Wisdom of this Age vs Wisdom of God - 1 Corinthians 2:6-16

Hey, man, team, thank you for that. We appreciate our worship team so much, all that they do and our crew in the back. heard them. I was up here Thursday and heard them rehearsing and been looking forward all week to sing that song with you all and worshiping Jesus together today. Look into the Word of God today, 1st Corinthians chapter 2, diving back into our series here. I want you to think for a minute, can you think of something that at one point in your life was confusing to you, and then something changed, and now you understand it more? Or maybe it wasn't just confusing. It was so confusing that it actually kind of was fooloolish to you. And you say, I don't understand it, I don't get it. And I don't see the point of it. It seems pretty pointless And then your perspective changed. My wife and I will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary on Tuesday, and thank you, thank you. And I remember the first date we had. We went to dinner, and then we were going to go see a movie we saw Cliffhhanger starring Sylvester Stallone. You remember that movie back in the day? And we were walking around the mall waiting for the movie to start. We passed by this little hobby store. They had those models in the window, little models you can put together little cars and some of them were NASCAR cars, and I didn't know this about Carrie at all. I met her in church one Sunday morning. By the way, single people work the room. That's where I found my wife of 30 years, so get around here after this service is over. And I called her up. She'd come to our church a few times. I called her up, so it was the Christian thing to do to take her to dinner and welcome her to the church. And I didn't know her that well, but I had no idea she was in a NASCAR. She starts talking about these cars. And she's like, he doesn't drive for Kodiak anymore. He drives for Miller. I'm like, what? And the worst I tuning aboutbacco and beer and NASCAR, like, what have I done here? And I realized it was way deeper than that. Her father's like a diehard fan. Still to this day he's a member of our church. He'll be in the third service His basement's like a shrine to NASCAR. and I was like, this is crazy. In fact, yesterday, our kids came and surprised us. They brought a VCR in our wedding VHS tape, and we watched as a family, our wedding. And as soon as the wedding ended, it went straight to a NASCAR race from 1995. Thankfully, he recorded at the end of the wedding, not the beginning of the wedding, but that's how deep it goes And I said, I got to figure this out. Every Sunday, all they just watch NASCAR races and so I had to learn this. And I can tell you, when I first saw watched it, I found it confusing, and honestly, I found it kind of silly, driving around in circles. Like this is the most boring goofy thing. Why would someone give their time? But after a while because of my relationship with Carrie and her dad, I began to understand a thing that was once sort of confusing to me, and I began to love a thing that I once thought was foolish. In fact, to the point where the night we got engaged as a picture of us by the Christmas tree, I'm wearing a Jeff Gordon baseball cap when I proposed to her. So oh, wow. See, it goes deep with some of these people here. And so you go from like thinking something is kind of silly and confusing and foolish to being a fan of something, being committed to something. I mean When you think of a time in your life, you did something like that, something that was confusing, but now it makes sense, something that you thought was foolish, but now you love it. If you understand that, they can come up with a human analogy, a temporary analogy, to understand this deeper concept that we're going to see in the scriptures today, of how we turn from thinking the wisdom of God is confusing and foolish to having the Spirit of God open our heart and open our eyes and open our minds, to not only understand the word of God, but to believe the word of God, a message of the gospel, the good news of Jesus, that was once confusing, once we were blinded to it, once we thought was foolish, and now something that is we see as the eternal revelation of God to our lives. That's what we're going to see in the scriptures today as we turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 2, 1 Coians, chapter 2. If you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. It's important as we're studying the preaching the word of God, that we're looking down at the verses in front of us to track with what God's word is saying. If you didn't bring a Bible with you today, if you just grab that copy of God's W underneath the chair in front of you, if you want to find that very quickly, you can just go to page 953 and on page 953, you're going to find that passive description that we're going to dig into today. Let's jump right into it. I' I'm not going to put all of on the screen. I'm going to put the first couple verses up on the screen because I want you to see where we're headed here today. I want you to notice the very first word verse 6, he starts this way, yet yet. yetet among the mature, we do in part wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age, or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, yet he starts. Now, whenever you're studying scripture, it's important, we study the Bible in its context. That means that when we read a verse of the Bible or passing to the Bible, we want to see how it fits into the larger passive descriptionure that we're in. So when you see words like yet, but, so, therefore, those words should point us up into the text to see what's been said up to this point. So we're going to see here is this word yet, in verse 6, is kind of a transitional word from what he's said in the first five verses of this chapter to what he's going to say in the next 10 verses of this chapter. So what has he been talking about? Well, if you read the whole chapter of chapter 2, you're going to see the word wisdom show up seven times. So we know this is about wisdom. A lot of this is about wisdom. It appears all throughout last week's passage and this week's passage. And last week, what did he say about wisdom? He said, I came to you preaching the crucifixion of Jesus, not the wisdom of this world. He said in verse 1, I didn't preach lawfulfty speech or wisdom. Verse 4. He said, I preached the crucifixion rather than the plausible words of wisdom. In verse 5, he said, I wanted your faith to rest on the power of God, not the wisdom of men So he said, I didn't come to you with a man's wisdom. I didn't come to you with a philosophy of this day or this age. I brought you something so much better than that because I wanted your faith to rest not on my eloquent wisdom that I could give you, but on the power of God through the message of Jesus Christ. And so then he moves to verse 7 and he says, but I imparted a secret wisdom, a secret and hidden wisdom of God. So you see there I highlighted it for us on the screen, just so we can see where he's saying here. He said, I didn't preach a wisdom of this age. I preach the wisdom of God. because I was speaking to people. He said, "Who are mature. What does mature mean? Here it just means complete You've been made complete in Jesus. You are now followers of Jesus, and I was bringing you wisdomdom that opened your hearts and caused you to be followers of Jesus. So today we're going to note the difference between the wisdom of this age in verse 6. He talks about, and the wisdom of of God, he talks about in verse 7. We're going to see four principles of the wisdom of God. Four elements of the wisdom of God. Then we're going to talk about four action steps we can take to apply this method message, this passage, to our life, four things. We still here's the good news, that God has not left us in the dark. God has not left us to stumble in the darkness, nor has God left us to develop our own truth. God has revealed his truth to us. We're going to see how he's done that and what that means for our lives. Four principles of godly wisdom. First is this, that godly wisdom is eternal and unchanging Godly wisdom is eternal and unchanging. Those first six, again, yet, among the mature, we do impart wisdom, although it's not a a wisdom of this age, or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. If you want to listen to the wisdom of the age, know that you're hearing it from people who are doomed to pass away. Some translations say, they are coming to nothing. They'll soon be forgotten, or one paraphrase I read said, it's all going to soon be out of date But Paul is saying, if you've been tracking with this for a few weeks, he's talking about how he came into a culture that valued rhetoric and public speaking and philosophy, and he said, I didn't try to impress you with my philosophy or my wisdom or my eloquence. I just brought you the word of God in the power of God, and that changed your life. So what he's saying here is, yes, you could listen to the eloquent teachers of your day, but just know it's worthless. You can follow the teachings of the day, the teachings of the culture. But if those are contrary to the eternal Word of God, at the end of the day, that's going to be worthless because it's passing away Verse 70, says,We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. It is secret and hidden. Some translations say it's a mysterystery. Now, what does that mean when it says, the Bible, the message of Jesus is a mystery. It's a mystery. It doesn't mean it's a puzzle that we have to somehow solve. When the Bible uses the word mystery, it's referring to something that was once a mystery, but has now been revealed, something that was once hidden, but it's now been revealed. Let me give you a couple of examples. Ephesians chapter 3, 4. Ephesians chapter 3 4 says, when you read this or when you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. So it was once a mystery, but now the Spirit of God, through the prophets and the apostles, has revealed what was once hidden. Romans 165. Another example of this word says, the mystery was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed through the prophetic world writings, it's been made known to all the natureations, according to the command of the eternal God. It was hidden, it was kept secret, but now it's been disclosed. We're talking about the Word of God, the message of Jesus, the message of Godly wisdom, that God said, it was once hidden, but now the Spirit of God has made it known And this is the God who existed, who has decreed this, before the ages., from all time. It's not a passing fad, it's not a temporary philosophy of human origin. God's word is eternal and unchanging. Isn't that good to know? In our culture today, we' everything is changing so fast and things come and go so often that there is something we can invest our life in that's eternal Isaiah 40 verse 8 says, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. It's the time of year the flowers are dying, the leaves are going to start falling. Thankfully, the grass is going to go dormant and turn yellow and I have to cut it anymore. in life, that's what happens. Things fade, Things die, but the word of God endures forever. It never passes away. Jesus said in Matthew 24, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. The writer of Hebrews in chapter 13, said, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. It never changes. Aren't you glad we have something in our life that we can stake our life on, this is not going to change? The other day, I just want to sit down and watch TV. It's a long day. I grabbed the snack, I went in, turned on the smart TV and I get the screen. You got to update your TV. I don't want to update my TV. I just want to watch TV. I'm I'm 53 years old, and I have gotten like cranky old man status now with technology. I get my phone out, I click on an app. I, you got to update that. I'm going to wait for the little thing to spin around and turn back until I can do. I'm tired of things in my life that they say, we're going to make it better for you. It was broken, but now we fixed it. It was pretty good, but now we've made it better. It worked for a while, but now it's out of date. The Word of God is going to be the one thing in your life. No one has to fix or upgrade or update or improve on. We can invest our lives in the Word of God. It's the one thing At a professor in seminary, said, there's two things that you can invest your life in, the souls of people in the Word of God. Those are the only two things that will never fade away. Those are the two eternal things in life, the souls of people and the Word of God. It's eternal. Time spent in God's word is time well spent You get up in the morning, everything I grab my phone start clicking on apps. Everything I look at, except the Bible app, is going to be old news. I want to see what the weather's going to be, that's going to change. I want to see what the stock market's doing, and that's going to change. I'm going to see what the headlines and news are. Those are going to change. Everything you click on is going to change except that Bible app. That's the one thing you can count on is the eternal Word of God. God has, from the dawn of time revealed his secret eternal wisdom to us. Second, Godly wisdom is beyond human comprehension. Apart from the spiritirit of God moving, which God's going to be 0.3. So let's camp here in 0.2 for a second. Godly wisdom is beyond human comprehension. Look at verse. None of the rulers of this age understood this. For if they had, they would not have crucified the the Lord of glory. Their eyes were blinded to spiritual truth, the spiritual truth of God's wisdom. They didn't realize when God was in their midst. Their ignorance of truth led them to crucify the Lord of glory. And let's not pick on leaders, spiritual, religious, political leaders from 2,000 years ago. We'd nail them to the cross just as fast today as they did then. when we're blinded to the truth. When we're blind to the truth, we don't see what God's doing in our midst. Verse 9, as it is written, what no eye has seen, no ear heard, nor the heart of man, imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him. Now, you may have heard that verse before. When I read that verse, I remember that verse as being a verse that I sometimes hear it fear funerals People talk when someone dies, that there's something in our future, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, the heart of man has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. We use it to say, there's a future, eternity that we can't even imagine. Our eyes can't even imagine. ears can't imagine. hearts can't imagine. That's true but I don't think that's what this verse is saying right here. I think you can apply that verse that way, because as a principlele here, I think you could draw comfort from this in that situation. But the original intent here in this context was he's saying those things in the past and those things today that are our eyes can't understand, our ears can't understand, our hearts can understand, the Spirit of God can reveal those things to us. We are unable to see to understand a fluency of the ways of God on our own God's truth is noticed it says, you can your eye can't see it, and your ear can't hear it. God's truth is not discoverable by our objectiveive, empirical forms of gathering evidence. nor can your heart conceive of it. You can't even think it up in your mind, and so you can't see it hear or even imagine it No human perceptception, no human reason, can perceive the wisdom of God that only God can reveal to us. The Spirit of God has to help us understand the things of God that we cannot understand by our own natural meaning. Here's the good news is verse 10. Keep going, verse 10. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, though the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. Now, the original language, this is word in such way that you would put emphasis on the words to us. You might just in your body, you could just underline them, make them bold. You'd read it this way. If these things God has revealed, to us It's emphatic. We're the ones that get, not the age. The wisdom of this age is foolishness and confusion and darkness, but to us, those who are following Jesus, who have the mind of Christ, we'll talk about in a minute, the truth has been disclosed He says, the Spirit of God searches the depths of God. He knows the heart of God. Look at verse 11. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him. So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God, except the spirit of God. What does that mean? What's he doing? Well, I think verse 10 is his point's making. Verse 11 is his sermon illustration He's trying to say, we can't know the heart of God, the mind of God, unless God reveals his heart and his mind to us. And then he says verse 11, let me give you an example. And he says, you can't know what's in the heart of a person. Have you ever wished you could understand what someone else was thinking? People are nodding. Some spouses are nodding. Yes. You don't know what's in your husband's head. You can't possibly understand what he's thinking sometimes. husbands, I wish I could understand my wife. For all these years, I still don't quite get it. Parents, you're trying to figure out your teenage kid and what just happened to them and teenagers, you can't understand what your parents are why they don't you ever done something? And you had the right motive, but people didn't see that right motive, and you said, "If only they knew what was in my heart. only the in my heart, this would be different looking at my actions, but they're not really knowing my heart." He's saying, "That's true of God You can't know the mind of God, the heart of God, unless the Spirit of God reveals the heart of God to the heart of people. And that's what happens here. This godly wisdom was beyond comprehension until the spiritirit of God reveals it. We think about the word theologian. And I say, do we have any theologians here? You might go right to Dr. Umstead, Pastor Rustin. He has a PhD, he has a book that's been published, he teaches theology of the seminary, and you say he the theologian at North. No, the theologians are every single person sitting right here. What's theology? Theology is the study of God In fact, everybody's a theologian. If you've ever had a friend say, I think God, they're doing theology. They're trying to come up in their mind with what God thinks or what God is like, what the will of God. You watch football today. They're going to be armchair quarterbacks and armchair coaches all in across the country today The think if they were the coach, this is what they would do. If they were the quarterback, what they would do. I'm going to tell you, we're just a roomful of armchair theologians. The culture is full of armchair theologians trying to figure out what God must be doing. And if I were God, I'd have done it this way. And if I were God, I'd have done it that way. We can't know the heart of God. It's beyond our compomrehension to fully understand the heart of God None of us can comprehend, understand, unless God takes the initiative to disclose it to us, which brings us to our third point. Look at verse 12. Here we're going to see that the wisdom of God is revealed to us by the Spirit of God. The wisdom of God is revealed to us by the Spirit of God. Verse 12. Now, we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God. So the rulers of this age, the teachers of this age, they taught a wisdom of this age that didn't connect to the heart and mind of God, because they couldn't, on their own efforts as armchair philosophers figure out the mind and heart of God. But now the Spirit of God has taken the heart of God and disclosed it to us, and now we've see in verse 12, that he has freely given us the things that we might understand the Word of God. We return to this contrast between worldly wisdom and and the truth of God. The spirit of the world is human capacity we have for knowledge and reasoning that's going to fall short What we need is the spirit of God to show us the truth of God. Here's how he does it, verse 13. Keep going verse 133. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. We didn't come to give you some man made up philosophy. We brought you what the Spirit of God revealed to us. We imparted to you things taught by the Spirit of God. That was our goal. You know, I was sorry last week about the opening of the last week, how the first time I preached was a terribly uncomfortable experience for me that never went away. It's still been uncomfortable for 30 years of trying to do this. But I remember then what bothered me the most when I first preached in high school at the first time. It was 12 minutes long, and I got up and I just it was was on faith and I just read a bunch of Bible verses about faith and kind of talked about those Bible verses and then read the lyrics to a Michael C song. I knew who that is, and I prayed and sat down 12 minutes later and said, I'll never do that again. One of the reasons I wouldn't do that again is because I thought I couldn't come up with anything clever or creative to say, so I just got up and read a bunch of Bible verses. Now, what I discovered over time as I understandoodood this concept more fully is what at high school Matt thought was a terrible weakness Now, I think, is a strength when we get up to teach or preach the word of God, is that we know we don't have anything to say, that we can't come with being creative or clever to say. And we just say the stuff that's on the page. That's what Paul's saying. I didn't come to you with a bunch of clever ideas. I just shared with you what God has revealed to me. And that's what we do when we share the good news with people. We share the gospel with people. When we teach the word of God in any setting you might find yourself, when you counsel people from the word of God, all we're doing is saying, this is what the word of God is saying. This is what the Spirit of God. Let's not try to figure out and guess and imagine what God might be thinking or feeling or doing. Let's look at what God is revealing and stake our faith and hope on that. The Spirit of God communicates the wisdom of God to us. Now, how does he do that? A couple of ways, there's a whole we could go a whole series of stuff on this. and we'll touch on these things deeper in other times. But let me say very simply, there's two things, two of the things the Spirit of God does I want to talk about today, is he is theologians or scholars have put them into the words revelation and illumination. Revelation and illumination. What do those words mean? Revelation is a word we use today in theological terms, to talk about the process by which God discloses His truth to us through the writers of scripture. Revelation is when God gave Paul the words for 1 Corinthians and God gave Isaiah the words in the book of Isaiah, and God gave Peter the words in 1 Peter. God is revealing his truth to the writers of scripture so that we might have it before us. passages like this, I'm put things on the screen. Galatians 1, 11 says this, for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. The revelation of the Word of God to the biblical writers to give us what we have in front of us today. Second Peter says this. 2 Peter 120, no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, which leads us to 2 Corinthians 3:1, that says that all scripture then, is breathed out by God. And so this isn't just the opinions of people, the ideas of people, the philosophies of people. It's the revealed word of God given to us through the writers of the book Bible, by the Holy Spirit of God as he moved in their hearts as they wrote. That's the revelation of God. But this Holy Spirit does another thing. The Holy Spirit also reveals to us the Word of God through illumination. What is illumination?? Illumination is the process by which the Holy Spirit helps us understand and apply the Word of God as we read it. So the Spirit revealed the Word of God to Paul and gives us 1 Corinthians. As we prayerfully read 1 Corinthians, the Holy Spirit in us gives us illumination to understand it and apply it to our lives and our situations. We have the Spirit of God in us. John 14, Jesus said, I ask the Father to give you another helper to be with you forever. So when I leave, the Holy Spirit is going to come to help you. Romans 89 says, the Spirit of God dwells in us. 1 Coth 6, 19 says, "Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. If you're a follower of Jesus, you have in you the Spirit of God. Ephesians 117 says, God gives us the Spirit of wisdom so that our hearts will be enlightened. We're no longer blind. We're no longer deaf to the truth of God because of the work of his Holy Spirit. How does this work? I saw a video this week. It was about 11 minutes long. It was kids getting cochar implants. If you've ever seen these, it's a device that can put in where a kid who was deaf could not hear up until that point, could suddenly hear through this device. And it was heartwarming to see these kids hear for the first time. They would cry, they would hear their mom's voice for the first time, they would cry. They would hear a dog bark, and they would hear birds sing for the first time in their life, they could hear what up to this point they were not able to hear. That's what the Holy Spirit does. We were not able to hear from God until the Holy Spirit says, I'm going to reveal the heart of God to you. And now we can hear from God. And now we can see more clearly, the spirit of God helps us see more clear. Remember, my son Mason got glasses late in elementary school, and I felt like a terrible parent, because he put his glasses on. We were walking outside. He goes, "Dad, this is so weird.." I said, what? He goes, "Everything looks so different." I said, "What do you mean, son? He goes, "It's like, it's like focused." And I was like, "Yeah." He goes, "No, seriously, Dad. I' like, look at that tree. There's leaves on it." I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "It was just a green blob." And I said, "Oh, I'm a terrible father. My son's walking in all these years, looking at green blobs. And I was like, "Look what I can see. That's what the spirit does." The spirit said, you say this was such a blur, and then the spirit of God opens our heart. The spirit of God opens our eyes, illuminates our eyes to see the truth of God's word that's revealed by the Spirit of God. And now we're no longer natural people. We're spiritual people if we put our faith in Jesus Christ, which is our fourth point. that the wisdom of God was rejected by the natural person, but welcomed by those who have the mind of Christ. When we put our faith in Jesus, our hearts are open to see, I am a sinner. I am without hope, apart from God intervening in my life. My only hope is that God would rescue me, and we realize that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. He rose from the dead It's that name that calls us out of our grave that we sing about. We turn from our life of sin to follow Jesus. Our eyes are now open. The Spirit now and dwells us, and the end of this past it says now, now we have the mind of Christ And because we have the mind of Christ, we now welcome the Word of God, which we once rejected. Nose verse:1 14. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for their folly to him, and he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. He couldn't naturally see it. It was foolish. Earlier in the chapter before this went in in verse 18, it says, the wordord of the cross is folly. The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But now we have the mind of Christ. verse 15, says the spiritual person judges all things but is himself to be judged by no one, for who is understand the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. What's you one can judge him? No one can judge him or her by worldly philosophies, because now we have the mind of Christ, and our eyes are fixed on the word of God, and the authority of God's word, and we're not judged by the standard of whatever worldly philosophy our idea comes along. We're judged by the word of God that was revealed to us by the Spirit of God The Spirit of God has allowed us to know the thoughts of the Lord, our eyes have been opened our hearts of have been open. What was once confusing, we can now understand what was once foolish, we now embrace. Our eyes have been open. You know, everyone in the whole planet can fall into one to two groups, natural or spiritual. Let me tell you the difference. This is important believers that we get this. We understand this. The only difference between the natural person who doesn't have Jesus and the spiritual person who has Jesus is the spirit of God opened our hearts to believe something that we were blind and deaf to. That should humble us and that should give us incredible grace to people. We view the world differently than some of our friends, and we might might think, because somehow we're smarter than them. Nope, we'd have been following the same foolish stuff if the Spirit of God didn't reveal the word of God does. And you may think, well, I'm living a better life than them. Nope, you're living the life that God has set before you because you how to now have the mind of Christ. The reason why they don't live the way you live is they don't have the mind of Christ. And so we realize this humbling, awe inspiring thing, that the Spirit of God has opened our heart and opened our eyes and opened our ears. And now we want to see how to think more deeply about the Word of God and the wisdom of God, and she caused us to see that the greatest need of the people around us is their need for Jesus, to change their heart, to change their life. So what do we do? with this? Let me give you four ways we can apply this. Number one, I want to challenge us to not take the revealed wisdom of God for granted. Do not take for granted what God has done here, and be so grateful that God has revealed his truth to us, what you hold in your hand. Here's what happened. Like the creator of the universe made made you and then said, I want you to know my heart. And he sent the Spirit of God to reveal the heart of God to you. And you hold that in your hands right now. You have that in your homes, you have that on your phone, you have that on your bookshelf. And how often do you neglect the Word of God, the creator of the universe is speaking to us.. Let us not take that for granted. Let us not neglect. Time in the Word of God is the best time we could spend, because it's a message from the creator of the universe to us. Get into the, you don't understand it, get with people that can read it with you. If you're new to it, let's talk about that, but don't neglect this word of God that he's put before him.. Second, Seek to be led by God's wisdom by being in his word and listening to His Spirit. I seek to be led by His wisdom in your life. How do we do that? It's when we read His Word and we listen to his Spirit. How do we do that? It be the very practical thing. We prayerfully read the Word of God regularly. Prayerfully in the Word of God. God, I believe this is a message from you to me. I'm going to read it. Holy Spirit, would you help me? Understand what you have revealed, and help me to see how what you've revealed applies to my life. The primary way God speaks is through His Word. And we say the Spirit of God reveals it. The first thing the Spirit of God did was give us the word of God. Second to that, the Spirit of God helps us as we read the Word of God. So if you ever say, I want to hear from God, read the Bible. And you say, what I mean is I want to hear from God out loud Read the Bible out loud. And you say, no, I want to hear like in a loud, like booming voice. Come up to the church, and we'll give you a microphone, and you can read the Bible into a microphone, and you'll hear the Word of God in a loud booming voice. Read the Word of God. Now, here's the good news, as you're reading the Word of God, the Spirit of God does help us And so we're prayerfully reading it sensitive to what the Holy Spirit is telling us as we read the Word of God. I's the to do demonstrate this, and all illustrations kind of fall short at the end. But the best thing I can think of this week was it's like those stripes on the highway, those lines that are there so we can see where the road is going And then they came along a few years ago and said, let's put these rumble strips in those, so you don't only see them, but you feel them. And so when you're driving down the road, you're trying to stay inside of the lines, but if you drift, you feel it. I think that's what the Holy Spirit does in our life. The Word of God shows us where to go, and when we drift, the Holy Spirit stirs in our heart to say, you're not on the right path This brings that conviction. And so we're going to see the word We' going to see the revelation of the Holy Spirit, we're going to feel the illumination of the Holy Spirit as we're in the Word of God. Let me give you a caution, though. If your feelings and this book contradict one another, this book wins Because I don't know how many times the ministry, it's been frustrating. Someone says,Yeah, Pastor, I know what the Bible says, but I've prayed about it, and I have a piece about it. If you have a piece about something that's contrary to this book, that piece is not coming from the Holy Spirit, but from someone else. And if you say, yeah, but my friends are telling me this, I get that with all due respect, your friends are wrong. If your feelings or your friends are giving you guidance contrary to this book, it's not from the spirit of God. And so we want to feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our life. We want to feel the believing in the Spirit. We want to feel the conviction of the Spirit, but the Spirit speaks to us primarily through His Word, and then brings to it the illumination that we need. Let me just tell you this. I know when you say when you hear from God, what we really saying is, I want to know, should I take this job or that job? Should I marry this person or not marry this person? Those specific answers that we want are sometimes hard, but I will say this. I think they come easier and clearer when you're in the habit of communing with God daily If you're in the habit of daily, prayerfully reading the Word of God, those specific answers you're looking for come a whole lot easier than you just going about your life, your way, and then one day wanting God to give you one answer to one question. And so we walk in a spirit of regular communing with God, being led by his spirit, by prayerfully being in his work, reading what he says sensing what he's telling us, knowing that it's the Word of God that trumps everything else that's going to come our way. Third, we pray for the lost people in our lives, that their eyes would be open to the truth of the gospel. Let me tell you what your friends need. They don't need it another debate. They don't need another argument, and they don't need another Facebook post. They need Jesus. And the reason they believe what they believe is because their eyes are blinded to truth. The reason they do the things they do is because they're a natural person, not a spiritual person The reason why they think differently than you think is because you have the mind of Christ and they don't have the mind of Christ. They need Jesus. You need Jesus if you've never put your faith in him. We don't have the Spirit of God because we're smarter or more spiritual with the Spirit of God, because the Spirit of God opened our hearts and our minds, and we put our faith in Jesus. And now we have the indwelling presence of His Spirit in our life. Trust God to open the hearts of the people in your life. Pray that God would open the hearts of the people in your life. Pray daily specifically, by name, for people whose eyes are blind and ears are deaf, that the spirit of God would reveal himself to them. And then finally, let me ask you a question. Is the Spirit of God drawing you to Jesus today? I wonder if there might be some here that God is doing something in your life right now. And maybe it's a little confusing to you, maybe it's surprising to you? I talked to a couple recently They told me their story. They went to church a little bit off and on as a kid. The husband said, I don't know if I've been back to church much since I was 12. The wife said, I made it a few times mostly Easter, and said, one day we were driving by the church and just felt like God told us to come here. And we got up next Sunday and we came here. And we had a lot of questions and we had a lot of doubts but God just began to show us His truth and God began to open our hearts and God began to cause us to believe something that I used to always say, thisis can't be true because of this. And now I see that I still don't have the answer to that question, some of my questions, but I see what God is doing here what's happening in their life. God is open their heart to Jesus. And they'd say, now, we're trusting Jesus. We're following Jesus. And that may resonate with you. Something's happening in your life right now, and you're saying, I don't know, God's just open my eyes to see things I hadn't seen before. He's open to my ears to hear things I didn't want to listen to before. He's opened my heart to feel things I didn't feel before. Let me tell you to lean into that today. Your next step may be real simple. You take that connect card out, and there's a box that say I want to talk to him a pastor, you check that box. And one of our ministry of staff will reach out to you, and we'll sit down and we'll talk about what God is doing in your life, and we'll look at the scriptures together. We'll talk about the messes that God might have for you Maybe it's just grabbing one of our staff members today, or one of the people you know here who are follower of Jesus diving in more. Maybe today's the day for you to give your life to Jesus. God has opened your heart to see, I am on the wrong path. I am not following God. I'm living a life of sin, and I know now, God just is speaking to me so clear that my hope is Jesus. There's no other name, that can turn my life around, but the name of Jesus. And maybe today is your moment. The scripture says, today, today, if you're feeling if you're hearing his voice today, don't harden your heart. Today turn to him Jesus, I want to turn from my life to sin to follow you. How do I do that? You just pray with me right now, just simple. We just all pray together. Right where you're sitting. It can be a prayer. You say in your way, your words to God, but just, it's a prayer you pray to God. that says, Jesus, I know that I'm on the wrong path. I know that I've lived a life of sin, and I know know my only hope is to turn to you. There's a simple prayer. Jesus, I'm turning from the way I'm living. I'm going to put my faith in you, Jesus. I'm trusting you, Jesus. I'm going to follow you, Jesus. That simple prayer is your cry to God to repent from your sin and to turn to Jesus for salvation. Pray that today. If you've prayed that before, your f Jesus, maybe your prayer is, God, thank you for revealing yourself to me. God, forgive me for neglecting this message that you've put in my lap. Maybe your prayer is Holy Spirit, help me to understand the things I'm trying to understand. I believe in you, Holy Spirit that you can illuminate my mind to understand and apply the word of God to my life. Maybe you're thinking of that friend who's blind, whose heart is hard, whose ears are deaf. Pray for them by name today, God, open their eyes, Spirit, reveal yourself. No argument, no philosophy, no debate, can penetrate their heart only the Spirit of God. God, thank you, that you not only created us and loved us, but you took the initiative to reveal yourself to us, thank you, that we don't have to walk in darkness that what was once a mystery has been revealed. Thank you, Holy Spirit. For giving us the word of God. Thank you for your indwelling presence that helps us to understand the Word of God. Forgive us when we take it for granted. Compel us us to invest our lives in this one thing that never changes. Open the eyes of those around us, our friends, our family, our neighbors who are blind, open their hearts to see the truth of your word. And then I pray for anyone here who's never put their faith in Jesus. You drew them here, you're drawing them even now. Today, Lord, open their hearts, that they might put their faith in Jesus, and trust in Him for salvation, and pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.