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. . . . . . . . . . . . Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to our services here at Faith for Word Baptist Church. Very nice to see you all here on this Sunday evening. Find your seats, please, and take your psalm books. We'll begin with hymn number 30 tonight. Hymn number 30. Hymn number 30. Nothing but the blood. Hymn number 30. Once you find your place, we'll sing it out together right on that first hymn number 30. Blood can wash away my sin. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Hymn number 30. Blood can wash away my sin. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Hymn number 30. Hymn number 30. Sing it out nice and strong on that first hymn number 30. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that is the flow that nothing but the blood of Jesus, for my part in this I see, nothing but the blood of Jesus, for my cleansing this I plead, nothing but the blood of Jesus, home precious is the flow that makes me white as snow, no other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus, nothing can force it at all, nothing but the blood of Jesus, not of good that I have done, nothing but the blood of Jesus, home precious is the flow that makes me white as snow, no other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus, this is all my hope and peace, nothing but the blood of Jesus, this is all my righteousness, nothing but the blood of Jesus, home precious is the flow that makes me white as snow, no other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. And for all your wonderful blessings, please let your spirit be upon us as we sing praises and yearly preaching of your word, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, hymn number 75, number 75 on Jordan's stormy bankside sand, hymn number 75. Let's sing it out on that first verse again, hymn number 75. Let's sing it out on that verse, 75. On Jordan's stormy bankside sand and cast a wishful eye, to me it's there and happy land where my possessions lie, I bow forth from this land, I bow forth from this land, oh who will come and go with me, I bow forth from this land, all o'er those wide extended plains shines one eternal day, there God the Son forever reigns and scatters right away, I bow forth from this land, I bow forth from this land, oh who will come and go with me, I bow forth from this land, no chilling winds nor poisonous breath can reach that helpful shore, sickness and sorrow, pain and death are felt and here no more, I bow forth from this land, I bow forth from this land, oh who will come and go with me, I bow forth from this land, when shall I reach that happy place and be forever blessed, when shall I see my Father's face and in his bloods of rest, I bow forth from this land, I bow forth from this land, oh who will come and go with me, I bow forth from this land. Alright, this time we'll go through our announcements together, if you don't have a bullet then slip up your hand nice and high, we'll get to you with one. On the inside we have our service time, Sunday mornings at 1030 is our preaching service, Sunday nights at 6, Wednesday nights at 7 is our Bible study, this week will be in Deuteronomy chapter number 32, we've got the soul winning times listed there below, as well as salvations and baptisms. Cross the page, congratulations to the Recker family on the birth of baby Sophia, be sure to congratulate them and speak to Mrs. Wright or Mrs. Ventura if you'd like to help out with a meal, keep praying for the expectant ladies in our church that they'll have a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery, we've got some soul winning coming up in Eloi on Saturday, February 24th, see brother Alexander Larson for details, preaching class on Tuesday nights at 7 for all soul winning men who are interested, no spectators allowed, but if you want to come participate, prepare a short sermon and talk to brother Segora for more details. On the back, small town soul winning, we've got a bunch of trips coming up, these are free, the food, the transportation, the lodging is all provided, even if you're a silent partner and you just want to learn how to go soul winning, you can just show up and tag along and be paired up with a talker, and so these are available, there's a sign up and details to my right here, there's also a big soul winning thing going on in Tucson on March 2nd if you want to go down there and participate, reach out to brother Corbin Russell if you're planning on going, of course you can always show up, but it's nice to sometimes reach out just so that he has a little bit of an idea of what to expect, and then that's about it for announcements, let's go ahead and count up the soul winning from the past few days, so going back to Thursday the 15th, anything from Thursday? Okay, alright, got it, got it, okay, okay, and then anything else from Thursday, what about Friday? Anything from Friday? Okay, okay, is that a 5? Okay, alright, that's from Friday, okay, gotcha, okay, anything else, how about Saturday? Okay, got it, okay, got it, got it, okay, alright, okay, and then, oh okay, gotcha, so we don't want to double count that, perfect, okay, and then let's see, today, going to Scott first, 4 for the main group with brother Scott, got another one over here, got it, got it, got it, got it, okay, alright, and then North Phoenix, okay, got it, okay, and alright, very good, keep up the great work on soul winning, let's go ahead and sing our next song, come lead us. Alright, you should find the insert in front of your hymnal, it's still sweeter every day, if you don't have an insert, please raise your hand, you'll receive one, we'll sing it on that first verse together, to Jesus every day I find my heart is closer drawn, sing it out, to Jesus every day I find my heart is closer drawn, he's fairer than the glory of the golden purple dawn, he's all but dancing pictures in his fairer streams and more, each day he grows so sweeter than he was the day before, the half and half he can't see, beside the golden shore, oh, there he is, so sweeter than he ever was before, his glory growed more fondly when I saw him from afar, he's fairer and a little bit brighter than the morning star, he fills and satisfies my longing spirit o'er and o'er, each day he grows so sweeter than he was the day before, the half and half he can't see, beside the golden shore, oh, there he is, so sweeter than he ever was before, my heart is sometimes heavy but he comes so secretly, he holds me to his love so when I drift and flight and dream, I love the price to all my burdens and his body more, each day he grows so sweeter than he was the day before, the half and half he can't see, beside the golden shore, oh, there he is, so sweeter than he ever was before. Let's go on your handles now to hymn 233, number 233. Tell me the old, old story, hymn number 233. 233, tell me the old, old story of unseen things above, hymn number 233, sing it out. Tell me the old, old story of unseen things above, of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love. Tell me the story simply as to a little child, for I am weak and weary and helpless and defiled. Tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Tell me the story slowly that I may take within, that wonderful redemption, God's remedy for sin. Tell me the story of him, for I forget so soon, the early dew of morning has passed away at noon. Tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Tell me the story softly with earnest tones and ring. Remember I, the sinner, whom Jesus came to save. Tell me the story always, if you would really be, in any time of trouble, a comforter to keep. Tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Tell me the same old story when you have lost your fear, that this world's empty glory is far seeking to hear. Yes, and that world's glory is dawning on my soul. Tell me the old, old story, Christ Jesus makes me whole. Tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story, tell me the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Alright, this time we'll pass our offering plates around. As the plates go around, let's turn our Bibles to Proverbs chapter 8. As we always do, we'll read the entire chapter, beginning in verse 1. Follow along silently with Brother Dan as he reads Proverbs 8, beginning in verse 1. In Proverbs 8 the Bible reads, Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand wisdom, and ye fools, be of an understanding heart. Here, for I will speak of excellent things, and the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness. There is nothing froward or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge. Receive my instruction, and not silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Pride and arrogance in the evil way and the froward mouth do I hate. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom. I am understanding. I have strength. By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me. Riches in honor are with me, yea durable riches, and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, yea than fine gold, and my revenue than choice silver. I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment. That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance, and I will fill their treasures. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, wherever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there. When he set a compass upon the face of the depth. When he established the clouds above. When he strengthened the fountains of the deep. When he gave to the sea his decree that the waters should not pass his commandment. When he appointed the foundations of the earth. Then I was by him. As one brought up with him. And I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth. And my delights were with the sons of men. Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children. For blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me, findeth life, and shall obtain favor of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death. Father in Heaven, we thank you for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We thank you for your King James Bible so that we can all be of one mind and one accord, Lord. We thank you for Pastor Anderson. Please bless him, fill him with your Holy Spirit, and bless all aspects of his sermon. And let it edify us all. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Men, Proverbs chapter number eight is one of the most interesting chapters in the book of Proverbs. Of course, being about wisdom, it fits in with the whole rest of the book, but what makes this chapter particularly interesting is the latter part of the chapter, a lot of which ties in with John chapter one about Jesus Christ being in the beginning with God, and he was God. And then you have this personification of wisdom, and a lot of it sounds very similar as it talks about wisdom being in the beginning with God and so forth. So there's really a tie in with the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, that shouldn't surprise us because the Old Testament is constantly pointing us toward Jesus Christ and to him give all the prophets witness that through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. And so it's a really interesting chapter for that reason. And also the modern versions really butcher this chapter, and I'm going to show you some really bad translations that they have later in the chapter that end up ruining this passage, one of the million reasons why we're King James only and are not members of the Bible of the Month Club, and we're not constantly changing our Bible. Or even if you stick with one version nowadays, the versions will keep changing, right? Hey, we stick with the tried and the true, the King James Bible, and that's what we believe, and we make no apology about rejecting all of these new modern bastardizations of God's word. So it starts out in verse number one here of Proverbs chapter eight. Does not wisdom cry and understanding put forth her voice? So in this chapter, wisdom is personified. Now, why is wisdom personified as female? Well, first of all, the biggest reason for this is just grammatical because of the fact that in virtually every language, wisdom is a feminine word. OK, now we don't really understand this in English because in English words are neither feminine nor masculine. They're just words, right? Only people or animals could be feminine or masculine. But in virtually every other language, right? Whether we're talking about German, French, Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, I mean, you go down the list. Words are either feminine or masculine. OK, and we're talking about just inanimate objects like just a cup, a chair, you know, and it doesn't always have anything to do with whether it's a masculine or feminine object. You know, for example, in Spanish, the word for a dress that a woman wear is called el vestido. So it's a masculine word. It's not a masculine object. So we need to understand there's a difference between grammatical gender and actual gender, biological gender or otherwise, right? We're just talking about grammar. So it makes sense that wisdom will be portrayed as female because of the fact that in virtually every language, this is a feminine word, who here speaks a language other than English fluently? Put up your hand if you speak that language fluently. Keep your hand up if it's a language that has gender in words. OK, now keep your hand up if wisdom is feminine in that language. OK, now, is there anybody here who speaks a gendered language where wisdom is not feminine? Does anybody have an example of that? No, I mean, because in German it's die Weisheit, right? La sapiencia, you know, we could go down the list of all these different languages in Greek, e sophia, go down the list. It's feminine. So this is why wisdom is personified as female. It's probably the biggest reason is just that it's just a grammatically feminine word. And this has caused some people to shy away from associating this passage with the Lord Jesus Christ because of the gender issue. But again, the Bible says of Jesus Christ that as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so Jesus openeth not his mouth. So Jesus was like a sheep before her shearers. So he's pictured by a female sheep in that verse in Isaiah chapter 53. And so obviously no Old Testament type or picture of Jesus Christ is going to be perfect because the people in the Old Testament who represent Jesus Christ, they're not perfect people. But yet Jesus is perfect. So we would still talk about David picturing Christ. We would talk about Solomon picturing Christ, even though these are people that have issues and negative things about them. No typology of Christ in the Old Testament is going to work perfectly. You know, the Ark pictures salvation. Jesus is the door, right? But you can't just go crazy with these illustrations and get too carried away because obviously illustrations are there to just point us to something and they're not the very exact essence of the thing. And here's another person who is female who does picture Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, Jephthah's daughter. You know, and so you could say Jephthah's daughter is a picture of Christ. But she's female. Well, again, no picture of Christ is ever going to be perfect. But I think you're missing out on some great things in this passage if you get too hung up on the gender here, understanding that wisdom here is prefiguring or picturing the Lord Jesus Christ and that there is a tie in between this passage and John chapter one. So what is wisdom, though? Like what does that word even mean, wisdom? Sometimes the words that we use the most, we don't always stop and think about what they really mean. Wisdom is knowing what is true and what is right and also not just knowing what is true and what is right but actually knowing how to put that information into practice or into execution, right? That's the best way that I could describe wisdom. And as we read this passage, the passage itself kind of helps us to find what wisdom is. Okay, so let's go through it right now. It says in verse number one, Does not wisdom cry and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way, in the places of the pads. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men. O ye simple, understand wisdom, and ye fools, be of an understanding heart. Now right away we can already see that the word wisdom is very closely connected with the word understanding. I mean we've already had, you know, three versions of that word just in these last couple of verses alone. We've already heard understand, understanding, understanding, right? And these three words wisdom, knowledge, and understanding are closely related to one another in the Book of Proverbs. Another reason why wisdom is personified as being female, not just because of the grammatical gender of the word wisdom in virtually every language including Hebrew, but also because of the fact that the idea here is that this woman is calling out to young men and inviting them to have a relationship with her, right? Because on the one hand you have the strange woman, the whorish woman, who's inviting them to live a life of stupidity and folly and ruin. And then on the other hand you have this other godly woman who is inviting them to have a right relationship with her and enjoy a life that is characterized by wisdom and understanding, knowledge, godliness, righteousness, clean living, etc. So this kind of represents two choices, two different ways that a young man can go. So the Bible says in verse 6, Here, for I will speak of excellent things and the opening of my lips shall be right things. Right? So wisdom is knowing what is right, what is true, what is acceptable, what is appropriate, what is the right thing to do in any given situation, and how to navigate through whatever life throws at us. That's what wisdom is. The Bible says in verse 7, For my mouth shall speak truth, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness. There is nothing froward or perverse in them. Nothing that wisdom says is crooked or twisted, right? That's what perverse means. Froward, meaning just kind of one of these people that's froward is one who just always argues about everything, right? They just always are just contrary and just always veering off from right teaching or right sound doctrine. They're froward. You know, you think about someone going to and fro. It's like a wayward, okay? And so it says here in verse 9, They're all plain to him that understandeth and right to them that find knowledge. So all the words of wisdom, the Bible says, are plain to him that understandeth and right to them that find knowledge. Meaning that once a person actually has wisdom and knows the truth about things, then the truth really seems obvious, right? And how many times have we in our lives not understood something and then someone explained it to us and then it was like, What in the world? It was there all along. How did I not see that? Because once you understand it, it's easy. Everything's easy after you learn it, okay? Like for us as adults, we look down at the pages of scripture and we look at the words on the page and it's pretty easy for us to read. We don't have to sound out the words on the page, right? We don't have to sit there and say, That's not how we read, right? It's just easy. It's just there's nothing to it. It's just wisdom. You just look at it and just at a glance, you just know, right? Because once you understand things, they're easy. But there was a time when we did struggle and work and we had to memorize the alphabet and try to sound these things out. And it took us months or years to really figure out how to read and get good at reading. And so what the Bible is saying is that these truths that wisdom teaches, once you get it, they're that easy. They're that obvious. Like you just look at it and it's like, well, duh. Yeah, of course. We take it for granted because we do understand. They're all plain or simple or clear to him that understandeth, verse 9, and write to them that find knowledge, right? So once you see it, it's obvious. And this is why wisdom is sometimes referred to as common sense. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that everybody has it because it's common sense. Really, what it means is that once you understand it, it seems so obvious you kind of feel like it's common sense. Even if the people around you don't really feel that way because they don't get it. And unfortunately, most people in our world just don't get it about a lot of things. And this is because the Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And so if a person does not have any fear of God, they don't have the Lord as their savior, well, then it's going to be pretty hard for them to get to second base when they haven't even made it to first base. And so even though we would think of these things as common sense, today, a lot of things that are common sense are being questioned. Because there's no foundation of scripture. There's no basis in the Bible. And so therefore, people are questioning, you know, well, why can't I change genders? Or why can't I, you know, live my life as an animal, as a furry, as another species or something? You know, well, what's wrong with me having, you know, these weird relationships and all these, you know, why not mutilate myself and whatever? You would just say, well, duh, it's obvious, but it's not obvious once you throw out God's word, once you don't have the Bible as a foundation, when you don't have the Holy Spirit inside you. You know, no, these things aren't obvious. They're obvious to us because we're Bible-believing Christians and we get it. But to this world, these things are not obvious, unfortunately. And so they're plain to him that understandeth and right to them that find knowledge. Verse 10, receive my instruction. And by the way, that means if somebody says that something in the Bible isn't right, it's just showing a lack of knowledge or lack of wisdom or lack of understanding on their part. Because those of us who have learned and gotten to that point, we look at the Bible and we say everything's right. You know, David said in Psalm 119 that, you know, everything about God's word is right about everything. You know, I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what he says, that it's all right concerning all things. And those of us who get it, we understand that people who sit and pick apart the Bible and say, well, I know that's what the Bible says, but I don't agree with that. They're just showing gaps in their own knowledge, wisdom and understanding because the Bible is right about everything. And the Bible is the basis for wisdom. The Bible is the source of wisdom. God is the ultimate source of wisdom. That's why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The Bible says in verse 10, receive my instruction and not silver and knowledge rather than choice gold. He's saying, look, if you want to spend your life pursuing something, don't let it be money. Pursue wisdom because if you have wisdom, you'll get the money that you need to live your life and succeed and thrive. But people who have money don't necessarily have wisdom. People with wisdom will get the money they need. People with money will not necessarily get the wisdom that they need. And so rather than silver and gold, we should spend our lives seeking to gain instruction, knowledge, wisdom. And we want godly wisdom that comes from the Bible. It says in verse 11, for wisdom is better than rubies and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. I wisdom, because remember wisdom is being personified as a person here. I wisdom dwell with prudence and find out knowledge of witty inventions. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Pride, arrogance, and the evil way and the froward mouth do I hate. But then again today people would say, well that's not right. Right? That's not right. Hate is not a family value. You know, why do you hate anything or anyone? Why do you hate the froward mouth? Why are you so hateful? What are you so mad about? Like why is wisdom all mad? What's she so mad about? Why doesn't she just chill out and just be happy about everything? And just enjoy everything and just tolerate everything? And no, you know, wisdom loves the truth and hates evil. Okay? The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. The fear of the Lord is that if a person fears the Lord they hate evil. People who fear the Lord hate evil. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You're not very smart if you don't hate evil. If you just think, well who cares? I mean, people are committing adultery? Who cares? Murder, abortion, stealing, robberies, doesn't bother me. No, the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. And part of worshiping God, fearing God, serving God is to love what he loves and hate what he hates. We should hate sin. We should hate evil. We should hate the froward mouth that deceives and teaches lies. This is what the Bible says. Say, well that's not right. No, you're not right. The Bible is right. Counsel is mine and sound wisdom. I am understanding. So again, wisdom is often defined as understanding. That's a big part of its definition. I have strength. By me kings reign and princes decree justice. By me princes rule and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. Look, any time any kind of a right decision is being made, any kind of right choice or right speech is being made, right? Wisdom is there, right? That's what wisdom is. And so it says by me kings reign. You know, if a king wants to be successful, they need to rule by wisdom, right? And if they do not use wisdom, they're going to fail at their job. Because anyone in any position of authority or doing any job is going to fail if they don't take heed to what the Bible teaches. Now look, obviously you say, well Pastor Anderson, you know, there are unsaved people out there and they sometimes do right things or succeed. And of course that's true. Because of the fact though that it's possible for an unsaved person to still put something into practice from the Bible without necessarily having gotten it from the Bible or knowing that it's from the Bible. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? You know, the Bible talks about the fact that the law of God is written on the heart of every human being. And so even the Gentiles who know not God do by nature, the Gentiles who know not the law do by nature the things contained in the law. These having not the law are a law unto themselves who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness and their thoughts, the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another. And so obviously we're all created by God, we all have in a sense the law of God in our hearts, we have an innate sense of right and wrong that comes from God. Also many of the cultures that we live in, whether it's the United States or other European countries or countries all over the world, have been influenced by the Bible. And to the degree that they've been influenced by the Bible, to that degree those are wise cultures. And the leadership, if they've been influenced by the Bible or influenced by people who've been influenced by the Bible or just are using common sense derived from the law of God written in their heart, you know, to the degree they match up with Scripture is the degree to which they are wise. And the degree to which they deviate from what Scripture teaches, that is how foolish they are and that is how they will not succeed. We'll succeed by following the Bible, we'll fail by not following the Bible. Wisdom ultimately comes from God, wisdom is documented in the Bible, wisdom comes from God, period. Okay, now obviously, yeah, unsaved people can sometimes put into practice things in the Bible. I mean, think about just American culture in general has been so Christian influenced over the years that even if someone never went to church or never followed the Bible, they would still probably do a lot of the things in the Bible just because of the fact that they're growing up in America, which is, you know, which is a Christian nation. Now that's becoming less and less the case, but historically that has been the case. And so the Bible says in verse 17, I love them that love me and those that seek me early shall find me. Right? So we need to seek God, seek wisdom, seek the truth early. Now there's two ways to understand this and I think they're both valid. Number one is we need to seek wisdom, seek the Lord early in life. Meaning that if you're sitting here under the sound of my voice, I don't care if you're 3 years old, 4 years old, 5 years old, 8 years old, 10 years old, 12, you're never too young to start seeking wisdom. To say, I want to learn, I want to take hold on understanding, I want to grow in knowledge and wisdom and I don't want to live my life like an idiot. I want to succeed and do what's right and live a life that's pleasing to God. You should be thinking about that now, even if you're 6 years old. That should be on your mind right now. You want to seek him or if you seek him, if you seek the Lord early, you'll find him. If you seek wisdom early, you will find her. You've got to seek early. Start young. Because look, there are people who are older and it's like, it's too late for them. It's like, it's like try to teach like algebra to somebody who's like 75 years old and they've never studied it. It's going to be pretty hard for them to accept that at that age. You know, because people kind of get set in a certain way and their mind is set a certain way and they're not always taking in new information. The older people get, the less new information they're ready to accept. You know, and it's not just 75, even people that are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, you know. And it's different for everybody because some people keep learning and they're a lifelong learner and they're better at keeping an open mind and growing and learning and, you know, processing new things. But you know what, if you wait too long and you get set in your ways that are ways of folly, it's going to be harder and harder for you to change as you get older. And so you want to start early seeking wisdom. But then also, you could also take this and apply it to a single day and say that we should seek God early, seek wisdom early in the day. Meaning that we should wake up in the morning and read our Bible and right away start seeking after God first thing in the morning. Just as the children of Israel went and gathered the manna first thing in the morning before the sun was hot, they went out there and gathered the manna which represented God's Word because they ate manna so that they would learn that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. And so we want to, number one, and I think this is the primary meaning, we want to seek Him early in our lives before it gets too late for us to really grasp and understand the principles and truths of wisdom and the truths of God's Word. We want to do it early in life and number two, we want to do it early in the day so that we can set the tone for our whole day and seek wisdom first thing in the morning. The Bible says in verse 18, riches and honor are with me, yea, durable riches and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, yea, then fine gold, and my revenue than choice silver. I lead in the way of righteousness in the midst of the paths of judgment that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance. And I will fill their treasures. So notice in verse 17 she says, I love them that love me. So if you love wisdom, wisdom will love you back. If you seek truth, if you're a lover of truth, if you want to know the truth, you know what the truth wants to be known. And if you seek, you'll find. If you knock, that door will be opened. If you ask, it shall be given unto you. If any of you lack wisdom, let them ask of God. They give it to all men liberally and upbraideth not. And so God will give you wisdom if you ask. He loves those who love him. Wisdom loves those who love her. Those that seek her early will find her. Riches and honor are with me, she says, yea, durable riches and righteousness. So instead of the love of money motivating you, let the love of wisdom motivate you. Let love of the truth motivate you. Go through life seeking truth, loving truth, loving wisdom, and you will get the money in the process. Don't go out chasing after money. The Bible says labor not to be rich. And then what are the next words? Labor not to be rich? Cease from thine own wisdom. Right? Your own understanding that's a wrong understanding that thinks that it's all about going out there and doing what you can to make money. Don't seek money. Rather let money be like a cat unto you where you will ignore it and it will come to you. Right? This is the secret to having a relationship with your cat. If you come on too strong, you're going to spook the cat. Ignore the cat and the cat will come to you. Okay? This should be our relationship with money. Don't obsess over money. Don't think about money. Go hounding money, chasing after money. No, no, no. Just sit back and let money come to you because you are actually seeking wisdom, truth, knowledge, understanding. You know, seek to be good at your job. Seek to learn more about your job and do better and be more excellent at your job and then the payment will take care of itself. You say, well, you don't know my boss. You know, my boss is just, he's never going to pay me what I'm worth. He doesn't appreciate it so I'm not going to do my best because my boss isn't going to compensate me for that anyway. But you know, what about your boss up in heaven? Is he going to compensate you for that? Because the Bible says, knowing that whatsoever thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord whether he be bond or free. He could be a literal slave where you're not even getting a paycheck and God says he will reward hard work. Even if you're in bondage. Okay, God is up in heaven and he'll see Laban ripping you off, not paying you what you deserve and he'll make sure that you end up getting what is coming to you. See, I just believe that in all labor there's profit and that if I go out and work hard, God will take care of me. And look, I had a boss one time that, you know, he did rip me off and he kept, you know, changing the story about how much I was getting paid. And he, you know, said I was going to get these raises if I did this and that and then I did those things and then the raises didn't materialize. And, you know, I just did not like working at that job. I felt like I was getting a bum deal. It wasn't what I signed up for. It wasn't what I expected it to be. But you know what? In the end, God really ended up taking care of me and I ended up making good money with the knowledge that I gained at that job at the next job that I worked. So even though that job never really gave me a fair shake, I took all the knowledge that I learned at that job. And then when I went to a different job down the road, I had the skills that I need. So it all worked together for good. God ended up allowing me to make really good money in that trade even though I spent years working for somebody who didn't really appreciate the effort that I was putting in. So at the end of the day, you put in the effort. God's going to take care of it. It doesn't matter whether it comes from that company or a future company. And, you know, sometimes you do have to just change jobs. You know, we live in America. It's a free country. You're not indentured to your job for life. So if you don't, if you can't respect the company that you work for, if you can't respect your boss enough to give it your best and do your best, you know, then you need to just go somewhere else and find a boss that you can respect. Now, you know, hopefully you can just realize that you're doing your work as unto the Lord and that Jesus is your ultimate boss. But, you know, if you feel like you need to move on, then move on. But don't be half in, half out about your job. Don't be disrespectful to your boss. Don't be disrespectful to the company that you work for. Give it your best. Be a team player. Be a company man. Give it your all. And God's going to reward you. Spend your life seeking after wisdom, truth, knowledge, excellence, being better at your job, knowing more about your job, and then you will be compensated by God even if man doesn't want to, you know, give you what's coming to you. And so you got to have the faith that God's going to take care of you. Don't be thinking that, well, it's all about just getting out there and making the money. You know, it's really about going to work and doing the best job that you can and gaining skills so that you could make money in the long run. You know, I'd much rather have a skill that would be a pipeline for money for the rest of my life than for somebody to just hand me a huge sum of money. Because no matter how big that sum of money is, you're pretty much going to burn through it. Whereas the skill, the pipeline, you know, that's something that is going to help you for the rest of your life. And you know what that skill is? You know what that pipeline is? Wisdom, ultimately, right? Having wisdom is going to help you succeed in all kinds of trades and occupations. You know, if you teach someone how to live, then they will know how to make a living. But a person who makes a living doesn't necessarily always know how to live. And so you want to make sure that you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, that you seek wisdom rather than silver and gold and rubies and things like that. You know, go into your job with the right attitude and you will be rewarded. The book of Proverbs is chock full with promises about that as is Ephesians chapter number six. Now this is where the chapter really gets interesting. So we end up with, you know, verse twenty-one, I'll fill their treasures. He's just saying, look, you know, if you focus on wisdom, money will take care of itself. You will make a living if you know how to live properly. But verse twenty-two is where this gets really interesting because this is where we get the tie-in with the Lord Jesus Christ. Really starting in verse twenty-two because the Bible reads, The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, wherever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water, before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth. While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. Now let's just stop right there and kind of digest a little bit of that that we just read. You know, what the Bible is saying is that wisdom already existed with the Lord before this world was physically created, right? So in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. But in the beginning, before the earth was even created, or ever the earth was, before any of these physical things in our world existed, wisdom was already there with the Lord in the beginning. Okay, now obviously this is talking about literal wisdom, but you can also tie this in with Jesus Christ because of what the New Testament tells us when it says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And so in the beginning with God was the Word. Later in the book of John, Jesus talks about the fact, and if you would keep your finger here, let's just flip over to John 17 just quickly to just hit a few highlights here in John 17. Obviously we're probably mostly all here familiar with John chapter 1 about, you know, wisdom being in the beginning with God, or excuse me, that the Word was in the beginning with God, the Word was God, and so forth. Jesus Christ is from everlasting, also the Bible tells us. And so in the book of John chapter 17, we have Jesus praying to the Father, and as Jesus is praying to the Father, he says in verse number 5, for example, And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. So right there, Jesus Christ had glory with the Father before the world even began. And then also, Jesus talks about in the same passage that the Father loved him before the foundation of the world, okay? And so before this world was ever created, look at verse 24, Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, verse 24, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world. So before the world was created whatsoever, I mean, what's the foundation? Foundation is the first thing when you're building something, when you're creating something, the foundation is the very first step. So before anything about this world was created, before the foundation of the world, the Father loved Jesus. Jesus was dwelling there with the Father. Jesus was in the beginning with God, and he was God. Because God eternally exists as three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And by the way, those three persons of the Trinity are three separate selves. And this is why Jesus said, with thine own self. Sounds like the Father's got his own self. Why? Because Jesus is not the Father, the Father is not Jesus, the Holy Spirit is not Jesus. These are three persons, one God. So God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and even before the world began, God existed in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God is love, and there was this loving relationship where the Father loved the Son before the world even began. There was an object to that love. Well, so with that in mind, let's go back to Proverbs chapter 8, and you're kind of going to see how some of this kind of echoes the language from Proverbs chapter 8. Some of the things we see in John 1, John 17, sound really similar. So wisdom existed in the beginning before the world was ever created. The Lord possessed wisdom. Where did we leave off? Does anybody remember? Verse 26, let's start there. I know we read 25. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world, when he prepared the heavens, I was there. When he set a compass upon the face of the depth, when he established the clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of the deep, when he gave to the sea his decree that the waters should not pass his commandment, when he appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was by him as one brought up with him, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. Right? So there's this relationship, there's joy, there's rejoicing, and this is even as the world's being created. And then it says in verse 31, rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights were with the sons of men. Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children, for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. And we'll get to that in a moment, that ending part. But what I want you to really focus in on here is this idea of wisdom already existing before the world began, being with God, rejoicing with God. God is delighting in wisdom. Wisdom is there, personified. Now, stop and think about this for a minute. First of all, it's easy to see a connection between wisdom and the word of God. Everything that wisdom says is right. Everything that the Bible says is right. Wisdom opens her mouth and speaks excellent things. The Bible is filled with most excellent things. Okay, as we go through all of these things, anybody who's ruling rightly would take advice and take counsel. They would do well to take counsel advice from the Bible. All of these things can easily be applied to the Bible because of the fact that God's word and wisdom have so much in common. So it makes sense that these things would be connected, right? Jesus is the word made flesh. And really, in a lot of ways, the word and wisdom go hand in hand. You see, the Bible, the word of God, and when I say the word of God, I don't think that that's just a name for Jesus. You know, I think that when we talk about the word of God, we're also talking about the words of the Bible. Now, we're not talking about the physical book because people would say that we're Bible-olitors, you know, making an idol out of the Bible. You know, it would be possible to make an idol out of the physical book where we're like, you know, oh, you know, we're kissing it and bowing down to it and maybe like pouring milk and honey on it and feeding it, maybe getting it its own seed on the airplane. And, you know, it sounds funny, but people that believe in Sikhism, their holy book is called The Guru Grunts Sahib. And the Guru Grunts Sahib is supposed to have its own bedroom in their house. Like, he gets his own room. He doesn't want to share a room. It's a book. And when they fly with Guru Grunts Sahib, they literally book it its own seat on the airplane. I mean, I'm not making this up. Do a little research. You will see that what I'm saying is 100% true. Now, obviously, that's making an idol of a physical book at that point. That's weird. We are not making an idol of the physical book. But if I'm accused of worshipping the word of God, I'm guilty. The word of God is God. Okay. And so trying to separate God's word, the verbal word of God in Scripture, from the person of God is a fool's errand. Okay. Jesus Christ is the word of God made flesh. And this is the word of God written down the eternal word of God, the eternal wisdom of God. And, you know, the Bible calls Christ in the New Testament the wisdom of God. It even uses that exact word to describe Christ. Christ is the wisdom of God. And so here's the thing about that. The Bible says in Psalms, thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. So God has magnified his word above his name. So is there any warning in the Bible that warns us, hey, don't make too much of a big deal about the word of God, or don't exalt the word of God too much. Don't worship the Bible. Here's the thing about that. If God exalted his word above his own name, wouldn't we worship the name of the Lord? Wouldn't we exalt the name of the Lord? Wouldn't we, you know, obviously, again, we're not talking about a physical book. But, you know, people call you a Bible-olitor, or typically people who just don't like what the Bible says, or don't believe what the Bible says, or they don't want to talk too much about what the Bible says. So they're like, oh, you're a Bible-olitor. You know who calls you a Bible-olitor? The Mary-olitors. Mary-olitors will call you a Bible-olitor, right? They don't have time to worship the Bible. They're too busy worshipping Mary and worshipping the saints. Because here's the thing, Roman Catholics don't believe that the Bible is the final authority. They don't like you making a big deal about the Bible. They don't like you going to the Bible and saying, well, the Church is wrong because the Bible says so, because it's too easy. It's like taking candy from a baby, proving the Roman Catholic Church wrong from the Bible. So they say, well, the Bible's written by man, which is, of course, true. But what they mean by that isn't what we mean. Of course, we know the Bible is written by inspired biblical authors. Holy men of God speak as they're moved by the Holy Ghost. When they say the Bible's written by man, you know what they mean by that? They mean that it's merely written by man. We believe in the dual authorship of Scripture, that Scripture is written both by man and by God. It's inspired by the Holy Ghost, and it's written by human authors, and it is without error. It is perfect. It is right about everything. And that the prophets of old times spake not by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. But see, the Roman Catholics, when they say, oh, the Bible's written by man, here's what they just think. They think that the apostles are just kind of writing down their opinions, and sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong. And they think that ultimately the Church is the final authority, not the Bible. And the problem with that is that the Roman Catholic Church is super corrupt and constantly lying, but they're like, yeah, but we're the one true Church. We're the one. You know what? The one true Church sucks. We need to start a new one. How about that? And you know, when I think of the Roman Catholic Church, here's what I think, and I know I already preached about this all morning, but let's just talk about it again. Whenever I think of the Roman Catholic Church, I think of cancer. And here's why I think of cancer, and I hope you don't mind a little biology lesson. Let me give you a little biology lesson, and I'm not going to get too technical here. But you know what causes people to have cancer, okay, is that two things have to happen to a cell in their body for it to become a malignant cancer cell, right? And I mean, look, malignant, one malignant cancer cell can grow and create something that literally kills you, right? I mean, people die of cancer, and it all starts with just one malignant cancer cell. And there are two things that have to happen to that cell in order for it to become this malignant cancer cell, and these two things don't necessarily have to happen in a particular order. But there are two things that have to happen. Number one is that that cell has to become immortal. It has to become immortal because you see, cells are supposed to go through a life cycle, right? They're supposed to be born and live, get old and die, okay? So in cells, it's called programmed cell death, or apoptosis. It's basically when the cell, by design, gets old, it's called senescence, and then it basically self-destructs. Why? To make room for new cells. You can't live forever. You've got to go, liver cell. You've got to go, lung cell. You've got to go, skin cell, and make room for the next new cell. You've lived. You've died. And this process might happen in the course of weeks or days or months, you know, whatever, depending on what type of cells we're talking about. But there's a certain lifespan that cells go through, right? And even we as human beings, I mean, we're the same way, right? We're born, and we live our lives, and then we start getting old. And we start to decay. And then we go through our own senescence, and maybe we get gray-haired, and we become a little bit weaker, and ultimately we die. And this is the way our physical bodies are designed to work. So number one, in order for cancer to exist, you have to have immortality of the cell. I mean, there are cancer cells from like the 1950s that are still alive right now, and scientists are saying we don't think they will ever die. We think that they are literally, you know, I've heard scientists say, you know, we don't like to use the word immortal or eternal or forever, but these things don't seem like they're ever going to die. They have immortality. Sounds wonderful, right? Well, it's not wonderful. And here's why. There's another thing, though, in order for, because let's say you just had one cell that's just like, I'm not dying. I'm going to live forever. You know, it might not necessarily be a big deal in and of itself if it's just one guy. He's just refusing to die. You know, everybody can probably work around him, you know, don't mind him. He's been here for, you know, 30 years. He refuses to die. I don't know what his issue is. Whatever. But there's a second thing, and this is maybe a little more technical, but I'm going to make it real simple. It's called anchorage dependence for growth. So most cells have this thing called anchorage dependence for growth. And just to make it real simple for you, here's the gist of it. It's that if a cell is surrounded by other cells and crowded, it's not going to split and multiply, right? Now, when a spot opens up and it can kind of spread out a little and go, okay, let's go ahead and reproduce. Let's go ahead and multiply. Well, see, a malignant cancerous cell, it doesn't have anchorage dependence for growth. And so what it will do is it'll just multiply no matter how crowded it is. I don't care if I'm totally packed in and surrounded by other cells. I'm just going to keep multiplying. And by the way, I'm not going to die. And by the way, these new copies of myself I'm making, they're not going to die either. And you know what? We don't care if there's space. We don't care if there's... We're just going to keep multiplying and we're not going to die. Now, can you see how this would be a problem? Can you see how this could become a cancerous tumor, a growth, a malignant tumor, right? And then when this type of cell goes to other parts of your body, right, and then the cancer can spread. And so, you know, I know that I'm probably oversimplifying cancer. I'm not here to give you a cancer lecture. But these are just kind of two main attributes of cancerous cells. They lack anchorage independence for growth and they are immortal. And these two things, these two tweaks, these two malfunctions can happen in either order. It doesn't matter which one comes first. And you know, I think of the Catholic Church, they are this malignant cancer cell that just refuses to die. Because you know what? The true story is, unfortunately, is that the reality of our world is that institutions, organizations, people, nations, businesses, they start out a certain way, they thrive, they hit their heyday, and then they begin to deteriorate. Okay? And you need fresh new growth and old institutions need to be replaced with new institutions. Faithful Word Baptist Church is not going to last forever. You know, hey, hopefully Christ will return in our lifetime, right? What a day that would be. Even so, come Lord Jesus. But you know what? If He doesn't come in our lifetime, if this world is here for hundreds of years yet without Christ returning, then you know what? Faithful Word Baptist Church is eventually not going to be a place that you would want to go to church. You know, and what happens is, eventually Faithful Word Baptist Church is going to need to die. But it doesn't matter because the Gospel doesn't need to die, right? The truth doesn't die. God and the Holy Spirit will continue to work through new institutions. You know, people always say whenever you're starting a new church, like, why do we need to start a church? There's already all these Baptist churches. I mean, I remember when I first started Faithful Word. This guy just laughed in my face. I knocked the door. It's like my first week in town, a guy laughed in my face. You know there's a Baptist church right across the street, right? You're starting a Baptist church, there's one right there. Why do we need another Baptist church where there's hundreds of them? You want to know why we need another Baptist church? Because many of those churches have outlived their usefulness. And you know, what's funny is that the church that he was literally pointing to, the church that he was literally pointing to, I talked to the pastor's wife out soul winning, I knocked her door. Oh, we used to knock doors. Oh, we used to do soul winning. Oh, you know what? I bet they used to be King James too. I bet they used to preach hard too. They used to win souls to Christ too. But what are they now? What are they now? Do you want to go there? Because I can give you directions. If you go there, you'll realize, hey, this church. And you know what? Here's the thing. That church is not immortal. It'll be gone someday. It'll get down to where it's a bunch of old people and then those old people will eventually pass off the scene and then the church will be totally gone. And constantly churches are closing their doors because they're down to seven old people and they just realize, okay, it's over, let's move on. And guess what? Meanwhile, down the street, some young guy in his 20s, 30s, 40s is starting a new church. And he's got all that zeal and he's into soul winning and he's preaching hard and he's doing it right. But unfortunately, things go downhill. You know, McDonald's was once, you know, probably a really great place to eat. I don't want to eat at McDonald's today in 2024. I just don't. But if I could get in a time machine and go back to the 1950s, I bet McDonald's is probably pretty good. I mean, they're serving like locally raised organic beef because that's just what it was back then, right? And look, a lot of organizations, you could probably think in your mind to businesses that used to really like stores that used to be really good stores and now they're just kind of meh and, you know, they're just kind of dead and dying. And when you can point to a restaurant or a store that can continue to thrive, it's because they kind of like reinvent themselves. They have to be kind of reborn. Somebody new has to come in and take over. You know, so the Catholic Church is basically just like this malignant cancer that just like won't die. Like, we're the oldest church. We're 2,000 years old. Yeah, you've had 2,000 years to just rot and decay and get more worse. Like, you know what you are? You're like a 2,000 year old loaf of bread in my cupboard. I don't want to eat it. You're like a 2,000 year old lamb chop. You're like a 2,000 year old birthday cake. No. It's, you know, they are cancer. They're just this dead, rotten, wicked institution that just has gotten worse and worse and worse over the years and just rotten. And so people had to come along and start new institutions, new churches, and you know what? They were rotten a long time ago. And obviously they in many ways started out rotten, of course, depending on when you want to point to the beginnings of, you know, whatever the Roman Catholic Church is. If you want to point to 313 A.D. with Constantine, they started out totally rotten. But they just don't die. They just refuse to die, right? They just, we're the oldest church. You know, old churches are usually some of the worst churches. You know, my dad taught me that my whole life. He said, never go to the first Baptist church because it's had time to become liberal. You know, you typically end up going to churches that are newer because of the fact that they're fresh and they're not just some old, dead yesterday's church that's just hanging on. And again, it's possible obviously for a, you know, a young man to take over a church and breathe new life into it. And it's possible, of course, for men of God to be in their 70s and 80s and still serving God and preaching hard. I mean, I've seen all that. But in general though, just it's the way of the world, my friend. Nothing lasts forever. I grew up my whole life being taught that churches can last forever. That's why I was taught my whole life because, you know, the Bible says, upon this rock I'll build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail. And they said, we've been promised divine perpetuity as a local church. We can exist forever. This church can exist forever. But here's why I don't believe that. The reason I don't believe that is because it's 2024 and no church has lasted this long. Can you point me to a church that's been preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ faithfully for the last couple hundred years and it's a church that you want to go to? You know, and look, you could find some rare examples of a really old church that is doctrinally sound. Like, for example, First Baptist Church of Hammond. You could say, okay, First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana is a church that's like, what, a hundred and... Don't quote me on this, but let's say it's about a hundred and fifty years old or a hundred and forty years old. Except, guess what? Whenever Brother Hiles showed up and took over in like 1959 or 1960, they were preaching out of wrong Bible versions, they had all kinds of liberalism going on, and literally half the church left after he took over because they couldn't handle the hard preaching and everything. So, yeah, the church has been around for a long time, but they had phases where they were an apostate church in many ways, and then somebody came along and whipped them back into shape or whatever. So, you know, you can't tell me that that church just has an unbroken history of, you know, serving God and whatever. It just doesn't, okay? And again, even that's a rare exception because, you know, 99% of examples that you can find of churches that are actually preaching the Bible, that are actually preaching hard and evangelizing and aggressively serving God, you know, are going to be less than 30 years old, maybe 40 years old, something like that. They're not going to be 700 years, you know, for 700 years, you know, this church would go strong. I mean, is the church at Ephesus just still going? Church at Smyrna? Church at Pergamos? No, did these, you know, the people who claim to go back that far? The Roman Catholics, right? Super corrupt, disregarding everything the Bible teaches because they're cancer. You say, Pastor Anderson, what does this have to do with anchorage dependence for growth? You know, to me, the forced multiplying, to me, that makes me think of the Roman Catholic Church too because of the fact that they have not organically and naturally grown as a normal church should just organically and naturally grow through preaching the gospel, through winning people to Christ. Like the Apostle Paul, he's traveling around, he's winning people to the Lord, churches are being founded, they're evangelizing their communities, they're reaching people to the gospel. You know, the Roman Catholic Church has gone around and conquered and forced people to convert as well. They've had an unnatural growth process and then other cells, new cells are being born. Let's say you're living in Spain, for example, and, you know, these new cells are being born, you know, oh look, here's the Protestant Reformation over here, here's some new, here's the Baptist, here's, you know, it's just like, no, we're multiplying, we're taking, you know, more Catholic churches. Stifling and squelching out, right, through the Inquisition and other counter-Reformation type things, you know, not allowing anyone else to grow or be established or multiply, right, persecuting anyone who tries to start something new because you just have to be part of their old, as old as the devil, as old as Cain, as old as Satan, right, as old as Balaam, you name it. So that's why the Roman Catholic Church is a cancer and I have no idea what that has to do with Proverbs chapter 8 or wisdom. Somebody help me out. All right, but I don't know, yeah, but I don't, there was a reason, there was a reason. Okay, that's good too, but that's not what I was saying. You know, I have no regrets about saying those things because it was a nice, like, it was a nice little add-on to the morning sermon, but I'm just trying to figure out where I'm at in the sermon because there's some really great stuff I want to say real quick and I've only got a few minutes left about Proverbs chapter 8. Bible-olatry, that's right. So look, yeah, we do worship the word of God around here. Yeah, we make too big of a deal. Yeah, God magnified it above his own name. So if God magnified his word above his own name, I don't think we can magnify it too much. We care about what the Bible says. The Bible's the boss. The Bible's the ultimate source of wisdom and the people who call you a Bible-olator for worshipping the word are basically people who have a problem with the word. They'd rather go with tradition. They'd rather go with their Roman cancerous church and then they'd rather go with the Bible. And then to actually go with what the Bible teaches. Okay, that was way off track, but all right. Let's just hurry up here because I want to finish this last part. So the point is here that wisdom was in the beginning with God, rejoicing, delighting. There's a lot of echoes of this in John chapter 1 and John chapter 17. So here's where some of the controversy comes in is that you have this verse in verse 22 where the Bible reads, The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way before his works of old. And so the problem here is that a lot of Bible versions have twisted this and translated this wrongly and it really ruins the passage. It kind of ruins any Christological tie-in or it could lead to the heresy that Christ is a created being because they'll change this from the Lord possessing wisdom to the Lord creating wisdom. Okay, and this is problematic for a lot of reasons. And so I want to emphasize to you though that the King James is not the only one that gets this right. There are a lot of Bible versions that get this right as possessed, but there are also a lot that have this wrong. And let me give you some examples. So you're looking at Proverbs chapter 8 verse 22. It says, The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way before his works of old. Okay, so here are some versions that get this wrong. For example, the NET. The Lord created me as the beginning of his works. The NRSV. The Lord created me. The Holman Christian Standard Bible. The Lord made me at the beginning of his creation. New American Standard Bible. The Lord created me at the beginning of his way. And a bunch of like other no-name versions that you don't really care about necessarily. I don't know what some of these are. The GNT, the gin and tonic version. The Lord created me, first of all. I think I already mentioned the RSV. And then there's the Amplified Bible, which was always too loud for me. But in the Amplified Bible, here's what's funny. I guess they just amplified, they just put everything in the text. The Lord created and possessed me. I mean, hey, well, let's just do both. The CSB, whatever that is. The Lord acquired me at the beginning of his creation. The CJB, Adonai, made me as the beginning of his way. And then this one always cracks me up. This one gets the possessed right, but it always cracks me up. The Orthodox Jewish Bible. Because this is what it says. Because this is what it says. Hashem possessed me in the reshit of his Derek before his works of old. Let me read that again. Hashem possessed me in the reshit of his Derek before his works of old. So this Bible is for like Hebrew poser wannabe fake Hebrew scholars to feel like they know a lot of Hebrew because basically it just only puts in common words that like someone with like one semester of Hebrew, everybody's gonna know like Hashem, reshit, Derek. You say, I don't know those words because you didn't have that one semester that they had, you know. So you could spend like a couple days on Duolingo and you can read this thing. And then they feel real smart because it only puts the really easy words in Hebrew and they're not even in Hebrew because it's like transliterated into English letters and whatever. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. It's just kind of funny. So what's going on here? What's going on with this? The Lord created me. Well, here's the thing. First of all, this makes no logical sense because if God created, if God basically is saying, well, in the beginning as his first thing, the first thing God's gonna create is wisdom. Well, the problem with that is that that would seem to imply that God didn't have wisdom before that, you know, which I would say that wisdom is one of God's eternal attributes, you know. And not only that, if the word of God eternally exists, then is he really, you know, creating wisdom or is he just possessing wisdom in the beginning? And you say, well, you know, what does the Hebrew say? You're not gonna believe this, but the Hebrew says possessed. Actually, it doesn't say possessed. It says a Hebrew word, but the King James Bible has correctly translated it as possessed and this word nowhere it's used means created. It just doesn't. Now, what they'll do is they'll take a verse like, for example, where it's used in Genesis, same Hebrew word, where Melchizedek calls God the possessor of heaven and earth. They'll just say, well, creator of heaven and earth works. It works. You can put that in there and make it work. Yeah, a lot of things could work. You could just put in all kinds of definitions, but it's not like we don't know what this word means. This is actually an extremely common verb in Hebrew. Usually what it means, usually it means like buying or getting something, but it often also just means just possessing something. And there are a lot of other words like possessions and cattle and substance and things that are derived from the same word. Like the King James gets it right, my friend. Don't let somebody tell you like, oh, well, you know, the King James, you know, they didn't know what we know now about Hebrew. Folks, the King James translators knew a lot more Hebrew than your typical scholars, so-called today, that work on these new versions. They were experts in Hebrew and the cognate languages. They were experts not only in just Hebrew, they knew Arabic, Aramaic. You know, they were pretty deep into it, my friend, and they got this right, okay? And you can trust your King James Bible, but even just right on the surface, possessed makes a lot more sense than created. You know, and especially if you want to have a Jesus Christ tie-in, you know, hey, yeah, he's in the beginning with God, but he's not created by God. Jesus was not created by God. Jesus was in the beginning with God, already in the beginning. He's already there. He was in the beginning with God and he was God. He was set up, verse 23, from everlasting. If you want to apply this to Jesus, right? It's about wisdom, literally. But again, it foreshadows things we're going to see in the New Testament about Jesus. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. So he's brought out. He's made manifest. He's lifted up. He's set up. He is all kinds of things, but he's not created because he is eternally pre-existent. He has always existed. He was set up. He was brought forth. He was brought forth. His goings forth, the Bible tells us in Micah 5, 2, are from of old from everlasting. Jesus Christ's goings forth are from everlasting. Of course, the NIV says, well, his origins are from ancient times. He doesn't have origin because he is not one who had a beginning. He is the beginning. Jesus said, I'm the beginning. I'm the end. I'm the Alpha. I'm the Omega. I am the Almighty. Jesus said that he was the Almighty God. He's the Most High. He's the Lord God Omnipotent. And he was in the beginning with God, and he was God. And so all that to say this, I'm out of time, but the Bible says in verse number 34, Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the post on my door. You know, we need to spend every single day at this gate, at this door, with this lady right here, listening to the truths of wisdom. We need to learn every single day the wisdom of God because everything in our life depends on it. Our job, our family, everything, everything hangs on the wisdom that we gain from this book. And if you don't read this Bible tomorrow, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, you're not going to know how to handle all of the garbage that life is going to throw at you. And I mean, I'm telling you, if it hasn't thrown it at you yet, it will. You need this book as a guide, as a lamp to your feet and as a light onto your path. Not only, and of course we need all of the teachings about God and Jesus and spiritual things and salvation. Of course, those things are paramount. We need to walk with God. But even just for the nitty gritty, the nasty here and now, we need this wisdom to avoid the pitfalls that are out there in this world. And we've got to be daily watching at the gates of wisdom. Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word. Thank you for wisdom. Lord, thank you so much for just this ultimate source of truth that we have in the Bible. Lord God, I thank you that our King James Bible is a perfectly preserved Bible. It is an accurate, right translation of the perfectly preserved word. Because, Lord, it wouldn't have done us any good that you inspired the word if you didn't also preserve the word. And so thank you, Lord, for giving it to us today in 2024 as relevant as today's newspaper. Help us to take advantage of it, read it, study it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Take your hymnals. Go to Hymn 297, 297. Close to the 297. If you notice at the end there, it says, Dies Alfine. You basically just go back to the middle mark there. That's called the second mark. So just when you end, when it gets to the end of the page, you basically go back to the middle. Then you start the next verse. So just explain that. So let's sing it out. Hymn 297. All along my pilgrim journey, Savior, let me walk with Thee. God, for He is a worldly pleasure, Lord, for fame my prayers shall be. Gladly will I toil and suffer, only let me walk with Thee. Close to Thee, close to Thee, close to Thee, close to Thee. Gladly will I toil and suffer, only let me walk with Thee. Keep me through the vale of shadows, bear me o'er my sickle sea. And with the aid of life eternal, may I enter, Lord, with Thee. Close to Thee, close to Thee, close to Thee, close to Thee. And with the aid of life eternal, may I enter, Lord, with Thee. Thanks be to God. Copyright © 2020 Mooji Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved. No part of this recording may be reproduced without Mooji Media Ltd.'s express consent.