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I Couldn't Avoid This Verse · Bible Tract Echoes Podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey friend, welcome back to Bible Track Records.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Michael McCurray, your host.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to thank you so much for joining me once again today.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you would grab your Bible, turn to the book of Proverbs.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It should be right there near the middle of the book.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, the Bible is made up of 66 books.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Proverbs 1 of those 66 is intriguing.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is a book of wisdom.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can almost call it spiritual horse sense, spiritual common sense.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, much of the book of Proverbs is attributed to Solomon, who we consider to be and rightly so, the wisest human ever.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, Jesus Christ, 100% man, 100% God, would have been wise or we understand that.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: But
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Solomon, the only man who was given the opportunity to ask for anything, could have asked for horses for lands, for armies for riches, and he asked for wisdom, and God told him, you could have asked for everything else, but because you didn't, I'm going to give you all of those things as well.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Solomon well known for many things, some good, some bad, he had the privilege of completing the temple.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: His father David did a lot of the preparation work, but Solomon was the man who general contracted the whole thing to a large degree.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: He was also known for unfortunately having a whole lot of concubines and wives, not the wisest thing for a wise man, but he certainly had his vices as well, but he's wise enough to know what was right and wrong because he talked about in the book of Proverbs.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: He, you could say, maybe a little hypocrisy, he spoke about the wisdom of avoiding the strange woman, avoiding those that are trying to drag you down Solomon, though.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: We believe wrote Proverbs 29, and this chapter, of course, all that under the auspices of the Holy Spirit, and under the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit, but
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Proverbs 29 verse 1 is where we find our place today.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Proverbs 29 one and let me give you a background on what brings me here right now.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes you're reading and scripture.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And over the last little while, this isn't all the time.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Over the last little while, I've been doing my best.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't always accomplish this.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: but I've been doing my best to read wide swaths of scripture at a time.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And not necessarily bogged down into one chapter or a few verses.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to read multiple chapters and sometimes 12, 15 chapters at a time.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And again, that's not every day.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I'm not, I'm not trying to put myself upon a pedestal here.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is so seldom does do I actually get to where I want to be, which is about a 15 chapters a day, but that's the goal.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that's interesting when you do that, and when you're able to be consistent with it, is you start to see some connections between different things in Scripture, because you just read it three or four days ago, you, something that would have been, would have had maybe a month in between the reading of it, but you see, oh, that's similar to this situation.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what led me to this Bible study, or I'm going to be honest with you, if the Lord allows, especially tomorrow and maybe the rest of this week, there will be some preachingness about this week.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: What going to be speaking about something that we're going to pull from Proverbs 29 verse 1 in this verse, this verse often comes to mind.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Every time I read through probably 29, this verse jumps off the page because I was about 12 years older, so, and my father, he was in the military and so he moved around a good bed, but my father was very active in church and we are whole family was.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Every church we went to, we got plugged in.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, we moved during my 18 years home eight times.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so,
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was ample opportunity for us to fall out of a church, or for my dad to decide, well, it's just not worth it.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that was not an option.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was no exceptions, no excuses.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: We were going to be in church every time the doors were open and sometimes we were the ones unlocking them.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But my father, he was stationed at Fort Lee, Virginia, there on East Coast, and I was about 12 years old, and my dad became, he did a few different things for the church, financial stuff.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he was also, I think he ran the buses, bus director, he was also kind of the junior church director as I recall.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It always took three or four guys to replace my dad every time we PCS to a different duty station.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: because he was active, he was intense, he wanted to serve God with everything, little wonder that my dad is now pastoring today.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: But, my dad has a junior church director, had this son, Micah.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was 12 years old.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I always looked older than I was.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I honestly, and this isn't brag, I acted older than I was.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd be mistaken for a 15 and 16 year old at 12 years old often.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was tall, I was big, I was broad, and I was tired of being with the quote, little kids.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to just move on.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to be a big church, you know?
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: My dad told me, no.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: 12 year olds are in junior church until you turn 13 you can be in junior church.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I remember being disgruntled about that.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I remember being irritating.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: My dad could be inflexible.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like he's gotten a little more flexible when the as the grandkids have come around.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now he's inflexible with them.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's not one of those grandparents just let's them run rampant.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, he sets a hard standard, but he has, I think he has softened a little bit.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: or I'm just misremembering how hard he was back in the day, you know, but now I doubt my father's a good man and he wouldn't give me an inch.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there I am stuck with the little kids.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think was one of those junior churches had a pretty wide gamut of age groups.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was probably like five to 12 or something and you're sitting there and you get this, not even knows five real next to you and
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It should I I don't want to be there really what I was doing was I was showing my in maturity and the reason I wasn't mature enough to be in big church Yes, I could have sat up straight.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I could have paid attention in big church Yes, I didn't need the games and the silly songs and things from junior church to pay attention But at the same time I was showing the fact that I was not yet ready to move on to the next step in life
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: because I wasn't mature enough to handle the stage of life I was in right then.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the story is not really about my dad.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: My dad telling me no was what led to this, but I had a year in junior church.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: There in Fort Lee, Virginia and there in Fort Lee, the church we were in.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my dad would trade off every other week with another gentleman, and he, my dad would teach one week, and the other gentleman would teach one week.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I pretty sure my dad was in there every week, anyway, but he just he kind of ran the program on the off week, and but he didn't teach, and so just to give some other reps to another person, and because my dad realized that you got it to train other people, you got to give them opportunities, and
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So 26 out of 52 weeks, my dad spoke.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: But 26 out of 52 weeks as well as I recall, this other gentleman spoke.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it seemed like, it seemed like, again, this is a foggy memory.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it almost appears.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: That the other man's text diverse, every single week, or should I say every other week, was Proverbs 29.1, and that may be a little bit hyperbally, I'm sure it is, it's likely that it was just, it was referenced, it came up, but it seemed to come up every single week in some form or fashion.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this verse, Proverbs 29 verse 1 says this.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: He, that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me read it one more time.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I only had to hear it, you know, 26 plus times, so you get to hear it twice.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: He, that being often reproved, hard enough, his neck shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: that verse has stuck with me for many years.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: That verse, every time something like this comes up, every time this passive scripture comes up, I can't, I can't help but think about.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: This man explaining, and after he'd illustrated, talk about situations of life and his life and other people's lives and talk about how people had been convinced, they should have been convinced of a fault.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: They should have been approved, they should have accepted the fact that something they were doing was wrong.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But instead of that, they hardened their neck.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: That language, the phrase hardened his neck, kind of evokes imagery of a stubborn ox that refuses to be guided by a yoke.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Think about pride, rebellion, an unwillingness to submit to rightful authority.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: a stiff-necked individual was one who resisted authority, but particularly divine authority.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It takes a pretty stiff-necked person to avoid and to be distracted from or to ignore the
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: to a door God.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: This term stiff neck that's used often, though at the Old Testament, to describe rebellious Israel, the nation of Israel, Exodus 32, 9, 33, 3, and due to
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are times you do things in life and you can fix them, but there are many others where you run into a buzz saw that leaves lasting consequences that judgment becomes suddenly without warning, especially after repeated opportunities to repent, it's final, it's irreversible.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Lord willing, this week, when we're speaking about this topic of sudden destruction, yes, I mean it as a warning.
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I mean it to grab attention.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'd like to think about the times the many times the manifest and manifold and many times that you and I have been warned and then we've gone on to do the wrong thing anyway.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want you to think about the fact that there may be some areas in life, some areas of ministry, some areas of family, that God has been warning, has been reprooping, has been trying to convince us of a fault, and I want you to notice the fact that there are some sins that God judges immediately.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Particularly those who have been often improved and shouldn't know better.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: This isn't about ignorance.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's about those who know right from wrong and choose to disobey anybody.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Will give just a little more context.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we're going to dive into this discussion on sudden destruction all this week.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want you to mow over that thought of Proverbs 29-1-hee that being often improved.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hardeneth is neck.
• 12:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Shows suddenly, be destroyed, in that, without remedy.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Have a great day for his glory, or plan to talk to you soon.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: God bless.
• 13:11
  [UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
• 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.