I have been assigned the topic of staying on the path of right knowledge. All right? And you have your book there, and you can take a look at that. Brother Wittes said that when Brother Rick came up, it made Brother Wittes feel old. And when Brother Jamie came up, it made him feel small. Okay? And I'm here to make him feel smart. Okay. And so, turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Hosea chapter 6 and verse 3. Hosea chapter 6 and verse 3. I've actually entitled this message, Keep It Between the Ditches. Keep It Between the Ditches. And so, we'll read verse 3, and then we'll open in prayer. The Bible says here, verse 3, then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord. His going forth is prepared as the morning, and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day, and Lord, I thank you for these men. I just pray that you would speak to our hearts today. Lord, speak to their heart the way you've spoken to my heart, and I pray that you just give me the words to say and help me to preach this message in a way that would glorify you and would honor you, would lift you up. And Lord, I pray that you just help me during this time. Give me the words to say, Lord, I pray in Jesus' name, amen. The phrase that I wanna focus on a little bit here out of that verse, it's not the whole verse, but just this phrase, then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord. What is reality? Have you ever heard that question? Maybe you don't read weird books. I had to read a bunch of weird books when I was going to school. Inevitably, when you get into some of that philosophical stuff, you hear people say, or if you listen to things on the internet, you hear these, well, what is reality? Is this even reality? Can we know what reality is? And it's usually asked by men who are much smarter than me, or maybe not. I'm not sure. But I was listening to a some little shorts on the internet the other day, and it intrigued me. And so I went and I found this entire speech, this entire talk that this English philosopher gave, and it really was interesting. English philosopher Hilary, that's a strange name for a guy. Maybe we'll address that at man camp. But Hilary Lawson, okay, gave a presentation that he entitled Beyond Reality Illusion. In this talk, he explains that we all understand in modern times, except for the flat earthers, and I'm not going to talk to you today, okay? This is for the rest of us. But we all understand that the earth and the planets, orbit around the sun. We recognize that, that they orbit around the sun, and this is known as the heliocentric view, and that was put out by Copernicus in the 16th century. However, that understanding hasn't always been the case. That isn't what we've always believed before this. We had the understanding that Aristotle had, and that was that everything revolved around the earth. This is the geocentric view. Their idea was that all of the planets and the stars and everything orbited around the earth and they were carried along by these invisible crystals that supported everything and it went around and around the earth. Now you might think that Aristotle's view, you say, well that's kind of weird, the earth is here. With our understanding today, right, that we think we do according to science, according to Hilary Lawson, we don't really know this, but we think that everything revolves around the sun and then the different than the different galaxies or they have their own motion and all of this stuff. But you would think that this archaic model that Aristotle put out, you would think that that was not accurate. That there was no way that these people could have predicted when the eclipses are going to come. That blows my mind. We just had an eclipse here a few weeks ago and I didn't see it. But they can look out and they can show where these are going to be 5, 10, 50 years, 100 years from now, where the solar eclipses are going to be, where the lunar eclipses are going to be, and who's going to see them, and what time can they see them. They can predict all of that. You'd think maybe that going back to that Aristotle's view that they would say, well, there's no way any of that stuff was accurate. How could you predict all of this by thinking that everything revolves around the earth? But what's interesting in that is that it really was pretty accurate. And in fact, when Copernicus put forth his view in the 16th century, he assumed that what Aristotle had done was accurate. And it really was accurate. And it wasn't until, they didn't claim that Copernicus' view was better than Aristotle's until like 200 years later after this was put out. And they finally said, well you know that heliocentric, that's actually a little bit more accurate than the geocentric. The funny thing is that they were actually able to go back and make some changes to the calculations of Aristotle's, his model, and they could make it just as accurate as Copernicus's view. Lawson says, So the point is, whether everything revolves around the sun or everything revolves around the earth, we can actually still calculate all of that and be accurate. Okay? Now Lawson says that the reason that these systems are so accurate is not that they are descriptions of reality, but that they're metaphors or ways of holding our view of the world. All right? I don't even understand what that means. That's why I quoted him and didn't try to explain it. But his criticism is that we can just keep refining all of these things. Oh, that didn't work. Well, let's just tweak it just a little bit and we'll make it work. So what he's saying is, what is reality? What is reality? We're calculating this and calculating that, and we don't have the answer, so we tweak it just a little bit to make it come in and make it be right. Lawson criticizes all of those attempts to understand the universe and all of the adjustments that have been made. He goes on and talks about Newton, when Newton discovered gravity. You probably know the story about that. The apple fell off the tree and he's trying to figure out, now why did that apple fall down? down to the ground. Then he came out with this theory and he said, well, you know what? I think that there's this force that pulls that apple to the ground. His critics said, well, that's ludicrous because what about the other apples? Why didn't they fall? they're still on the tree. And he said, well, that's an interesting question. Maybe there's another force that holds them on that tree, right? And so he's coming up with an equal and opposite force that holds that there, and it doesn't allow it to fall down. And that's why those apples stay on the tree. Why didn't they fall to the ground? Lawson says that this is a very convenient way to look at that. When something doesn't work, we just come up with another adjustment and explain it away. We just say, oh, well, there's another force. And that force didn't let that force work. In 1998, we discovered, when I say we, I don't mean I had anything to do with it. I just simply mean that as a society, as science, or whatever you want to call it, we looked up at the stars. and they weren't behaving the way that scientists thought that they should. According to the Big Bang, when nothing exploded, it threw everything out, okay? And you would expect that all of the nothing that exploded would go out from that center and eventually start to slow down. And just because it would start to decelerate. We know that. That we throw something, it eventually slows down and falls to the ground. And so we would kind of expect that to happen. All right? But that's not what the universe shows us is happening. In fact, what it shows is that it's accelerating the further away it gets. Okay? And so they started to look for that. And they thought, well, what in the world is making it accelerate? This explosion that happened, the force that was exerted in that explosion, that has to be wearing out. So what's picking this up and accelerating it out even further? So scientists came up with dark energy. And they said, there's this dark energy out there that's pulling everything away. And in fact, it's accelerating it faster and faster. Scientists say that if we combine dark energy with something that's called dark matter, that actually the dark energy and the dark matter make up 95% of the universe. And all that we can see, if you can imagine this, all that we see is only 5% of the universe. So what's the point of all of this? Well, according to Lawson, the point is that we can't even understand reality. Is there even the reality of reality, or is it all an illusion, right? Well, the reason that he's skeptical of this reality is that he doesn't believe in the one who holds reality in his hand. All of these attempts to understand reality are in vain if we don't acknowledge that there is God in heaven who created everything that we see. If we're going to search for some naturalistic explanation, then no, I would agree with Lawson and say that reality is an illusion. If we're going to just disregard God, if we're going to say that all of this is just by chance, that all of this is just a random whatever, then we're not dealing in reality. We don't even understand that. We're never going to understand reality if we take reality out of the equation. The reality is that there is God and it is he who orders and ordered the universe so that we can have a reliable system. Do you recognize that God said, let there be light? God and then it says later, and then he made the stars also. It's like, oh yeah, I forgot that part. Well, that's a pretty big part. But all of the universe that we see and the way it acts and its reliability and the fact that we can make calculations and we made those calculations hundreds of years ago and they still work today is absolutely a miracle. To think that those, All of those systems, all of that order, all of that reliability, all of those things that scientists are still trying to understand and know were spoken into existence by a perfect, all-powerful God. Man is searching for reality, and he's searching in the right direction. He's looking out into the universe. He's looking out into the stars. He's looking out into the planets. So man is looking in the right direction, but he's looking through the wrong lens. God told us that it was he who ordered everything so that we could rely upon it. He did that back in the book of Genesis. Genesis 1 verse 5 says, and God called the light day and the darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day. And do you realize that we have been calculating the length of a day the exact same way for all of history? And it has never changed. Evening in the morning is the first day. Evening in the morning was the second day. Evening in the morning. And we just go on from literally from day one. That has been the metric. That has been the rule that we use to measure that. Genesis 1 and verse 14. The Bible says, and God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years. We can look into the heavens and we can calculate the seasons. We can calculate the years and the and the days, and all of these things, and all of these calculations that Aristotle made, and all of the calculations that Copernicus made, and all of the calculations that we make even today are reliable because God made it that way. He made it reliable. And for thousands of years, it hasn't changed. And we still can calculate that and understand that. It is actually God's creation that reveals what reality is. It is God. God is reality. God is realized. Psalm 19, verses one and two, the Bible says, and the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. God is real, and he wants you to know him. What is all the malarkey of not believing in reality? God wants you to know him. He's not hiding from you. God is not hiding. He has put it up on the largest billboard that you could ever imagine. He's shouting the reality that He exists. He's shouting the reality of who He is, and God is in control of all of that. He's not hiding. He wants you to know who He is. He wants you to know His will for your life. For pastors specifically today, He wants you to know how to lead your church, and the ministries that he has given to each and every one of us. Our text here says today, then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord. How do we know? How do we know reality? How do we know God? How do we know all of these things? The Bible says here, follow on. Follow on to know the Lord. How do we find reality? How do we find God? Stay on the path. Stay on the path of right knowledge. Does anybody else drink? No, that's good. It doesn't really bother me if somebody drank out of that. When we were in Bolivia, we used to go to this little village and they would make some lemonade for us and they got the water out of this ditch that came down off the mountain. It probably traveled ten miles down out of the mountain through this gray nasty dirt and came out. If you held up a bottle of their water like this, you couldn't see through it. It was just gray. And so they would make lemonade out of that. And they would bring the pitcher out and set it down on the table with one glass. And so whoever it was was there. We all just poured some, drank it, and then passed it on. And that's the way it went. So it doesn't bother me if somebody else drank that. All right. So where am I at on all of this? Stay on the path, Devin. Don't get distracted over here. This afternoon, I would like to see how we can know God, how we can know his will, and how we can know to lead our churches. First of all, how do we know him? Stay on the path. Stay on the path. Jeremiah 29 verse 13 says, and you shall seek me and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart. This is the promise that we have from God, the promise to be able to know him. Hebrews 11.6 says, but without faith it is impossible to please him for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Do you want to know God? Stay on the path. Do you want to know who he is? Keep on the path. Don't veer off of the path. Don't get sidetracked by all of these things going on. Just stay on the path. God is not hiding. God has given us everything we know. God has given us this book so that we can know him. I talk to people all the time who desire to know God. Well, how do we know God? Get in the book. Get in the book. So many people, I need a Bible study. When they say they need a Bible study, that means they want a book that's going to explain the book and all that they really need to do is get in the book. They don't need all of these other things, just stay on the path. God has given us everything that we need and he's promised us that if we'll look for him, we'll find him. All of these scientists looking out into the stars at night and gazing out in there and trying to think, oh, what is real? What is it? And how did this happen? And all of these things. Well, they're looking in the right direction because they're looking into the creation of God. And if they looked with their eyes open that they would see that there's a creator who has designed this perfectly and that for all the time since the beginning of time until now, we can calculate all of those differences. All of those different things are going to happen. All of the eclipses and all of the seasons, and we know how long a day is, and we know how long a year is, and we know all of these things. All of this knowledge that we have is designed by God to point us back to him and to reveal him to each and every one of us. In fact, the Bible says that when we look out into that, if we don't see God, then we're without excuse. So there's no excusing that. But there have been many who've missed that. And so what did he do? He gave us a book and God reveals himself in this book. He reveals his character. He reveals his likes and dislikes. He reveals everything about him and he reveals his plan. He reveals how we can know him and how we can be saved and how we can go to heaven. He reveals all of these things to us because he wants us to know him. God is not hiding. If you will look for him, the Bible says, you will find him. If you'll diligently seek for him, you will know him. So stay on the path. God is not hiding from you. God is not hiding from anyone. He is broadcast in the heavens, his existence and his glory. He wants you to find him. He wants you to have a personal relationship with him. And preacher, don't hide him from your people. Don't confuse the matter. Don't cover it all up. Expose your people to who God is and what he was. Preach Jesus. Get out of the way and they will see Jesus. Just preach the word. Get your agenda out of the way. Get your hobby horses out of the way and stay on the path. Show your people Jesus. If you exalt Jesus and not issues, if you exalt Jesus and not opinions, everything will fall in line. Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord. Number two, how do we know His will? Stay on the path. stay on the path. In Genesis, when Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac, he trusted that God would direct him. In Genesis chapter 24 verse 27, we can turn back there if you want. Genesis 24 verse 27. So many times we make the will of God this big mysterious thing that nobody thinks that they can find what it is. How do we find God's will? And young people, I recognize, they have a difficulty in this. They wonder, how do I know God's will for my life? How do I know where do I go to school? What do I do? Who do I marry? And where do I live? And all of these things. Here in Genesis chapter 24, we see that Abraham sent out his servant to find Isaac a wife, and it says this in verse 27. It says, and he said, blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth. I, this is the phrase, being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master's brethren. How did the servant find it? He got in the way. He got going. He got on the path. He started moving. He said, all right, I'm supposed to go find a wife, so I'm going to go find a wife. And on the way, it says, being in the way, God led him to that house. It was in the way that God was able to direct his servant to know his will. If you want to know God's will for your life and ministry, stay on the path. Stay on the path. We find God and his will in the way. God sent Abraham out and said, I will show you. I will show you. One of the greatest lessons that I have learned in my life and in my ministry is that what God expects of me is just to be faithful in the way. wherever I am, whatever is going on, whatever position or job or ministry, whatever it is, as long as I'm in the way, marching along, staying on the path, God will direct me. God will show me. I don't have to sit back and in my study and think and try to plan out my whole life. All I need to do is get out in the way and God is going to direct me. I had surrendered to go to the ministry, and I was on my way to a conference with a friend of mine, and we were talking to this older pastor. My friend was telling him, yeah, Devin has surrendered to go to the ministry, and he's doing this, this. So he asked me, so what is God going to do? I said, I think that God is going to take me to the mission field. I want to go. I was telling him these things that I was going to do, and he said, what are you doing now? What are you doing now? Well, right now I'm sitting back talking about it, is apparently what he was getting at, right? Get in the way, get in the way. And so I took that to heart and I started serving in my church. I started teaching Sunday school. I got involved in a bus ministry, became a deacon and started doing these things. And it was while I was in the way that God opened another door. and I didn't overanalyze that. I thought, you know what, God, I'm praying for a door. I'm praying that you would open it up. I'm praying that you would show me where you want to go. I'm not going to overanalyze or overthink what this door means, and is this door reality? Is it even a real door? I just said, okay, Lord, you opened a door, I'm going to go through it. And so he directed me this way, and then he directed me again. And all through my life, God has directed me as I was in the way. And this servant of Abraham here in Genesis chapter 24, being in the way, God showed him where he was supposed to go. God showed him the wife that he had for Isaac, and he revealed his will to this servant while he was being obedient. It was on the path that God revealed to Abraham where he wanted him to go. Do you want to know who God is? Get in the path. Do you want to know his will? Stay on the path. If we want to know God, stay on the path. Do you want to know how to build a church? Stay on the path. How do we lead our churches? Stay on the path. The Bible says in 2nd Timothy chapter 3 and verses 16 and 17, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. How do we lead our churches? Stay on the path. There is a path that has been given to us for to completely equip us for everything that we need to do. Everything that we need is right there in God's word. We don't need to go to the world and figure out how to build a church or lead God's church. We don't have to go to the Christian bookstore or to Amazon to learn how to lead God's church. We don't need to look over the fence to see how to lead God's church. One of the things that we tend to do as independent Baptist, right? And this has kind of become my thing. I'm a small-I independent Baptist, all right? What do I mean by that? I mean I'm independent, and that's what I mean. We don't have to go to some other place, and we don't have to look over the fence, and we don't have to look across town, right? What you're doing here may not work where I'm at, okay? What works in Mississippi may not work in Montana. What works in some other country may not work. What works in the United States of America may not work on the mission field. All right? And we got to stop looking at other people and comparing ourselves with other ministries and see what's working for them. And, you know, I could have all of this stuff in lodge grass and it would just gather dust. Right? Because we don't have the people do that. And I praise God for, I praise God for churches who have orchestras and all kinds of things. We're lucky to have a pianist, right? I feel for that gentleman that lost his pianist. When we first went to Lodgegrass, it was like, man alive, we need a pianist. And if anybody was sick, there was no pianist. We had a blessing. We had to go back to Michigan, most of you know that, for a funeral last weekend. Well, what that meant was, is that all of our pianists were in Michigan. And I praise God that he brought Brother Jamie. He was already scheduled to speak in Lodgegrass on Sunday. And I thought, well, praise the Lord, we have a preacher, but he's going to be singing acapella there. and Brother Jamie doesn't like to sing at all, okay? And he was a little worried about that, and I thought, there's no pianist, what are we gonna do? Well, they got to church, and one of our new families, they're from the Philippines, they're teaching in Lodge Grass, and a lady that they knew, they had been missionaries in China, they're from over in Ekalaka, they came to Lodge Grass to visit, and she played the piano. And so we had a pianist. I praise the Lord for all of that. All I have to say, we all have our own struggles. We all have what works. Some of our churches, they just have talent dripping off of every rafter and everywhere. Some of us don't have that. So we can't do what these other churches do. Maybe there are some programs. I had a man ask me at the funeral and he says, He says, so do you do small groups in your church? I said, brother, we are a small group. I don't know what in the world. We have small groups, there's one, and we meet on Sunday morning. But you know what? How do we lead our churches? Just stay on the path. We don't need to be looking at what this group's doing and what that group's doing and how this is working. We don't need to go to the world. We don't need to have their music. We don't need to have their philosophy. We don't need to have all of these things. We need to stay on the path. I was talking to my brother-in-law. He's talking about his church and his pastor has some wording that he does not like to use when leading someone to the Lord. And so he, to the point where, I mean, if you use this certain verbiage when you're leading the Lord, leading someone to the Lord, you don't need to preach here, right? And it is just like super. And he's independent fundamental Baptist and praise God for that ministry down there. But he said, no, you can't, you can't use it. I'm thinking you have, What you've done is you've made the words we use what saves the person without even understanding that you've done that. It's a condition of the heart. When I humble my heart before the Lord and I come and I cry out, you're going to tell me I have to use the right words or if I use the wrong words that it didn't work or didn't take? I don't know. But we don't need to be looking at some of these other things. We need to stay on the path. Stay on the path. We don't look over the fence to see how to lead God's people. Quit looking over the fence. Maybe there are some things that we can glean from other men. I'm not saying that. But stay in the book. Stay in the book. Feed the sheep. Love the sheep. Correct the sheep. The sheep aren't always right. Okay? Lead the sheep. Don't drive them. But don't follow them either. Right? We don't follow them. They're not the shepherd. They'll not give an account. We'll give an account. You and I will give an account, not them. Not even the deacons will give an account. You will give an account. Right? Stay on the path. Stay on the path. It is in the day-to-day walk with God that we can know Him. How do we know Him? Stay on the path. How do we know His will? Stay on the path. It's that day by day by day, walking down the path, the path that's been given us to us, that we can know Him, that we can know His will, and that we can lead His church. Stay on the path. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. I thank you so much for your goodness to me and to these men, and I thank you for this group, this fellowship, and Lord, these brothers in Christ, and I pray to Heavenly Father that you would just encourage us and lead us and instruct us, and Lord, help us to stay on the path. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.