We thank you so very much for your son, Jesus, and we just ask that as we spend time in your word that we would rely upon your spirit and that we would have a sense of humility. that we would look at this text from your servant Ugar and that we would, or Agor, and that from Agor that we would learn the lessons that we need to learn, that salvation is from you despite our limitations. We thank you so very much for everything you've given us in your son's name, amen. So this past week I started a new book, which isn't weird. The subject of the matter is very interesting. I don't want to get lost in the weeds of what the book's about, but it's a giant conspiracy theory. That's what the book's about. I knew going in that I was buying a book about a conspiracy theory. I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment of listening to people who have massive conspiracy theories. What I enjoy about conspiracy theories, interestingly enough, is that it actually shares a little bit more of what people are afraid of, right? So this one's a political one, and so really what it demonstrates is that people don't trust those in government. There's another interesting thing that happens in the midst of conspiracy theories. It's what people think is the authority. That is very fascinating to me. And without exception, every single conspiracy theory I've heard, the basis for the conspiracy theory is their own ability to reasonably think through the situation. So they say, reasonably, I think this is true, therefore it must be true. That's what they appeal to. They appeal to their own reason. Their own reason, their own thinking is the authority by which they then look at the world. And if it doesn't make sense to their reasoning or to their thinking, well then it's impossible. But if it makes sense to their thinking, well then it is the truth and you need to think like them. I find this pretty prevalent in modern thinkers and in modern people, our striking arrogance. So many people around us, the basis for what is right, what is wrong, how they think about the world, how they gather information, how they gather knowledge, what they think about metaphysics, what they think about epistemology, what they think about the beginning, and what they think about the end, starts and ends on the basis of the human mind being able to reason and think. The human mind is the, pinnacle it is the zenith of truth and determining truth that has led to some really dangerous dangerous thoughts it is not a biblical thought by the way it is absolutely antithetical to what we find in the scriptures and this morning that's what we're going to look at we're going to look at the extent of the human mind, the extent of human knowledge, the extent of the human mind in theology, and how small we are. We are very small. We don't know what we think we know. We don't observe what we think we observe. We don't have as much power as we think we do. And in this world where we have this inflated ego of ourselves and of the self-importance, Agor teaches us, son, you don't know anything. You are nothing compared to God, and you need to trust him and trust his word, and stop trying to be so arrogant and self-important. That's what we're going to see, so turn with me to Proverbs chapter 30. We're starting a new section in the book of Proverbs. and Lord willing, we'll go through the first six verses this morning. And I wanna point out three things to you in this section of Proverbs 30, verses one through six. The first three verses, we're gonna look at the limitation of our knowledge, the limitation of what we know, the limitation of how we know what we know, the limitation of our theology. Four, we're gonna see our limitation within creation. That's where we're going to see in verse four. He's going to ask a whole bunch of questions that we have to say, I can't do that. I don't know of anybody that can do that except for God alone. And the point is to demonstrate our smallness and our limitation. And then in five and six, we're going to see that salvation is from God, but this is salvation from God that's revealed in his word, and that I can't trust myself, what I think about reality, I have to trust God. So, let's start in verse one. I will say this in dealing with verse one. I don't know of a more debated verse in all of the book of Proverbs and this, I believe that every single word in verse one is debated. And if we all stood up and read our translations, you will see how different these translations are. And there's part of me that wants to sit here and argue for why I interpret things the way I interpret things. But I think sometimes we might lose what Egor is actually saying. And I think that all of those interpretations and all of those translations and all of the different things of what we think he's saying all lends itself to one major thing. And I think the major thing that we have to see going into this is his questioning man and demonstrating the limitation of man regardless of how you translate this that is what you come to okay so let's start in verse one the words of agor now we don't know who this guy is we don't know What we do know is that this isn't a Jewish name. This is most likely a Gentile name. So I like that, being a Gentile, being non-Jewish. Here we finally have the Gentiles represented in the book of Proverbs. Yeah, there we go. That's about as much of applause as we need, right? Then it says, the son of Jacob, once again, we don't know who this guy is, but it's a Gentile name. It is very possible that this guy was well known during the time of Solomon in 1 Kings, it talks about all the wise people coming to learn and sit with Solomon. We then get this next word, and this is where the word starts to become debated. In the ESV it says the oracle, some of your translations may have a particular name calling him the Mazenite, which is an actual group of people at the time. But it seems likely, and the literal word literally means an utterance, a prophetic utterance, that this person is a prophet. So here we have a Gentile prophet in the Old Testament. That's significant. Let me tell you why I think this is significant theologically. It demonstrates that even though Israel is God's chosen people, God cares about all people as well, right? That's what he does. He cares about all people. He cares about us as Gentiles, right? If you're non-Jewish, he cares about you. And at the time, when we read sometimes in the Old Testament, we think, well, the only people that knew God at the time had to be from Israel. That's not necessarily true. Here, this demonstrates, here's this guy who's a Gentile who's, writing at the time of Solomon and writing in God's word and has and knows God. That's important. So notice, it says, the man declares, I am weary, O God, I am weary, O God, and worn out. Now, some of your translations may have two guys' names here, and it's Ithil and Yukal. Your translation might say that, that that's who he's talking to. And here's then where this debate is. There's actually three ways of interpreting this. It's either that Egor is talking to these guys, and this is a discussion that he has with his pupils, And then you would then take this as this man stands in as God speaking to Israel, but still you would be left with the idea that Israel is limited in their knowledge and understanding of God. There's one that goes based off of the Aramaic, saying, okay, if this guy's a Gentile, he's not necessarily writing in Hebrew, he's maybe using an Aramaic term here, which says, I am not God, I am not God, I should not prevail. that would make sense and still follows. But the most likely one, and the one that most of the Hebrew scholars agree with, is this one, of the interpretation of taking the word literally, and the word literally, ethel, and yukal, literally mean, I am weary, oh God, I am weary, oh God, and worn out. One of the reasons that they point to this is, one, the word by itself means, I am weary, O God. So that's why they would say, just take it. It doesn't have to be a proper name. Just take it at face value. That's what he's saying. He mentions that phrase twice, I am weary, O God, I am weary, O God. So it seems a little strange to say the one pupil's name twice. It would seem more poetic and just taking it literally that this is what he's saying, I am weary, I am exhausted. This is how I take it, I take it that that's what he's saying. And so it's kind of interesting, you would say, well, why is this man weary? Why is he exhausted? Well, as we will come to find out, When you come to God's word and your ego fights against God's word, is it not exhausting? Is it not exhausting when you think about the world around us and trying to figure everything out? Don't you just get tired? Like, don't you get tired? Don't you get tired being on Facebook for hours, YouTube on hours, your news for hours, and you still walk away going, I don't know what's going on. I have no idea what's going on. I read all the newspapers. I read the latest books. I spent all this time just trying to figure out what happened yesterday. I'm behind, right? That is something that is just draining. You just walk away going, I don't know. I'm so tired of trying to figure this stuff out, right? This is similar to what the preacher concludes in the book of Ecclesiastes, his weariness, his weariness of looking at the world, trying to figure out the world, trying to figure out how this all fits together. And so here we see this man who, under the weight of what he's about ready to say, realizes the exhaustion of the human spirit. This demonstrates the first limitation, right? We get tired. You wanna try to think about God and instruct God and tell God how you think things should happen? First thing you should know is he doesn't get tired, you do. He can handle things, you can't. He doesn't get worn out, he doesn't need sleep, you do. Every time we take a nap, that's a demonstration of our limitation. It is, because I need to re-energize. God doesn't have to do that, you do. Even sleep, oh blessed sleep, is a demonstration of your creatureliness and your dependence on God. Every time you eat a meal because you're hungry and you're famished, that demonstrates You're a creature. God doesn't need that. He's not like us that requires food, right? He's not like us that he needs water. We need water, we need food, we need rest. He doesn't need clothes, he doesn't need shelter. We do. And as Agor thinks about theology, he thinks about God, he thinks about all the things that he sees, notice what he then says. He says, surely I am too stupid to be a man I have not the understanding of man. As he thinks about the complexity of God's word, he thinks about the complexity of the world around him, as he thinks about everything that is to be thought about, his overwhelming conclusion is, I am no better than an animal. So as you drove in, you probably saw the cows. What does a cow know? That's pretty much what we know. That's the idea. We're no better. We all end up the same, right? Well, hopefully not. Maybe a cow might become a burger. Hopefully you don't become a burger. But we all die, right? End, finality, right? What do they know? What's the urges that they follow? Do we not have some of the same urges, right? And so the conclusion is, when we study God's word, we come to the sense of, I don't... I don't know. And then I listen to other people and I go, man, there's some people out there that are really, really smart. I'm not smart enough to even match them intellectually. What do I know? I know nothing. Man knows nothing, right? We see this later, we see this by other prophets. For example, Isaiah, when he talks about God, he says, God's ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Paul discusses this in 1 Corinthians where he says, where's the wise man of this age? Is not the foolishness of God much smarter than the wisdom of man? So at the sense, you start to see that man is limited even in what I know. I'm limited in what I understand. Let's say you're the smartest human being that's ever walked the face of the planet. What do you know? I mean, really, what do you know? What's your understanding? Now, you might have more understanding of something than someone else, but really, what do you know? In the whole grand scheme of all things, maybe .001%? Well, that's not a lot. That's not awesome, right? When we are confronted with God's word and God's wisdom, the response has to be an overwhelming, I don't know. I don't know. There's a lot of things I don't know, and I can't figure it out. And then I'm not in the understanding of a man. this type of self debasement isn't something that he's just feigning humility. This is something that happens when somebody's encountered with the glory of God. Think of Isaiah, when Isaiah sees God in Isaiah 6. What does he say? Woe am I! There's this complete self-debasement. There's this understanding when he sees the Lord, he realizes, I'm nothing compared to that. I don't know anything compared to that. I'm nothing. I think every time that we see an example of somebody who beholds the glory of God, walks away with this overwhelming sense of awe, this overwhelming sense of the bigness and transcendence of God and the overwhelming sense of our own creatureliness and smallness and how little we actually know. Now think of this just for a moment. Think about our culture around us, where the human mind is the pinnacle. If it's reasonable, therefore it must be true. If I can prove it, logically, it must be true. This is what the enlightenment was built upon. The human mind and reason is the zenith. Here, this passage goes, you guys don't know anything. It's pooled ignorance at best. At best, it's pooled ignorance. That's what it is. And then notice what he goes on. He says, I've not learned wisdom. The more you know, the more you realize I don't know, right? We spent how many years in the book of Proverbs? I still stay up late over situations praying, God, how do I navigate through this situation? I'll preach over something, and then I'll go home, and then I'll have to put it in practice, and I'm sitting there going, What was I doing all week when I spent all that time studying the sermon? I should be able to make a quick snap decision here, and I'm still kind of struggling on how to work this stuff out. We're limited, we're limited. And then he says, nor have I the knowledge of the Holy One. You think you know God? You think you know theology? You think you know these things? You know a couple big words? You know, a couple big theological words. You know the meaning of anti-Douvlian? Great. You know what hypostatic union means? Okay. So what? You don't really know God the way you think you know God. When we think about how big God is, how transcendent he is, how infinite he is, how arrogant is it for us as mere humans, to say, I really, really know a lot and everything about him. Yeah, right. I mean, I have a tough time describing the ocean to people who've never seen the ocean, let alone God. Now this doesn't mean that God is not knowable. We can know God. We can know him in a real way. We can have a relationship with him and we can know things about him. And we're gonna see how we can do that. But realize this, that man apart from God revealing himself to us cannot know God. Meaning this, I can't tell you, go out and look at a tree, and you'll look at a tree and go, oh, yeah, as I look at the bark, God's trinity. Yeah, Jesus came and died on the cross for my sins. You see that in the leaf right there. And you see the sinfulness of man on that, the way the branch loops over the water. No. At best, all you know is somebody designed it. Somebody put it here. You might come up with some things that sound somewhat biblical in your theism, but do you know him? Can you know him from just your mind? So you see the limitation of the human mind? The human mind is incredibly limited. Here's the problem. I don't think of my mind as being limited. I don't. And I probably, I'm gonna go out on a limb here. I know I just used a tree illustration. I'm gonna continue on that tree. I'm gonna go out on the limb that's hanging over the river. You probably don't think of your own knowledge as being limited either. In fact, I'm gonna go even further out on the limb, right? So now I'm on the little twig now. We probably think it sounds reasonable to me, therefore it's probably true. We probably all have that. It sounds reasonable to me, therefore it's true. Because it's me, right? It's me. I know me. I wouldn't lie to me. I wouldn't deceive me. I know more than the other guy. I might feign humility, but deep down in the recesses of my soul, I go, yeah, but I know. I know. I know, I'm right, because I am. This verse is like popping the balloon of our own pride. We don't know what we think we know. We don't have as much wisdom as we think we have. We are incredibly, incredibly limited, and the human mind by itself cannot come to wisdom and cannot come to know God. Now, some of you are pretty smart and you're thinking of Romans chapter two, saying, well, doesn't that passage talk about the law that's inscribed in somebody's heart and people doing things instinctively of the law? I want you to table that for a moment, because we're going to get to that in verse five. Because the point is, God was the one that revealed that to their heart. God put that in their heart. It wasn't that they determined that by themselves independent of God's creation and revelation. That's the point that this author is making. That apart from God, you know nothing. Apart from God, you don't know him. Now some of us might think we're pretty big stuff in the whole grand scheme of things when it comes to the cosmos. Notice verse four of our limitation even within creation. This is very, this rapid fire questions that Egor uses here. Man, we could spend a lot of time in each one of these questions, but I find that going through them quickly is probably better. And let me just tell you, your answer to each of these has to be, I don't know anybody that's done that, or that can do that, except for God. Only God can do that. I can't do that, you can't do that, I don't know anybody that can do that, but God can. So just notice the first one. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Anybody? Anybody here? Wanna raise your hands? Anybody ascended and come back down? I've been in a plane. Does that count? No. When he's talking about heaven here, he's talking about what? The abode, God's abode. Who's gone up there and come back down? Only Jesus, right? Only God. Only God has done that. Nobody does that. So anytime that man, apart from God's revelation, says, oh, I know, I know, No, you don't. You haven't been there. You haven't been there and come back down. Who do you think you are? Then notice the next one. Who has gathered the wind in his fists? I have trouble flying a kite on the beach, let alone trying to catch the wind in my hand. Who does that? Who can hold the wind in his fists? Who does that? Do you know anybody? Any takers, anybody think you have that power? The power of wind? I know a story is pretty windy. I come from Wyoming. That place is super windy, super, super windy. I wish I had the power of wind. That would have been awesome, especially when I was playing baseball. There was a couple balls that floated into the foul line because of the wind. Every time that you see the ball going over to the foul line, what does everybody do? You pray for the power of wind in those times. We don't have it. We don't have it. Nobody has. Only God possesses the power of the wind. Now notice the next one. Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who here wears water? Who can control water to that extent? Anybody? Anybody? Who here can go out to the ocean and say, stop, go over there? I'm sure Sam would love that power, right? The control of water, that would make being a Coast Guard a lot easier, right? Notice the next one. Who's established all the ends of the earth? Who's established boundaries? Boundaries, this goes here, that goes here, that goes over here, waters, you stay here, you people stay here, this stays here, this stays here. Who does that? Who has the power? Now, we like to think that as Americans, our government has the power to do some of those things. No. God's the one who does this, right? So the answer always has to be the same. And so as he's thinking, he then poses this question to us as a reader, what's his name? Name the person, name it, what's his name? And then here, Egor says something that is prophetic, because it's an oracle, it's a prophecy. And sometimes in prophecies, somebody can ask a question, and later on, because we have more revelation, we can then answer the question with great clarity. But the question is, what man can do this? Does he have a son that can do this? It's kind of a weird thing to put in, right? A weird thing to say. But we as believers, looking back at this, we say, well, who's the one that does this? God. And what's his son name? Jesus. Jesus does this. In fact, it's interesting. You look at each of these questions. Has not Jesus done each of these things? Who's ascended to heaven and come down? Jesus. In fact, Jesus even talks about that in John numerously. He's like, I'm the one that's been up there. I know the Father. Who's the one that holds the winds in his fists? He's sitting on a boat, tells the waters and the wind to stop, and it stops. Who controls weather like that? Jesus does. Who's established the ends of the earth? Jesus. Now notice what he says, because he says something that's really important, because it's implying that we all come to the same answer. Who's done this? No one. But then he says, surely you know, You know, meaning we all know the answer. The rhetorical question is so obvious at the answer. Who alone has this power? No human alive has this power. Only God has this power. So what does that mean? That means God's really big, and that means we're really small. That's what that means. He's really mighty, and we're really weak. He's independent and self-existent, and we're required upon him. We are completely, totally dependent. What do you have that can overcome these limitations? Humanly speaking, absolutely nothing. It's amazing how throughout the week all the different studies that you become a part of when you do multiple Bible studies and how some of these things just compound upon themselves as you study. And we're going through the book of Exodus and we're looking at all the prayers in the book of Exodus on Wednesday afternoon. And the evidence of man's human limitation is so obvious. Here you have the Israelites, they're released, they go out into the desert, God leads them to this place where there is nowhere to go. You got the Red Sea behind ya, mountains all the way, and then there's this one place, and guess what happens? The Lord moves in the hearts of Pharaoh and his army, and guess what they do? They come to get ya. And what do the people say? Moses, why did you lead us here? Was it not good enough for us to be slaves in Egypt that you would lead us to the desert to be slaughtered? We have no way out, no way out. We can't fight them, we can't overpower them, can't swim it, can't climb the mountains, we're done. And what does God do? He protects them and then he parts the sea and they walk across on dry land. And then when Moses looks back at that event, that whole event, the whole, leaving Egypt and then God defeating Pharaoh. What is his conclusion? His conclusion is to use these words that speak of the grandeur of God. He's majestic in holiness. He's majestic in his greatness. And we've made the comment several times as we discuss this text. Moses is at a loss for words. He uses the word greatness over and over again, because that's the only word he could think of. God's so great. This is the basis for how a Christian mind, this is what a Christian mind should look like. This is the default position of the Christian mind. God is really big, and he is really powerful, and I'm really small, and I'm really limited, and I really absolutely need him for everything. There's this hopelessness of the human limitation. But notice this hope and this warning that comes, this advice that comes and the salvation that comes, but it comes with a warning in verse five and six. Notice the salvation. Notice the salvation that's from God. And notice what he says, every word of God proves true. It's true, it's right, it's pure, there's nothing wrong in it. Every single word, every single word is right, it's infallible, there's no error, it's proven true. It's true at the time when he writes it and it's true past the time that he writes it. The word of the Lord endures forever. It's perfect. It restores the soul. This is what it does. It's right. So you say, why does he say it like this? It's so obvious. The first four verses demonstrate the limitation of man to know anything, to understand anything about God, to understand anything about the word or the world. But God has revealed stuff to man. And those things that God reveals are so concrete, so pure, so axiomatic, that it can't even be questioned on its veracity. It is so true. In the confusion and limitation of everything apart from God, here God's word stands as this peer, this anchor. Every word proves true. You do realize that every single word of the Bible is true. The whole thing is true. These come from God's word, as God moved in the hearts of men to write. And so we can easily say that these are the words of man that God uses in their circumstances, but he's so moved in such a way that the very words that the human author wrote are the very words that God wanted written. I know that it's in vogue right now for people to deconstruct their faith and then write books about it and have video series on YouTube and try to convince other people that the Bible's not true. And they come up with all of these cleverly devised arguments. Many of them are not new arguments, they're old arguments. Many of them are not well-researched. Many of them are based off of wrong ideas. And some of them are just simply based on the idea that if my human mind can't reasonably understand it, therefore it can't be true. Let me tell you this one thing, friends. I believe in a global flood. I believe that there was a little boat that Noah was on. Even if I never see that boat, it's true. I don't need somebody pretending to be Indiana Jones to find it for me to go, well, now the Bible's true. God's word is true, and I trust God. I might not be able to understand how everything fits together. Oftentimes I don't, because I'm a lot like the author here. I'm too stupid to be a man. But I do know the author. And I do know that he tells the truth. I know him. Notice then what he then says next. Because this is so important. It's so important, so simple, that sometimes it's easy to forget. Because notice what he says. He says, he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Well, I thought we were talking about God's word. Why now all of a sudden start talking about the character of God? Because that's what the Bible reveals. It reveals the character of God. And it reveals not only the character of God, but it then encourages us to what? Trust him. Notice the description here. He's a shield. What's a shield do? Protects. Protects from problems. Protects from attacks. It offers safety. He is that safety. He's that safety shield. He's that riot shield in the midst of the confusion. And notice that if you take refuge, you trust in him. Now, us in the New Testament, looking back at this, we would say, yeah, you trust in God by trusting in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone for your salvation. You do that, which is, by the way, revealed in God's word. The only place that you could find about that salvation is found in God's word. When you believe that and you take refuge in him, notice what happens. There's safety. There's salvation. Salvation is from him. So the implication is you cannot save yourself. Your mind cannot save you. Your power cannot save you. The only hope you have is to run as fast as you can to God's word and trust in him. That is all you got. That is it. That's all you have. You run as fast and hard as you can. And the moment you start to veer from that, realize, oh, it's scary dangerous out there. The only place I have is God and his word. Now, we will find this to be true throughout chapter 30. Agor has a very interesting way of talking. And what he'll do is he actually addresses three major issues later on in this chapter. And the first one that he deals with is human ignorance. He'll deal with humility. He'll deal with greed. And what he'll do is he'll give these sayings that you have to sit there and think through of that demonstrate what he's trying to say. So here he demonstrated the, ignorance of man. Later on he'll demonstrate the greed of man. He'll demonstrate man's rebelliousness. So he'll give that, then he'll give a piece of advice. So here the piece of advice is to go to God's word. Next week we're going to see the piece of advice is prayer from God for content and peace. And then later on what we're going to see is that the answer is repentance. And with each of those there is a Advice, but then there's a warning. If you don't heed this advice, something bad will happen. Something bad will happen. So there's this warning. Some of the warnings are pretty graphic, by the way. I'll let you look through chapter 30 throughout the week, and you'll see what I mean. There's a thing about vultures eating the eyes of people. But we'll get to that next week. I know that we're all excited about that. But notice what he says in verse six. Because this is what the human ignorance and limitation does, and we do this very easily And here's the warning, do not add to his words. Now, some of you go, well, I've never done that. I've never taken to a piece of paper and said, now I'm writing 2nd Isaiah and selling 2nd Isaiah. Here you go. Here's 2nd Isaiah, new book of the Bible. We go, as long as I'm not doing that, I'm not adding to God's word, right? I mean, we don't add to God's word, do we? Of course we do. You know how easy it is? You know how easy it is to have an interpretation, to say this is what the interpretation is? When you read the text, you don't even think about the text, you go, that's the interpretation. What if the Bible doesn't mean that? Doesn't matter, that's what the interpretation says. I know certain people that have certain study Bibles from certain people, I'm not gonna mention those certain study Bibles that people have, but they'll go, they'll read the text, and then they'll immediately, without thinking about it, without doing due diligence in Bible study, will go immediately right down to the comment and go, well, the commentator says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's what it means. It may mean that, it may not mean that. That may be helpful. I have studied Bibles. What I'm doing right now is I'm teaching. Oh, but is it possible for me to add implications that are not there? Yep. To cause you to think about the text in a certain way that's not necessarily correct? Yep. Add ideas that are foreign to the text? Of course. There's a technical term for this, by the way. It's called eisegesis. That's taking an idea or a thought or a cultural thing that you have and bringing that into the reading of the text and not allowing the text to speak for itself. So be careful, be careful about interpretation. This isn't a nerf fight. These are real bullets. There's real consequences to interpretation of God's word. And it's easy for us not to study God's word the way that we should. But there's something bad that happens. By the way, let me just say this, it is also, we also live in a time where there are so many people, so many Christians that claim, God told me something, they write it in a book, and then they hand it to people, which is essentially inspiration, and they're saying it's scriptural, and it's not, and they're adding things to God's word. They do this all the time. People see visions, and they add things. They're false teachers. They add to God's word. There's a whole sect in Utah that wrote a whole bunch of other books saying this is from God. Not a good thing. In fact, it's also interesting with this adding of things. You know that as God has revealed his word, he's done this in stages. And at the end of each stage, it's kind of interesting, there's always a statement that says, don't add, don't add. There's one with Moses in Deuteronomy. Here, you have one. in the hakmah, the wisdom literature. You have one in numerous places in the prophets that say don't add. You have within the New Testament, the very last words of the book of Revelation, which is speaking about the book of Revelation, but applies to the whole book, don't add, because if you add, God'll add tribulation to your life. If you take away, God's gonna remove blessings from your life. But we as humans are so ignorant, so stupid, so arrogant, so egotistical, that we think we can correct God's theology and tell him what we think he should mean instead of going to say, what does he say? What happens? Notice what happens. Don't do this, because what'll happen? lest he rebuke you. That ain't a good thing. It's not a good thing to be rebuked, to be told off by God. That's not good. No believer should ever want that. No follower of Jesus should ever want to have a rebuke. And then notice the next thing. You'll be found a liar. Why? Because you're taking the truth and changing the truth. You're changing reality. That's what you're doing. When you change God's perfect word with our own perversions, that's changing reality. That's a lie. It's changing the way that people think about reality. That's a lie. That's false. It makes sense. God knows he's perfect. He writes a book. Don't goof with it. Take it, accept it, trust him. There's a lot of commentary we could talk about about today's church, so we're gonna have cookies, and then we're gonna come back, and I'm gonna talk about all of the ways that this has happened. I'm joking. Be careful, friends. Brothers and sisters, please be careful. This past week, I've heard so many videos, just doing the research of the sermon, and looked at so many things, and I've heard so many people who at one time used to be Christians, and they talked about their deconversion. And every single one of them, the one common denominator was, I trust my mind more than I trust God. More than I trust God's word. My mind is the ultimate authority, and I know. I know. I know what happened in the past, because I know what happens right now, and I know the things in the past couldn't have been anything different than how it is right now. My mind is right. There's no evidence for these things. My mind is right. And Christians foolishly buy into this, all right, you need evidence, let's have an evidence battle. And we stack up evidence against their lack of evidence, and then we say charge, and we have an old medieval war. Evidence versus evidence, clash versus clash. And sometimes what happens is we even can become allured away from the simple following of Jesus, thinking that I gotta somehow be credentialed by the world in order to have a voice in the world to talk about God's word, or I have to have this mind that has the answers for every single person. Now, I'm not against apologetics, I'm not against amassing evidence, I'm not against pointing things out and using reasonable, winsome arguments, but friends, we have to realize that the reason why people believe in Jesus is not because of our arguments or our ability to communicate those arguments. People come to know Jesus because the Spirit of God works in their heart. And sometimes praying for them is far more beneficial than sitting there trying to argue with them over Facebook. Sometimes, we just need to have that holy stubbornness and say, God's word is right, regardless of how my mind thinks about it. This is true. Stay faithful to Jesus. Stay faithful to the word. This is true. Everything else out there is confusing. You can't trust your own mind to think through these things. But thanks be to God that he loved us so much that he revealed himself and the truth through his son and through his word. I'm very thankful that he even comes down to our level to even validify some of those revelations to us. Much more could be said, but let's leave it at that. Trust God, trust Jesus, stay faithful, trust the word, run as fast as you can to the word, and don't leave it. Because everything else outside is shaky ground. May the Lord give us both the will and the ability to do all that we heard, and let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this text. We thank you so much for the things that are said here. We're so thankful that You are concrete and true and trustworthy and help us, help us in our own sinfulness, in our own sinful state to not be so arrogant in our own mind and in the way that we think, but to submit ourselves to You, to fear You, to trust You, and to truly trust You, even with our minds, even with our limitations, that we may have this salvation despite our limitations, because salvation is from You, from Your Son, and that is revealed in Your Word, and we're very thankful for that. We thank you for everything that you've blessed us with, and we just ask for your blessings on the rest of the day. We say this in your son's name, amen.