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What God Says About Knowledge - Kevin Swanson · Passing On The Faith

0:00
SPEAKER_01: What is it with children they don't honor their mothers and fathers?
0:03
SPEAKER_01: If a mother would come to me and say, my 13-year-old child doesn't submit, she doesn't obey, she doesn't cooperate, etc.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: What would I say?
0:10
SPEAKER_01: I think the answer has got to be initially, ma'am, do you fear God?
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Have you been living in the fear of God all the day long?
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Is that you?
0:20
SPEAKER_01: Is the problem that there is no fear of God really in you?
0:25
SPEAKER_01: So, moms and dads, let me ask you this question: Do you fear God?
0:29
SPEAKER_01: Not just on Sunday, but on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: Is this the fundamental disposition of your life?
0:36
SPEAKER_01: Is this where every day of the week you begin right here with the reverence and fear before God?
0:45
SPEAKER_01: Is that what characterizes you in your life?
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Is your child growing in this area?
0:53
SPEAKER_01: Are they fearing God in the history class, the science class, the literature class?
0:57
SPEAKER_01: Are they growing in the disposition, the character trait as they grow in knowledge?
1:02
SPEAKER_01: Or is this separation of knowledge from the fear of God going on as they are picking up on all of this information?
1:12
SPEAKER_00: You're listening to Passing on the Faith, a podcast from generations.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Every week, we bring you a powerful moment from one of our sermons, audiobooks, webinars, or conference talks.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Intext to help you build a strong biblical foundation for your family.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: This week's episode is a sermon from an equipping series at Reformation Church of Elizabeth, entitled What God Says About Knowledge by Kevin Swanson.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Let's turn now to our study this morning on equipping the saints of God to every good work.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: And this is the second in our series that we began last week.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: We as pastors really do have the obligation to use the scriptures, the Old Testament scriptures first, and then the New Testament scriptures, to equip the men and women of God to every good work.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: That's 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: All scripture's been given for that.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: And Paul is referring to the Old Testament as well as to the New Testament scriptures.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: The context was Old Testament scriptures for that 2 Timothy 3 passage, but that's our job.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: We are to equip the saints of God to every good work by all scripture contained in Old and New Testament.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to take a series of messages and address some of the major issues, foundational issues, and practical issues found in Scripture to equip us to every good work.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: So I started out with Ephesians 6 and verse 4.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: That we as parents are to raise our children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord Jesus Christ.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: This is what it says.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: You fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: Now, the simplest way to put this is that as you're raising your children, as you're educating your children, as you said last week, paidea of the child, to raise your child in the training, where the nurture of the Lord is to raise them in the paide of the Lord, and the paide of the Lord is every aspect of that child's raising, whether it be intellectual, emotional, spiritual, social, physical, any other part.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Your child comes out of the womb, there's some assembly required, they leak a lot, we know that.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: There's other issues that are there.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: And so we have an obligation to do some work.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: And so what this passage tells us to do is to raise our children in the nurture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: To put it simply, do whatever Jesus did.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I travel to the uttermost parts of the earth, and I come down after traveling 18,000 miles, and I get up in front of a group of people, and I say, I'm here to tell you to raise your children in the nurture of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Do whatever Jesus did, and I walk out.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: So to make it simple, that's one way to do it.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: To do what Jesus did with his disciples.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: And so this morning I do want to expand on that just a little bit and go into a Christian view of knowledge as it applies to this training, to this teaching, to the way that Jesus did it.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: And there's really an important application of this message to the present day.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Those theories of knowledge that are really rampant in our systems today are not doing well.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: Epistemologically, that is, in terms of the theory of knowledge and how it's working its way out into the cross of all the people and human society today across Europe and America and throughout the world, is uh is not good.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: We have, as it were, crossed the line of despair.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: There's a great deal of doubt.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: There is the institutionalization of doubt.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: That's one problem.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: Another problem is that we're in an age of pseudoscience, where science is used to very bad ends, very foolish ends.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: So we're entering into an era in which man is using science to weapons of mass destruction, to the use of certain electronic forms that are not healthy and are doing great damage to the human mind.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: The Internet consists of tens of thousands of confusing narratives that indeed is just another illustration of how God has given them all up to an insane mind.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: There is an insanity about our age today, unlike the way it was in 1990 or 1980 or 1970.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: Some of the young people may not remember the way things were in the 1980s or 70s or 60s, but indeed we have entered an age of insanity.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: That being the case, I don't think there's ever been a better time at which people need to hear the word of God, at which people need to go back to God's word and find that God's word is the very source of truth, and we need to get back to it.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: Christian foundations that were laid down over a thousand years produced the culture that we have enjoyed, the freedoms, the political situation, the stability of nations, certainly our science, our cultural systems, charity, hospitals, art, music, etc.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: All of that was laid down over a period of a thousand years, at least here in the Western world.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: But over the last 200 years, there has been a concerted attempt to destroy that knowledge, that system of knowledge, that foundation of knowledge, and it has not been productive at all.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: It's been very destructive.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: And it's for us to be obviously very concerned about that.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: You stand inside of a large building that has a foundation that's been laid down over a thousand years, perhaps it's 30, 40 feet thick, but you stand inside the building, you take a wrecking ball to the foundation, what happens?
7:01
SPEAKER_01: The foundation obviously breaks down, but what happens to the rest of the building, children?
7:06
SPEAKER_01: If you're standing inside of a building and you're breaking down the foundations of the building and it's all cracked up, it's all destroyed, what will happen to the building itself?
7:18
SPEAKER_01: If you destroy the foundation of the building and you're standing inside of a building, the building will come down on top of you.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what's happening to our world today.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: And so it's important for Christians to really get engaged in the reformation of knowledge and education more than at any other time in history.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: And here's the other thing.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about our own children.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: These are our precious children.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: We want, generally I would say almost everybody wants, a good future for their children because you love your children.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: We want the best for them.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: So given that we live in a very dangerous age, in which not only is the system of knowledge being destroyed, but also realize that we're into an age in which there's been a great deal of centralized control over the pop culture as well as the educational institutions of the day.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: Unlike any other time that we've seen in human history.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: It's not as if Rome had a great deal of control over all the colleges and universities and K-12 schools throughout the Roman Empire.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: That's never happened before until about 1920, when we were able to get a compulsory attendance law together.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: And over the last 80 to 90 years, we have seen a huge amount of control over education and, of course, the removal of God, the fear of God, the nurture of the Lord Jesus Christ from the schools.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: And so this has been a concerted effort.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: And I don't believe it's just the work, the powerful work of certain men.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: I think we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: In other words, we're in an age at which the world, the prince of this world, has declared war specifically upon little ones, upon the next generation, upon our children.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: And we as parents need to stand against this.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: Now, I realize that there have been some educational experts, some politicians that have been able to take something of a stand, and I'm appreciative of that.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: But you think about the$90 billion megalith of Disney that has really become the Pied Piper of Hamlin and effectively changed the opinions of billions of children since the early 1990s.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: Everybody knew that Disney was the most pro-homosexual organization in the world in 1994.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: We all knew it.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: It was no question at all.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Everybody knew it was very public.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: But we went ahead and let the Pied Piper do whatever the Pied Piper wanted to do.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: And now we come to Florida, in which the governor of Florida is trying to push back a little bit on the$90 billion largest entertainment industry in the world today.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: And he has not been all that effective at that.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: So here's the question: who in the world, what in the world could possibly stand against these demonic forces that are so strong, that are so influential, that have really dominated our culture today?
10:07
SPEAKER_01: What in the world could stand against all of that?
10:09
SPEAKER_01: That's my question for you.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: And I say this, of course, God stands against it, but one thing for sure, and that is moms and dads.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: Those moms and dads that are listening today and are concerned.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: Those moms and dads that are alive and awakened to what's really happening in our culture around us.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Those moms and dads who really love their children and have faith in God, I believe that, I know it's hard.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to listen to messages like what we give in this church.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: But I'm telling you that if you have the faith, you could hear it.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: If you have the faith, if you have faith in God, if you have love for your children, I believe that you can stand against it.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: I believe that there are parents around the world today, including those in this building, who could stand against it and be strong and raise their children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord Jesus Christ, not in the nurture and the admonition of Disney.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: And so we live in a very critical age.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm hoping that parents all over the world will wake up to what's happening right now.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: If there ever was a time, brothers and sisters, that we should go back to the Word of God as the foundations.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: It is right now.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to ask the simple question: what did God say?
11:22
SPEAKER_01: Not what does anybody else say?
11:24
SPEAKER_01: I just say, you know, just be curious for a moment.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: Be trusting for a moment.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: Ask God, what did you say?
11:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm at the point where I'm willing to humble myself and receive something from your word that applies directly and relevantly to the topic that we're concerned with this morning.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: Let me say this that God is very smart.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: Extremely so.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: God is wiser than John Dewey.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: God is.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: You gotta trust Him on this.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: God made us.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: God made you.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: God made your children.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: Will you believe this?
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Will you believe that God is wise?
12:12
SPEAKER_01: Scriptures are competent to equip the man or woman of God to every good work.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: Is the word of God sufficient?
12:19
SPEAKER_01: Is God wise enough for this?
12:22
SPEAKER_01: You've got to trust Him on this if we're going to go to the Word this morning.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: But let me give you some broad strokes.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: What does God say?
12:32
SPEAKER_01: How did Jesus do it?
12:34
SPEAKER_01: Initially, uh let me say this: that bare knowledge is dangerous.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: That is, to simply lecture facts, methods, systems, it's extremely dangerous.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible bears this out.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: We can't allow for a bare knowledge.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: We can't allow for downloading seminary notes on a Sunday morning or just just you know pressing facts into the mind of the hard drive of your child's head or whatever it is.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: We can't allow that anthropology.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: We can't allow that view of man or that view of knowledge.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: We can't go that direction.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: Bear knowledge.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: Jesus doesn't allow for that.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 8.1, knowledge puffs up, a love edifies or builds up.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: So bear knowledge.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: It makes us proud.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: That's not good.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: Not healthy.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: Luke 12 47 also.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said that servant who knew his master's will and did not prepare himself or do according to his will shall be beaten with many stripes.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: And then 1 Timothy 6.3 also instructions for pastors.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: I knew this is helpful for all of us.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: And Paul is concerned about the kind of words and the kind of lessons that we share with one another in the church.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the teaching which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: And then also James 3 and verse 13 says, Who is wise and understanding among you, let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: So wisdom, the true biblical wisdom we speak of this morning, is humble, it's teachable, it's correctable, it's merciful, and peaceable.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: Those are the words used in Scripture.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: Humility stands out, definitely stands out.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: Remember the first time I taught rhetoric at a classical school about 20 years ago, they gave me Aristotle's rhetoric.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: But before I went into Aristotle's rhetoric, I looked up what uh what God had to say about rhetoric in the Bible.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: I found a verse, 1 Timothy, or 1 Peter 3.15, which is sort of the classic verse on this.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is within you, but do it with meekness and fear.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: So the fishermen didn't have a whole lot to say.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: The Bible actually doesn't have a great deal to say about rhetoric, but something.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: And so there it was.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: Humility and fear, the fear of God, those who are really essentials.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm going through Aristotle's rhetoric, and I can't find a single reference to humility and fear.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: He's got 300 pages, he's got a whole system on rhetoric, but nothing on humility and fear.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: And then I go into his ethics and find this phrase humility is not a virtue.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: Rather, winning fame and honor of men is the highest virtue.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: In the structure, an ethical structure, the moral structure of Aristotle's thinking.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: Now, brothers and sisters, this is messed up beyond all recognition.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: This is foundationally, basically wrong.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: It's wrong, it's so wrong.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: That when you're teaching a rhetoric, the thing that matters most is this fear of God as well as humility before men.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: These are the qualities that are most important.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: And so as we teach and we we lead people up what I call the well of knowledge.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: Let's say you've got a ladder and you're climbing up the well of knowledge, and you've got your class behind you, and they're learning some things that the rest of the class didn't pick up on so far in the class, and they're all looking down at the poor slobs that didn't make it to class today and feeling rather like they know something more than everybody else.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: Until at the end of the class, we remove the lid off the well of knowledge and show them a universe of those, of that knowledge, that incomprehensibilities related to the universe, the one and the many, the transcendence of God, the depths of science and the molecules and the atoms and the cells within the human frame, etc.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: And we show them the universe of knowledge that they haven't learned yet, and they are smitten to the ground to realize how humbled they are before the omniscience of Almighty God that created the universe.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: Humility and the fear of God are so fundamental, and we'll get back to that.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: But I want to summarize quickly the Pide of Jesus.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: What is it that Jesus did?
18:51
SPEAKER_01: How did he teach?
18:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, the first thing we read is that Jesus taught with authority, the authority of God.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting that the scribes did not speak with authority.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: Humanists typically do not speak with authority.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: Here's what's interesting is that, you know, the relativists always end with a question mark, and you know that's the epistemology of the day, right?
19:11
SPEAKER_01: As you move into relativism, nihilism, and all the rest, and that's the direction that humanists always tend to go.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: And so you wind up with this rather strange mixture of doubt and pride, and I'm not exactly sure how they can subsist together, but that's typically what happens.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: They're very proud, and yet they do not speak with the authority of God.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: They revel in their doubt and they revel in their pride at the same time.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And so it's very unusual to bring those two things together.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: How can you be so proud of your doubt?
19:42
SPEAKER_01: Seems odd.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: But doubt and uncertainty is what the unbeliever celebrates, because, of course, any kind of certainty would lead to the knowledge of God, and they're so busy suppressing the truth and unrighteousness they can't quite get there.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Jesus speaks with authority.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: He speaks with gracious words, piercing words, with shocking authority, with a strong sense of God's truth, with God as the source of truth, and God as the essence of truth.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: Now, how does Jesus teach?
20:11
SPEAKER_01: What is his view of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding?
20:14
SPEAKER_01: What is Jesus most concerned about with his disciples?
20:17
SPEAKER_01: And I want to sum this up as quickly as possible.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: Again, quick summary for you.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: Jesus absolutely repudiates all pride, all hypocrisy, all knowing without doing.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: He affirms the fear of God and faith.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: You of little faith, Matthew 6.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: Where is your faith?
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Luke 8, 25.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Have faith in God, Mark 11, 25.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: I can give you many other references to that, but we're going to get back to those in application in just a little bit.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: Then there's humility.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says here in Matthew chapter 11, thank God he has revealed these things, not to the wise and to the prudent, the educated, the high and mighty, but unto the babes, unto the fishermen.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: Whoever would be great among you, Jesus said, must be your servant, Matthew 20, 26.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Unless you become like little children, you cannot see the kingdom of God, Matthew 18, 30 to 4.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: He who humbles himself will be exalted, Matthew 23, 12.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: So there is no academic pride.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: There is no pride in achievement.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: There is humility.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: This is the thing that Jesus emphasized above all things.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Also, the heart motive matters for neighbor and for the brother, the heart motive of love for God.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: Jesus wants to be sure that there's hearing and doing going on.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: He's not content with assent to a few doctrines.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: He wants obedience as the follow-through.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: So to boil it down, I want to just give you just three basic elements today before we're done.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: Three absolutely essential indispensables for the education or paide of a child according to the paide of Jesus, according to the training method of the Lord Jesus Christ.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: Jesus exemplified this, he patterned it for his disciples, he lived them out, and he taught these things to his disciples.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: What is the number one?
21:53
SPEAKER_01: The number one is the fear of God.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: Jesus feared God.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: Jesus taught faith, and Jesus taught follow-through.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: So those are the three things that you're going to find in teach in Jesus' methodology.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that are most important, not just for your children's education, but for your education, for whatever happens within the church, whatever happens within the context of the family, the school, or anywhere else, even within the college or the university.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: If you are in college, university, the fear of God, probably not there.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: Not really an essential.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: If you walk into an average school and you ask, what do you teach as the fundamental, the foundation of all knowledge?
22:33
SPEAKER_01: Most schools will not say, oh, that's easy, the fear of God.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: They're not saying that.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: That being the case, the system is irreparably wrecked.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: That being the case, the science that will develop out of that, where a Christian who studies science departs from the fear of God as the beginning of knowledge and wisdom, will create bad science and will most likely try to destroy the world eventually with the kind of technologies that are being produced.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it's very, very dangerous not to bring the beginning of knowledge to play in our education.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: It must first and foremost be the fear of God.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: And we know that Jesus feared God.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 11 1 3.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: Here's the prophecy concerning Jesus.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: And this is our text this morning.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: So you might just turn there so you can see it in black and white.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 11 1.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: Verses 1 to 3.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: Here's the prophecy concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse, Jesse being David's father.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: And so the rod is Jesus coming forth.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: And a branch shall grow out of his roots, the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: His delight is in the fear of the Lord.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: So there it is.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: Brothers and sisters, that's the passage this morning to pay attention to.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: The one thing that Jesus is prophesied to fulfill here, in terms of his conveyance of prophetic knowledge to the people, is what?
24:12
SPEAKER_01: Do you see that in verse 3?
24:14
SPEAKER_01: The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: His delight is in the fear of the Lord.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Now, to think that Jesus feared God, that sounds strange to you?
24:25
SPEAKER_01: It shouldn't really.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 5 actually refers to Jesus' fear of the Lord.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 5 and verse 7, here we read, He offered up prayers and supplications to God with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent fear.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: Now, I know the minute we bring in the fear of God, it's a foreign concept.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: By nature, it's a foreign concept to all of us.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: But increasingly a foreign concept to the world we live in today.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: It seems that when, you know, I've probably spoken 500 conferences around the world.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: And I will tell you that the minute I come to, okay, here's the biggie.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: This is it, my friends.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Everybody ready for this?
25:09
SPEAKER_01: I've done some introductory stuff, perhaps gone 45 minutes into it.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, you can forget everything else I just said.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: I believe everything was important that I gave it to you because it's important.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: But here's the one thing that I want to be sure that everybody gets, and that is Proverbs 1 and verse 7.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: The beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord, at which I get blank stares.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about thousands, if not tens of thousands, of blank stares.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: And it's because it is so bizarre.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: It is so seemingly irrelevant and uh idiosyncratic, I guess that's the word I'm thinking.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: It's it just doesn't quite fit.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: It's a non sequitur.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: It's what?
25:52
SPEAKER_01: What did he just say?
25:55
SPEAKER_01: The beginning of knowledge is what?
25:59
SPEAKER_01: The fear of God.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: And that's because the world is defined this way.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: There is no fear of God before their eyes.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: Friends, there's not the fear of God in media.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: There isn't the fear of God in pop music.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: There's not the fear of God in politics and education and universities and all the rest.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: It's very much foreign to the modern mind.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: And yet, it's so basic.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: It's fundamental to the civil magistrate.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: If you look at 2 Samuel 23, and we usually bring this in, what is it most important, non-dispensable, characteristic for anybody we would ever elect?
26:42
SPEAKER_01: And we've asked politicians in this room.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: We've had some meetings in this room where politicians show up and we say, Do you fear God?
26:48
SPEAKER_01: And they immediately say, Of course not.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: And they're nice, you know, Christian Republicans.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, they're not going to fear God.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: That's, of course, that's so foreign from the modern conception.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: The fear of God?
27:01
SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Fearing God.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: And yet, brothers and sisters, I want to say that this is the root problem with marriages in our day, with family conflicts, with relational breakdowns.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: This is the problem with the nation.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: This is the problem with the fears, the anxieties, the anger, the judgmentalisms, the discontentment, the self-centered agendas that afflict so much of our churches today.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: In fact, this afflicts us in this church.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: This, I believe, is our problem.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: I know some of you have have come to us as elders, and you say, I think these might be your problems.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: Everybody's trying to figure out what the problem is.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we've got a lot of problems.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, amen.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: But fundamentally, what is the thing that we need more than anything else?
27:51
SPEAKER_01: The fact is we need the fear of God.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: We need to understand the fear of God.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: This is the root problem with the church that is not revived.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: The compromised church, the weak church, the broken down church of the modern day.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: If you want to do an analysis, step back for a moment and say, I think it is the fear of God that was never really taught in my K-12 school.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: It was never really brought into 97% of my raising.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: It's new to me.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: It's different.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: It is a little bit idiosyncratic in my own mind.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: If you could at least come to that point, then perhaps we could start building something back.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: And I do believe that the fear of God would shove some rebar into the concrete foundations of the church and the family in the present day.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, the book of Proverbs, of course, is God's book on the education of a child.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: It's really the most basic lesson in the book itself.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: As you come to Proverbs 1 and verse 7, it is by far the most rock bottom, most basic, most basic constituent for the Paidea program for our children, and that is the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: This needs to be your number one goal.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: Now, not necessarily the only goal, right?
29:18
SPEAKER_01: We move on to number two, number three, number four, and we'll get to others.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: But your number one goal is do my children fear God?
29:28
SPEAKER_01: The same thing for the child training.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: What is it with children they don't honor their mothers and fathers?
29:33
SPEAKER_01: If a mother would come to me and say, my 13-year-old child doesn't submit, she doesn't obey, she doesn't cooperate, etc., what would I say?
29:40
SPEAKER_01: I think the answer has got to be initially, ma'am, do you fear God?
29:46
SPEAKER_01: Have you been living in the fear of God all the day long?
29:49
SPEAKER_01: Is that you?
29:50
SPEAKER_01: Is the problem that there is no fear of God really in you?
29:55
SPEAKER_01: So, moms and dads, let me ask you this question: Do you fear God?
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Not just on Sunday, but on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: Is this the fundamental disposition of your life?
30:06
SPEAKER_01: Is this where every day of the week you begin right here with the reverence and fear before God?
30:15
SPEAKER_01: Is that what characterizes you in your life?
30:20
SPEAKER_01: Is your child growing in this area?
30:23
SPEAKER_01: Are they fearing God in the history class, the science class, the literature class?
30:27
SPEAKER_01: Are they growing in the disposition, the character trait as they grow in knowledge?
30:32
SPEAKER_01: Or is this separation of knowledge from the fear of God going on as they are picking up on all of this information?
30:44
SPEAKER_01: Before proving the existence of God.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: If the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom, then before you set out to prove the existence of God, what do you need?
30:56
SPEAKER_01: Like here's all this information where I'm going to prove the existence of God.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to give you a bunch of knowledge this morning, as in the classical proofs or whatever it is, that God exists.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: But before I do that, what do I need?
31:10
SPEAKER_01: What is the foundation before I got to fear God first?
31:13
SPEAKER_01: Which means I have to receive the existence of God and fear God before I get into proving the existence of God.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: And this also points out what is fundamentally flawed in so much of American evangelicalism.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: There is very little fear of God as the foundation of knowledge before we get into any aspect of knowledge.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: This was the very life of the Christian church.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: It defined the Christian church in Acts 9.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: You may remember Brother Josh going through this in his message, Acts 9.31, says, the churches throughout all Judea, this is kind of a summary of what's going on in the churches at the time.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: The churches throughout all Judea, which is the southern end, Galilee on the northern end, Samaria in between, had peace and were edified, and walked in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and they were multiplied.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: So what defines a church and the health of a church and the reviving of a church and having any kind of a life in the church is going to be the fear of God and the growing in the fear of God.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: So essential.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: So essential.
32:29
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 12, 28, and 29 also sums up the eschatological life of the church from AD 70, really, to the end.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: Then also 2 Corinthians 7, verse 1.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirits, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: And then a very interesting conclusion to the entire Bible found in Revelation 14 and verse 6, where there is this definition of those who receive the gospel and those who do not.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: So this defines the real church during this period of apocalyptic challenges that are facing the entire world at the time.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: It is really this fear of God.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: Now, what is the fear of God?
33:44
SPEAKER_01: Let's define it for a moment.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: Children, you need to understand that there are some things that are really impressive.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we say a skateboarder is awesome because he can run through that skateboard thing and he turns around the air four times.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: His skateboard just kind of sticks to him.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: He turns around the air four times and lands on his skateboard, and it's the coolest thing you've ever seen.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: And you say something like, Well, that's awesome.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now that's what we're talking about.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: Except we're not talking about skateboarders.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about God.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: And let me say this: that skateboarders are not awesome.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: We tend to use words to depreciate what they really meant in order to be sure that we can't apply the same word to God anymore.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: It happens when there's no fear of God before their eyes.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: So we have to begin with this: that there is something impressive, there is something awe-inspiring about God, there is something awesome about God, and our response is adoration, praise, and worship.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: And not just on Sunday.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: Proverbs 23, 22 says, be thou in the fear of God all the day long.
35:06
SPEAKER_01: It cannot be this dualistic idea we talked about last week of, you know, we're going to have a little fear of God and reverence and worship of God on Sunday, but not on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: No, it's this is this is a call to the entire nation to repent of that way of thinking.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: We want to be sure that we are in the fear of God, we are learning the fear of God, we are walking in the fear of God and growing in the fear of God all the day long.
35:34
SPEAKER_01: I've been watching a documentary around tornadoes over the last week or so, and they keep attributing these uh EF5 tornadoes to Mother Nature and nothing to the hand of God.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: You actually hear people taking God's name in vain throughout, but you certainly don't see anybody acknowledging God as the source of all the power and the destructive force that comes upon these entire uh cities that are wiped out by these mile-wide tornadoes.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: But truly amazing, truly amazing to see the force of God's hand, not just nature, but God's hand.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: That if there isn't just a sense of the fear of God, there must be a hardness of heart that will only end in more judgment for the nation.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Remember when the Hurricane Katrina came down?
36:23
SPEAKER_01: It was the most worst natural disaster than probably uh 1914, somewhere in there.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: It wiped out New Orleans and all the rest, and you know what happened to it.
36:32
SPEAKER_01: And I can remember watching uh George W.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: Bush uh fly over New Orleans and land in the helicopter, and I was watching it, and I told the children, he's gonna he's gonna he's gonna fall down on his face before God.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna go prostrate.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: Watch this, children.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: Watch him.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna go.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna he's gonna he's gonna call for a day of prayer and fasting, a day of repentance for the nation, as our founders would always do.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: He would acknowledge God as the source of these things, and he will call us to repentance and to the fear of God.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: I said, just watch him, kids.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: He's about ready to go prostrate.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: He's going prostrate now, but he didn't.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: But why?
37:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, you think about John Adams sitting next to Benjamin Rush at the Continental Congress in 1776?
37:16
SPEAKER_01: They're sitting right next to each other.
37:19
SPEAKER_01: And uh and Benjamin Rush whispers to John Adams, who, by the way, I don't believe was a believer, but but he was sitting next to John Adams and he whispers, is it possible that we could win this conflict against this gigantic enemy?
37:31
SPEAKER_01: We are up against the greatest empire on earth.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: Is it possible we could win this thing as just a couple of colonies picking a fight with this gigantic empire, the most powerful force on earth?
39:52
SPEAKER_01: And John Adams' answer was this.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: Listen, if we repent of our sins and fear God.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: Now, see, the the reason the reason that our politicians don't think this way is why?
40:08
SPEAKER_01: Because we haven't been fearing God in the schools or the universities for 150 years.
40:18
SPEAKER_01: We know nothing of it.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: That God is really the political science classes in the universities that these politicians attend.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: Do they get to the chapter which it says, God is over all?
40:31
SPEAKER_01: God is the one who brings wars to an end, God is the one who aids us in winning wars, God is the one who brings these disasters to our shores.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: No, they don't even think that way.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: Why?
40:44
SPEAKER_01: Because God is irrelevant.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: They've been told a hundred thousand times, God is irrelevant.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: God is not in the picture, God is not to be feared.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: They got that in kindergarten, they got it in first grade, in fifth grade, and tenth grade in their PhD program in political science.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: They know one thing is for sure.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: The beginning of knowledge in political science is not the fear of God.
41:07
SPEAKER_01: They've got that down well.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: We bought a large picture book called Galaxy from Barnes and Noble.
41:18
SPEAKER_01: We still have it.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: Where we have these amazing pictures, like this big.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: Amazing pictures of all of the different stars and planets, and not all the stars in the galaxy.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: The Milky Way galaxy, it's only on the Milky Way galaxy, it's only a single galaxy out of a hundred million galaxies.
41:33
SPEAKER_01: They just picked one.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: And the thing that's extraordinary to me is that we know a hundred thousand times more of our universe than we did a hundred years ago.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: Think about how much more we know.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: We have telescopes that reach out into, we we know it's it's much bigger and broader and more awesome and more expansive than anything we could have ever imagined.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: A hundred thousand times more, yet we fear God a hundred thousand times less.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: It's cosmic, it's cosmic treachery against God.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: It's what it is.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: It's man shaking the fist in God's face.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: That's what it is.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: Where's the humiliation?
42:13
SPEAKER_01: Where's the where's the prostrateness in the astronomy classrooms?
42:18
SPEAKER_01: Where is the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom and knowledge?
42:28
SPEAKER_01: Jupiter's got that storm on the planet.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: It's the size of our earth.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: It rages at 600 miles an hour.
42:37
SPEAKER_01: It came to this earth.
42:39
SPEAKER_01: It would wipe out all life on earth in five seconds.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: God keeps the storm at bay.
42:47
SPEAKER_01: He puts a storm on Jupiter.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: We should realize his long suffering, his mercy, that his judgment is there as well.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: And I realize people are nervous when it comes to God's judgments upon the earth.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: But think of the rest of nature.
43:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we we need to be teaching our children the beginning of wisdom and knowledge in the science class, the fear of God.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: More a study of the human cell, it's extraordinary.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: The DNA, the DNA in one human cell would take up two full bookshelves of like 200 books that provide instructions to a single cell in your body, but there are three trillion, 30 trillion cells in your body, and so you multiply 30 trillion cells by two large bookshelves, and guess what?
43:44
SPEAKER_01: You get 68 million miles of bookshelves of information that dictates every cell, every unique cell in your body that instructs how the eye will develop, how the ear will develop, how the legs, how how the muscles, how the bones.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: There was 68 million miles of bookshelves stacked on my head to give the genius instructions that only God could have put together.
44:10
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
44:12
SPEAKER_01: And every cell in your body is like the complexity of a city of, say, a hundred thousand people about the size of Colorado Springs.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: Extremely involved, in which maintenance systems, communication systems, production systems are happening inside of one tiny little cell.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: And God's creating two million of those cells in your body every second of the day.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: Two million cities with all of their complexities.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: It takes us 180 years to create a city like that.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: God does two million of them in a single second.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: Then two million again, another two million, another two million.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: Does anybody want to be awed?
44:52
SPEAKER_01: Does anybody want to be taken back?
44:54
SPEAKER_01: Does anybody like to be impressed by anything?
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Or we just want to be sitting around bored and say, oh, it's nothing.
45:02
SPEAKER_01: Look at me, look what I can do.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: What can man do?
45:07
SPEAKER_01: Man makes this.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
45:13
SPEAKER_01: With God's wood, no doubt.
45:15
SPEAKER_01: It's like the scientists that go up to heaven and say, figure out how to do life.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: Do a contest, God, ready to set, go.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: They reach down, grab some dirt, God says, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: Go get your own dirt.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: This is what a man does.
45:30
SPEAKER_01: Man throws a couple nukes down on Japan in 1945.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: God is a sun that burns at one trillion nuclear bombs every second.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: And he blows up a star in an amazing supernova with a hundred billion years of seconds of one trillion nuclear bombs all at one time just to impress us.
45:57
SPEAKER_01: So that somebody will step back and say, God is awesome.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: Somebody needs to recognize the awesomeness of God.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: And I know it's odd when I say the chemistry professor or the astronomy professor needs to be prostrate and singing, How great thou art.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: He just needs to be sing.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: It's the only way, it's the only response.
46:25
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, more cosmic treachery.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not sure there's a Christian professor in a junior college who would be willing to do that.
46:35
SPEAKER_01: The fear of God, a recognition for at least 10 seconds of the awesomeness of God, to give him even a microcosm of the praise that he deserves.
46:50
SPEAKER_01: I was up doing teen pack in Wyoming a number of years ago, and these kids all around us up in Cheyenne.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: Got these floors where you've got fossils embedded in the floor, all these dead creatures all over the place.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: In the floor of the Cheyenne Capitol.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: Everybody in a circle, let's take a look at what's going on here.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: We got dead creatures.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: Where'd these come from?
47:18
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you something.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: There was a period of time at which there was great wickedness and violence that went all the way through the earth.
47:25
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they were aborting 70%, 60% of the kids that were conceived as what we've seen the last number of years.
47:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it was, I don't know what kind of violence it was.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: It was some kind of murder.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: Violence and God was done with it.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: He was done with it.
47:39
SPEAKER_01: He said, I will come and I will destroy all flesh from off the earth.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: And you're looking at what happened here.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: Now, if the people in these committee rooms don't pay attention to the dead animals that are shouting out the warning to everybody that walks these floors, don't you dare bring that kind of violence on the earth again.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: And make no mistake about it, God saved eight.
48:02
SPEAKER_01: But my calculations, at least conservatively, destroyed 99.999992% of the population of the earth.
48:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's conservative.
48:14
SPEAKER_01: Only eight survived.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: Against the plain teachings of Jesus Christ, Polycarp's last words.
48:35
SPEAKER_01: In the last 1970 years of the church.
48:42
SPEAKER_01: One guy stands up and says, Don't worry about it.
48:45
SPEAKER_01: Hell's not forever.
48:48
SPEAKER_01: I would never want to take that risk.
48:53
SPEAKER_01: What kind of blood would be on your hands if you were to minimize the judgment of Almighty God like that?
49:01
SPEAKER_01: So be very, very careful, my friends.
49:03
SPEAKER_01: But stay conservative on this one.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: Do not minimize the justice of God.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: It's infinite.
49:16
SPEAKER_01: But so is his mercy.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: And people say, well, how do you reconcile the fear and the love?
49:27
SPEAKER_01: And I say that's easy.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: Somebody asked me that this week.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: I say that's easy at the cross of Jesus Christ.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: Let's get under the cross of Jesus Christ.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: And you see the blood falling off of his hands, his head, his feet, his side.
49:41
SPEAKER_01: And you and you answer this question, why is he there?
49:44
SPEAKER_01: Everybody knows about the cross.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: There, it's right there behind me.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: Everybody knows about the cross.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: The whole world knows about the cross.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: Isn't anybody asking the question?
49:52
SPEAKER_01: Why is he there?
49:53
SPEAKER_01: He's a righteous man?
49:56
SPEAKER_01: He's the Son of God.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: That's what he claimed himself to be.
50:01
SPEAKER_01: And that's who all the Christians claim him to be.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: So why is he there?
50:06
SPEAKER_01: It's God's wrath.
50:09
SPEAKER_01: Just like God's wrath came down upon the world during the time of Noah, and Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: God gave up his son to be killed in the most cruel manner possible.
50:19
SPEAKER_01: But let me ask you this: why would a father do that?
50:24
SPEAKER_01: Why would a father give his only son, the son whom he loved, with an eternal love?
50:29
SPEAKER_01: We need to be going over this.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: Why is Jesus, the Son of God, in so much agony and anguish for this great suffering on the cross?
50:40
SPEAKER_01: Why is he there?
50:41
SPEAKER_01: He's taking the wrath of God upon himself.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: The Father pouring out wrath upon his own son, the son whom he loved with an everlasting love?
50:54
SPEAKER_01: Does this make any sense?
50:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you, brothers and sisters, you've got to believe the full picture of this.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: If you can't receive the whole message and commit to it, then there's no explaining the cross to the atheist.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: You have got to 100% enter into this picture.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: You have to.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: You have to say he's there because he's taking the wrath of God and the justice of God for the sins of the world upon himself at the cross.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: And he's doing it.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: Why is he doing it?
51:26
SPEAKER_01: Why would he do it?
51:28
SPEAKER_01: For love.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: For love.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: For you and for me.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: I wish I could express this somehow.
51:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking right now, I'm doing my best, but man, I'm not even coming close.
51:39
SPEAKER_01: And I get it.
51:39
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are going, oh yeah, whatever.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: It sounds big.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: It sounds kind of good.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: I can't express.
51:46
SPEAKER_01: I cannot express.
51:48
SPEAKER_01: It's bigger than us.
51:50
SPEAKER_01: It's something that we can't handle entirely, but friends, God has put his own son up there.
51:58
SPEAKER_01: This is the toughest love and the severest mercy to overcome the infinitely severe wrath and justice of God at the cross.
52:14
SPEAKER_01: And at this point, brothers and sisters, we can only tremble.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: Nothing more awesome.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: In heaven or earth.
52:31
SPEAKER_01: We fear.
52:32
SPEAKER_01: We tremble for the justice and the wrath of God is satisfied by the Son.
52:39
SPEAKER_01: But we tremble for the infinite mercy and love that intervened for us.
52:46
SPEAKER_01: We tremble.
52:48
SPEAKER_01: We tremble now.
52:51
SPEAKER_01: Nothing more trembleworthy than God the Son incarnating into human flesh, taking our sin, taking the curse of God upon Himself, and becoming the curse to save us from the eternity of hellfire.
53:09
SPEAKER_01: You've got to tremble at least a little bit over that.
53:12
SPEAKER_01: For the sheer awesomeness of what happened there.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: The fear of God is a salvation issue.
53:22
SPEAKER_01: The beginning of wisdom and knowledge concerning salvation begins with a fear of God.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: And where there is no fear of God, there is no salvation.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: How can a person who does not see their great need ever look to the great Savior?
53:45
SPEAKER_01: That's why people don't get saved.
53:50
SPEAKER_01: They don't tremble.
53:52
SPEAKER_01: They see no great need.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: And so they need no Savior.
53:59
SPEAKER_01: The fear of God also becomes the exponent on love and faith, adoration and worship as well.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: When you say exponent, what do we mean?
54:08
SPEAKER_01: We mean that if you have a number and you square it, it gets bigger.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: When you have a number and you take it to the third power, you cube it, it gets even bigger.
54:16
SPEAKER_01: So as the fear of God goes from one to two to three to four in your life, your love will grow.
54:23
SPEAKER_01: Your faith will grow because you got a bigger God.
54:26
SPEAKER_01: You got a more substantial salvation.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: You got a better atonement.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: You got a better propitiation.
54:32
SPEAKER_01: Jesus really did shield you from the wrath of God.
54:34
SPEAKER_01: So why do you have to be walking around feeling condemned all day?
54:38
SPEAKER_01: Because you have this magnificent sense of the magnificence of the propitiating work of Jesus stepping in, throwing his body over you, and taking the full brunt of the wrath of God for you, and you have no need to feel condemned for the rest of eternity.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: That's huge.
54:59
SPEAKER_01: It's just not huge enough.
55:01
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're trying to do.
55:02
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to build it up to be a little bit more awesome today.
55:08
SPEAKER_01: And above all, brothers, amen, fathers and mothers, learn the fear of God.
55:19
SPEAKER_01: Be done with lesser things.
55:21
SPEAKER_01: Let's not get diverted to conspiracies.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: Focus on man, focus on yourself, focus on what others are doing or failing to do.
55:31
SPEAKER_01: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
55:34
SPEAKER_01: We don't need any of that.
55:35
SPEAKER_01: We need to grow in our sense of the awesomeness of God and the fear of God.
55:40
SPEAKER_01: That's what we need.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 112.
55:47
SPEAKER_01: Praise the Lord.
55:49
SPEAKER_01: Blesses the man who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in his commandments.
55:53
SPEAKER_01: His descendants will be mighty on the earth, and the generation of the upright will be blessed.
55:57
SPEAKER_01: Surely he will never be shaken.
55:59
SPEAKER_01: The righteous will be in everlasting remembrance.
56:02
SPEAKER_01: That man who fears the Lord, he will not be afraid of evil tidings.
56:07
SPEAKER_01: His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.
56:10
SPEAKER_01: His heart is established.
56:12
SPEAKER_01: He will not be afraid until he sees his desire upon his enemies.
56:17
SPEAKER_01: All predicated upon this man, what?
56:19
SPEAKER_01: Fearing the Lord.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't have much time left.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: Jesus taught fear.
56:25
SPEAKER_01: Jesus taught faith.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: Jesus taught follow-through.
56:29
SPEAKER_01: These are the three elements of a godly paide for our children.
56:33
SPEAKER_01: This is how we disciple them in the science, the history, the literature.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: We instruct them the fear of God.
56:42
SPEAKER_01: Our goal is the faith, faith in God.
56:44
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was teaching faith in the process of casting out the demons, putting them to the task.
56:50
SPEAKER_01: They failed at it.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: He taught them faith.
56:52
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead, walk in the water, start to sink, taught them faith.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: They were like, master, master, we perish.
56:58
SPEAKER_01: In the midst of the storm, he brought up the storm, then he stealed it.
57:01
SPEAKER_01: But what was he teaching them?
57:02
SPEAKER_01: Faith! Faith! This is what matters.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: What matters, Proverbs speaks of trusting the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding.
57:11
SPEAKER_01: In all your ways, acknowledge him, he will direct your paths.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: Go to the anger slugger, consider ways to be wise.
57:16
SPEAKER_01: It turns out the book of Proverbs is about faith and character.
57:20
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that matter.
57:21
SPEAKER_01: It's not about the math.
57:23
SPEAKER_01: It's about your children trusting God in the math class.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: It's about them overcoming their fear of the obstacles.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: Times when your children will say, Math is hard.
57:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't like math.
57:33
SPEAKER_01: I fear math.
57:34
SPEAKER_01: I tremble before the math book or whatever it is.
57:37
SPEAKER_01: What's the problem with this?
57:38
SPEAKER_01: You used to like math.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: I noticed you're not doing your problems anymore.
57:41
SPEAKER_01: What's going on?
57:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, math is bad.
57:44
SPEAKER_01: I don't like it because it's too hard.
57:47
SPEAKER_01: There's obstacles.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: There's a line in the streets.
57:49
SPEAKER_01: The slothful man doesn't plow his fields, there's a line in the streets.
57:54
SPEAKER_01: That's why what he's got to do, he's got to have the faith and the trust to go to God.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: He's got to move on in faith.
58:00
SPEAKER_01: He's got to overcome the obstacles, which, by the way, we face all of us in our lives, every day of our lives, in which we're facing obstacles.
58:07
SPEAKER_01: You can move away from them, you can postpone the things you have to do, et cetera, et cetera.
58:11
SPEAKER_01: But if you've been trained, not so much in math, but in overcoming the obstacles by prayer, by faith, that's what makes the difference in the Paideia.
58:20
SPEAKER_01: Moms and dads, it's not about the math.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: It's about focusing in upon your children as they're plowing the field or overcoming this problem or that problem or going through the math class, whatever it is.
58:33
SPEAKER_01: The whole idea is for them to overcome these things by faith, and yes, character, diligence, following through, and all the rest are rooted in faith.
58:41
SPEAKER_01: That's the focal point in the boat.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: That's the focal point in the math class, in the science class.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: It's not fundamentally about the math.
58:49
SPEAKER_01: And finally, Jesus taught follow-through life application.
58:54
SPEAKER_01: I've already referred to a couple of these.
58:56
SPEAKER_01: But the major biblical view of epistemology is it's not enough to stuff the facts in your kids' heads.
59:03
SPEAKER_01: That's not enough.
59:05
SPEAKER_01: There's got to be application to this.
59:07
SPEAKER_01: If a guy hears his master's word, doesn't do it, beaten with many stripes.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: If you know the word but you don't do it, you're like the man who looks himself in the mirror, straight away forgets what manner a man he was.
59:17
SPEAKER_01: That's why about 95% of education is a waste of time.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: Because it's just facts and there's no application to it.
59:23
SPEAKER_01: The application is essential to the follow-through.
59:26
SPEAKER_01: Wise men hears the words of Jesus and does them.
59:29
SPEAKER_01: And he builds his house upon the rock.
59:31
SPEAKER_01: There's two parts of learning.
59:32
SPEAKER_01: There is the fact itself, getting the fact down, and then plugging the fact into something and making application.
59:39
SPEAKER_01: If we haven't gotten to application, we don't know anything yet.
59:42
SPEAKER_01: We haven't completed the process of education or bestowing knowledge to the point at which there is application to the knowledge.
59:49
SPEAKER_01: Very basic to a Hebraic and a Christian form of education.
59:53
SPEAKER_01: You've got to have follow-through.
59:55
SPEAKER_01: You've got to go out.
59:57
SPEAKER_01: We teach uh the most dangerous animal on earth.
59:59
SPEAKER_01: And what is it?
1:00:00
SPEAKER_01: It's the mosquito.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_01: Mosquito kills more people than any animal on earth.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: Teach that in our science books.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_01: What do you do at the end of the chapter?
1:00:08
SPEAKER_01: You send your kid out to the back, and here's the assignment: fill in the potholes, empty wagons of the water within a hundred yards from the room, from the house, so that you're destroying the mosquito breeding ground.
1:00:21
SPEAKER_01: You're actually doing something to take dominion of that mosquito.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_01: There's a reason you're doing what you're doing.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're studying science to glorify God, but you're also studying science to be obedient to God and take dominion over the mosquitoes.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_01: And so that's the follow-up.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_01: You've got to have the follow-up.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: It's not just sort of this uh idealistic sort of ideological understanding of some kind of mathematical principles.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_01: It's about doubling the recipe in the kitchen.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_01: That's why math has to always be in the kitchen.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_01: Because we have to move, not just stay in the ideology, but we have to move into the practical.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: Double the recipe, double one-quarter teaspoon, get the get you to one half teaspoon, etc.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: They've got to get to the point at which they are following through and making application.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_01: This is a biblical epistemology.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_01: By the way, it's also humbling in that you're not just resting in laboratory experience, or you're just not memorizing a few facts.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_01: You're actually having to get out into the real world and you have to do something.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: There's a humbling effect, I believe, to the life application element to all of this.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus wants, Jesus wants fear, faith, and follow-through.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_01: Those are the three things that constitutes the method of Jesus' teachings.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_01: He wants also head, heart, and hands.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: Not just the head knowledge, but the heart and the hands.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_01: Fear, faith, and follow-through.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: Head, heart, hands.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_01: Because here is what Jesus wants for all of us to love our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to live out that love of God with all of our strength every day.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, brothers and sisters, I hope this is helpful in equipping the man and woman of God and the children of God to every good work.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_01: I realize this is a little bit odd to bring out the wisdom of Jesus and the wisdom of the Proverbs and the He Dea of Christ on a Sunday morning.
1:02:32
SPEAKER_01: But this applies as much on Sunday as it does on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, Saturday.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_01: So may God help us to understand these things better.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_01: I think we're all trying to warm up to it, to understand it, to work it into the way that we do our things.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_01: But the world doesn't have it right.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_01: Jesus does.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_01: God gets it right.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_01: Let's uh let's incorporate this as best as we can day by day with our children from the earliest years.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_01: By the grace of God, we will see fruit.
1:03:04
SPEAKER_01: Father God, most of all today, we want to know you better.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_01: We want to know what Jesus was doing at the cross even better.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_01: God, we want to fear you more because we want to believe in you more, and because we want to trust you, and we want to obey you, and we want to love you, and we want to follow through on the things that Jesus said.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, God, we pray that as moms and dads, as adults, this would be our heart passion.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_01: This would be what we want more than anything else.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_01: And then help us to pattern it.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_01: Work it out.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: Teach to our children.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' name.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_01: This has been a production of the Generations Media Network.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_01: For more information, go to generations.orgslash media.