WOL2025 – Proverbs-02
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Transcript
WOL2025 – Proverbs-02 – How To Make Sure Your Life Doesn’t Get Burned Up
We’re looking at the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs, as you’ll see in just a minute, was designed to actually be in the very center of the architecture of the Bible by Ezra. The whole book is predicated or built around the 4th chapter where God clearly says in chapter 4, verses 18 and 19, that there are two groups of people, there are two destinations, and there are two ways of life. One is the ever brighter path of life. When we even talk about it, who would pick the dark one? Who would want to go through life in the dark stumbling, constantly tumbling, and always wondering why everything’s happening? And just having a horrible time? But yet the book of Proverbs says there’s a whole group of people and we live around them. We’re supposed to share with them the ever brighter path for life.
Here’s the verse, the path of the just. Now, the way God describes His people, there’s one descriptor, the just. They’re called the wise. In fact, in chapter 11 where I was copying, remember I told you last night that I’m writing out every word, they’re called the blameless. Blameless, just sounds a little proud, doesn’t it? It’s not us. We don’t claim that we’re sinless. In fact, we say that we’re sinful. In fact, it’s a great way to witness.
I told you last year, we’ll see if you remember this. When I was pastoring in Michigan I had a really young staff. They all looked like teenagers to me. They were like newlyweds and just starting their families and there were a lot of them. We would go out once a month and have lunch and I would buy their lunch because they’re poor and buying diapers and everything. I remember those days. I think there were 20 years that we never had a child out of diapers. We had eight children. It was a long time.
But we were sitting at Red Robin and this waitress, I really wanted to witness to her. She picked up right away that I was the old one paying the bill so she was extra talkative, wanting to get a tip and everything. So, she came over and I said there’s one thing I have to tell you about these guys at the table. She went, yeah, she leaned over. I said, they’re all convicts. She stepped back and looked over the table and looked at each one of them. Then she came back to me and said. What did they do? She wanted to know whether she should protect herself, get her mace spray out or whatever. I said they’re convicted sinners and I am the worst sinner I know in the world. Boy did that give her a lot to think about.
I started sharing the Gospel with her because I’m justified freely by His grace. I have been forgiven. You should be the worst sinner because you don’t know why anybody else does what they do. You don’t know why they react like they react. But you do know how much and you know how much of it you actually live out. So, I told her I’ve been justified. I’m on the path of the just. It’s like the shining sun. It shines ever brighter to the perfect day. The perfect day is not when we get everything the way we want it. It’s when God gets everything the way He wants it in our life, and He finally gets us safely home. But the way of the wicked isn’t like that. It’s darkness. They don’t know. They know about their sin, but they don’t know anything about the remedy for their sin and what the inevitable result of their sin is.
God’s message in Proverbs, and this is kind of summarizing everything last night. God’s way of salvation, the just, the blameless is wisdom. Now you say, whoa. Last night, do you remember I showed you 1 Corinthians 1:30? But of Him, are we in Christ Jesus who is made unto us wisdom. In fact, Jesus introduces Himself in the Book of Proverbs by a beautiful story about wisdom, talking about how wisdom was there at Creation. Wisdom was rejoicing with the creation of this universe. Jesus is wisdom and God’s way of salvation is wisdom. Even in the Old Testament, Jesus is introduced as the wisdom of God that lives within us versus man’s way, the way I was born. I was born foolish. I was born wanting my own way, and that leads to, in the darkness, damnation. So, that’s last night.
So, Proverbs is an illustration, and this is where we’re going this morning. Yesterday, last night’s topic was wisdom, which is all the way through, the contrast of wisdom versus foolishness. Today we’re looking at God’s will.
Boy, is that a popular topic, especially for young people, especially in the Bible Institute. Man, I love teaching in the Bible Institute and every new crop, every new year, all those first year students, I get the privilege both here and in New York to teach them and boy, they are big on God’s will. So, Proverbs is an incredible illustration of how to find and follow God’s will for each of our individual lives. It’s kind of exciting.
So, just for you to see where we’re going, last night; we’re saved. That’s who the people that have wisdom are. They’re saved and they want to live life God’s way. That kind of summarizes the whole Bible. The whole Bible is God imploring us. In fact, in the prophets, the major prophets, God says all day long I’ve extended My arms to you and you’ve turned your back on Me. See, God wants us to know and do and follow His will and He stands with His arms out to us this morning. How do we obey the will of God? Let me ask you something even better. This is more important. Not how do we obey it, but why should we? What happens if we don’t? That’s really what the Apostle Paul spent so much of his half of the New Testament talking about.
So, this morning, whose will do you want to follow? My way or God’s way?
I actually took a picture. That’s my Bible and I’m not a good underliner. In fact, Bonnie and I were reading Proverbs while flying I don’t know between where and we were going over some mountains. You know how the planes do this, and then they drop, and they go up and it drops. Look at those lines, you’re seeing the Rocky Mountains there and the gust of wind. But there are two roads in life. The path of the just and the way of the wicked. My way is the way of the wicked. The path of the just is God’s way. Whose will do you want to follow?
See that’s why, and I’ll back up to it. Do you see the our two servant hearted? Do you know what that’s talking about? God calls us His servants. Who are servants? Servants are those who do the will of another. They don’t do their own. They do the will of another. They serve them. They do what they want them to do. They do what they’re told.
Now, I’m hardwired to not like that. I don’t want to be told what to do. I don’t want someone telling me what to do. In fact, all solid Americans fiercely want their independence. They want their financial independence. They want their free speech and everything else that’s in our Constitution, but God’s talking about something different. God says, I want you saved. I want you righteous and justified and My Spirit within you. We saw that last night. But I want you growing and thinking every day about being a servant. I want you obeying My will because it’s the best life possible.
So, I ask you, whose will do you want to follow? And here’s why. This is where we’re going to start. 1 Corinthians 3, because there’s a day coming when everything we’ve lived for is going to pass through fire. Let’s look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3 for just a minute, and then all these verses and proverbs are just going to light up.
1 Corinthians 3:10, According to the grace of God, which was given to me as a wise master builder, I’ve laid the foundation, another one builds on it. Look at that little tagline at the end of verse 10, 1 Corinthians 3, but let each one take heed how he builds on it. God doesn’t make us do His will. He asks us. He offers us. He showers us with His grace. The grace of God that brings salvation teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust. And to live soberly, righteously, and godly. Titus 2:11-13 says that.
Take heed, verse 10, how he builds on it for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the foundation. He is the wisdom. As 1 Corinthians 1:30 says, we are in Christ Jesus who is made unto His wisdom. Proverbs shows us how wise people behave, live, and conduct themselves through life, in what way.
Now, verse 12. Look at this metaphor. The Romans were big on building, the Roman Empire. Bonnie and I, when we teach, we taught in September or October last year in Northern England. It was such a blessing on our way between sites where we were teaching. We went by Hadrian’s 80 or 90 mile long or a 100 mile long wall. The Romans loved building stuff. It’s still there. We pulled over.
Oh, honey, I shouldn’t, but I’ll tell one story about Bonnie. We’re in England, so I’m sitting on the wrong side and Bonnie’s on the right side of the car, so she thinks she’s still driving. We’re driving along on the wrong side of the road, wrong everything. You know how disorienting that is and with all those roundabouts. We’re driving along and I look down and my diesel fuel tank was over and it started making this red blink. I said, Honey, it’s really bad when diesels run out of diesel. They have to re-vacuum them and everything and we don’t want to run out of gas. Here we are, five lanes on each side going on the M1, driving along, running out of diesel. I’m saying, Honey, would you pop open your phone and see where the nearest diesel station is? Bonnie’s leaning forward like this. She has both feet engaged. She said, I will when I’m done driving. She thought she was driving because she was sitting in that chair. We finally got gas and we pulled off and there was part of Hadrian’s wall. We got out and we climbed up and we went on it. The Romans were really into building.
Look what Paul says here. No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Verse 12, if anyone builds on this foundation, and look at the building materials: gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw. You know all that, right? We’ve known that all of our lives. How to make sure your life doesn’t get burned up. It’s right in this verse. If you build out of wood, it burns. Hay really burns. Straw really burns. Gold just gets more refined in the fire. Silver gets more refined in the fire. Precious stones, it doesn’t affect them. Be careful what you build with is what Paul’s saying. Okay?
Why does it matter? Verse 13, Everyone’s work will become clear for the day. We’ll declare it because it will be revealed by fire. The fire will test each one’s work of what sort it is. If anyone’s work, which he has built on endures, he will receive a reward. Yay. We stop there. Look at the very sobering last part of this passage. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss. Do you know why the Lord has to wipe away all tears? That might be one of them. Do you ever think of that? There are born again Christians who lived their whole lives on Earth indwelt by the infinite eternal Spirit of God, purchased by Jesus Christ with a room in their Father’s house awaiting them. They’re going to stand and instead of elaborating, I’ll just read it. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved yet so as through fire.
Before the service, I was talking to some folks and they were born in Massachusetts. I was learning more about them and they said, do you know anything about Massachusetts? I said, oh yeah, I’m a Massachusetts taxpayer. They went, oh! And I told them that when Bonnie and I served in Rhode Island we had to live in the parsonage that every pastor had lived in for 165 years. But we had just moved from Los Angeles where we sold our house and the government wanted 40% if we didn’t rebuy a house. We had to pay that capital gains tax on it back then.
So, the wise elders in this church in Rhode Island said you need to buy a house even though you’re living in our parsonage. You need to buy another house and rent it to somebody or you’ll get behind because you’re a newlywed with your wife and two little children then. So, we did. They said, but don’t buy it here. Rhode Island’s not a good place to buy a house. They said buy one on the Cape. Do you know what we could afford on the Cape? We bought a little tiny shack that was sitting on stones that had sand and dirt underneath it. One time Don Locke Sr. was staying in our house and a snake was wrapped around the pipe of the sink. That’s how natural our house was. It was a snake haven. So, we bought it, that’s all we could afford on the Cape. This little shack on stones where the first floor was six feet, seven inches. That’s part of why I lost my hair. I would always bump my head going up the stairs to the six foot five inch second floor. The underneath part was mud and dirt, and it flooded.
So, we rented it. In God’s wisdom we rented to a smoker. We didn’t know they were a smoker, but he did, and they smoked away and fell asleep in bed and burned our shack down. Massachusetts Insurance Code says you have to rebuild a burned house, not to what it was, but to current code. So, the basement had to be eight foot. It was no feet, the house got better. Then the first floor had to be nine feet. It got really better. The third, or the top floor, had to be 10 back then. We got a little palace. That’s kind of reverse of this. Some people are going to suffer loss at the judgment seat of Christ.
How does that happen?
The best life possible is to do what the Scriptures say. So how do you make it at the judgment seat of Christ? How do you get the proverbs ever brighter way? It’s not hard.
Let’s turn to another passage. Okay, look in your Bibles. Now this is kind of a test. As I say turn there, I’m of course looking to see if you do turn there because either you have it memorized or you just want me to read it to you. But what you should turn there for is to see if you have this marked. These are some of the most important verses and this is what I do with the young people. I say, do you have that highlighted in your paper Bible or your electronic Bible? These are the greatest verses in the Bible. They’re key. Psalm 16:11 is where we’re going. The best life possible, this ever brighter way is only achievable by following Jesus through life. Verse 11, this is David’s testimony. Did you know David wrote some of the Proverbs? Solomon wrote it down. Solomon says, when I was a boy, my father, when I was at his knee, told me this. There’s a whole section of the proverbs that is David talking. He’s the most talked about person other than Jesus Christ Himself in the Bible. 141 chapters are about David.
This is his testimony. Look what he says. You infinite God of the universe will show me You’re my guide through life. You will show me the path of life, that ever brighter path. The path that leads not to everything burning up, but the path that leads to everything becoming part of that which we cast at His feet and say my life is reduced to this: gold, silver, and precious stones. It went through the fire and it’s refined. I give to You because You’re the one that made it possible. In Your presence is fullness of joy. At Your right hand. Our pleasures forevermore. The best life possible is following Christ.
Now I have in my pocket here, I have a little indicator. Let me look. I have two bars. They have not put any more cell towers up since last year. You guys are bereft. Do you know what I have here? I have an indicator of the strength of the cell signal on my phone. My phone is always looking, it’s always calculating how to be connected better. It’s triangulating and it’s moving between towers. That’s how they track us, right? That’s how they know.
Do you remember during covid we had contact tracing? They already knew that they were triangulating. They knew. That’s why they wanted you to tell them when you got sick so they could see everywhere you’ve been and who you infected. We are in the most tracked time in history, and it’s biblical and it’s prophetic, and it’s exciting because we see the day approaching. But my phone wants to be connected. It shows me the strength of the signal.
Now look back at Psalm 16. You’ll show me the path of life. Do you know how I know that I’m on the path of life? The second line, when I stay in Your presence the signals strong. There’s fullness of joy. Joy is a byproduct of the Holy Spirit. The more we’re filled with Him, the more we have inextinguishable joy. Joy is becoming detached from my circumstances. We were born with an attachment.
It’s kind of like the float in the back of the toilet that just floats on the top. That big round thing that is floating up and down that fills the water. It just floats on top and it goes up and down and up. It flushes and everything’s bad, and then it comes back up and everything’s good. That’s how most people’s emotions are, tied to their circumstances. Oh, we got a good deal on that. I’m excited. Oh, we just got a bad report and so we’re like this and we’re attached to our circumstances. Joy is the divine condition of detachment from a circumstance. So that, look at verse 11, in Your presence is fullness of joy. Whenever I am in the presence of Christ. I have inextinguishable overflowing, never ending joy. I can tell that I’m following Him because the signal strength is indicated by my joy level. So, the best life possible is following Jesus through life.
So, let’s get back to Proverbs. Okay, let’s go back to Proverbs chapter 1. Let me get there in my Bible that I read to you last night, and you’ve memorized. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So, the whole book of Proverbs is a two-sided kind of contrast and comparison.
Basically, what I was telling you last night is God’s way is wisdom. Man’s way is foolishness as verse 29 says, that I read to you twice. The saved, verse 23, and remember I showed you that turn at My rebuke and I will pour out My Spirit on you. The saved are on what Jesus called on His Sermon on the Mount, the narrow way. The lost are on that broad way as Proverbs 7:27 says.
We become sensitive. Look at Proverbs 8:13. It says this, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. So, a saved person has this thing kind of like my son has this air quality thing in his office because he works out west in California and they were always having air quality alerts. So, he has this thing that checks the air quality in his office and there’s a remote attachment where you can connect to air quality checkers outdoors. This week we asked him how he was doing. He said air quality is whatever. Do you know what we have? We have a spiritual similar one. We, in chapter 8, verse 13, because of the fear of the Lord, when we sense evil, we don’t want to be around that. We hate evil because it offends God. It grieves God.
Do you remember why God flooded the Earth back in Genesis 6? Every thought of the imagination of humanity’s heart was only evil, continually, and it grieved the Lord. We belong to Him. So, we’re sensitive to evil. We’re not entertained by evil. We are not enriched by evil and we don’t want to participate in evil. Verse 13, The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Pride, and arrogance, and the evil way, and the perverse mouth I hate. That’s why when it gets to a certain time at night and all those talk shows come on where all they do is speak in innuendo and use very prurient expressive things to be funny, we don’t like perverse speech. We don’t like pride and arrogance and evil way because we fear the Lord. We’re sensitive to what grieves Him, but of course, the lost or not.
We worship God. We have His Spirit. They worship, look at chapter 12 of Proverbs and verse 15, it says this: The way the fool is right in his own eyes. Everything is about them. They worship their way. They’re self-centered. They don’t want God’s way. They don’t want Him telling them what to do. We who know Christ flee sin. They mock sin. Proverbs 14 and verse 9 says, fools mock at sin, but among the upright there is favor. Do you see the contrast between fools and the upright? There’s always this contrast.
I shared this with you last night, we are being saved. There’s something to think about with that. When you get to Heaven in Revelation 21 and 22, which I’m going to be teaching in a couple weeks at the Bible Institute and I can’t wait, do you know what’s in Heaven? The Tree of Life and it’s bearing fruit for us to eat and it bears fruit month by month. You go, wait a minute. What? What’s going on? What are we doing? Why are we eating in Heaven? I thought we don’t need to eat anymore? No, we’re never going to be self-sufficient. Only God is self-sufficient. Only God needs nothing. Only God doesn’t need to be sustained. We do.
So even now, even though all of my sins were crucified with Christ on the cross and in 1962 when I heard the Gospel and responded to it, all of my sins were forgiven. Positionally I was already seated in heavenly places in Christ. Progressive sanctification says that I’m going through life denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, and I’m going through life asking for grace to live soberly, righteously, and godly. That’s what Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 1:18. He said there are two kinds of people in the world, the people that are being saved, they’re being sustained by the grace of God, they’re being empowered by the Holy Spirit. They are being made more into the likeness of Christ. Then there are those who are perishing. They are walking in the darkness and they’re stumbling, and they don’t know what’s happening to them.
So, the path gets brighter for us each day. Not easier, not more comfortable. Brighter. We see more clearly where we’re headed. As Isaiah 33 says, my eyes shall see the King in His beauty and the land that is far off and I can’t wait to get there. Hebrews 11 says they had a city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God, and they long for that city. Because here they had no enduring place. So that’s the contrast of the book of Proverbs.
Now let’s get into Proverbs because what I want to talk about with God’s will is why we should even listen to what it says. The book of Proverbs is in that red square there. It’s one of the poetic books. It was written by Solomon, who followed David. So, it’s written basically in this timeframe right here. Solomon reigned from 971 to 931. His son messes up and the kingdom divides. All of his Proverbs, it says he gave 3000 of them, but there are only 900 proverbs in the book of Proverbs.
Okay, so what’s the difference? The collection of chapters 25 to 29 was originally composed by Solomon, but copied, included by Judah’s King Hezekiah. Chapter 30 reflects the words of Agur and 31 of Lemuel, perhaps that was Solomon. Proverbs was not assembled in the form you’re holding in front of you until probably Ezra. Hezekiah started it and Ezra did it.
Why I’m telling you that is, and I don’t know if you notice this, history is all about where things happen and when they happened. Sacred history is that everything happens sometime. So, start thinking about that. It matters to God, the context.
But look at this, sacred geography is everything happens somewhere. So, the book of Proverbs is talking about Solomon in his life ruling at the greatest extent of Israel’s kingdom until the Millennium. Look, he went right from the river of Egypt, right there in the Negev, the Sinai, all the way up to the Euphrates River. If you see that he had Lebanon and a lot of Syria, Jordan and right over to Iraq, facing off looking at Iran. That’s the sacred geography of the Book of Proverbs.
But how do we know the book of Proverbs is accurate? If someone challenges you and says, how do you know that is to be believed. How do you know, how do you know that any part of the Bible is accurate when you’re called into question?
With that, I was unloading my books when I pastored in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That’s where Don Locke senior was my associate, some of the greatest years of my life. But I was just moving into that church and into that office, and I was taking my books out of the boxes and putting them on the shelves. It was my first day on the job and the secretary that I just had met. Came running in and said, you got a phone call?
I said, I got a phone call. Who would call me? No one even knows me here. I just got here. She said, it’s the local radio station. She said, it’s John Erling. I said, I. Who’s that? She says in the metro area of Tulsa; there’s a million people. She says 80% of them listen to him and it’s lunch hour, and they’re all listening to him right now.
Everyone listens during the lunch hour, and he makes a surprise call to every new pastor and he’s going to ask you a question on the air, and she said, he’s waiting for you right now. She pulled the cord in and stretched it all the way in and set it on top of my moving boxes and handed me the phone. So, I entered a conversation had been going on for quite a while.
I found out later someone gave me a recording and all the local pastors of the United This and United that and the first that all in Tulsa were all talking and the topic that day was. The incredible non-scientific kind of caveman view that the evangelicals and the fundamental people have. So, they said, we’re going to trick this guy.
We’re going to ask him right off to prove on the radio on the spot that literal seven day literal 24 hour seven day creation cannot possibly be true. So, they had talked this all over and. They put me on. So I was, and I was kind of pulling the phone and reaching for my Bible, because I knew I was going to have to use it.
And I said, hello and I got it. He said, hello, this is, his beautiful FM voice. This is John Erling with, whatever the radio station was, he says, and I’m with, and he named all these other pastors, and he said, we’ve been talking for over a half hour about the fact that there is no one. That was an actual literal person that is recorded in the Bible that actually is historically provable before.
And he said, David, he said, we think maybe David was a real person, but all the ones before that cannot be proven. He said that they were real people and he said, and besides that, he says, how do you know? And he just went into this whole creation thing. So, I finally had gotten my Bible. I said, do you want me to answer?
He said, yes. I said, say it again, but you’re asking me. He says, how do you know that Abraham really existed? How do you know that there was really a literal creation in Genesis, and all that stuff that it says in the Flood and all that stuff. I said, oh, that’s an easy one. He said, it is? I said, yeah, I believe the Bible is true because Jesus believed the Bible is true.
Now look at this. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. It’s profitable for doctrine. What’s that? It’s what’s right for reproof. What’s that? It’s what’s wrong for correction. How to get right and instruction and righteousness. How to stay right? So, the Bible is all about what’s right, what’s wrong, how to get right, and how to stay right so that we can be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Inspiration what the Bible says. What that verse says is God gave every word of the Bible. How do we know that? Because the Bible that you hold, Jesus attested to what we call the 39 Old Testament books. He called those Scripture and He said, they cannot be broken. They are Scripture.
And then He said, My Spirit will bring to your mind’s apostles, the things that you must write down. So, He affirmed that there was coming, a sequel, the New Testament. So, over a period of 1500 years, 40 plus men guided by the Spirit of God, wrote from Moses’ time 1446, that’s the Exodus, all the way through the Apostle John on Patmos.
And in this book- and by the way, it was so neat the radio, I said, because Jesus did, and there was, which is amazing on radio. A long pause, and then John Erling said, whoa. He says, we are going to come back right after the break because I would like to know what else did Jesus believe in, and I got to for the next half hour, with my Bible, read, Jesus affirms Adam and Eve. Jesus affirms Noah. He affirms Jonah. He affirms everything. Jesus believed the Bible. One by one you could hear the phones hanging up of all those scoffer pastors who didn’t want to hear any more of this. That Jewish radio host continued for a half hour saying, tell me more that Jesus believed in. Tell me more of what the Bible says. I thought, all you have to do, you don’t have to defend the Bible, Jesus does that for you. You just use Him. He believed and affirmed the Scriptures. So, God’s will revealed in Proverbs, for my character, God wants me to be righteous, not wicked.
God says, wise people fear the Lord. Proverbs 14:16. A wise man fears and departs from evil. You know how that is illustrated in the Bible? You remember Joseph? Bonnie and I was telling you about Hadrian’s Wall. We teach another class and we were down in the London area and so we rode over to the British Museum. The British Museum is one of my favorite spots in the world. It was built by a group of explorers and scientists and wealthy British people that actually believed the Bible. And they went archeologically looking.
In fact, the man that discovered the palaces of the Assyrian Empire discovered them using the Bible. And he says, you know what the Bible says? That Assyria had this city called Nineveh, which wasn’t known by the time of Herodotus, the Greek historian. He said, we don’t even know if Nineveh is true. Herodotus wasn’t even sure there was a Nineveh. It was so destroyed and buried by time, that this Sunday School teacher, this wealthy British traveler took his Bible and said, it’s got to be here. He started paying all these people to dig everywhere along the river until finally one of them hit an Alamosa. You know what those are those big winged things that you see in Assyrian palaces. They’re huge, like a winged dragon horse kind of thing with six legs. They hit one and they dug down and they found hundreds of feet of palaces with stone reliefs that exactly describe the events in the Bible.
So, we were going through the British Museum and they, that’s the Assyrian wing… they have an Egyptian wing, it’s overwhelming. The ceiling is 50 feet high. They have some of the largest, they have more stuff than the Egyptian museum in Cairo has. These gigantic Pharaoh statues. I walked through and I thought how overpowering Egypt was and Joseph was there. And Joseph feared the Lord. Do you know what that looks like? Do you remember Potiphar’s wife starts pulling his clothes off? What did Joseph say to Potiphar’s wife who was attacking him sexually? He said, how can I do this evil and sin against God? And Potiphar’s wife went, God who? Who else is in this room? I thought it was just you and me. He said, there’s someone else in this room. I fear the Lord. He’s watching. That’s what God wants us to live.
God says, people, wise people, hate what is false. Do you remember how Peter describes Lot? Lot who lived in Sodom. Wise people hate what is false. It said, that Lots righteous soul, 2 Peter 2:7-8, was vexed by what was around him. The false views of sexuality and everything else that was in his life. God says, wise people shun evil. Do you remember David’s testimony in Psalm 101? David said, I will set no evil thing before my eyes. That’s a sign of a wise person. Wise people shun evil, hate what is false, constantly know that the Lord is watching them, they do what is righteous… and whatever, no matter what the cost is.
Do you remember when Paul and Barnabas were going through Listra in Acts 14 and they came and started offering a sacrifice to them? Paul and Barnabas tore their clothes and said, and ran around, said, stop doing that. It’s not righteous for you to worship humans. Only God should be worshiped. Do you understand? There’s this… what Proverbs describes as God’s will for my character and your character, God illustrates all the way through the Bible, normal people like us saying, oh, I want to do, I want God’s will.
God says, wise people speak the truth. My favorite one on that is Daniel. He got on radio and television in front of the number one, the king of Babylon had him there at the banquet where the hand wrote on the wall. Just the hand. The dismembered hand was up there, 50 feet high writing on the wall. And he could read it and understand it, and he got put on the spotlight. And when the spotlight shined on Daniel, do you know what he said? I don’t know that, but there is a God in Heaven that revealed to me what that means. He spoke the truth. He pointed the spotlight to where it should be.
So, God speaks in the Book of Proverbs. God Himself gave us every word of Proverbs and all the other wisdom books through His servants the prophets and others. Inspiration is why we believe the Bible is true. All scripture is given by, the word in Greek is… it’s one of those theo words. Theopneustos. Does it kind of sound like you’re sneezing? And it means God. Theopneustos. Breathed out the Word of God. What a beautiful description of what we have. Inspiration is why we believe the Bible is true.
And the number one reason is, and never forget this, I believe the Bible’s true… and this is the only reason I need… Jesus believe the Bible is true. That’s the number one reason. But there are seven reasons, that if you think about it… number two- the complete testimony of the apostles and prophets was, they weren’t thinking this up. The Spirit of the Lord spake by me and His Word was in my tongue. That’s what… in 2 Samuel 23:2, that’s what David said. It’s the Spirit of God speaking by me.
All of the apostles and prophets said that the survival of God’s Word… you remember, another place Bonnie and I were, we stood in the largest bath in Rome. It was Diocletian’s baths. Unbelievable. The Church of the Martyrs and Angels is one tiny piece of it, and it’s one of the largest Roman Catholic beautiful cathedrals. But that bath was built by Diocletian who was an incredible engineering mind. He was an emperor in the 4th century up through the great persecution, the 10 years from 293 to 303 in the Roman Empire. He systematically, number one, destroyed every building where Christians met. Number two, he destroyed every leader of any church, either imprisoned or killed them. Number three, and this is what’s most notable, he destroyed every complete copy of the Bible. There is no copy, complete copy of the scriptures that predates Diocletian. He did it. He destroyed every complete copy.
Now that, what they did is the same thing I experienced when I used to deliver Bibles in Eastern Europe in the 70’s. All the churches there, when the police were coming to raid the church, they would tear out every book of the Bible, all 66 and hand them out to families. So, 66 families each got a piece of the Bible. And so, there was no way that they could destroy all their copies of the Word of God. That’s what the Early Church did. That’s why though, there are no complete copies that predate Diocletian. We have 25,000 torn up pieces that they’ve reassembled. Those are beautifully, of course, a complete copy. But the Bible has survived even Diocletian. He got the closest to exterminating Christianity.
Number four, the absolute unity of God’s Word. I talked about it last night. I remind you this morning, no matter where you read in the Bible, it’s kind of like it all fits together. Even though those 40 men, most of them never met each other, they didn’t even live near each other. Most of them never even read what the other one wrote when they were writing their part. Yet it completely fits together in an amazing way.
The prophetic accuracy. I wish I was teaching on prophecy, stuff’s happening every day. All this stuff that’s going on, you know that Doge is going to the Social Security Administration and Doge is going to… What’d they do last night? He looked into the payments for children. What do you call that when you get divorced? Child support. And everybody’s getting all worked up on this. Do you know what you should think about when you see that? We’ve come to the place with artificial intelligence where a computer operating at speeds we can’t comprehend can digest every detail and spit it back out instantaneously. We call that, chat GPT or artificial intelligence. Do you know what that means? Revelation 13 tells me what it means. Someday one person is going to have all that information. They’re going to know all the triangulation records of your and my cell phones and everything else, and all of your smart devices that are so convenient. And they’re going to know where we are. And they’re going to do what we’re seeing happening right now.
What just happened? The US Aid was all canceled. They stopped the electronic payments instantly and they wouldn’t go through. That’s exactly what’s going to happen during the Tribulation. Only it’s going to be the one ruler, the Anti-christ who’s going to…, so I don’t think Musk is the Anti-christ and I don’t think Trump is the Anti-christ and I don’t think any of that stuff. And I… and that, I don’t think there’s some huge conspiracy of people doing this. It’s Satan. He’s the real conspirator. And he’s got someone in the wings that’s going to take command of the armies of Europe. And is going to make a peace treaty with Israel. And they’re going to accept it and disarm and allow him to protect them. He’s going to have all the power because if you don’t go along with him, he’ll cut off your money, and you can’t buy or sell without his approval. That’s exactly what the Bible predicted thousands of years ago, that you are watching today. I love the news. It just reaffirms the Bible is true.
Number six, scientific accuracy. If I was teaching through Isaiah, which I love doing with the kids in the Bible Institute, do you know what Isaiah says? Isaiah talks about oceanography. It talks about ornithology. It talks about the ability of salmon to find their way. It doesn’t mention salmon. It says, who guides the bird in the air? Who guides the fish in the sea? God. Everything the Bible says about science is more accurate until science catches up and observes what God has done.
And the historic accuracy. I told you they found Nineveh and I could tell you all kinds of stories. We have two minutes.
The Old Testament is made up of 39 books, mostly arranged by Ezra. Next to Moses, Ezra is the most revered Old Testament personage to the Jewish people. Why? Number one, he invented the synagogues. He’s the one that started them because he wanted the people to get back in the scripture.
Number two, he’s the one that invented modern biblical Hebrew. Hebrew had gotten kind of lost. It was a little hieroglyphic-ized by the people being in Egypt for those 400 years. Then it got a little bit phoenician-ized by living around Tyre and Sidon and the Phoenicians and everything. By the time of the exile, Ezra’s time, no Jewish person could read the Hebrew Bible, because they didn’t understand it. They had lived in Babylon too long. So, what did he do? He invented what we call modern biblical Hebrew. And he personally oversaw the copying of all the books of the Bible into this, what we call Masoretic or modern Biblical Hebrew.
When did he do that? Most people have trouble with history, so I kind of do it like the gear shift. About 4,004 BC, according to Usher’s chronology, Adam was around. 3,000, Noah. 2,000, Abraham. 1,000 David. So, 1,000 years before Christ, David was king in Israel. So that’s 3,000 years ago. Where’s Ezra? He’s between 1,000 and 0. Jesus is at that AD/BC, at the terminus there. Ezra was at 500 BC. They couldn’t read the Hebrew that David had or the Hebrew at 1500 BC that Moses had. So, he rewrote it and basically, he shaped the scriptures as we know it. By the way, a thousand years ago, the Vikings were around. Today, 2025, we know the world’s going to be around at least 1,007 years from today. So don’t worry, the atomic bombs aren’t going to destroy the world and the asteroids aren’t going to hit us. So, you can sleep well tonight.
And, oh! Now it’s time to go. But I wanted to show you this and it’s time to go. This is how Ezra designed the Bible. He designed it with 17 historical books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy are the majors before the exile. Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. After the exile, him [Ezra] and Nehemiah, Esther. And there are 17 of them. Now look, there’s 17 prophecy books. Look at the order of the Bible, that Ezra so orderly [placed]. Five major prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Nine pre-exilic from Hosea to Zephaniah. Three after the exile. Notice, there are three historic books after the exile and three prophetic books after the exile, but what’s right in the middle? Job, a theology of godly suffering. Psalms, a theology of godly worship. Ecclesiastes, a theology of godly life. Song of Solomon, a theology of love. By the way, those three we will see tomorrow or the next day, mark the three eras of Solomon’s life. It’s fascinating but look what’s in the middle. Proverbs, a theology of practical living. It’s exactly the center in Ezra’s construction of the Bible as we know it.
And wise living is what God says is His will for us. So, that what we do in life doesn’t burn up. We make it to Heaven. We’re saved. But who wants to get there smelling like smoke, saved so as by fire.
It’s time to go. So, it’s time to stand up. I’m going to close in prayer and then turn it over to saint Rich. And let’s pray that we will want, with all of our heart, to follow the Guide who wants to show us the path of life. And let us live the best life possible. And let us have a life that lasts forever to praise Christ.
Father in Heaven, thank you for sending us this book. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for affirming Your belief that this book is inspired. It’s the scriptures. Thank you for sending Your apostles and prophets to illustrate and apply Your truth to our lives. Now all we want to do is follow You in Your presence, find fullness of joy, and at Your right hand have those endless pleasures. Because the road gets brighter and brighter the harder it gets, and we long to be with You. So, we say even so… come quickly Lord Jesus. Thank you for sending the news and help us to do what You left us here to do, until You come or call. In the precious name of Jesus we pray. And all God’s people said, amen.
