Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 26, 2020 | Stand Strong - You Don't Know Me

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January 26, 2020 | Stand Strong - You Don't Know Me · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: That inspiring video.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: Song video is by Mariah Peters.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: We thank her.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: I thank her for agreeing to allow me to use it.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: During our Jeremiah series, it represents so clearly the challenge of the book of Jeremiah.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: A challenge that I'm asking you to take with me by reading the 52 chapters of the book during these three months and the five chapters of Lamentations.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't started yet, please join us.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: This week we'll be reading chapters 13 through 16.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: As Teresa mentioned, we have devotionals.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Now you can find them on your cell phone app.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: And if you've never looked even at one of the devotionals, since I'm preaching, open your Bibles if you would to Jeremiah 9.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Since I'm preaching on the ninth chapter of Jeremiah, and since you're going to absolutely love this sermon, just a prediction.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: So why don't you look up that devotional this week as a follow-up, even if that's the only one you ever look up?
0:59
SPEAKER_00: And uh so I'd ask you to open your cell phone or your uh you'd love that invitation, or your Bible, to Jeremiah 9, because we're gonna get to one of the most famous verses in the Bible, one of my favorites.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm certain that at least one of you within the sound of my voice would say that this is your life verse, or to be more accurate, life verses, because it's verses 23 and 24.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 9, 23 and 24, which in an older translation goes like this.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Thus says the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that gloryeth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exerciseth loving kindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: For in these things I delight, says the Lord.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: These verses are wonderful verses for you to know by heart.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And I hope you'll learn them if you don't know them.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: The key word in these verses is the four-letter word K-N-O-W, No.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: My title this morning is You Don't Know Me.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: If you're old enough, you'll remember, perhaps, Ray Charles' 1962, Lament You Don't Know Me, which contains words like this: you give your hand to me, and then you say hello.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: And I can hardly speak, my heart is beating so, and anyone can tell you think you know me well, but say it with me, you don't know me.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm just a friend, that's all I've ever been, because you don't know me, or you will oh, you will never know the one who loves you so.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't know me.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Tech, did you were you able to come up with a few seconds of this song just to remind us of the give your hand to me.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm in heaven.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: Then you say goodbye.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: I watch you walk away.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: The lucky guy love to never never know.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: The one who loved you so.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: Well, you don't know me.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: All together now.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: No.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Wow, but you know what?
3:29
SPEAKER_00: No matter what age you are, you know all about this feeling.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: Because whether you're 10, 20, or 50, you remember the time when in school you looked across your classroom and you saw that girl.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay, some of you perhaps it was a guy, but you know, and you were you were immediately smitten that she was so pretty, and you just thought, if only I could get to know her and vice versa, if we could enter into a relationship, my life would be complete.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: It would be so much fun.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: And so you uh made overtures, you know, on the playground or whatever, you found ways to be close to them, uh close to her or whatever, and you you said something friendly.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: But it was like, you know, she said, Oh, hi, and then moved on.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, she clearly wasn't impressed, but you weren't gonna give up because you knew if only she knew you, you guys would really click, and so you kept trying.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: And then one day just the door slammed shut because she entered into a relationship clearly with the cooler boy in class, or maybe she left town and you found your mind and your heart just sad with that plaintive tone in Ray Charles' voice going, if only you'd known me.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: I just really feel like we could have hit it off.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: I love that song, and I wanted to play a little bit of it because that Ray Charles voice sound is for me the sound of the ninth chapter of the book of Jeremiah, in which God says plaintively to his people, to you and to me, you don't know me.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: So let's go through this uh uh uh amazing, very interesting chapter.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: I'll hit some of the verses just to show you that God's cry, you don't know me, is in the midst of death and judgment and other things.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: He starts off Jeremiah chapter 9, verse 1 in the English text, Hebrew, that's the last verse of chapter 8.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: But here he says, Would that, this is the prophet crying out, would that my head were made out of water, and my eyes were a waterfall or a fountain of tears, so that day and night I could weep for the slain of my daughter, my people.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: This is my translation today, and rather than anyone that you have, but it's close.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: So basically what he's saying is, you know, I'm just overwhelmed with sadness.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: We call Jeremiah the what prophet?
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Especially because of this verse, but he's constantly weeping.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: He's upset, you know.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: And you can see that, by the way, the next verse.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: He says, you know what?
6:03
SPEAKER_00: He sort of changes his tune.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could find in the desert a motel six.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: Anything, the cheesiest motel just to get away from my people and get away, because they're all adulterers, they're a mob of traitors.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: And as you know, in context, they're trying to, even his family's trying to kill him.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
6:19
SPEAKER_00: When we are around people, when we have family members or friends or people that we've grown up with in the church, and they backslide and they wander away and they become jerks or whatever, we generally have one of two responses.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: One response is self-righteousness.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm so much better than they are.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Or the other response, maybe more common, is anger.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: They're getting what they deserve.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: Man, I hope they get crushed.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: How evil can they be?
6:45
SPEAKER_00: They stole my money or they did something else.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'll admit that righteous anger is dotted all the way through Jeremiah, this book, both from God has righteous anger at his people, so does Jeremiah.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: But here's what's interesting is the emotion that overrides them both is constantly grief.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: It's constantly, you know, yeah, I'd like to get away.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: They drive me crazy.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you've noticed in these early chapters, they commit every kind of sin you can think of.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: There's child abuse and there's even child murder.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: There's a idolatry of the worst possible kind, and there's cheating and everything else.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm going to skip over verses three and four, but I don't know why, since I'm not going to tell you that what they say is that even brothers are cheating their brothers, family members cheating their families.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: And you go, yeah, well, I know all about that.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: That happens all the time.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jeremiah's going, This is just wrong.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: What a screwed-up society.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Everyone cheats his neighbor, verse five.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: They never speak the truth, they've trained their tongues to speak falsehood.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: I had to read that twice because when my kids were growing up, I always got the feeling that it came natural.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Nobody needed to train them.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: They were good at it.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Not Mark, of course, but I mean the others, you know.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, wow.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: They were they worked at it.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: They tried to get better at lying, even to their friends and their family members, all right?
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Oppression followed oppressed oppression in my country, he says.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Fraud follows fraud, and then God's God's speaking here, and he says, they refuse to know me.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: They refuse to know me.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: They refuse to know me.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: The word of Yahweh, you don't know me.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: And he's not saying they refuse to go to seminary and study my attributes.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying they're not going to Sunday school anymore to learn this and that fact about me.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, when he uses the word know in this book, well, let's go to the professionals.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: Jay Thompson, perhaps the most significant commentator on this book for the last 40 years, says the verb yada, to know, denotes much more than intellectual knowledge.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: It's rather a deep intimate knowledge.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: A woman that I really admire her scholarship, Elizabeth Achmeyer, Stanford Columbia Union Seminary, puts it this way.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: I like her statement the best.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: Knowledge of God is a key concept in Jeremiah that signifies, get this, that inner heartfelt intimacy with which a faithful wife knows her husband, or an obedient son knows his father.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: You get it?
9:15
SPEAKER_00: It's not what we call a head knowledge, it's a heart knowledge, it's a personal relationship of commitment and closeness where you're talking with the other person constantly.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: It's that's why I picked the Ray Charles song.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: You don't know me, you don't really know me in a personal relationship kind of way.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: And that's God's cry.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: You're refusing to know me.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: You're doing everything but getting to know me.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: And yet, on my part, you only have I known of all the families of the earth.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Amos 3-2.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: The omniscient God doesn't know all the families of the earth.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he does intellectually, but no, the word know here is this knowledge, this personal sort of marriage and love knowledge of someone.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: And God says, I've entered into a special relationship of knowing you.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you want to know me?
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Right?
10:07
SPEAKER_00: Now we jump down to verses 15 and 16, where God says, because of all the sins you've committed, and as I've promised, I've been patient for like 800 years, but finally my patience has run out, and now I'm going to scatter you among the nations, and I'm going to send after them the sword until I've destroyed them.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking about Judah, that is the southern two tribes, the only tribes that are left in the land of Israel.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: And he's bringing the armies of Babylon, the greatest nation in the world at this time.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: This is about 620 BC.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: He's bringing the armies of Babylon down from the north, and they are going to wipe out Jerusalem and destroy his temple and so forth.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: It's just horrible.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: But God says, this is what's happening.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: Now listen, what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to make inquiry and call for the wailing women to come.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: In the ancient Near East, in the Mideast, and even in Africa and in Arab countries today, there are guilds of women, there are professionals, there are people you can hire, and then other people who are just good at it, especially women, who come and they wail at funerals, and you can hear them.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: And they call it ululating, u-l-l-a-t-i-n-g.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of those words that's uh onomonopoeia.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: It expresses the sound of what they do in the word.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: And you've probably heard it on television.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: They go like that.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: They're ulolating, and they are so good at it, and I can do it for about two seconds before I lose my voice.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: But it's this wailing, it's this mourning that happens when someone dies and you hear it.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: You know when someone has died, when you're in Africa or when you're in an Arab country.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord actually, you know, we consider it kind of faky.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, in our movies, we go, you know, don't mourn, you know, if you have a stiff upper lip.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: But here's the Lord saying, I'd like you to find some of these women.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to send for them, because this is a total tragedy in Jerusalem.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to send for the skilled women to come quickly and raise a lament over us.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I'm doing this.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: You deserve it.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: I know you, but I have to send you into exile.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: But let's mourn this thing.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Let's weep over it.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: That our eyes may run with tears and our eyelids may stream with water.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Listen, weeping is heard from Zion.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: How great our ruin, how great our shame.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: We've left the land, our homes have been torn down.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: So you have this weeping and wailing, and it's a good thing.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: In fact, God says, He commands the women, he says, Hear you women, the word of Yahweh, teach your daughters a lament, each woman a lamentation to her friend.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I may be jumping to conclusions here, but I find it interesting that this is addressed to women.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: I think that when there are catastrophes that are due, you know, when our family and friends, someone we know, a brother or sister, backslides, gets into a real mess and so forth, and then goes to jail or gets something terrible happens to them.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes there's a tendency for men to get angry, you know, the sort of righteous anger.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: They're getting what they deserve.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: But there's something about women.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: In fact, after first service today, there are a couple of young young women, young, young moms who are just sobbing out there, and I went up and asked them what was wrong.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: And there's a teenage girl in our town, you know, who'd gotten pregnant, but last night she lost the baby in a horrible, you know, and just a really sad and shocking way.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: And they're weeping and they're doing exactly what God says is a good thing.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: I think there is a ministry of tears implied here that God says that women can have, that while everyone else around them, especially the men, is going, well, they deserve it.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, go get them, you know, kill them.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: That for women to weep and to grieve over the sin, over the sin in our families and among our friends, the sin that causes people to leave a church and then to get into real trouble.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: And to weep over the results of that sin, the horrible and terrible things that happen to people when they wander away from God and get in trouble with God and with the law.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: It's just a wonderful thing, this ministry of weeping and ministry of tears.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: Not my point this morning.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: I'll leave that and move on.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: But there's something to weep about, and that is that death is pictured here.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Like an intruder, death has climbed through our windows.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Wow, what a picture.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Has entered our citadels like an intruder, like an assassin.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: It not only can get through our windows, which in the Mideast are just holes, you know, in the wall, but actually into the mighty fortresses have a way of slipping in to the citadels.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Why?
14:50
SPEAKER_00: To cut down children, even in the streets, the youth from the squares.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: Speak, says the Lord.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: The corpses of people fall like dung on the face of the fields.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: What a picturesque, you know, picture.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: Like grain stalks behind the reaper, which no one gathers, picturing the reaper going through with his scythe and just stalks falling.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: You've heard of, I'm sure, the grim reaper, although this phrase, this name for death really doesn't, it dates, it's about 700 years old.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: It it came to us from Europe during the great plague of 650 years ago, the Black Death, when rats brought lice from the diseased areas of Central Asia on the ships.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: And within hours of those ships docking in European cities, people started falling over.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: And for five years, people just fell over like grain stocks.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: People who went to bed healthy would wake up dead, which I guess is a contradiction in terms, but people would walk down the street and they would just fall.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: And after a while, during these five years, nobody picked up anybody, nobody had the energy.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: Too many people, a third of Europe had died, 25 to 30 million people.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: The mothers still took their babies to the churchyard and dumped them in an open grave, but otherwise the animals and people just lay like stalks laying in the field.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: A horrible thing, a picture of death, and God is saying that's what's going to happen in this case, and that's why we need to have some weeping.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: That's why we need to care.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget a couple of hours on a plane with a weeping young widow.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: In 2007, uh some of us went to Sudan, largest country by far in Africa on the eastern side, just north of Kenya.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Almost uh half the size of America, it's so big.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: And so we went to Sudan to visit my brother, who is a doctor up there.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: Sudan divided in about 2010 between the north, all Muslim, and the South, and there was war and so forth.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: And he had a little hospital, you know, on the border.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: And so we went over there and we met a couple over there in 2007, this godly young couple in their young 20s named Yaakov, Jacob, Yaakov, and Tabarak, and they were from Ethiopia.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Ethiopia is just 150 miles to the east, where there are loads of Christians, and they have such a missionary zeal, a number of them.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: And these 20-some-year-olds, just super a beautiful, handsome couple.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: He was strong and handsome, and she looked like a model, and they were just so on fire for God, and so outgoing and so fervent.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: They'd come over and they were on Rob's compound, and they were just magnetic, and they were drawing just hundreds of children out of the bush and leading people to Christ, and he was a teacher, and it was amazing.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: So we met them.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: Came back home three years later.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: I went back over with Stan, you remember that, and Phil Gray, and some others, because they were building, I would say we were building, but I was sweeping the floor.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what to do.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, there were it was a maternity clinic over there, and they were working on it.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: And and the last day, uh, Rob got a call and he asked me to go with him.
18:04
SPEAKER_00: He said, he said, Do you remember Tabark and Jacob and Jacob?
18:08
SPEAKER_00: I said, of course.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, they work, they've they're in charge of a village, a school, church, and everything, about 100 miles east of here.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Would you go with me?
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Because I hear he got, I just found out he got malaria last week, and just out of Ethiopian pride, he didn't treat it.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't treat it, it's easy to treat, but if you don't treat it for three days, you're in real trouble.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: And he's in real trouble, and I think he may have even died.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And so we hopped in a Jeep, and and uh, and the rest of the guys flew on down to Wilson Airport in uh in Nairobi, and so we went, and sure enough, sure enough, he was dead.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: This wonderful young man of God in his twenties had died.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: Senseless death, just a crazy death that didn't need to happen, which made it all the more tragic.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: And his wife Tabark was just sobbing already, and we called for a little plane.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: We got a Cessna, and the four of us crowded into it, took out back seats, we could put the possessions.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: She needed to get him back to Ethiopia, but to get him there, we had to fly all the way down to Nairobi, so then she could take his body back to Ethiopia.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget those hours in that plane, huddled in that small plane behind the pilot, Tabark up there, Rob over here.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: And she's just wailing and she's keening, she is uh ulolating and just loud.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: And after a while, I just felt for her.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: I didn't couldn't understand how she could continue doing it hour after hour.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: And I understood that this is the kind of grief that is so common in that part of the world.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget it partly because, you know, that plane buffeted by the winds and so forth, and every time it suddenly dropped or whatever, I'd have to put my hands down and hold his body, which was between my, which was between my feet, so it didn't bounce or slide.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: But it was such a sad hour, such a sad day, sad afternoon, listening to her cry.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: By the way, news is good.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: So, so so I had a wonderful service in Ethiopia for him.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: And of course, being as vibrant and wonderful a personality, beautiful as she was, within five years, another man snapped her up, and they're back in that same village now over in Sudan, and they're ministering together, having a wonderful ministry.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that's why we grieve.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: God says he wants us to grieve, and death is something to grieve about.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: And there was a lot of grief here yesterday as we had Marvin Wilson's service.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: He's a vibrant and leading man.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: And uh and that's appropriate that we have tears.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's in that context of life and death and tears and the things that are really important that suddenly God says, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him who glories in this glory in this that he understands and knows me.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: In other words, when you look at your life, there's something you need to know that I'm looking for from the living before you die.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: There's something I would like you to ask yourself.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to ask yourself what you consider to be the most important thing in life, what it is you value, what it is that you consider your greatest achievement, what it is that you consider to be your greatest accomplishment in life.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: Because maybe the thing you consider to be your greatest accomplishment should not be the thing that you consider to be your greatest accomplishment.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the thing that you are so eager to name-drop is not the right thing to be names-dropping.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: And I think these verses have special application to young people because when you're young, you uh you're desperate for people to recognize that you are who you are, and that you have capabilities and that you have promise and so forth.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: And so getting awards and getting recognition and getting noticed for certain accomplishments is feels so important to you and it's so valuable.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: And all young people are this way, and especially I think once you get to college, this is true.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: And it's in this context that God says there's.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: There's some things that all of you will feel that you think are the most important things in life at a time.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: And yet I want to tell you that they're not the most important things in life.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: And those things that you may think are important are wisdom and might or power and riches.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting if you go online and you ask, what's your greatest accomplishment in life?
22:26
SPEAKER_00: Up will pop what people say is their greatest accomplishment in life.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: I finished the marathon.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: I got my degree, first person to graduate from college in my family.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: I climbed Mount Kilmanjaro.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: I've risen to the top of my department.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: I got the lead in the play.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm the first person in my family to ever own my own company.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I will warn you, young people, that your greatest accomplishment and thrill starts changing when you get a little older.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: When I was young, ecstasy for me was hitting a golf ball next to the hole from 150 yards away.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm ecstatic if I just remember in what general direction I hit the ball.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: And these verses, as they are asking us, what do you feel is the most important thing to you in life, as you can see, are easily distinguished as a contrast.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Verse 23, let not, let not, let not.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: Verse 24, let, let, let glory in this.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: Three categories of things that we should not glory in, we should not boast in, that we should not name-drop as our greatest accomplishment in life, though we will all of us at some time in life crave these things.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: We'll do almost anything early in our life to get wisdom, to get a degree, to get an A in class, and to graduate at the front of our class, and maybe, if we're really good, get a PhD or a graduate degree and become famously brilliant.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: At some time in our life, most of us would do almost anything to rise to the top in our business or in our company to be known as a person of power and influence.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Maybe even rise to the place where if we say jump, other people will say how high.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: And for many of us, or in fact, for probably all of us at some time in our life, we will long, long, crave for wealth more than anything else, hope beyond hope, that somehow we could get enough money so we'd not have to worry about small expenses.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: We would love to own the biggest and best of everything, to maybe have a vacation home on one or both coasts, be able to go anywhere and do anything we want.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Some of you may actually have found when you were young that you had some intellectual firepower.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: You got A's in school, and this was a temptation for you.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you went into the educational field and you could tell everyone here that this is a terrible temptation for those in the educational field, because you get together with faculty and especially on university campuses, and everyone glories in knowledge and wisdom.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: And the person, I mean, there's a pecking order, the most brilliant professor, that's him over there.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: The smartest students in his class are right over there.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Which makes it, I think, significant that the Apostle Paul, who was clearly one of the most brilliant men in the first century, traveled all over the world.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: He spoke multiple languages, he'd been tutored by the single greatest scholar in the Mideast, Gamaliel in Jerusalem, attacked.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: He himself attacked intellectual pride more than any one of these other two.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: I think that maybe it's because he knew this temptation to glory in intelligence.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: And he attacked it in several ways.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: One time he said, What do you have that you haven't received?
25:48
SPEAKER_00: And what he's saying is that if you're smart and if you have intellectual accomplishments, it's still illogical to take pride in it because after all, where did you get your brains?
25:58
SPEAKER_00: It was a gift from God in the first place.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: What do you have that you haven't received?
26:04
SPEAKER_00: Another time he said, Knowledge puffs up, love builds up, as if he's saying, you know what, if nearly every room you go into, you look around and realize you're the smartest person in that room that you know more than anyone else, you may actually be the most toxic person in that room because knowledge puffs up, or as love builds up.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: Or if you're the intellectual equal of a college professor, maybe you're a philosopher, a book writer, you may actually be the dumbest person around, even in your own family, because remember, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the dumbest person in your family who's trusted Christ as their savior is actually farther along than you are, and you're back in intellectual kindergarten.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Reminded when I was thinking of this of the joke about the people on the plane, the four people flying on the plane, the kid, the pastor, the doctor, and the smartest man in the world, and suddenly the pilot came running back and he said, Sorry, the plane is going down, and there are five of us, but only four parachutes.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: With that, he took a parachute and he jumped out of the plane.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: It was quiet for a minute, and the doctor jumped up and he says, I save lives every day, and the world needs me.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: He grabbed a parachute and jumped out.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: Then the smartest man in the world said, I'm the top professor in my field.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: The world needs my brains.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: He took the parachute and he jumped out.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: It was just the pastor and the kid in the parachute.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: Pastor looked at the kid, he said, I've had a good run, I've had a good life, I've had a good ministry, you're young.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Listen, why don't you take the parachute?
27:41
SPEAKER_00: You take it.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: To which the boy responded, Don't worry, there are still two parachutes left.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: The smartest man in the world just jumped out with my backpack.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: So listen, the smartest, the point is that the smartest man in the world is not the smartest man in the world if he doesn't recognize that the smartest thing in life for a smart person to do is not to take any pride at all in his smarts, his degrees, his knowledge, and his brilliance, to realize it's just a gift he's received, and he should focus on the giver and not the gift.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe some of you have realized when you were young that you had a lot of natural power.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: You had a personality that drew people.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: You naturally had influence.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: You were the one who in your family organized the games, even though, let's say, you were the youngest.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: You found that you had physical power as well.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: You were the best athlete in perhaps your high school or in your class, and physically, when you went up against someone else, mono a mano, you won.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: And it's the temptation, always has been for you to glory in your strength, to think of your athletic ability as your greatest accomplishment, to name drop the most valuable player awards you've gotten when you get out of school.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: When you get a little bit older, it sort of shifts, doesn't it, to social influence instead of athletic or physical influence.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: So it's social power.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: But even now you look around a room and you find you're oftentimes the most powerful, influential person in the room.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: And so it's tempting to glory in, to name-drop that influence.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: You like the fact that when people come up to you, they have stars in their eyes, they're a little nervous, they would do anything for you.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: It's why sometimes we say, well, that person, when they won the election, went to Washington, D.C., and Washington, D.C.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: ruined them.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: Because you don't have to visit Washington, D.C.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: for more than a few hours to just feel, feel the power in that city and the pecking order and the kind of strength, adoration, and idolatry there.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: And the same thing is true, isn't it, of military power.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: That's why North Korea and China and Russia like to parade their goose stepping fighting men, their soldiers and their rockets and their tanks down Main Street once a year because they're glorying in their military strength.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: And God laughs at this.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: He said, It's crazy to boast in your muscle or in your political power or in your strength because that's a gift from God, and my weakness, after all, is greater than your greatest strength.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: That reminded me of the joke about the strong young guy at the construction site.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: He was bragging that he could outdo anybody in any feat of pure strength.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: And he made a special case of making fun of one older guy, and after several minutes, the older worker had had enough.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: He says, You know what?
30:33
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you put your money where your mouth is?
30:36
SPEAKER_00: I challenge you to a strength competition.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: He said, I will bet an entire week's salary that I can haul something in this wheelbarrow over to that building that you won't be able to wheel back.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: You're on, said the young guy.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Let's see what you got.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: And he said, grab the wheelbarrow by the handles, and he said to the young guy, jump in.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: And the point is that even if you are the most influential and the strongest person around, even if you have a hundred people jumping when you say jump, a hundred people that count on you and listen to your every word, the fact of the matter is, God says, your power is going to disappear the older you get, and it's going to disappear entirely when you're dead.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is now your power is absolutely nothing compared to real power in the universe.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, there's money, because who of us hasn't craved and longed to have more money, than enough money so we wouldn't have to worry about small expenses and maybe enough money one day so that we could have the biggest house or the best car in town and be able to have a vacation home somewhere.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: The god of mammon has always been, I think, the most powerful of all three of these gods.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And some people, you know, you notice when I was when I had no money, I was even on food stamps briefly, I found myself comparing myself to other people who I detected somehow in the store, you know, had less than a dollar when I had a dollar.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: And it's just crazy.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: And then you rate other people based upon what restaurants they go to.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: Jim Gaffigan humorously pointed that out when he said, it's fun telling people you go to McDonald's.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: They always give you that look like, oh, I didn't know I was better than you.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: Because some people rate themselves on their car, on their house, or on the restaurants that they're too cool to go to.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah says, beware glorying in wealth, comparing yourself to other people based upon that, as Marvin Wilson said when he was accepted into the Honor Society under the wall at Ottawa University.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: He said, I believe that money is a wonderful tool to help people, but it is a very bad god.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: And there's that story of the rich man in Luke, remember, who just kept building bigger and bigger and bigger barns, and then God said, It'll be required of you.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: He died and he couldn't take it with him.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: No Brinks truck ever followed the hearse to a cemetery.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: And because money will leave you immediately upon death, it's foolish to boast about money.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: So that's why God says, please, please don't name-drop these things.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: They're stupid.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: They are stupid things to consider your greatest accomplishments.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: More than any of things, any of these things, more than getting your PhD and becoming brilliant, more than being the most influential man in the entire world, more than being the richest person you know, I would beg you to boast in knowing me.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: The wise, strong apostle Paul said to the boasting Corinthians and 1 Corinthians, and by the way, he clearly had read Jeremiah 9 when he wrote this chapter.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: And God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: And thus says the Lord, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, the mighty man his might, the rich man his riches, but let him who boast boast in this.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: That he understands and knows me.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: There it is, there it is.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: That I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for these things I delight, declares the Lord.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: What is it that you value?
34:23
SPEAKER_00: There's a contrast here, isn't there?
34:25
SPEAKER_00: God speaks to us from heaven in these verses.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: He said, Some of you, you really value and honor people with intellectual wisdom, and you are really proud of the fact that you're so smart.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: I've got to tell you, God's saying, you know what I value when I look down at earth, I don't look at smart people.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: I look at that woman who keeps steadfast love for that child who's left home and hasn't called her in three years.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: I value that church that when they see people backslide from that church or leave and sin, they still pray and they care.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: Their love is steadfast.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: I value the people that I see who've been ambushed or treated poorly by other people.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: And instead of holding on to their anger, they let it go and they decide to love and pray them back.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: Those are the people I value, those with steadfast, loyal, faithful, forgiving love.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, you you really value power.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: You think that's the most important thing in the world.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: You you you you name drop how much control and how much influence you have and what company you control.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: You know what I consider to be far more admirable when I look down on earth is that person who has a heart for the oppressed, that person who looks around and sees people who can't defend themselves, people who are weak, people who've been deserted.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: And this person has a heart for justice for those people and strikes out and does whatever he or she can, sometimes even takes a lower salary in order to work in a place where they can help bring justice to people who are not getting justice.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, so many of you honor the people with wealth.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: You tiptoe around those people who have the biggest house or the most money.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: You're so admiring of these people who are rich, and I'm telling you who I admire when I look down at Earth.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: It's that person who has integrity, who believes so much in right or wrong that even when they know no one is watching, they won't cheat even a little bit.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: They won't steal even the smallest thing.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: Because they really do live for integrity.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: They know me.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: These people know these are the things I delight in, saith the Lord.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And if you say to me, How in the world can I do that?
36:32
SPEAKER_00: That kind of integrity is hard for me.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm not used to helping people who are oppressed and weak.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm not the kind of a person who has that kind of steadfast love.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: I react really strongly when I've been treated poorly, and God said, I'll give you a shortcut.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: You need to trust my son Christ Jesus as your Savior.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: Because Christ Jesus is the embodiment of these things, and you put him into your life, you welcome him into your soul and into your heart, and he brings with him steadfast love, he brings with him justice, he brings with him righteousness, and all of those other wonderful favorite things of mine are embodied in Christ Jesus, who becomes to you wisdom from God.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: Let the one who boasts, Paul concludes in chapter one, boast in the Lord Jesus Christ.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: The Lord says, Then you come to know me.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: You believe in my son, you look at him, that wonderful son of mine, and you gain the wisdom of suddenly seeing that it's not your intellect that matters.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: The wisdom is seeing that the gospel is he died for you and for me on the cross and for the world on the cross.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: Then he becomes to you wisdom, and you enter into that relationship with us, and you know us.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Whom to know is life eternal.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: But listen, that's not the end of it.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: You need to keep knowing us throughout your entire life.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: You need to keep on saying throughout your entire life, I will not boast in anything.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: No gifts, no power, no wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: Because I see so many of you, God is saying, who no longer know me.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: You thought you knew me, and you did know me to a certain extent, and we were in relationship, but then you walked away from me and you cut me off, and you thought I was unimportant, and you've been away so long.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: Now you're just somebody that I used to know.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's just about as far as it goes.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just somebody that you used to know.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: And it's breaking my heart that you no longer know me.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: Would you please come back to me?
38:37
SPEAKER_00: Would you please prioritize knowing me personally?
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Would you spend time with me?
38:43
SPEAKER_00: Would you read this verse and maybe commit it to heart?
38:47
SPEAKER_00: Let me end with a parable of a king who owned a kingdom which was doing well, but he was old, and he wanted to find a successor to pass it on to, and he had four sons, one of which he wanted to make king, and he called his first son in, his oldest son, and he said to him, Son, I'm trying to figure out how I should pass on and to whom I should pass on this kingdom.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: What do you think you would bring to this kingdom as a king that would be valuable?
39:17
SPEAKER_00: And his son said, Well, as you know, I'm the smartest of uh of your four sons, and I know a lot, and I built the library here, and I've built the university, and I can tell you that if you made me king, this would be the wisest, the most intelligent kingdom uh on earth.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: His father said, Thank you, and he dismissed him.
39:38
SPEAKER_00: And the second son came in and he said the same thing to the second son.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: What is it that you would bring to this?
39:43
SPEAKER_00: And his son said, Well, as you know, I mean, when we've had games as kids, I've always been the ones that organized the games.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: I just have influence.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: It's just natural.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: And even my older brother would follow me.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: And it's happened that way.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: I've I've started this company and I've done this, and I'm a leader, and that's why I've risen right to the top because of my power and my influence.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you that if you made me king to succeed you, we would become the most powerful and the leading country in the world.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: His father said, Thank you, and he dismissed him.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: And the third son came in and said the same thing to the third son, and uh and the third son, well, as you know, I seem to have the mightest touch.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: It's just something else.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: Ever since I've been young, I start companies, they do really well.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: As you know, you put me in charge of the economy, and our country is just doing terrifically right now.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: If you put me in charge, we would become no doubt the number one economic country in the whole world.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: And his father said, Thank you, and dismissed him.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: And the fourth and youngest son came in, and his father explained this, and his son said, I've just seen my older brothers leave, so I understand now, and and I admit I can't compete with any of them.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm not all that smart compared to my oldest brother, and I'm certainly not all that powerful or influential like my second brother, and and and I I'm not great, you know, economically like the third brother.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: The only difference between me and them is I've just spent all my time with you in the palace doing whatever you wanted and carrying out these things that you've done.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: You have this heart for helping the poor and the needy, and so I have taken care of that, and you have this uh dedication to honesty and to justice, and so I've helped establish the courts, and and all I can say is that if you made me your king, and I won't mind if you don't, but if you did, then I would simply carry on your values because I feel like I know you better than anyone else in the world.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: And when the king made his announcement to the to the people, goes our made-up story, uh, who would be the next king?
41:51
SPEAKER_00: They rejoiced when they heard he had given the kingdom to his fourth son.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: Because it is in these things I delight, saith the Lord.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the wonder and the joy and the privilege of getting to know you, that you care that much that we get to know you, but you warn us that we do tend to walk away.
42:17
SPEAKER_00: I pray for those who who are here today are in the sound of my voice and are not sure that they know you, not sure that they've ever entered into a relationship with you.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: I pray, Heavenly Father, that you would reach out to them in this very moment and you would call them to yourself and that they would respond.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: They would say, I do want to know you, and you'd say, Look at my son.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: That's all you need to see.
42:37
SPEAKER_00: My son Jesus Christ, trust in him, not yourself for salvation.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for calling out to those of us who have known you, but have a tendency to walk away from you, to value other things as more important than knowing you better and better and better throughout this life and in fact throughout all of eternity.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for calling us this morning to come back to you to value what you value, to delight in what you delight in, and that is that personal knowledge and relationship and walk with you.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: We're so honored by that.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for that.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for your son Jesus Christ who makes it possible, in whose name we pray.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: Amen.