just want to be the godly husband, father, man. I just want to be the godly employee or business owner.

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I just want it. I want all the success. Can I just have the pill? Can you just upload it?

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Can you just give it to me by osmosis? We like the then of the promises. Here's what you get.

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We don't like the if. And this whole section is if, then. If, then.

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So here's the question we have to ask ourselves as God's people. Humbly, I'm saying this to myself as much as I'm saying it to you.

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Are we ready as God's people to deal with the if, then? If you do this, then

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I promise this. That's a word from God. The one who spoke and splashes the most glorious sunsets.

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Who holds the whole world together. He says, my son, if, then.

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If, then. Here's the challenge. It's clear from these texts of wisdom from God that you are either on this path or you're on the other.

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If you do these things, then this will happen. No quick fixes.

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No uploading. There's something that has to be taken into consideration as you read through this next passage here where it's if, then.

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If, then. If, then. Is there needs to be a challenge to us, all of us.

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I thought about this in terms of some common grace that I recently heard about. There's a famous man.

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I don't know if I mentioned him recently. It's really neat to see someone receiving sort of this common grace.

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His name is David Goggins. He was a Navy SEAL and just a million other things.

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But he weighed like 300 pounds. He decided one day he was like a exterminator, like a bug exterminator.

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Cockroaches and rats and things like that. He weighed like 300 pounds. He used to go every day and get a box of donuts and a chocolate shake.

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Treat himself real nice every day. He's going to kill cockroaches. He decides one day, because he sees that famous show of that BUDS training where it shows them following the guys that are

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Navy SEAL training. He decides, drinking a chocolate milkshake, I want to be a Navy SEAL. He ends up being a

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Navy SEAL. He loses like 100 pounds in two months so he can go to BUDS training.

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Becomes a Navy SEAL. The man's amazing. He ran a 100 -mile race with three days' notice with no cardio.

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Yeah, I mean, he was like literally like secreting blood from parts of his body we don't normally secrete them and using the bathroom on himself while he was running the 100 miles.

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But he did it. The man is nuts. And when he talks about how he started this process of personal transformation, this is the common grace.

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He says that he has the accountability mirror. The mirror that he looks into and he just starts telling himself the truth.

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Right? You're out of shape. Not because of your genetics, ultimately.

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You're out of shape and look the way you do, he says to himself, because you're lazy. You're not smart, he says to himself.

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Not because you can't be, but because you won't work at it. You won't study.

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You refuse to do so. So he has an accountability mirror. He just starts telling himself the truth. This is what's really wrong with you.

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Here's why you're not accomplishing things. Because you're lazy. Because you're this. Because you're that. Just telling himself the truth.

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And there's something to that in terms of always as believers looking at the word of God and letting it expose us with the truth.

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And say, honestly, I'm not wise because I won't do these things.

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I don't do this. I don't treasure up God's word in my heart. I don't incline my heart to understanding.

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I'm not crying out to God for wisdom. I'm barely whispering. That's why

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I'm not a wise person. I'm not a wise Christian because I don't obey this.

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And God says, if you do this, I will do this. This is what wisdom will bring you. That's a promise from God.

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And the truth is, we don't want the labor. I don't like the if part because it takes pain.

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It's complicated. Sometimes maybe it exposes something in me. I don't like it.

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But God says, if then. And so he says this, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, treasure them up.

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This is a common theme also through Scripture. Does that sound familiar to you? Treasure up my commandments within you.

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In Psalm 119. Go there quickly. It's almost like we're reading something from the same author.

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Psalm 119. That's to the left, by the way. Verse 11. This was one of the very first Bible verses

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I memorized. It's probably one of the first five that I memorized.

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I have treasured up, stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

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I have treasured up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Same thing.

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If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments within you, if you do this, same concept you see throughout

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Scripture. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. You get the idea of I'm feeding on this.

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I need to feed on the Word of God. Your word I've hid in my heart, treasured up in my heart that I may not sin against you.

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If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments within you. Jeremiah 15 -16.

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You know the famous scene? Your words were found and I did eat them.

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So that accountability. Looking into the word here, God says, my son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments within you, then you're going to get this.

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And that's the challenge. Look at yourself. How much memorizing of the

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Word of God do I actually do? God promises knowledge and justice and understanding and instruction and most of us can simply say it's in that book somewhere.

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How do you know that? How do you know that? You just made a claim about the world and God and Christ.

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How do you know? And our response typically, if we're honest with ourselves, is it's somewhere in that book.

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Let me Google that. You have to treasure it up within you. The idea of treasuring up, we don't typically store up treasures in our house like this, but they didn't have bank vaults back then and those sort of things.

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If you had something that was very valuable to you, very valuable, it was worth a lot, you would typically store it up, treasure it up, to draw from later at your home.

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Maybe you dug something up under your bed. You kept it hidden away under your bed. It was valuable.

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It was treasure. And you guarded it as treasure because it was so valuable, you knew you had to be able to draw from that value later so you would treasure it up in your home.

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You would hide it and treasure it up and guard it because it was treasure. And God says,

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My son, if you receive My words and treasure up My commandments within you...

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So how many of us are doing that? If we want wisdom, we're saying, Yes, let's do a study in the book of Proverbs.

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Let's invest in God's wisdom. Here it is at the beginning of the book. If you do this, then you get this.

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So what is it? It's receive His words, the words of God, the words of wisdom, and treasure up these commandments within you.

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How much are we doing that as God's people? How much are we actually memorizing

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Scripture and storing up God's truth and His knowledge and all this understanding within us? Can we quote it to ourselves and not just quote it to others?

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Are we preaching it to ourselves and not just to others? We need to memorize the law, the

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Word, Amen, and the knowledge of God. Yes. So, next, in verse 2 -2, look here.

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Here's the answer again. If you do this, then you get this. Making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding.

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How do you get it? If you do this, then I'll do this. It's clear that wisdom requires of us ears and a heart.

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Ear and heart. We have to not just hear the words of wisdom and be attentive to the wisdom, but we have to incline our heart to understanding.

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How many times have you ever been in a situation where you're talking to somebody and you're talking to them and you think like they're listening to you and you find out like five seconds later they're totally checked out.

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They're not listening to a word you're saying. First of all, don't do that to each other. Amen?

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Because it shows that you don't value the person. Right? So as much as we may fail in an area, stop doing that. It's a sin.

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Stop. You're careless with somebody's emotions, with their thoughts.

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But how many times has husbands, has your wife said something to you and you're like I'm sorry,

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I heard you, but I wasn't listening. Right? We get the understanding, that concept of like it went here, but it didn't sink down into like the root of my passions and like I didn't really incline my heart to anything.

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There was noise, but it didn't go deep. There's no commitments made. Okay? So the text says, if you make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding, this is something you have to wrestle with, obviously.

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No quick fixes. No pills. This is something where you have to hear, open your ear, hear it, receive it into yourself and it's clear that you have to wrestle with passions.

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The heart is the seed of the passions and the emotion. You have to wrestle with wisdom. You have to make sure that you're wrestling and fighting and working with it.

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Wrestle with it. It takes rehearsal and it takes practice. You know,

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I mentioned this last year when we were doing the Philippians study. Remember the Philippians study? We talked about Scripture giving you commands at times that you're like how is that even humanly possible?

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Well, it takes practice. It takes rehearsal. Now, all glory to God, the only reason that I would want wisdom, true wisdom from God, is my heart is regenerate, amen?

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Like unbelievers aren't seeking for God, right? There's none righteous. No, not one. No one seeks for God. No unbeliever is saying

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God give me wisdom. Believers are doing that. So here's the thing. The hope is this. If you are the one who desires wisdom and you're frustrated by your lack of wisdom or your lack to actually accomplish it, praise

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God. That's the work of the spirit of God in your life, amen? You're there because God loves you and He's given you a new heart and He lives within you.

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But there is a wrestling that needs to take place. There's a working at it. And this is what I mentioned last year is that what's so mind -boggling to me is that we typically understand the work that it takes to get skilled at something in every area of life except our walk with Christ.

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Like so many men today within our own body are saying I want to take seriously being able to defend my family.

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Right? I don't just know it. I can't just watch a video. And so there's a ton of men in our church right now saying

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I'm going to incline my heart to understanding how to defend myself and my family physically, how to do it.

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You have guys taking classes on how to shoot and aim and use weapons to protect their families.

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You have guys taking classes on how to choke a man out. All good things in the right context, right?

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And we recognize I don't just get this by saying I watched a YouTube video.

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Right? I watched a master class on self -defense so I got it. I got it.

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Like recognize it takes practice. You have to rehearse this. Or anybody that's going to school right now.

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You're in college right now. What are you doing? You're going there to get all of this stuff and then get the skills to work it out.

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I mean which nurse do you want to stick you? The one who said

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I just watched 25 hours of how to do this. Or the one that's been doing it and rehearsing it and practicing it for years.

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I want that one. I truly want that one. Give me the one who has practiced this.

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They've sharpened their skills. It's not their first day. Can you imagine if you're at the hospital? You know you got in some serious accident.

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Someone comes in the room. They're like hi. My first day. Never done this but I watched the video. You recognize no one does that.

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You have to get good at it. You rehearse it. And so there has to be a wrestling that takes place in the Christian life when it comes to wisdom.

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The text teaches us if you receive God's words and you make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding and the next text says and you call out.

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You cry out for insights and raise your voice for understanding.

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That's the challenge. So many of us and again I preach the sermon to myself as much as I'm preaching it to you.

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So many of us are so passionate about other things. We passionately pursue other things that we think will give us happiness and pleasure and joy and security.

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We're so happy to invest everything in it. We don't do that for wisdom. We're not at our houses or even in our churches crying out to God like God give it to us.

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I want to be wise. I want to be like you. Like Bonson said when he preached on this.

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We're barely whispering. Barely. But the text says if you do this if you're crying out for insights if you raise your voice for understanding if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures before we get to the then think about that for a moment now.

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Every word of God is pure. Every word of God is true. He's saying this for a reason. If you raise up your voice and you're crying out give it to me

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God and he says if you seek it like silver and search for it as hidden treasures This is foreign to us today because we've got the lottery.

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What is a lottery just a phenomenal indication of? That everyone wants the then they want the reward without the sweat without the labor without the pain.

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I don't want to endure any of that. I just want to spend a dollar on a ticket and win 500 million dollars.

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Right? And everyone gets frustrated. I didn't win. Yeah, it's because you're an idiot. Like it's foolish.

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If you want riches and wealth there's nothing wrong with that. Love of money. Don't do that.

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Don't do that. But if you want to be a wealthy person that hands this down for the kingdom of God and your children then work.

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Build something. Do it to the glory of God. You can't live your life with those kind of pursuits that say no labor and then reward.

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But God says here you search for it like it's silver and search for it as hidden treasures.

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It takes work too. That takes work too. I have right here this is real.

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This is a 100 ounces of fine silver.

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100 ounces of fine silver. When you see it like this it doesn't look like much.

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Right? But so much in our world today depends on this. Our electronics the cars so much.

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This is a very valuable resource. And I would say we're going to learn this as we go into the

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Proverbs if we held to God's standards of real money we would be more dedicated to gold and silver than we are today.

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We used to have a gold standard. We used to have a standard that said money has to be real money. It has to be really valuable.

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It can't be fiat, fake. And the problem is that takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of labor.

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Like silver itself. Gold actually is in some respects a little easier to mine than silver is.

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But silver is not easy to get. It's dangerous. It's dangerous.

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A lot of people have died and continue to die. Mining for this stuff. And it's not simple because it's usually found with a bunch of other things.

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It's not like you found a rock that oh that's silver let's melt it down. It's combined with other things.

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So you have to separate it out. It's a long process. It's blowing things up. You've got to find it first.

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Blow stuff up. You've got to try to survive that. Get the silver. Break it up into little pieces.

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Then you've got to sort of pull it out of there. Get water through it. But it is a long difficult process to get to this.

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You ever felt this? You ever felt this? Let me have one of the brown kids. You're right on the end there.

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Come on up here. Yeah. David said pass that around.

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Okay be careful. Don't drop this on your foot. You've got flip flops on. You ready? Is that heavy?

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A lot heavier than you thought right? This. Thank you. This is really heavy.

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If you had a small box. A small box of just five of these.

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It is like 35 pounds. It's a teeny box. You can really fool someone. Hey bro hold this for me real fast.

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They will drop it. Because it doesn't seem like that much weight could be in a small box. But this is silver.

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Who wants it? Anybody want it? You never know. It might be free gift day today.

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Grace. All gifts. Who wants this? Who really wants this? I've got to believe you.

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Look at Dan. He's running down the aisle. This right here.

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This should be if our markets weren't run by corrupt organizations.

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This should be in the hundreds of dollars per ounce. But as of right now, this is probably worth about 3 ,000 bucks.

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So this little brick right here is $3 ,000. It's pretty awesome, huh?

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Now everyone's sort of like going, is he serious? Can you see how excited

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Matt was? He was kind of running down here. I'll take it. I want the treasure.

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Because you recognize there's real value to that. But listen, if you seek for it like silver, it wasn't like him running down the aisle.

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Here it is. How did you have to get silver when this was written? You had to work hard for it.

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Find it. Labor. Crush it. Work it. Chemicals.

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Process. To get this silver that's so valuable. And to find treasure. You ever seen that show?

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What channel was it on? Was it Discovery Channel? Discovery Channel?

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Was it Bearing Sea Gold? You ever watch that show? I used to love watching that show. Bearing Sea Gold.

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It's like frozen out there. It's just freezing. People can die. You're diving into water trying to suck rocks from the bottom of the sea to go up into this thing to bring it down and try to find the little teeny, teeny, teeny flake of gold.

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And they just labor and suck water through this machine and pull rocks and stuff from the bottom of the sea floor through this machine to get teeny flake, teeny flake, teeny flake.

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And you'll see them freak out when they get just like a teeny pebble. They're like, woo! Gold! But it's when you pull all that treasure together that you have this massive wealth and treasury.

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But you have to work for it. And God's saying this to his people. If, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments within you, if you make your ear attentive to wisdom and incline your heart to understanding, if you cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as hidden treasures, here's a promise.

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Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

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Then you will. So God's people, there it is. Words from God.

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Not my words. These are not Pastor Jeff's tips to success. These are the words of God.

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If you do this, then here's what you get as God's people. So let's be honest with ourselves.

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What's really wrong? What's really wrong? Look in that mirror.

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What's really wrong? Me. Because I, I don't really feel that way about God's wisdom.

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I don't really feel that way about understanding. I'm not crying out for it.

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I'm not searching for God's truth, His knowledge, and His wisdom like it's actual treasure that I want to bury up within myself.

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That's the truth. In verse 6 it says, For the Lord gives wisdom, and from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding.

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He stores up wisdom for the upright. He is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of His saints.

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See, God is promising that He is the very source of wisdom and knowledge and God promises you that He guards

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His saints. He guards the righteous. You already see at the end of this chapter there's a promising that the wicked are going to be cut off, they will not inhabit the land, but it's

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God's saints that He guards. It's the meek who shall inherit the what? Let's try that again.

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The meek shall inherit the what? The earth. That's the promise of Scripture. I specifically picked today Psalm 37 as the reading before the congregation today because what does that psalm teach?

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Same thing. The wicked will be uprooted from the land. It's the righteous, the meek who inherit the land and expand it in the

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New Testament to the earth. Final word here. I have so much to say on this.

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We're going to do two sermons on this. Is it okay? Okay. Final word.

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In verse 9. I already thought about cutting it off here, but I just didn't know how this was going to go, so...

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Verse 9. Then. If you do this, then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path.

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Righteousness, justice, equity, every good path. The word equity is translated in other parts of the

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Old Testament as uprightness. If you do these things, then you will get the guarding of wisdom.

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You will get God watching over the way of His saints. You will get the understanding of righteousness and justice and equity in every good path.

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This is key. You guys are familiar with that amazing section in Deuteronomy chapter 4.

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I'll read it for you. Deuteronomy chapter 4 verses 5 through 8.

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This is what God says to His people when He gives them His law, His commandments and His word. Look what He says.

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Very foreign to the modern day evangelical that treats the law of God as something that is irrelevant and ultimately bad for the world.

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God says about His commandments this. Chapter 4 of Deuteronomy verse 5. See, I have taught you statutes and rules as the

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Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

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Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who when they hear all these statutes will say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

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For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our

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God is to us whenever we call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you this day?

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God says in His word, if you pursue wisdom and understanding like this, with your ear and your heart involved, together, inclining, crying out for it, seeking it like silver and treasure, then you will be guarded by wisdom.

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God protects His saints. And then you will have what? An understanding of righteousness and justice and equity in every good path.

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We live in a day where people shout constantly about that's not right.

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We want justice. We need equity. And these are the same people who believe that their ancestors were bacteria.

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That we are just protoplasm in a mindless, meaningless universe. We're not special on any order.

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We're just random results of a universe that doesn't even care. And yet they cry out for justice and equity and righteousness.

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And even in the last couple of days, when we see something like Roe versus Wade being overturned,

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I mentioned we filed an amicus brief. Our amicus brief that we helped to file was quoting the word of the living

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God. We didn't go to the court trying to argue on neutral grounds. We argued that first and foremost, this is your duty before God.

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These are the words of God. Obey Jesus Christ. That was the foundation of our argument and our amicus brief.

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But you see people today saying things like, oh my goodness, the idol is out of the way.

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Oh my goodness, we've lost this opinion that has brought tyranny upon over 62 million human beings murdered because of this opinion.

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We've lost it now, so you're seeing now people on that side who are part of the culture of death saying what?

01:00:04

Well, this isn't just. Say what? It's not just? So they're saying things like, we need to dissolve the

01:00:12

Supreme Court. Amazing, right? We were just saying the opinion is evil. It's a sin against God.

01:00:18

You need to reverse that opinion. They're saying dissolve the court. Do away with it.

01:00:23

Why? Because we don't like what our God now says. It's amazing in terms of people saying,

01:00:32

I understand, or I want justice, I want righteousness, I want truth. Pastor James posted on his social media,

01:00:41

I think it was Facebook the other day, a quote from somebody, I think it was a pastor talking about how he has women calling him from his church who are so scared and sad right now.

01:00:50

And this pastor was trying to tell people, hey guys, in all your celebrating, just remember I've got women in my church calling me that are so scared right now that Roe has been overturned.

01:01:00

What? If you had done your job as a man of God, as a minister of the gospel, and taught your people wisdom and justice and righteousness, you wouldn't be getting any phone calls.

01:01:12

You'd be having the standing ovation we had today in this body. That's the truth.

01:01:23

That's wisdom. That's understanding. That's justice. Knowing what does

01:01:29

God say? What are His standards? The world out there, they don't know. They claim they want justice, they want understanding, they want wisdom, but they don't know.

01:01:41

We say, look to the law word of God. If you want justice and righteousness in the land, the fear of the

01:01:48

Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. There is no real wisdom or knowledge or instruction apart from the word of the living

01:01:58

God. I'm not just preaching to you. That's what God's word says.

01:02:03

So if we want justice and equity and righteousness and every good path in our world around us, we have to start with the fear of the

01:02:10

Lord. It's the very beginning. Not the middle. Not the end. God's wisdom says, in our current context, what are we to do?

01:02:21

What is truly just? How do we live? God's wisdom says, chastity.

01:02:30

Pastor James, again, I'm going to keep quoting from you today, said, how are we really going to have this conversation in our current cultural climate when it's the church that will not speak to the culture about fornication and adultery?

01:02:43

How are you going to talk about the issues when we won't even speak about fornication and adultery? God's word,

01:02:49

His wisdom says, chastity. Chastity.

01:02:56

God's wisdom says, male and female. God's wisdom says, what's in the womb is in His very image.

01:03:06

God's wisdom says, love your neighbor. God's wisdom says, equal weight and measures.

01:03:13

God's wisdom says, punish the evildoer and not the victim. That's justice.

01:03:22

And we understand that as God's people, not because we made it up, not because we're so creative and so wise in our own understanding.

01:03:30

We understand that as God's people that that will secure and guard the world because we have the

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Word of the living God and we start all our thinking with the fear of the Lord because that's the beginning of knowledge.

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There is no wisdom, insight, understanding. There is no knowledge apart from the foundation of the true and living

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God. And God says, if you do this, then I will give you the blessings of wisdom.

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The challenge to us today is this. Are we willing to yield to that pursuit?

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Do I feel that way about wisdom in my life? My life may feel disordered.

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I may feel like I have a total lack in so many areas. God's promise is, I'll give it to you.

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I'll give it to you. But your heart needs to be like this. You need to seek that wisdom like it is silver and treasure.

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You have to cry out for it. Don't whisper. Brothers and sisters, let's stop whispering and start crying out.

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Let's pray. Father, I pray that you'd bless the Word that went out today for your glory and kingdom. Help us to have a heart that cries out for wisdom and understanding.

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Let us bury your commandments and your truth within us like treasure. Let us be light to the world for your glory and kingdom.