ResponsiveReiding

THE AUDIO FOR THIS SERMON CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING HERE

SO FAR: 

1. There are UNIVERSAL & UNRELENTING temptations we need to look out for. Do not be surprised when you face these things over and over and over again.

2. 15-16 / There are UNFILLABLE voids in the souls of men.

3. 18-19 / There are UNFATHOMABLE mysteries in life.

4. 21-23 / There are UNFITTING realities in life.

Only Christ can fill the voids

Only in Christ can the mysteries of life be explained – for all of God’s wisdom is summed up in Him.

Only in Christ at His coming will the unfitting effects of the Fall be righted.

TODAY

There are 3 more Master Lessons to look at in this passage – to bring our total to 7.

5. 24-28 / There is UNTAPPED wisdom in Creation all around you.

Don’t be surprised if some of life’s best answers are illustrated right in front of you.

These four speak to one of the most primal realities which any of us faces in life: We hate the thought of, let alone the experience of -being powerless.

People we cannot impact infuriate and terrify us.

When they won’t listen to us or when all of our arguments seem to simply bounce off of them.

When our best attempts at moving them are absolutely impotent.

When a husband or wife seems to be impervious to changing no matter how much you hurt.

When children won’t respond to discipline and Parents won’t take the time to consider their children’s point of view.

Even what is in itself a wise things to do – like the purchase of insurance is at least in part an attempt to hedge against the inevitable. An attempt to bring peace over things we know we cannot control: accidents, death, health, etc.

So Agur points to these 4 examples:

Ants have no “power”. They are not strong. How do they manage in a world where they are virtually the most powerless of all?

They do what they can – when they can.

And then they are cast upon God.

The rock badgers or mountain mice – tiny and frail – how do they survive? They’ve learned the secret of hiding in those places that are strong.

A lesson to us to find our refuge in the strong tower of God’s name, rather than in our own strength or ability.

The locusts. They are just bugs. They can be flicked off with the tiniest finger. Blown about with the slightest wind. Yet entire regions can fall beneath the plague when these feeble little creatures – without a leader – band together and make an army none can defeat. A picture of our being bound together with the host of other powerless Christians, who apart from any earthly King, yet march on for Christ’s kingdom, and have brought down entire empires. The unity of the powerless sons of God – relying on the power of their God.

And lastly, the lizard – or as some translations have it – the spider: Both little, frail, easily caught and extinguished.

Yet in their usefulness, are not only found but allowed to live in the finest places, in King’s palaces.

Their natural capacity to rid their environs of multitudes of other pests, makes a way for them when they would not be tolerated naturally.

So that Christians, bringing Biblical ethics and goodness and safety to those around them, though without any power in themselves, are found to be a needed useful part of society.

Sort of welcome pests.

Even the most vicious opponent recognizes that when Christians actually live up to the standard of God’s Word, the world around them is better for it.

Power is sought by all of us.

Power over a cheating spouse, an abusing superior, a stronger opponent, the indefatigable waves of life.

But power over things in life is not what we need.

Trust and confidence in the One who rules and reigns over all, that is what we NEED.

Confidence that He has made us as we are.

That His hand is upon us.

That the gifts and capacities He has placed within us, are more than a match for the need of the hour, if we look to Him.

That we can run into Him and be safe.

That we are our Beloved’s, and He is ours, and that is enough.

Take a lesson from the creatures who tho smallest and frailest in creation – not only live but thrive – because The Creator provides for them.

And as Jesus told we who follow Him: Are we not of more value than MANY sparrows, who are worth almost nothing?

6. 29-31 / There are UNLINKED similarities in life. Not everything is a conspiracy. Men simply share a common fallen nature.

Not everything rises to the level of a conspiracy, even though there might be great and startling similarities.

Our driving need to make sense of the things we experience in life, can easily lend itself to drawing connections between dots that ought not exist.

It is one of the prevailing reasons why we are so quick to jump to conclusions about people’s motives.

EXAMPLE: Politically – on the Left – there are accusations of “a vast right-wing conspiracy”

And on the Right there are looming images of the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers and massive global conspiracies of untold power.

But the truth is – what we have is a commonality of fallenness which ALWAYS seeks to run the world as much as possible.

Every empire from the ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Greece, Rome, The Huns, The Turks, The Nazis and the Communists and scores of others have sought for world domination.

This is nothing new and we should expect it from fallen humanity.

But closer to home – in our private lives – we love to connect the dots to give us a discernable pattern in all sorts of circumstances, as a way of dealing with the unknown.

Especially in regard to things we are offended by.

We very quickly imagine a failure to shake hands, a missed thank you note, an unacknowledged phone call, or a passing glance of the eye to be filled with all sorts of sin and menace. Shame on us.

As our text notes: Lions, roosters, he goats and king’s with their armies with them: All STRUT.

But the similarities stop there.

None of the 4 mentioned they strut for the same reasons.

Yet how quick we are to assume reasons behind the actions of others, with nary a moment’s trouble at finding out the truth by means of asking a simple question or two.

By that I really mean asking – not accusing BY asking. Which is a great temptation in itself, isn’t it?

How many relationships would be spared if people would only assume the law of love:

Love assumes no sin in the other person, unless the facts prove it to be otherwise.

People’s sin can be counted upon to make them brag and leak information at enormous rates.

But we have this compulsion that we MUST have THE reason behind anything we cannot fathom normally.

As though everything is a matter of direct cause and effect.

1. A. Carson / “Exegetical Fallacies” – unwarranted connections.

Why are fire engines red?

Because they’ve got 8 wheels and 4 people on them

And what is the reasoning behind that?

8 + 4 = 12

There are 12 inches in a foot

One foot is a ruler
There was a ruler named Queen Elizabeth
A ship named Queen Elizabeth sails the seas
In the seas are fish
On the fish are fins
The Fins fought the Russians
The Russians are red.
Fire engines are always rushin’.
Therefore – fire engines are red!

What unwarranted connections have you been plagued by? And then made equally unwarranted conclusions because of?

The lion struts. The rooster struts. The he-goat struts. A king appearing with his army struts.

Not a one of them is connected to the other.

They are, but – similarities.

SLIDES:     Richard Dawkins / Emma Watson

Irene Ryan / Harry Reid

Burger King / Mel Gibson

Yassar Arafat / Ringo Starr

Joe Biden / Jeff Dunham’s Walter

A. Carson / Jim Broadbent

Jeremy Bretts / Ligon Duncan

N.T. Wright / Richard Schiff (Toby Zeigler)

Patrick Stewart / Neanderthal man

Now all of these are harmless fun – but then are some places where this REALLY matters –

Example: MORMONISM / CHRISTIANITY

Different God – NOT the Triune God of the Bible

Different Jesus – Not the God/Man but a man who achieved goodhood

Different Holy Spirit – Force vs a Person

Different Salvation – Works vs Grace

Different Authority – Bible vs Church & additional documents

Different Heaven & Hell

Different Gospel

Galatians 1:8–9 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. ⁹ As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

But the ancient Christians told those men the truth,—namely, that “as they had feigned unto themselves an imaginary Christ, so they should have an imaginary salvation only.” – John Owen

Similarities are not truth simply because we can observe those similarities.

Better to occupy our hearts and minds with The Divine conspiracy of the Triune God to bring saving grace to a lost race.

Now THAT’s worth contemplating.

The Heavenly Father conspiring to bless His Son with a Bride fit for Him.

A Son who redeems that Bride when she ran away in rebellion – buying her back at the price of His own blood – dying in her place for her crimes committed while in her rebellion.

And the Holy Spirit conspiring to make her clean and holy and prepared for the Son once again.

THAT’s worth musing on.

7. 32-33 / There are UNAVOIDABLE consequences to our thoughts and actions.

Twist someone’s nose, you’ll make it bleed

It is a law of nature

It is the simple truth

Harp on, or harbor anger – and you’ll produce strife

Set your mind on sinful things – you’ll sin

Sow to the flesh, you’ll reap in the flesh

Sow to the Spirit – you’ll reap spiritual things

You cannot grow in grace feeding your heart and mind on ungodly things

If we are arrogant, we WILL be brought low by the hand of the Lord who “opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” – 1 Peter 5:5

This is why we need the Gospel so desperately – “The wages of sin is death” Death is the unavoidable consequence of sin.

It is a universal, inevitable and unavoidable.

No one can sin with impunity. No one. Under any circumstances.

And just because you haven’t experienced the wretched results yet for some of your sins – do not imagine they have gone unnoticed.

You’ve walked your own way in life.

Ignored the Gospel in its free offer, and in its command – ACTS 17.

And you say to yourself, “the sky didn’t fall in, the earth didn’t stop turning on its axis, the universe didn’t unravel.” WAIT!

1 Timothy 5:24 (ESV) The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.

There is an inevitable result of believing the Gospel and putting your faith in the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ on the Cross – dying for human sin so that those who believe might go free!

Salvation!

And there is an inevitable and unavoidable result of rejecting this Gospel of grace – and it is eternal punishment away from the presence of the Lord.

It is to this reality we call you today.

Here is Christ – God’s Son, crucified for guilty sinners – for you and me.

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.^[1]

There is no other hope.

^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), Ro 3:23–25.

7 Master Lessons for Life

Proverbs 30 – Part 2

THE AUDIO CAN BE FOUND HERE

Last time:

Lesson 1: There are UNIVERSAL & UNRELENTING temptations we need to look out for. Do not be surprised when you face some things over and over and over again.

 We tend to forget:

(4) God. WHO & WHAT God really is -and that His love for me is displayed in the Cross by the One who fully unfolds Him to us.

(5) God’s Word is the only SURE source of truth – it needs to be trusted above my logic, or my perceptions.

(6) Adding to what God has said, is as dangerous, and MORE tempting than leaving things out.

(7-9) Left to myself, I am unreliable. I know my fallenness & cannot trust myself.

TODAY

Lesson 2: 15-16 / There are UNFILLABLE VOIDS in the souls of people.  Do not be surprised at the lengths to which men will go to try and satisfy such voids.

There ARE unfillable voids in the souls of men and apart from Christ as our true satisfaction – all sorts of other things stand ready to rush in to fill the void.

People do what they do to try and fill those voids.

4 Examples:

The GRAVE    –       Relentless

The BARREN WOMB       –       Mournful

PARCHED LAND      –       Insatiable

FIRE     –       Lust

We were made only to be truly satisfied with Christ. –  Eph. 1:15-23

OUR FULLNESS – IS IN HIS FULLNESS.

Augustine said, “O Lord, you have made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Blaise Pascal: “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

When this void remains men will try to fill it – sometimes in extreme, horrific and bizarre ways.

When men’s actions do not make sense, you can be sure they are trying to fill some deep emptiness.

BUT – Such deep, deep voids can only be met in Christ.

When human beings as created specifically be God’s image bearers, lose that image, they are left with the haunting reality that something is horribly wrong, something essential has been lost.

And without the special revelation of the Scriptures – they misidentify that missing something every time.

As long as we try to meet this reality by other means than being restored to our original purpose in Christ, the futility of it, and the inward gnawing and aching only increases.

Sometimes we drown it out. Temporarily.

Work

Family

Amusements – Hobbies, Sports, etc.

Sex

Drugs & Alcohol

Causes – Good and bad              Much so-called “activism” is driven by this need.

Even CHURCH

These desires and unfillable voids we often cannot even discern for ourselves.

In another of Solomon’s works – the Book of Ecclesiastes, he addresses this phenomena with marvelous clarity.

He recognized that this gnawing ache in the human heart is tied to our sense of purpose in life.

Solomon says he began to search for meaning and he looked in the same 4 places all of us look.

1. Pleasure – selfish enjoyment – but pleasure is fleeting

Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.”

But behold, this also was vanity. ² I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?” ³ I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life.

2. Productivity – satisfaction in work but it has no eternal aspect to it

⁴ I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. ⁵ I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. ⁶ I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.

3. Possessions – all of which will one day perish

⁷ I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem.

4. Power – Which is an illusion. For in the end we have very little true power over anything.

⁸ I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.

⁹ So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. ¹⁰ And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.

Conclusion:  ¹¹ Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

Proverbs 20:5 “The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water,  but a man of understanding will draw it out.”

The perversity of men’s hearts seems to have no bounds.

Need proof? The Holocaust!

How do we explain such things? MAN WANTS.

And man will do whatever he thinks he can get away with to fill his wants…

Until we find our soul’s satisfaction in Christ.

If you are being driven by compulsions of any kind – this passage is diagnosing the problem – the disease.

And the Gospel is extending to you the sole cure – being restored to God through Jesus Christ.

30:17 – WARNING: Those who do not recognize this – Will act out in the most grievous ways, and ultimately pay the price.

Lesson 3:  18-19 / There are UNFATHOMABLE MYSTERIES in life. – Do not be surprised there are things you will not be able to figure out. You will not get all the answers you seek.

Some things we will never be able to explain adequately.

And if we do not accept this fact and shift our gaze elsewhere, our perplexity may well (and does in many) shift itself over into endless obsession and hopeless despondency.

4 Examples:    EAGLE in the SKY   –  Invisible thermals

SERPENT  on a ROCK  –   No feet

SHIP at SEA  –  Currents

MAN & VIRGIN  –  Invisible means – who knows how love and attraction actually work?

It is the tendency of man’s fallen condition to let the reality that we truly CANNOT know some things, overflow into a fear that we cannot know anything for certain – and thus the soul faints in despair.

Nowhere is this seen more than in great evils done to us.

A driving need for many.      An obsessive and destructive need for some.  Look at our virtual NEED to blame someone for every pain, heartache or suffering we endure.

Our legal system thrives upon this drive.

HURT IN A CAR? CALL WILLIAM MATTAR!

This is one of those deep, unfillable voids we were introduced to in the first section.

Suffering MUST make sense if it is to be bearable to us.

Truth is there are a vast number of things in this life we may never be able to explain.

And if we are not able to give those things up to God, and to trust that HE knows both why, and has our best interest at heart in allowing us to experience them – we will sink into some form of madness.

Colossians 2:1-3 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, sto reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

In the words of Ira Stanphill:

I don’t know about tomorrow,
I just live from day to day.
I don’t borrow from it’s sunshine,
For it’s skies may turn to gray.
I don’t worry o’er the future,
For I know what Jesus said,
And today I’ll walk beside Him,
For He knows what is ahead.

I don’t know about tomorrow,
It may bring me poverty;
But the One Who feeds the sparrow,
Is the One Who stands by me.
And the path that be my portion,
May be through the flame or flood,
But His presence goes before me,
And I’m covered with His blood.

Refrain:   Many things about tomorrow, I don’t seem to understand;
But I know Who holds tomorrow, And I know Who holds my hand.

Perhaps we could slightly alter that refrain to read:
Many things about my SORROW, I don’t seem to understand;
But I know Who holds my sorrow, And I know Who holds my hand.

30:20 – WARNING: Those who perpetrate evil, justify it to themselves.

Lesson$  21-23 / There are UNFITTING REALITIES in life.

Don’t be surprised at injustice here.

EXAMPLES:  A SLAVE made KING – The unfit in leadership. Men who are unfit for leadership, ruling over the lives and destinies of others.

A FILLED FOOL – Foolish men and women, when they have come to enjoy great wealth and satisfaction.

A GOTTCHYA GAL – A woman who was long unloved, will become so obnoxious to her former friends when married at last.

A REPLACEMENT WIFE – When a maidservant displaces her mistress. In our day, when the boss leaves the wife who put him through                             college and raised his kids, runs off with the secretary.

REALITY: Entertainers earn more than Doctors and Educators.

We cry with loud voices to protect endangered fish, birds and other animals, while murdering 1-plus million children in their mother’s wombs each year in America.

Pedophiles can run public websites, and Christians can’t pray at public events.

And as my friend Tony Bartolucci sent in an email to me, in America we are expected to – to “be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand. Believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.”

The truth is, we live in a fallen world. And such a fallen world will be filled with such unfitting things.

Criminals at times will be treated like victims, and victims like criminals.

Laws will be passed to hinder good and protect evil.

This is sin at work. This is what happens when the creature wants to usurp the Creator’s place.

We are unfit. And all we do will result in unfitting things.

– Don’t despair.

– Life doesn’t end here.

– This will not always be the way it is.

– Christ IS coming.

– One day, all of these wrongs will be made right.

– All that is so far from what it ought to be will be brought back into         line.

– He will judge the world in righteousness. His wisdom will prevail. His         truth will govern all.

– Everything will be in its right place.

– Every relationship precisely as it ought to be.

– The fullness of Christ’s redemptive work will permeate and         characterize   all of creation.

There will be all sorts of unfitting realities in the intervening years.

But not a one that will not be made right in Christ.

Don’t go mad, go Biblical – in the hope that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:13 “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

There will always be unfitting realities in life.

Injustices we cannot right. Things that just aren’t “right” but nevertheless – are existential realities.

Christ is Lord of these as well. 

2. 15-16 / There are UNFILLABLE voids in the souls of men.
3. 18-19 / There are UNFATHOMABLE mysteries in life.
4. 21-23 / There are UNFITTING realities in life.

Only Christ can fill the voids

Only in Christ can the mysteries of life be explained – for all of God’s wisdom is summed up in Him.

Only in Christ at His coming will the unfitting effects of the Fall be righted.

7 Master Lessons for Life

Proverbs 30 – Part 1

FOR THE AUDIO OF THIS SERMON CLICK HERE 

As we have said from the beginning of this study – The Bible has a lot to say about HOW we think, as much as what we think.

EXAMPLE – Eph. 4:23  “that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” EXAMPLE – Rom. 12:2  “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” are typical examples.

We are often too preoccupied with the mere academics, and not enough with HOW TO THINK – How to think according to God’s understanding of the universe.

THIS, the Bible says – is WISDOM!

We need to develop a “Gospel gut” – A faculty or mechanism for taking things in, and then breaking them down properly – some to be digested and used, some to be cast off into the draught.

Proverbs is a handbook on critical Christian thinking. William G.T. Shedd wrote that: “The Book of Proverbs is the best of all manuals for the formation of a well-balanced mind. The object of Solomon in composing it seems to have been to furnish to the church a summary of rules and maxims by which the Christian character, having been originated by regeneration, should then be educated and made symmetrical.”

The design of PROVERBS: Bringing God’s world view into play for each of us in our various roles as : Child, Adolescent, Teenager, Young Adult, Adult, Male, Female, Father, Husband, Brother, Wife, Mother, Sister, Daughter, Grandparent, Laborer, King, Merchant, Philosopher, Academic, Professional, etc.

This is especially timely – in a generation of fatherless homes. This fills the need that so many men feel having never had a mentor or Dad.

This is God as your Father, mentoring you personally.

As we saw in 29:18 – The Wisest way to live is to live in accordance with God’s 2-fold prophetic vision: To be personally conformed to the Image of Christ, and that the Church be built together into a single glorious edifice to glorify God in Christ Jesus.

And as this book closes out it will provide us with three summary portions to round off our Christian or Biblical Worldview.

Our text today:               Proverbs 30

The 1^st part of Ch. 31:     Final Address to “Kings” (31:1-9)

2^nd Part of Ch. 31:           The “Virtuous” (powerful) woman. (31:10-31)

Solomon at this point includes outside sources. 

1. 30 / Proverbs 30:1 The words of Agur son of Jakeh. The oracle.

Some time ago I had the opportunity to watch a “master’s class” with famed tenor Luciano Pavarotti.

It was called a “Master’s Class” not because the students were seeking master’s degrees, but because it was held BY a Master in his craft. One who could teach them not only out of his knowledge, but out of his skill. He had mastered what he was trying to impart to them.

So here.

We have no record of who this individual – Agur – is, nor where he comes from or how it is that Solomon came to know about and include his words here in his collection.

What we do know is, that by the guidance of the Holy Spirit these things were assembled for our good.

By the time we are done, you will no doubt see what a remarkable amount of insight is packed into such a small number of words.

Gigantic concepts reduced to very digestible size.

Each of which – if you are anything like me, need to be reiterated over and over and over – because I let them escape my thought process so often.

7 Master Lessons in Life.

1. There are UNIVERSAL & UNRELENTING temptations we need to look out for. Do not be surprised when you face some things over and over and over again.

In this opening portion – Agur points us to 4 such temptations.

All of us, even as the Redeemed are likely to forget these realities in the rush and crush of everyday life and circumstances.

Forgetfulness of these things Agur says right up front, make him “weary” – it is how he gets “worn out” mentally and emotionally.

Look at how he puts it in vs 2 – In effect he is asking himself “why am I so stupid?” How is it that this stuff just evaporates from my consciousness when I need it most?”

This troubles him to the extent that he says: “In the final analysis, it is as though I haven’t learned any wisdom nor learned anything about God!”

We’ve talked about this phenomenon before: The NOETIC effects of the Fall. Al Mohler lists them for us.

1. Ignorance
2. Distractedness
3. Forgetfulness
4. Prejudice
5. Faulty perspective
6. Intellectual fatigue
7. Inconsistencies
8. Failure to draw correct conclusions
9. Intellectual apathy
10. Dogmatism
11. Intellectual pride
12. Vain imagination – thinking about things we ought not
13. Miscommunication
14. Partial knowledge

We walk away from something we have heard that we KNOW ought always to inform our emotions and thought life only to have it escape us like it was never there.

Welcome to the Fall!

Agur knows it – and Solomon knows we need to know it too.

What are these things we are so prone to lose consciousness of?

Agur says they start with these 4.

We are tempted to FORGET:

(4) God. WHO & WHAT God really is -and that His love for me is displayed in the Cross by the One who fully unfolds Him to us.

In a world where our tendency is to demand others love us the way we WANT to be loved – God instead want us to find true love in the perfect way He loves us.  

Our questions about whether or not God loves us most often come out of our painful experiences. Where is God when I hurt?

And the only way to prevent being dragged into that bottomless pit – and measuring God’s love by whether or not things go well in life:

He loves me when things go well

I doubt His love when things go poorly

Instead of trying to read the tea-leaves of experiences, He points us back to the ever present Cross – where in unfathomable mercy and grace He poured out the wrath due to us, on His only begotten Son.

So Paul can write: Romans 8:32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Only at the cross can I know a vast, absolute and unchanging love.

And if you are outside of this love – it is because you have not yet submitted to the propitiation – the satisfaction for your sin in Jesus’ blood – which has been held out to you, and must be received by faith. (Rom. 3:25)

(5) God’s Word is the only SURE source of truth – it needs to be trusted above my logic, or my perceptions.

How true this is especially when we face to issues of today in terms of same-sex marriage, abortion, legalization of marijuana – etc.

Instead of falling prey to the Culture’s whims and trends, we need to have our principles founded in the explicit teaching of God’s Word.

We do not cave to the Culture’s views. “Why is X so bad?”

We can be intimidated into fearing to simply say “God’s Word says so – and that is sufficient.”

Often, there are explanations regarding some of the parameters God lays down in His Word – and other times, no.

Why did God say to the Israelites that they were not to eat any seafood but what had fins and scales? Lev. 11:9-12

Or Deuteronomy 22:11 You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.

When we have to arrive at a practical answer because His having said so isn’t sufficient for us – we make practicality god, and not Him.

He has the RIGHT to declare things right or wrong whether we can arrive at a practical reason for it or not.

(6) Adding to what God has said, is as dangerous, and MORE tempting than leaving things out.

This was the issue with Eve in the Garden, and it remains a perennial issue when we demand things of people that the Bible never does.

I believe it is often true, that under the umbrella of extrapolation or deduction, we add to God’s words.

We seem almost incapable of stopping where His revelation does.

To let Him decide what to do with the loose ends.

We are unwilling to limit ourselves where it “seems” as though we can reasonably go.

But we must pay much more careful attention to this tendency and its sinfulness.

Let us tremble every time we put even one toe over the line.

Let us stop and consider it with the utmost care.

He stopped where He did for His reasons.

Eve made a perfectly reasonable deduction regarding not touching the tree God had forbidden us to eat from.

Most of us, if not all would be willing to make the very same observation – if we are not to eat of it, then we ought not to touch it either.

After all, what possible good could come from touching it?

What practical purpose could it serve?

We do not know. We do not need to know.

We need to know what He has said – and we need to heed that – and not our reasoning upon it.

What is the best hermeneutical tool in this regard?

I do not know. But we would do well to figure that out.

Nowhere is this more important than when it comes to The Gospel.

When we make salvation a matter of jumping through human hoops, rather than proclaiming the finished work of Jesus on the Cross – crucified for our sins – and calling men to lay aside every other means to please or be reconciled to God but to trust in Christ’s substitutionary atonement – we commit one of the highest abominations possible to man.

The preaching of the cross must be simple and unadorned.

People do not have to come to our Church, read our version of the Bible or subscribe to all of our doctrinal nuances in order to be saved.

They need to know their sinful, rebellious condition before God.

Their standing under His just judgment for their sins.

That He has poured out His wrath upon human sin on Jesus at Calvary.

And that He calls everyone of us to flee FROM our sin TO Him, trusting Christ as our substitute.

And the one who sets their entire faith upon Jesus dying in their place is brought into the family of God and can never be thrown back out!

1 Corinthians 15:3, 4, 11  For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures… ¹¹ Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

(7-9) Left to myself, I am unreliable. I know my fallenness & cannot trust myself.

Perceiving his own weakness when exposed to either too much prosperity or poverty – he pleads to be spared those extremes which will call out his sinfulness into action.

I cannot always arrive at what is right or wrong, or even the whole truth of situations relying only on my own perceptions and reasoning.

                         Carson said: “I’ve lost a number of debates in my life, but I’ve never lost the replay.”

We are so prone to cast things in our favor at all times.

We a so irretrievably self-centered – self-oriented.

So, Agur prays – Prov. 30:7-9

Prevent me from :  Living in or perpetuating untruth.

And from:       My sinful responses to circumstances that may be either good or bad.

With all of that as foundational – Agur now goes on to show 4 symptoms that I may have forgotten one or more of the keys he has already given us.

10 – Preoccupation with other’s sins above my own.

11 – Pointing the finger at others for MY sin.

        I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed

        To find our why I killed the cat, and blacked by husband’s eyes

        He laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find

        And here is what he dredged up from my unconscious mind:

        When I was one, my mommie hid my doll in a trunk,

        And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk.

        When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one day,

        And that is why I suffer now from kleptomania.

        At three, I had the feeling of ambivalence toward my brothers,

        And so it follows naturally I poison all my lovers.

        But I am happy; now I’ve learned the lesson this has taught;

        That everything I do that’s wrong is someone else’s fault.

12 – Pronouncing myself more righteous than I am.

14 – Preying on – getting emotional gain from other’s weaknesses.

WHEN I FORGET:

(4) God. WHO & WHAT God really is -and that His love for me is displayed in the Cross by the One who fully unfolds Him to us. When I live somewhere else than in the fullness of GRACE

(5) God’s Word is the only SURE source of truth – it needs to be trusted above my logic, or my perceptions.

(6) Adding to what God has said, is as dangerous, and MORE tempting than leaving things out.

(7-9) Due to the Fall – my unassisted perceptions and reasoning are unreliable.

It will inevitably result in:

10 – Preoccupation with other’s sins above my own.

11 – Pointing the finger at others for MY sin.

12 – Pronouncing myself more righteous than I am.

14 – Preying on – getting emotional gain from other’s weaknesses.

In other words – it will be impossible to live out the Life of Christ within me by virtue of the Holy Spirit.

I will veer off into a life lived for me, and not for Christ.

Let’s Pray.

Living The Prophetic Life

THE AUDIO CAN BE HEARD HERE

“Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the Law.”

This verse is one of those somewhat obscure passages, which has opened the door for all kinds of difficulty in the lives of Christians, and in the Church as a whole.

I’ve seen it used for building programs, or (as the current trend is) to see Pastors and other Church leaders as “vision casters”.

In fact, there is no one passage in all of Proverbs that so completely and elegantly summarizes everything that Proverbs is communicating as THE key idea – and to bring us into the life of wisdom before God.

29:18 – sharpens the focus of all we have heard so far in an astounding way.

We have 3 key parts which need to be unpacked carefully if we are to grasp the Author’s intent, and then glean something from it for ourselves.

1. Prophetic Vision
2. Casting off Restraint
3. Keeping the Law

1. Prophetic vision.

The prophets did 3 things mainly:

[a]. Made God’s Word (and thus His mind, plans and purposes known).

[b]. They proclaimed the blessings which attend living within God’s plans and purposes, and warned of the coming judgment upon all who live outside God’s plans and purposes.

[c]. Called god’s people BACK to these central things whenever they got off course.

Describing the problem

Describing the inevitable results if not heeded

Reminding the people of God’s great grace and forgiveness

[When building a structure you need:]

A concept

Blueprints

Construction workers who can read the blueprints and who will follow them to erect the Architect’s plan.

[Prophets are forever URGENTLY calling God’s people back to the blueprints.]

Calling them to remember the original plan.

Warning them of what will happen if they proceed off-plan.

Denouncing the thinking that gets people off task.

And telling them how forgiving and willing the Architect is to get them back to it.

Underlining the entire ministry and message of all the prophets is this scheme:

 [Creation:] Holy God created us for Himself – to bear His image

[Fall:] Humankind rebelled to serve our own purposes

[Promise:] God announced a coming Redeemer to reconcile us back to God and restore us to His plan and purposes

[Fulfillment:] Christ came and died a substitutionary death on Calvary that all who believe in Him may be forgiven, reconciled, and restored

[Consummation:] Final judgment on sin, and the restoration of all things in Christ.

All prophetic ministry in the OT – apart from the particulars that may have applied to specific people, times and events – is underscored by this overall plan.

When the prophetic ministry is understood this way – it keeps us away from:

1. Making God serve us in OUR thing, rather than serving Him in His.

2. Making the Word of “private interpretation”. Seeing a passage as all about my personal life instead of God’s grand plan.

3. Trying to divine all kinds of personal guidance apart from God’s grand plan.

[The PLAN, is both PERSONAL and CORPORATE]

Each brick, each 2 x 4, each joist, support etc. needs to have certain qualities to be useful.

None of these are meant to exist in isolation – but in close union to the other building materials that are needed to make up the whole.

[Ephesians 2:19–22] (ESV) So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, ²¹ in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. ²² In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

[1 Corinthians 3:7–16] (ESV) So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸ He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. ⁹ For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. ¹⁰ According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. ¹¹ For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. ¹² Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— ¹³ each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. ¹⁴ If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. ¹⁵ If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. ¹⁶ Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

[1 Peter 2:4–5] (ESV) As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, ⁵ you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

[Do we understand that Christ is building His Church – the holy habitation where He is to be enthroned and worshiped, and that we are to be about the business of being conformed to His image, so that joined together – we might BE His Temple.]

The [PERSONAL] is in setting the priority of being conformed to the image of Christ: [Romans 8:29] (ESV) For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

The [CORPORATE] is in being JOINED together with other saints, that the Gospel may go out, gathering others in – helping them grow in the likeness of Christ and in unity growing together into God’s “spiritual house” as stated in 1 Pet. 2:5.  [Ephesians 4:15–16] (ESV) Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

A grand edifice comprised of redeemed souls as the ultimate place of revelation of and worship of the true and living Triune God.

[2. Cast off restraint.]

When the Blueprint is lost or ignored – then those committed to the project can do a number of things

1. Get creative and start to make the project about their ideas.

We see this when the Church takes its cues from the World around us, and tries to fashion and shape after mankind’s ideas of its needs and wants.

Example: 1968 – The World Council of Churches adopts as its official slogan: [“The World Sets the Agenda for The Church”.]

So, whatever the world is most interested in at the time – this too becomes the Church’s chief concern.

Nuclear disarmament

Ethnic liberation

Sexual freedom

Human self-image

Etc.

Certainly the Church needs to thoughtfully and Biblically address all of the issues that impact humankind – but the AGENDA of the Church must be set by the Head of the Church, which several places in the NT note is Christ alone: [Colossians 1:18] (ESV) ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

This is HIS Church.

He is building it – [Matt. 16:18]

And we are to be about HIS business and HIS agenda in it all.

This is why we MUST grasp the reality of all of human history moving inexorably toward the final day of judgement and the glory of Christ’s revealed reign over all.

So –

1. Get creative and start to make the project about their ideas.

2. Abandon the project altogether.

3. Move on to some other project.

In any or all of these – ordering one’s life around God’s plan and will as it has already been revealed in the Scripture – gets shoved aside for something else.

Personally – when I leave off the Project of being conformed to the image of Christ as primary (taking on Christ’s Character) and being joined together to other Christians so as to grow the Church as a whole – I will not order my life accordingly.

I will cast off “restraint” – My intentions will become freewheeling. I lose God’s perspective on priorities and what calls for attention and assign my own values to everything.

[Richard Sibbes – Puritan Preacher said: The life of a Christian is wondrously ruled in this world by the consideration and meditation of the life of another world.^[1]]

I will not see or feel the need to be joined and bound to others who are also part of the building. I will just be ME. After all, ME, MY ministry, MY happiness, MY desires outrank the Project!

I can be a Christian and be one all alone.

Yes – and as unjoined, unusable.

Not contributing to the whole. Just being – me.

This is what happened in the Corinthian Church with people and their spiritual gifts.

Each was exercising their gift without concern over whether or not it truly ministered to others – but so that they got to use their gift!

Self became the primary thing.

I’m me, and I have a gift and I have to USE that gift, and y’all better make way for it.

Rather than seeing that God is building His edifice, and each gift only bears fruit when the WHOLE is considered as more important than my PART. How does this contribute to the unity and health of the Body – of the Church?

NOT – does this get me the free exercise of MY gift?

No restraint. And why Paul says through the Spirit – [1 Corinthians 14:31–32] (ESV) For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, ³² and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets.

Lack of restraint is lack of giving my all to God’s great plans and purposes, and confining myself to those, rather than needing to run free with my own.

And He has articulated this in:

Personal Conformity to Christ

Being built together with The Church for the declaration of His Gospel and the building together His holy habitation in the saints.

[3. Keeping the Law.]

Whenever we hear the term “KEEP THE LAW” – almost invariably our minds reduce that idea to OBEYING the Law.

For us most often, to KEEP the Law IS, to OBEY the Law.

But the word as it is used Biblically has a different stress of emphasis.

Obedience will play a role, but it is arrived at differently than by rote or slavish adherence.

From the beginning, this word KEEP had more to do with protecting, caring for and attending.

These are all things you do with something precious and valuable.

[Gen. 2:15 – Adam was to “keep” the Garden.]

Gen. 3:24 – An Angel was sent to “guard” the way to the Tree of Life.

“KEEPING” Comes from a root with the idea of setting a hedge around something to protect it.

It is valuable and something to be cherished and so it needs tended to and watched over. It is precious.

And when you value something so as to protect and watch over it, you by default, pay close attention to it so as to avoid doing anything that might break it, injure it or defile it.

Life is meant to be lived in direct relationship to God’s purpose and plan.

And when it comes to the OT/Mosaic Law, keeping it in a right sense would be to keep it intact, and also to tend to it in terms of WHY it was given: It was given – as the sacrifices, the Levitical system and the social and ethical aspects reveal – to teach us about the person and work of Jesus Christ.

This is why Jesus in John 5 can say to those looking to the Law as a system merely to be OBEYED:

[John 5:39] (ESV) You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,

[John 5:46] (ESV) For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.

[Luke 24:27] (ESV) And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Cherishing, guarding it, keeping it, setting watch over it – until the work is done.

To keep it is to think deeply about:

Where is all of this going?  How will it end?  What happens after death?

All these things God has told us about.

And it is the Prophets who constantly remind us of God’s program.

This is why NT preaching is most often connected with PROPHESYING – in unfolding the Scriptures the Preacher is constantly rehearsing the plan of God to sum everything up in Christ in the coming Kingdom, teaching about how to live in that perspective, and warning about the coming judgment and the failure to live a life given over to Christ and His Kingdom.

This is the core of what the OT prophets did. They had these same emphases.

And it is in this context that lives get ordered well.

When these cease to be realities, when we lose sight of what it means that we will all stand before the judgment bar of God and give an answer for the things done in these bodies – whether good or bad – we fail to address sin, and just let things be.

The Christian life MUST absolutely be lived within the dynamic of living today – with my eye on eternity and the age to come.

When this prophetic way of seeing life is cast off,

Lives get lived outside the natural restraint that such a worldview constrains us to,

But blessedness, true, eternal, spiritual blessedness attends those who in attending to the worldview taught in the Law – especially in respect to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross, and the fullness of the Kingdom of God He inaugurated while here.

This Jesus who is soon return as the Kingdom’s ruling Sovereign.

PRAYER: Father, deliver us from lives that do not live with eternity in view. That neither strive after your promises, nor fear your judgments. Save us from the sucking vortex of the existential moment. Draw us to yourself – to see and love your plans and purposes and to be consumed with them above all – That Christ may truly be glorified to, in and through us.

^[1] Elliot Ritzema and Elizabeth Vince, eds., 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Puritans (Pastorum Series; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).