The blessings of God's Word for instruction, for encouragement, for help, for blessing for ourselves and for our children, for protection. And we watched at the gates of God's house. The next thing I thought about was watching at the post of opening the scripture and receiving the blessing of God's Word. And I started thinking about posts in the Bible. The first post I thought about was the post in Egypt that they painted with the blood of the Passover lamb. I did something that I have not done ever before. I went out to my garden and I picked a mess of corn and enough for our family to all have some. I've never grown corn before because I don't like the use of the space, but my brother Paul was talking to me about it a little, and earlier this spring somebody sent me a package and it had seeds in it, and I planted all the seeds that they gave me, and in there was a pack of corn seeds. It wasn't very much. Man, Ned, I didn't have any problem with pollination. I had tons of corn on every ear. You know, one of them, I could put my fingers around the ear of corn, So it was smaller in diameter than normal, but when I shucked it, it was perfectly formed, just a few less rows. And delicious? Boy, it was wonderful! You know, I got that, I got to pick a little bit of broccoli, I picked a bunch of tomatoes, and I picked a few zucchini, and we brought all those things in, and we ate some of everything except the zucchini, and it's just, I really look at that like I'm receiving something from God's hand. And there was just a bunch of dirt and everything, and it got worked up, and some seeds are planted. And it certainly is a miracle of life that a seed can sit in a pack for all that time, and you put it in the ground, and it sprouts out and grows. And I like to see that new life. Amen? How many of you like to see a little bit of new life in your own self? How many of you like to re-seed some farm or home-grown tomatoes and get those and eat them? well I just like to get some mirekwip and some white bread and put it in the toaster and toast it until it's about light brown a little more than just on one or two but not until it's dark brown and then put a bunch of mirekwip on there and then slice them tomatoes until you have trouble holding that thing together and I like to eat them tomatoes while they're still hot from the sun Cleon They have a special taste at that point. Isn't it nice when you have that opportunity to pick something you grew yourself? I think that as I'm in the garden, I remember that God on earth started in a garden with Adam and Eve. And I think about going through creation and everything He did, He said, it's very good. And then I come along and I pick a weed and I say, well, that ain't very good. or there's some spoilage or some Rana that said that's not good. That's all part of the curse and part of the sin that we're fighting. I want you to think about the blessing of receiving good things. Some people have received good things for so long that they forgot how to be happy and thankful about it. I was at the airport waiting for my brother Paul and I love to look at all the people I love to sit, and it's all I can do to stop myself from going and asking people questions about their behavior to see what's going on inside their head. And there's this one family, and as I focused on them, and I focused on my wife, I noticed that they were training their kids, and it was passive, it wasn't active, but they were doing it. They were training their kids that when you pick somebody up at the airport, it's a time of excitement. and the mother and the aunt were talking to these kids and they're using a different voice. You guys know what I'm talking about. you know, that different voice you use when you're talking to a dog. Come on up here baby. You never talk like that to anybody else. But here you are, you talk, and they use a different voice than they normally use. And they go, oh kids, we're so excited about this. And we're just looking forward. And they're going to be coming down the aisle any minute. And we're all going to run up to them. And we're going to celebrate them being here. And we're going to have a time of rejoicing. And it's going to be so great. And they rehearse this and rehearse this with these kids. And then along come their relatives, and the kids held back, and they were a little shy. And the adults ran up, and then they encouraged the kids to run up, and they were teaching them to cherish and embrace that moment. I'm afraid that sometimes we forget to do that for our kids. When we see God's people, or when we get to go to God's house, or when we receive something from the Scripture, We forget to rehearse. One generation tells the next generation about God's goodness and His promises and His blessings. And sometimes we can get more energy up over telling about a gallbladder surgery than we can about sharing a praise about the Lord. Let's look in Proverbs chapter 8. And we're going to finish Proverbs 8 this evening. And I have loved, loved, loved this chapter of Proverbs. I'm just going to go through the message title that we preached out of Proverbs 8, verses 1-6. Wisdom's cry is for you. 7-10, wisdom's message is for you. 11-16, wisdom's wealth is for you. 17-20, wisdom's love, life, and leadership is for you. 21 through 23, wisdom's inheritance is for you. It's kind of nice when the Bible's for you, isn't it? Sometimes we don't personalize it, and it's for everybody, but no, it's for you. And 24 through 29, wisdom in creation. That's when we started to talk about wisdom being the Lord Jesus Christ, and God created the world by Him. in 32 last week, Wisdom Beloved of the Father and given to man. And today, receive wisdom, Jesus Christ, and be blessed. But God always gives the other part of the story, and sometimes we don't when we present the gospel, which is don't receive wisdom and receive the curse. Let's look here in Proverbs 8. I'll start in verse 33, and we'll read down through the end of the chapter. It says, Hear instruction and be wise and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the post of my doors. For whoso findeth me, findeth life. and shall obtain favour of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death. Let's just look at this and start in 33. It says here instruction. Be wise and refuse it not. The instruction of wisdom is the plan of the gospel to salvation of Jesus Christ. It is Christ's death on the cross, his substitutionary death, taking and paying for our sins. It's his burial, three days and three nights. And it's his resurrection, purchasing in the process for us salvation. Sometimes we say salvation and we talk about the goodness of God in that area so much that everybody's like, yeah, we heard that about a thousand times. Let's move on to something else. Don't you have anything new? You know, those that have received salvation have not gotten over their love of that old, old story. And they recognize the goodness and the blessing of God. I have a thought about life. My thought about life is that we better learn how to find the blessings and happiness that God has placed in every little nook and cranny in place for us. When we pick up a rock and we see a worm under there and that worm starts wiggling around, God put that worm there for us to observe and for us to praise Him and for us to rejoice over. Now some of you ladies might not rejoice about seeing it work, but you know, the Lord put the stellar blue jay in a tree, and you know, several of them get up there and they start chattering, making some noise, and they're beautiful with that blue color, and God put them there for us to see. When the sun rises in the morning, God put it there so we can look and we can see His goodness, His blessing, His power, when the sun sets in the evening. So that we can rest assured it's going to rise in the morning. That God is faithful. that we can be still and know that He is God, we can also rejoice and we can praise Him. Hearing instruction in Romans chapter 10 and verse 17 says, So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. You know, in Acts we have a look back at when the children of Israel saw Moses and Moses came to offer himself as a leader and he didn't quite do it in the right way. He ended up killing an Egyptian. But the Hebrews didn't react in the right way either. They're like, who are you that you're going to be a ruler over us? And that rejection and that thing that Moses did caused him to flee and he was gone 40 years. And the very people that said, who are you that you're going to rule over us? He came and God endued him with power and blessing, and he was made a leader for them. He brought them out of the land of Egypt. He showed the wonders of God's goodness, the Red Sea, and the 49 years in the wilderness. Howard shared this with me, and I think about it regularly. He said many things that you think you're sure about are not true. You're wrong in many places. The Lord is never wrong. And we're the strongest when we're leaning on His Holy Word, when we're leaning on the wisdom of the Word of God, when we're finding and hearing instruction there. I want to encourage you to hear instruction, consider well. Take your time considering. Sometimes we make up our minds too quick. And do not refuse the instruction and wisdom that God gives us. in Hebrews chapter 12, 24 and 25 and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant to the sprinkling of the blood that speaketh better things than that of Abel that ye see that ye refuse him not that speaketh for if they escape not who refuse him that spake on earth how much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven. In Hebrews chapter 3, it says, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? If we refuse to accept the wisdom of God, there will be consequences. Now you get to choose what you're going to accept or not accept, but you do not get to choose what your consequences will be. You know, when we have the principle of sowing and reaping kick in, I mentioned on the positive side of sowing and reaping, and I like to look at the positive side of sowing and reaping. When you're sowing the ground, there's a delay between the sowing and the reaping. Now if you take care of things right, your harvest will be greater than what you sowed. I sowed one piece of corn for all them plants. Now some of that corn didn't come up, but it did pretty well. And then on that one piece of corn that grew one plant, there's got to be some bunch, they got to pollinate one another. But on and near a corn, up to 500 little new kernels. You know, you can sow a small amount and you can harvest a large amount and sometimes God lets us sow a little bit of good and He blesses it and our harvest is more than we expected. And sometimes we sow a little bit of wrong and we cover it up and we pat the ground and we think we got away with that one and it swept under the rug. And our harvest comes back and it's bigger. All I did was one little thing. All I planted was one little seed. And up grew this acorn tree. And every year all these acorn nuts fall off of it. Why couldn't I just have one consequence from my one behavior? But here I am with all these acorns raining down on my head. Some of those things, only the grace of God. gets in there and intervenes. I want to encourage you to think about the consequences. In Psalm 34, it says, Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. Now I was thinking about Psalms 100, where we enter His gates with thanksgiving. But we watch at His gates. And there's a couple of places where this scripture brought me to thinking about. And the first one was watching at the gates of the house of God. Watching at the gates of the house of God and watching at the gates of the house of God for the blessings of God's Word, for instruction, for encouragement, for help, for blessing for ourselves and for our children, for protection. As we watch at the gates of God's house, the next thing I thought about was watching at the post of opening the scripture and receiving the blessing of God's Word. I started thinking about posts in the Bible. The first post I thought about was the post in Egypt that they painted with the blood of the Passover lamb. And it wasn't a place where they all went together. Each got to paint the post of their own house. And we don't seek and find the Lord. He comes and seeks us. He comes in seeking to save that which is lost. Thank God for the blood of Jesus Christ. The next post I thought about was in Deuteronomy where they put the scripture, the law, on the post of their door. And every time they went in and out, they touched it. They were touching it to let it touch them. What they're supposed to do is they're supposed to touch it and let it touch them where they would get it in their heart and in their mind. And sometimes it's like carrying around a closed Bible. Yeah, I got the Word of God here in my hands, but if I won't open it, I'm as bad off as someone who doesn't have a Bible. And they started going more formal and they got a little, a really decorative, sweet looking container here. And inside the container is a little scroll. And on the little scroll is the Word of God. So they still got the Word of God there, but they can't read it. Unless they open the cool box and they get out the scroll. They lost the point. The next post I was looking at was a post that went through the land of Persia. When Esther And Haman, and Mordecai, and King Ahasuerus had their discussion and agreement that the Jews could fight back. And the day of the annihilation of the Jews was coming quick, and they sent out a post. It's like the post office or the postman. And they sent out a post. And it was the king's message for the people. And it was a message of goodness and a message of deliverance. I think we watch at the gates and, you know, we're sitting at the gate of this earth and we're waiting for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We're waiting for Him to point at the archangel and say, get the trumpet. With a trump and the shout of God and the dead in Christ who rise first, He says He has a special reward for those that are watching the gate daily. There's a special reward for those that are watching for him. You know, when we're watching for the Lord, it automatically puts us in a place of recognizing that He's watching us. Sometimes we need that encouragement. That someone's watching us. One time I climbed up in a tree. And along came a dog. And the dog was getting ready to go out on the road. Now I thought I'd play a little trick on the dog. So I hollered at the dog its name and I told it to sit down. And the dog did this. And I told it to sit down again. And the dog sat down. And then it did this. I don't know who's telling me to sit down, but I'm going to sit down. When we recognize that God is watching us, we're like that dog. And sometimes we need a wake-up call. Sometimes we need to recognize that God's watching us. Have you ever found yourself doing something wrong? Wouldn't you just love it if Jesus Christ came back right when you were in the middle of giving a piece of your mind to your wife? Maybe the last piece you have. Wouldn't it be a thrill if you had your family around the dinner table and you were just Blessing them. And the Lord came back. Wouldn't it be nice if you were praising God when He came back? Get those posts. Get the message of the Scripture, the message of the blood of Jesus Christ, and the message of our kind and benevolent King. In verse 35, it says, For whoso findeth Me findeth life. and shall obtain favor of the Lord." Wisdom is Jesus Christ. Wisdom has called out to whosoever is simple. Wisdom has cried a message of calling mankind. It's the same message in Revelation. Whosoever will come and take of the water of life freely. It is an offer of salvation. It's an offer of abundant life. It's an offer of living for the Lord Jesus Christ. You know what's amazing? How quick we get off track. I still love those slot cars. You stick them in there, and you plug in that track, and you rev that little trigger, and if you hold your car off the back, and you go, and you can put a little butter on the track, and then you can set your car down, and it'll just burn out. It's all great until you get going too fast around a curve and your car tumbles off the edge. Isn't it something how quick we get off track? I mean, we can leave church on Sunday with a mandate from God and an understanding and a fervor burning in our heart and somehow by Monday afternoon, We're all caught up in stinking thinking. Sunday we talked about what things to think on and having joy in Christ and having the peace of God. And we can pray and receive all those things. But the weight of the world soaks on us. And we get off track pretty quick, don't we? Whoso findeth me findeth life and shall obtain favor of the Lord. It's interesting that the offer of Christ is given to all men, and how few have embraced the offer. How few have received him. I have not had the experience, very many times, of sticking out my hand, but somebody wouldn't meet me halfway. But the Son of God went further than halfway. Oh, what about that? And that's how Jesus Christ, God's Son, has been treated. I want to encourage you to embrace God's Son. Receive wisdom. We first receive it at salvation. But then, each believer has an opportunity each day to say, I'm going to follow Jesus today. I'm going to choose Him. We can sing that song, I've decided to follow Jesus, each and every day because we need to take up our cross daily and follow Him. Just like we need to watch the gate and the post daily, we need to follow Jesus daily. In 1 John 5, 10-13, it says, He that believeth on the Son of God hath to witness in himself. He that believeth not, God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is a record that God hath given to us, eternal life. And this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God." If you will take the Scripture I've given you this far and live it out for the next seven days, the Scripture tells us that you're going to obtain favor of the Lord. It's just a small chunk of what God's given us. But we have such a short attention span. You ever try to teach a child something? There's a certain foghorn leghorn chicken and he's always trying to teach a little chicken. He says, now boy, boy, I want you to look up here. I'm going to try to teach you something. And by the time he gets done with his long stuttering and speech, the boy is off doing something else. The little chicken. Now isn't that the way we are? God has a lesson for us. Now, I have experienced getting older. Now I haven't experienced it as much as some of you, but I have experienced more than others of you. I'm not in the middle anymore. That's about 35, isn't it? Howard says, once you get to 40, it's all downhill from there, but it sure is a great view. Can we learn something? Can we follow God? Can we pick up our cross daily? Can we receive the blessings that God has for us? God's intentions for each of you are to have abundant life through Jesus Christ. In John 3.36, he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. I want to say this two ways. Because I've invited you to pick up your cross each day, every day that we don't is a rejection of Jesus Christ. You know, we look at Peter and we see him denying Christ three times. Then we see him preaching at the Day of Pentecost. It's not a recommendation to deny Christ three times. It's a hope to say, God receives sinful men. He still loves us. He still wants and has a use for us. You know, when Christ resurrected, He told them to tell the disciples and Peter. He knew Peter was laying a little lower, licking his wounds a little harder. And He has the same care and compassion for you. I did not receive the gospel the first time I heard it. But when I did receive it, I received all of it. And the Lord saved me. I know some of you here have heard the gospel, and you've heard the gospel, and you've heard the gospel, and you've heard that Christ died for you, but you haven't taken and placed your faith for a personal, for you, trusting Him for your personal salvation, for your sin debt, for your soul on the way to hell. And God placed this scripture in the Bible. So you'd have one more opportunity today to see that message. And you have one more opportunity to accept or reject the Lord Jesus Christ. God made the greatest offer in the whole world, offering His Son. It's incredible, isn't it? Will you accept Jesus Christ? Forgiveness for your sins? A home in heaven? A new direction? And 36 says, But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. This is he that sinneth against wisdom, against Jesus Christ, does not receive Christ in this life. He wrongeth his own soul, and he wrongs his soul in a way that it cannot be more wrong. He damns his own soul. The question comes up, would a loving God take people and cast them into a lake of fire? A loving God sent his Son to die on the cross for all people. And he that sinneth against him wrongeth his own soul. And on judgment day, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And every person is going to have to say, I had the chance to receive Christ, but I rejected Him and I wronged my own soul. And to be separated from God for eternity. He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son hath not life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. When we see this gospel message in the scripture, it does not end with, would you like to accept or reject Jesus Christ? It ends with the consequences of not accepting Jesus Christ. John 3 doesn't end in verse 16, it ends in verse 36. The wrath of God abides on him. Here we have this message. But he that sinneth against me, against wisdom, not receiving grace, wrongeth his own soul, and all they that hate me love death. The mockers, the scoffers, those that deny God, those that do not accept Him here and now, 1 Corinthians 16 22 if any man loved not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be anathema maranatha let him be accursed the Lord come and this isn't a oh the Lord cometh and we can't wait it's the Lord cometh and he's got his judgment coming with him It's the same look and the same context as we find in Galatians 1. It says, I marvel at you so soon removed from the hymn that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached, let him be accursed. It's damn to hell. In verse 9, as we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that you have received, let him be accursed. There is a way that seems right to men. There's a popular philosophy. If all my good deeds are going this side and all my bad deeds are going this side, I hope I've done enough good deeds. They're in my way to heaven. If you could earn your way to heaven, Jesus Christ died for nothing. It's not a works list any man should boast. If God speak into your heart tonight, receive the call of the Holy Spirit. Accept Christ as your Lord and Savior. Hebrews 10.29 says, Of how much sure punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace. For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense saith the Lord. And again, the Lord shall judge his people. How much more will he judge those that are not his people? In verse 31, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God, a living God. God help us. Help us to receive the benefit and the blessing, not the curse of rejecting and not receiving Jesus Christ. Let's pray. You've been listening to a message from the pulpit of Town Center Baptist Church in Happy Valley, Oregon. We invite you to come visit us at 10505 SE 85th Avenue in Happy Valley. If we can be of help to you, please call us at 503-659-4494. We wish you God's very best.