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Is Ignorance Bliss? · Bible Tract Echoes Podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, friend.
• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to Bible Tract Echoes.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Mike McCurray, your host.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm very thankful for the opportunity to speak to you today.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to ask you to grab your Bibles.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Turn to the middle of the Bible just about you'll find yourself close to the book of Proverbs.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You might have ended up in Psalms, but you'll get to Proverbs soon.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Proverbs 29 and verse 1.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I gave a good bit of context surrounding my experience with this verse and also some biblical basis and structure to go with what we're going to speak about today.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want you to think about this verse, Props 2912 and your ears.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm asking you to sharpen your mind right now, open your ears, and soften your heart.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Listen to what Props 2912 says,
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And let's discuss how it might apply to you.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Proverbs 29 verse 1, He, that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mentioned the other day how I grew up and my dad had us in church all the time and during a particular span of my life about 12 years old I was in a junior church and there was a man every other week he spoke and somehow he always brought the thought back.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: to this verse.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: He that being often reproved.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hardeneth is neck.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: She'll suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It seemed like we couldn't escape it.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: It always, always, always, he came back to this thought.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: He that being often reproved.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hardnith is neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy and he'd give a personal illustration or he'd give an illustration about someone else that he knew in his life that had not listened and had done things the wrong way, not out of ignorance but out of rebellion and he'd repeat to us he that being often reproved hardnith is neck shall suddenly be destroyed
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: and that with our remedy and he'd focus on different parts of the verse and how people have been approved and warned and told time and time again what's wrong and that that sudden destruction will come without warning and that judgment will be without any sort of notice beforehand and that without remedy the fact that it cannot be fixed and maybe it's through death, maybe it's too scars, maybe it's through the heart of another person that can never be undone and he tell us again
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: He that being often improved, hard with his neck shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I alluded to yesterday in my Bible study, the Lord put some connections together throughout Scripture, that brought me to this verse one more time.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I heard it many a time during my 12th year and of life in junior church.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's one of the great things about having your kids in church is you're gonna hear things like this.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: That will stick with them for the rest of their life.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: He that being often reproved.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed in that without remedy.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know what's like when you have to guide a child, maybe a five-year-old.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're much physically, much more physically strong than they are.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you put your hand on their neck because they are just not listening and you're not squeezing.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're just trying to guide them.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, hey, we need to have to go this way and they put their shoulders up.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: and they say, effectively what they're saying is get your hands off me and they harden their neck.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've been there with a kid, maybe your children are perfect, but sometimes our children, he that being often approved hardeneth his or her neck.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there are some sins that God judges immediately, but it's interesting how there are some inscripture that were so incredibly wicked and yet God gave them chance after a chance after chance.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think about Sodom and Gomorrah.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: You realize that it almost goes beyond mentioning, and we're not going to, because not only is it gruesome, but it's just abominable what that city, Sodom and Gomorrah, what those two cities were, participant in.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then you think about the fact that God would allow Abraham, one of his dear friends if I can say that way, God speaking to Abraham would allow him to speak and say, God, if there are 50 righteous in Sodom, will you spare it?
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: How about 45, 40?
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he walks it all the way down 20 and down to 10 and
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know exactly why Abraham stopped asking.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I've heard it said this, maybe it's because there's a lot in his wife, that's too.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: He had two virgin daughters, the two daughters that, again, abominably he offered in exchange to the wicked, vile men that were trying to beat down his door after his angelic visitors.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: But regardless, there's four people that should have been if we can say this way, should
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we know he had at least two other daughters that were married.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Think about this.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Those two other daughters, I should say, men move too.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what if we know there's at least two because the Bible speaks about plural.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: He goes to his sons-in-law when the angels are telling him you've got to get out of Sodom, but Lawton is wife that's two.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then you have the two unmarried daughters.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you have, what if there were three married daughters with three sons in law?
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's do that.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is an explanation.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Someone gave a potential explanation.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing in the description of back this up, but I wonder.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wonder.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: If possible, if you do the math there, three married daughters with three sons and laws that adds up to what should have been ten people that should have been followers of God.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: They came from good stock, came from a godly family, Abraham's nephew, and
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: they were not righteous.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: They were those sons and laws.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: They talked to a lot of disrespectful way and it was to them as if he was one that mocked.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: One that was joking as if he was being sarcastic.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey guys, God's going to judge Sodom.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what they thought he was saying.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because it was so far gone and a lot with such a hypocrite to come to them and say, God's going to judge and they're like, the way you've been living?
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've been just like us, just like the rest of the Sodomites.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's no way you're true on this.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know why Abraham stopped.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: My point is this, that's to the side.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know why he didn't say, but five God, but three God, but two.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But one, we don't know why he stopped.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe he realized that Sodom is deserted.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe he realized a lot, dessert.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And his supposition to a large degree to guests, commentators, disagree.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I do know this.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: God was willing to parlay, was willing to allow Abraham to talk him down what he was willing to do is expand the measure of grace that he was planning to give and he was willing to withhold his destruction from a wicked place that sudden destruction that came on
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just because there were a few righteous there, even though Sodom as a whole deserved it greatly.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: My point is this, it's interesting how we're going to get a sudden destruction, but I found a correlation in comparing the times when God suddenly destroyed a people or a person.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting to note that God sometimes gives much grace to those that are ignorant of His commands.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Should Sodom have been doing what they were doing?
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, no.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: The law of God is written on every man's heart, but at the same time, they didn't have a
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't have someone locked in and go there to warn them, that brings me to another example, think about Nineveh, but you guys Nineveh was a dangerous place, Nineveh, the armies of Nineveh, the excursions that they're raping, the pillaging, the raiding, that they did of the Israelite lands and those around Nineveh, the stuff of legend, the
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ninova was not a place that Jonah wanted to go.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can always excuse Jonah for not wanting to go, and he ends up, of course, in the belly of a whale.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what's interesting to me is the fact that Ninova deserved, we wiped off a map.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Ninova deserved to have the equivalent of a nuclear warhead dropped on it.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Man, women in child, but God had grace, and he talks about, he says there, I think it was 120,000.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know the left hand on the right, likely, alluding to children.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, he gives so much grace, God does, especially if, especially if that is alluding specifically to children, he gives grace to those that are ignorant.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: not willingly ignorant, not those that know what right looks like and turn their eye turn a blind eye or a deaf ear, no, no, no, he gives grace to those that are ignorant, but what about those that are not?
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: What about those that know what right looks like and choose to do that which is wrong?
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I believe we have to refer back to a verse that I'm
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can quote it to you just like you probably can now you say by the mic, it's getting a little old.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I told you I heard it 26 out of 52 weeks and I heard it multiple times each week, so we're probably around 50 times or so that I heard it through that year.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So buckle up, you're going to hear it a couple more times this week, all right?
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Forever 291, he, that being often approved, hardneth his neck.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: He that's told what's wrong.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: He, who knows what right and wrong looks like and yet gets rebellious, gets stiff necked.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: He, that being often approved, hard knit is neck, shall suddenly be destroyed in that without remedy.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: do you know what right and wrong looks like?
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: The fact that you're listening to Christian radio or the Bible Trek echoes podcast tells me that you probably have more than the inkling, more than just a foggy understanding of what God's word says.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not assuming that you grew up in Sunday's school in junior church like I did.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was blessed to be a Baptist brat.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was blessed to be to grow up in church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and every other time the doors were open and as I've said before my parents were probably the ones unlocking the door.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we stayed to be the last ones to lock it up.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember late nights, my dad pouring over the finances with the pastor and helping him or different things like that, the financial secretary and him printing and cutting bus fires on Friday night.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they'd be ready on Saturday, not because my dad was a lazy man and had put it off, but because he worked 60, 70, sometimes 80 plus hours in a week.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was the only time we had his family to go and get some of those things done.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: into church.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I have been often removed often.
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: How many times have I hardened my neck and told God or my authorities know I know better?
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: How many times have you?
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: How many times have you though completely and totally
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: No.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to do things my own way, have it your way Christianity.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not the Christianity of the Bible.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tomorrow on a broadcast, we're going to get into five.
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we'll see how long it goes.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: We get to five different things, items, concepts that God judges, suddenly when you mess with them.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have a great day for his glory.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk soon.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: God bless.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for tuning in to Bible Tract Echoes, the radio ministry of Bible Tracts Incorporated.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Want to see our gospel tracks and other resources?
• 13:29
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• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks again for listening.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: May the Lord richly bless you as you live for Him.