“Respect Your Elders!” – FBC Morning Light (1/26/2024)

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, good Friday morning to you. We are ending the last full week of January with this weekend, and I hope you're looking forward to a good

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Lord's Day with God's people. I trust that weather permitting, we'll all be able to gather together and worship the

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Lord together on Sunday. So this particular Sunday, mind you, we have

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Bible study at 9 .30, morning service at 10 .30, and then we have lunch together after that service, and then an afternoon service beginning at 1 o 'clock.

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So if you're in the area of Faith Baptist in Sterling, certainly welcome you and encourage you to visit with us and join us as we worship together on the

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Lord's Day. Well, in our Bible reading plan today, we're reading the Council of Elihu, chapters 32 through 34.

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You've got to take your hat off to this guy Elihu. We don't have any idea how old he is, but he does acknowledge at the beginning of chapter 32 that he's much younger than Job and his three friends, and he points this out.

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He's been listening in on all of this back and forth between Job and the three friends, and he's not said a word.

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He's just sat by the side and taken it all in. But if you were drawing a comic strip of this, what you would see is

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Elihu sitting over here on the side while each of these guys takes their turn, and they go back and forth with Job, and Elihu's sitting there, but the smoke is rising.

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There's this little plume of smoke rising above his head because he's getting pretty ticked.

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He says this, it says in verse 2 that the wrath of Elihu was aroused against Job because he tried to justify himself rather than God, and it was aroused against his three friends because they'd found no answer, and yet they condemned

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Job. So Elihu's been pretty upset, but he's been quiet.

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He hasn't said anything. Why? Well, I appreciate his attitude and his approach.

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He says in verse 6, he says, I am young in years, and you are very old.

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Therefore, I was afraid, and dared not to declare my opinion to you.

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I said, age should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.

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I appreciate this, Elihu is looking at these older men, and in deference to them, to their age, and to hopefully their wisdom, he's going to sit on the sidelines and just take it in, just listen.

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But then he realizes something very important for us to understand, that just because someone is elderly, older, and their hair is gray, doesn't mean they're necessarily wise.

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They're not necessarily filled with biblical wisdom. Oh, there are people who have become very street -wise because they've been around the block a few times in their many years on this planet, but it doesn't mean that they have biblical wisdom.

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I recently read a book, I can't remember the title off the top of my head, but I read a book where the guy was interviewing a whole bunch of octogenarian people, and how they lived, and the way they lived, and what they regretted, and so on and so forth, and he distilled all of these interviews down into this book, and shared the wisdom of these gray -haired people who've lived a many number of years, past 80 years of age.

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And as I read through some of those comments of some of those people, there were some things they said that were very prudent in terms of navigating life in this world, but very few of them had really an understanding of the deeper things of life.

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Very few, if I can't remember any of them, that really had wisdom from God's perspective.

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And this is Elihu's understanding, recognition. He's been listening to these men who are much older, but he realizes that they don't have the answers, they don't have the wisdom.

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Years don't necessarily make a person wise. Instead, what does?

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Well, he says in verse 8, there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding.

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There is the answer. It is the breath of the Almighty that gives a man understanding.

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And I've experienced this in my own life. I'm now at the point where I'm considered to be an older man, mid -60s and all that stuff.

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But in my years of ministry experience, I've always tried to be respectful and deferential toward those who are older.

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But it's interesting, nobody goes through 40 -some years of ministry without being hurt, and sometimes hurt very deeply.

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And I certainly have. But one of the things as I've reflected on this that is troubling is that all of those hurts, as I think about it, all of those really deep hurts have come from those who were older.

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Those who should have expressed compassion, those who should have had a measure of understanding and God's wisdom, and they didn't have it.

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Instead, they lashed out, and they were very cruel and hurtful, kind of like Job's friends to Job.

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Just because someone has gray hair doesn't mean they are wise. What they need, if they're going to be truly understanding of the way things are, and the way

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God works, and so forth, is they need the breath of the Almighty that gives understanding.

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Interestingly, that word breath is a word that could be a reference to the

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Spirit. The Spirit of the Almighty gives him understanding. So let's evaluate ourselves in light of this truth.

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Am I wise? Am I truly wise, regardless of how old I am? The answer to that question depends upon how well you know

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God, and how much his Spirit possesses you and fills you.

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Our Father and our God, I pray that we would be truly wise. Grant us your

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Spirit. You have said that you would grant your Spirit to those who ask. And so we ask,

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Father, that regardless of our age today, I pray that you would give us your wisdom.

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Grant us understanding. Fill us, O Lord, with the Spirit of truth.

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We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well, let's have a good rest of your Friday.