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Okay, let's go ahead and let's
pray and then we'll spend some time in the word together. Father, we thank you so very
much for your son, Jesus Christ, who's come and died on the cross
for our sins. Once again, just ask as we open up your word that
your spirit would be moving, that we would see the things
that we need to see, that you would teach us, that you would
lead us to a point where we would desire to want to be more like
Christ, that we would repent of our sins, that we would seek
to be a good testimony to those around us, And Father, we're
just so very thankful for everything that you've blessed us with and
everything that you've given us in your Son, Christ. We thank
you and love you in your Son's name. Amen. Imagine for a moment that you
were going on a hike, and The things that you need are what?
Water, backpack, probably a good pair of shoes, and a compass.
Now imagine for a moment that you had a compass that didn't
have a needle in it. Now, where would you end up?
I don't know. Would you find true north? Maybe,
by accident, right? It wouldn't be because of the
instrument that you had, because the instrument that you had is
broken, right? Now, how foolish would it be
if somebody came up to you and showed you a broken navigational
system like that and said, this will always lead us to the place
we're going. It will always lead us true north.
And you look at it and go, No, it won't. It won't. And the more
they try to convince you of the validity and the veracity of
this particular thing, you would say, no, we won't go in the right
direction. I mean, we'll go in a direction,
you might know the path, but we're not necessarily gonna be
following the right course, right? Like we couldn't find true north,
we couldn't go east, we couldn't go south on purpose, right? This wouldn't be helpful. And
we would think of that person as being incredibly self-deluded
and incredibly independent, right? We would think of that person
as being incredibly arrogant. I know what to do and don't tell
me how I do things in the woods. This will work. And you'll walk
away going, no, no. I find that in the Christian
life there are many who go through sanctification like that person
going on a hike with a broken compass. They are so self-sufficient,
so independent, so self-righteous, so arrogant, so self-absorbed
that they, who knows where they go, but they'll end up there.
They'll end up there. We don't know where they're going,
but they'll end up there. And what's amazing is how many
times God lays out for us where we're supposed to go, how we're
supposed to live. He outlines for us the path of
holiness, the path of righteousness. And this is the right way, but
there are people who are so self-sufficient and self-righteous that they
follow their own way. This morning, as we look at Proverbs
30, verses 7 through 17, That's exactly what we're going to see.
We're going to see this idea that God sanctifies us, God makes
us holy. For us as believers, God makes
us like Christ. independent or despite of our
independence. And so the goal for us is to
be dependent upon the things that God gives, right? That's
how you overcome independence is dependence upon God and this
real sense of I am not self-sufficient. No. No, no, no, no. I am not
an independent, autonomous Christian. I must absolutely depend on God. Depend on God for a lot. For
a lot. And that's what we're going to
see. And there's going to be three things we're going to see
in this text this morning. In verses 7 through 9, we're
going to see the sanctification which comes from God. the sanctification
from God, we're going to see this desire by Agor to please
the Lord, and he's gonna talk about the problem of pleasing
the Lord with this idea of independence, of self-sufficiency. Then, in
verses 10 through 16, he's then going to demonstrate what it
looks like, the bad behavior that comes from this independence.
Right, so from 10 to 16, we're gonna see this bad behavior of
independence. And then in verse 17, we're gonna
see this absolutely gruesome consequence of independence. Where does that lead? What does
that lead to, this independence? And we're gonna see that. So
as we've been last week we started Proverbs chapter 30 and as I
shared it kind of follows a form and we're going to see this form
again. Now it's going to be a little bit out of order from how we
saw it last week but it definitely follows this order. It's going
to one. declare a problem, and this problem
is definitely common to man. It is a problem of man's life
apart from God's help, God's intervention, apart from God's
illumination, right? So here is this untamed, unkept
depravity, right? And this is what it's going to
look like. He's then going to offer a solution to that problem. Last week, remember, the problem
was the ignorance of man. Man doesn't know a thing. He
doesn't know a thing. He just doesn't know. He's so
ignorant, so arrogant, so silly. But God, in his graciousness,
will offer salvation and reveals that through his word. So you
want to know anything, you have to go to Jesus. You have to go
to his word, right? Here we're going to see man's stubborn independence
and we're going to see the solution. And then the third aspect to
this section, as we're going to see, is if you don't man,
there's a consequence. There's a consequence to this,
right? So there's the problem, there's
the solution, and then there's a warning, if you don't follow,
here's what's going to happen. So, in this section, it's kind
of interesting because he starts it with the solution. He starts
it with, here's the solution, and then he goes on to describe
the bad behavior. That's kind of interesting in
this section. So notice what he does, Verse seven through
nine, and notice what he says. Two things I ask of you. Now
I take this, that this is Agor speaking, and that I think he's
speaking to God. I think this is prayer. So the
very first thing that we see here is that he's praying to
God, he's talking to God. Prayer. is such an important
aspect to us as believers. Prayer, just by the act of it,
is an act of dependence upon God. A prayerless life is an
arrogant life because it's assuming I can do this apart from God's
help. Right? I can do this without
God's intervention. I don't need to consult God.
I don't need to consult him. I don't need to ask for his help.
I don't need to ask for his illumination. I could just do this without
him. And so prayer is that act, just the act of praying is an
act of humility, of saying, yep, I need you. I absolutely need
you. Right? I need you to help here.
I need you to help here. I need you to help with this.
Prayer is so important, so very important. And so here the solution
is this prayer. He's praying. So how do we combat
greed? How do we combat self-righteousness?
We do this by true prayer. Now let us be careful here because
there are people that do things when all of our eyes are closed
that may sound like prayer but may not really be prayer. We
don't know who they're talking to, but they might not be talking
to God. Now, on the one hand, some of
those things can be quite obvious. Sometimes that's not as obvious. The Lord knows, but for us in
our hearts when we pray, we need to make sure that we're not saying
things in a way to get people to amen us because we said something
really profound in our prayer, right? We need to remember that
a prayer isn't good because it's long, right? This isn't Joanne's
fabric. The longer it goes, the better
it is. That's not necessarily the case.
I think prayers should be measured by our heart, by our submissiveness
of our heart, should be measured by its weight, right? The things
that we're saying are true and they have the right perspective. They're asking God for the right
things. And in a sense, it's a conversation to God. And if
you get to listen to my conversation with God, amen. If not, who cares? I'm talking to God. I'm talking
to the creator of the universe. So it starts here. It starts
with this, God's the one that can help me. Clearly, here's
this wise man who's a prophet. He realizes, I can't stop this
problem. There's these two major things. And it's only God that can stop
me from these things. Because notice what he says.
He says, two things I ask. Deny them not to me before I
die. remove far from me falsehood
and lying, and give me neither poverty nor riches." That's his
two prayer requests. Have you ever prayed those two
prayer requests, by the way? I mean, has that been on the
top of your list? What's the two things? Keep me from falling to deception,
and don't give me too much, and don't give me too little. I'm going to be honest here.
I don't think I've prayed these specifically, and I don't think
I've ever been in a prayer meeting where we asked for these things
specifically, right? A lot of our times when we go
together and we pray together, it's always, there's this need,
there's this need, there's this need, there's this need, there's
this need, and that's important. to pray about needs and problems.
I'm not saying that that's a small thing. That's something that
we should do, and God asks us to do. But I'm often, even in
my own prayer life, I realize that I don't thank God as much,
and I'm not as dependent upon God as I should. There's a lot
of times where I say things and I tell God, here's the solution,
and if you could make my solution work out, that's great. Here
is this man who's humble enough that says, look, one, I am ignorant,
and I am helpless, and I absolutely need your help. And the things
that he asks for, on the surface, you go, well, that's kind of
an interesting prayer. It's an interesting prayer. Why
are those the two things that he prays for? Why are those the
big issues on his mind? Well, we're going to see why
they're such big issues later on, but let's just look at what
he's asking. First, he says, remove far from
me falsehood. This idea for falsehood, by the way, is not falsehood
in his own thinking. per se, this is falsehood from
outside that perverts the way he thinks. So the idea is protection
from lies, right? I need your help to protect me
from lies. Now, I've mentioned this before,
we often think of ourselves as really good judges of character
and that we can always spot a lie. I'm a lie detector and so are
you. That's not necessarily the case, friends. That is not the
case. You know why we believe the truth?
It's not because of your ability to see it. It's because God helps
you see it. He gives you the ability to see
it. You want to know why you don't go off into falsehood?
because of the Lord, not because of your ability and strong will. No, it is the Lord's help. And
so he immediately realizes that any perspective he has that's
true and correct has to be protected by God himself, and that it's
God who's actively protecting him from falsehood, and that
he's dependent upon God for that protection. Now, then there's
the second part, which is lying. So protect me from false things
that come from the outside, but then also protect me from myself
spouting lies. Telling the truth. Help me tell
the truth. Help me love truth. So the love
for truth, the love for hearing truth, and the love of not spouting
out lies, and the love for sharing the truth, this is something
that is given to us by God and is protected by God. And our
prayer should be this constantly. I'm ignorant, right? Last week,
that's what we saw. I'm ignorant. I'm a little kid.
I don't know what's going on. If I don't know what's going
on, and you're the only one that does know what's going on, then
I desperately need you to help me navigate. It's absolutely
necessary. And I don't think that he's saying
this in such a way that's just a blase like, yeah, help me.
The way that he says this, deny me not this before I die, implies
screaming, crying out, a real heart, right? Then notice the
next thing, he says, neither give me poverty nor riches. In fact, then he goes on and
he says, feed me with the food that is needful for me. So it's give me the right amount. The right amount of food. What's
the right amount of food? The Lord knows that. So give me the
right amount of food. Now, if you're looking at this,
you go, well, this sounds a lot like the Lord in Matthew chapter
6, when he says, lead us not into temptation, but delivers
from temptation, and also give us this day our daily bread. Yep. Yeah, no, that's exactly his
prayer. His prayer goes along, and the Lord recognizes this
is the way that we should be praying, right? This is the way
that needs to happen, that our protection from temptation is
the Lord, and the one who gives us our daily bread is the Lord. Now, what happens, what happens,
and he specifically focuses on this idea of giving me neither
poverty nor riches. Notice what happens here. He says, lest I be fool and deny
you and say, who's the Lord? It's possible, and the Lord warns
about this in Deuteronomy several times of the nation of Israel,
it's possible, this is even warned in the New Testament, that we
can have so much and that we think the reason I have is because
I did it. The reason I have a house is
because I was good at financial planning. The reason I have this
is because I was really good at my job. The reason I got a
promotion was because I was really good. I'm really good at this.
And I'm really good at keeping my money. And I'm really good
at looking at the market and determining what's going to happen.
So this is all me, man. Look at me. Look at me. I did
this. And so the fear is, if I have
too much, the temptation for me is that I will become self-sufficient
and thus deny the Lord's provision in my life. and assuming it was me, I'm self-sufficient,
to even go as far as to say, who is the Lord? To go into atheism. It's possible to go into, who
is the Lord to me? I am my own master. I'm the one
that made all this happen. That's dangerous. I can't help
but think, in our own culture, the Lord has really blessed our
country, hasn't he? We've become very full. We have
a lot. We have more than what we need.
And isn't it interesting that there's a growing atheism? I
wonder why that is. Oh, maybe it was because we got
so full that we forgot about the Lord. And we thought, look
how good I am. And maybe the church kind of
bought into this. Look how good we are. We live here. Obviously, everything we have
is because I'm American. He sees the danger of this. He
sees the danger of this. And then notice, he then says,
well, what happens if I have too little? He says, or lest
be poor and steel and profane the name of God. So here, with
poverty is this, Attempt to steal, right? I don't have enough food
to feed my family. How am I gonna feed my family?
I gotta feed my family. I gotta do the thing, right,
to feed my family. So I'm gonna do something that's a little
sneaky. And guess what happens when that happens? People look
at that and say, who is the Lord? Oh, is that what a believer looks
like? I'm not. So his prayer is, Just give me
enough and help me be content. You see, that's the real heart
of his prayer. Help me be content. Help me be
joyful with what you've given me and content with what you've
given me and to realize that you are enough and what you provide
for me is enough. So you have these two prayers,
right? Keep me from falsehood because I'm gonna fall into it
and keep me from from this position of greed and self-sufficiency. Help me be content, right? That's
the prayer. That's his prayers. Now he's
going to describe what happens when you have somebody who's
self-sufficient, and he's going to give all of these behaviors.
It's kind of interesting. So notice verse 10 of the bad
behaviors that come from independence. It's kind of interesting how
he starts off with this first one. It says, do not slander a servant
or a slave to his master. That means don't go up and say
something that's legally liable. The idea is make something up.
So don't make something up about a slave to his master. The sense is, He won't have any
legal recourse to fight it, right, because one, he was only acting
on behalf of his master, so it's not like he has his own volition. Two, in a lot of societies, if
you're a slave, you don't have the rights to go to court. So
here you are bringing a charge against a guy who can't defend
himself. And notice what happens here,
and this kind of demonstrates this whole self-sufficiency apart
from God's word, apart from God's law, apart from God's justice.
Notice what happens, lest he curse you, and you be held guilty. The idea is, man, this guy. He only has one recourse, talk
bad about you. And when he starts talking about
you, guess what happens? It's possible you get in trouble,
right? So here's this whole idea of
instead of following God's law, God's justice, God's plan of
loving one another, what ends up happening? Everybody's self-seeking
and everybody's getting in trouble, right? Now, notice the next couple
of verses from 11 to 16. In the ESV, they all start off
with this phrase, there are those who. Your translation might say
there's a generation, there's a people. So here he's describing,
and even in verse 10, it kind of alludes to this, of a whole
generation of people. This is what people are. It's
kind of describing mankind, mankind without God's help, mankind without
God's, restraint without God's word, that this is what it looks
like, right? This is what it looks like. And
I want you just to see, I want you to see the independence of
each of these people. That this whole, I'm my own captain
of my own ship. That this whole, I don't need
anyone else. I don't need the Lord. I don't
need any other person. I am autonomous and self-sufficient
and independent. And this is what happens when
we leave God's word. We become so arrogant and self-deluded. So notice, verse 11. There are
those, there is a generation, who do what? Who curse their
fathers, same word as before, curse, says bad stuff, says bad
stuff about his dad, and does not bless their mothers. So they
say really bad things about dad, utter curses against dad, and
then when it comes time for Mother's Day to bless their mother on
Mother's Day and every other day around the year, they go,
nah, Nah. That's what happens when you
get to be independent. Now, before you would go, well,
of course, all those people outside of church would not honor their
father and mother, but all of us inside of the church, of course
we love mom and dad. We've been taught that from wee
little kids, knee high to a grasshopper, that we need to be honoring to
our father and mother. I want you to remember it was
the Pharisees, the religious people who took God's word pretty
serious that had created an entire system to buy something expensive
for mom and dad and then as they were getting ready to give it
go, oh actually I'm going to need this for the Lord. This
is dedicated to the Lord and so I need to keep it. But you
get a look at it, and isn't that a great thing, that I bought
you something you need, and now you know that it's in the service
of the Lord in my house. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord,
right? Amen. Can't we all praise the
Lord together? And the parents walking away
going, what are you doing? Are you kidding me? Is this what
I get? Be mindful, friends, even today,
there's a large movement of people who are divorcing their families. This is becoming a thing. This
is becoming a huge thing, becoming independent of one's family.
I don't need family. I get to pick my own family with
my own friends. I don't need to honor mom and
dad. That's what happens. That's what happens with independence.
leaving God's Word. Just think about how self-centered
this person has to be to look at the person who raised them
and then utter a curse and say, I ain't blessing you. I ain't
saying thank you to you. I'm not grateful for what you've
done. Notice the next thing, verse 12. There are those who,
all right, so here's the second qualification, right? There are those who. who are
clean in their own eyes, but are not washed of their filth.
Okay, so this is a really interesting phrase. Notice the contrast here
between the cleanliness of their own eyes, but the actual filth
that's on their body. So they think of themselves as
being incredibly pure, but they don't realize how dirty and filthy
they are. Once again, we're gonna have
to use our Lord's example when he talks about the Pharisees.
What did he call the Pharisees? He said, you're like a clean
cup on the outside and dirty on the inside. You're like a
tomb, whitewashed on the outside, looks real pretty, but on the
inside, there's just a whole bunch of rotting flesh. This
verse speaks of self-righteousness. It speaks of, I am right with
God, even though the person is not right with God. Because notice,
they're not clean on the basis of what God says. As a believer,
they're not clean on the basis of Jesus Christ. They're clean
on the basis of what? How I see myself. I see myself
as being clean. Therefore, I must be clean. It's
the idea that what I feel is true is reality. No. No. Because what does it say
in the next part? But they have been washed of their filth. Now, this
word for filth is all the really disgusting stuff that you don't
want ever near you. I'll leave it at that. If you're
really curious about what that filth is, Ask Rindy. No, I'm joking. You know what
we're talking about. We're talking about that disgusting
stuff that you want away from you. So think of this person
who goes, look how clean my clothes are, and you're looking at them
going, no, no, you're not clean. You're dirty. You got dirty clothes
on. This is a conversation that I have with my kids and my wife
has with our kids. Pretty on a weekly basis, right?
Put some clean clothes on. I do have clean clothes on. No,
you don't. It's not clean clothes. Here's
the sense. Imagine this morally, somebody
thinking of themselves as being righteous, but they're not. And
then notice, he even bears down even more. He says, there are
those, how lofty are their eyes, and how high are their eyelids.
Well, man, these people think of themselves as being the best
of the best. They're the top tier. Not only
are they pure, but they're way better than you. On basis on
what? The way they think of themselves,
of arrogance, self-righteousness. They think of themselves as being
kings, and they're not kings. Now notice the next part. So
you kind of see how all of this is self-sufficient, right? They're
all self-sufficient, all independent. Notice what else happens with
independent people. It says, there are those whose teeth are
swords. What an image, what an image. Imagine somebody showing you
their pearly whites and finding out they're actually swords coming
out of their mouth. We know what that means, right?
They're going to eat people, right? pure predators, right,
and whose fangs are knives, right? So you got this whole image of
somebody, their whole mouth is full of knives and swords. Well,
why would you have to have knives and swords inside your mouth?
Well, because you're going to eat people and you're going to
devour people. Well, what kind of people are you going to eat
and devour? Those who also have swords and knives in their mouth? Nope, knows what it is. To devour
the poor from off the earth. Well, that's interesting. Devour
the people that can't protect themselves. Huh. Why would one do such a thing?
Because they're pure in their own eyes. It doesn't matter. They don't care about the other
guy. They don't care that that other person has nothing. It's all about me. All about
what I can get. All about what I can consume.
By the way, notice just the contrast, or the interesting thing of Agar
at his prayer, you know, help me so that I have just enough
to eat. And here then you have this picture
of these independent people, and what are they? I'll eat anything
and everything, and if they can't defend themselves, that's even
better. Let's talk about a predator, right? Let's talk about somebody
who's willing to take from people and the needy from among mankind.
It doesn't matter. They'll go to other countries.
They will go to other countries. They will search the whole world
to devour people and they don't care. It's all about me, all
about what I can get. You see the independence? You
see the independence? Now, we would look at these people
and we would look at these things and we would realize, of course,
of course what Agar prays at the beginning, of course the
solution is praying to God and praying to God, help me. with
falsehood. And what would be that great
falsehood? That I don't think of myself as being as clean and
pure on the basis of what I do. That's a big falsehood, right?
Help me from telling lies, right? God, you got to help me from
these things. And then help me be content. Look at this verse
10 through 14, how These people are just about devouring
and themselves. So obviously his prayer at the
beginning of help me against these things is obvious, that
it's only God that does this. The author is not strong enough
by himself to stop him from doing these things. And I dare say
that we are not strong enough in among ourselves to stop ourselves
from these things. We can't stop it. We have no
power. But that's why God sent Jesus,
right? That's why we have the indwelling
Holy Spirit. It's because of his power and his working in
our life that we then can stop these things, not based off of
my strength, but based off of what he's doing in my life. Now
there's more. Notice what he says next in verse
15. He says, the leech has two daughters. This type of leech
is kind of an interesting leech. It's known as a horse leech.
that particularly attacks horses, thus the name horse leech. And
what would happen is when they would go down to drink, these
leeches would live in the water and they would get sucked up
into the nostrils. And then they would attach themselves
to the nostril wall. And guess what they do? just
suck and suck and suck blood. That is how they survive. And
then when they have babies, guess what happens? The next time the
horse goes to drink, they drop the babies in the water, the
next horse comes in, right up in, and the vicious cycle happens
over and over again, right? That's what a leech does. It
attaches to somebody and just takes, takes, takes, takes, takes,
takes. So notice what it says. It says
the leech has two daughters. Might be a, there's a debate
on whether this should be two daughters or two mouths or, okay,
we can have that debate maybe later. Just get the point. Has
two daughters, give and give. What's the leech concerned about?
I want more. Give me more. Give me more. Give
me more. Well, what happens if you kill
the horse? I don't care. Give me more. Give me more. I want
more. I want more. It attaches itself
solely for the purpose of drinking the life out of something else.
It's a vampire. And then notice what he says
next. He says, three things are never set aside, four never say
enough. Now these are all metaphors of
selfish, self-sufficient people who are like the people that
we just talked about. I want more, I want more, I want
more, I want more. And it's this drive that Agor
realizes this is a dangerous thing and I need God's help to
counteract this ongoing problem of greed, more, more, more, give
me more. So he gives four images to help
us understand the nature of what we're talking about. Sheol, the
grave, death. How many times has death gone,
I don't want anybody today? Just imagine if death was a person,
if there was such a thing as a grim reaper. Does he take a
day off? Nope. Does it matter to him how
many people die in a day? Nope. Death just keeps on wanting
more, more, more. Notice the next thing. The barren
woman. So this is kind of a cultural
thing. I think we kind of understand it. But culturally, in the ancient
world, if you didn't have a kid, you were seen as being cursed
by God. And so women that didn't have
children were striving hard, hard, hard to have kids, to be
blessed. And they would do crazy things
just to have kids. Now, let me say this. Somebody's
ability to have kids, we know, scripturally, is not a basis
of one's morality, right? Very rarely are these things
issues of morality. And I would hardly say that a
person who doesn't have a kid is not godly. That's not the
case. Now, there might be circumstances,
but let's just say this. Somebody that medically cannot
have a kid, that is not a fault on that person. That is something
that the sovereign God has put in their life that they have
to work through. And I will say this, that there
are ways to get kids, even if you can't have kids, through
adoption. We do have that. But what this is talking about
is not the evilness of that. It's speaking of that cultural
idea that a barren woman has to have a kid and that strong
desire that she does all the time to get a kid. It's never
satisfied, never satisfied, willing to go to great lengths. Notice
the next thing. The land that's never satisfied
with water. That's true. Yeah, even out here
in the land of rain, The land's always wanting more water, right?
It'll suck up all the water. You can put the whole ocean in
the land and it goes, that's not enough. And then what's the
next thing? And the fire that never says
enough. That's true too. You think a fire just stops halfway
going, I'm good. I don't need to consume the rest
of this log. I'll just go out. No, that's the whole point of
a fire, right? If I put in a log, what's it gonna do? It's gonna
eat the whole log. If I put in anything into a fire, it's gonna
be burned up in a fire. They're never satisfied. And this is
man's depravity apart from God's help. I want more, I want more,
I'm self-sufficient. It's all me, all about me. Give,
give, give, give, give, give, give. I'm self-sufficient, self-righteous. What's the solution? We already
saw that. Asking for God's help, realizing Man, we're in a bad
spot, and God helps us, right? He who began a good work is faithful
to complete it in Christ Jesus, right? Now, what happens if you
don't? Now, this is pretty gruesome,
so I didn't write this, and if you have a problem with this
imagery, take it up with God. I didn't give this image, but
this is a pretty graphic image, right? Notice what it says. It
says, the eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother.
So it looks at suspicion at mom and dad and says, I'm not going
to obey. I'm going to be self-sufficient.
I don't need authority. I'm not going to submit to authority.
Notice the end that will happen. We'll be picked out. So the eyes
will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the
vultures. That's pretty gruesome, right?
I mean, that's pretty graphic. We're not talking like, oh, you'll
just, you'll be punished. We're talking about a severe
punishment, right? You'll die in a valley and birds
will come and pick you apart. Serious consequence, right? It's
a serious consequence. And that's what we would say.
We would say this, when you let the flesh go, It always ends
in serious consequences. Always. There's always a consequence
to sin. Could it lead to physical death?
Of course it could lead to physical death. But don't play around
with this. Don't give your flesh an inch
because it will want more and more and more and it will lead
to really bad consequences. Really bad consequences. So this
is the bad consequences of independence. Severe, severe consequences. So we've seen the solution, right?
We've seen that sanctification is from God, and that we need
to pray and ask God for his help, for his guidance, for his strength.
We need to yield to the spirit, yield to yield to the things
that we find in God's word. We need to think about ourselves
in light of who we are in Christ, right? Realizing that the victory
is won because we've placed our faith in Christ, right? Salvation
is found in Christ, and Christ is working on us day by day. I think we need to understand
as well the deceptive nature of our own flesh. Man, you and
I will lie to each other. We'll lie to ourselves, we'll
think of ourselves as being super clean, super dependent upon God
when we're not. That's dangerous, that is dangerous. And we need to realize that this
is widespread and that this is something that we can easily
walk into. And it's something that we don't necessarily see
about ourself. That's what makes us so dangerous,
is because I think of myself as being clean when I'm not.
And I need to remember that there are some serious consequences
to this. But I don't want to leave you
with that. I want to leave you with hope. This past week I was
reading about this. that some Asian cultures, what
happens when they make these pots is through use, it'll miss
pieces of clay out of the pots. And they do something very interesting.
For me, I would get glue and try to glue that piece back in,
right, and try to hide it the best I could. These societies,
they go, nope. And they just put in gold in
place of that thing that's missing. They don't even hide the fact
that something's broken. They just put something better
in its place. I was thinking of that in light
of this text, in light of thinking of the pound of flesh that Agor
took from us, of our own ego and of our own flesh, and realized,
what's God doing? He's not making a better Caleb.
He's making me into Christ. Right? That's what's happening.
I'm becoming more like Christ. It's not that he's trying to
take all those bad things and polish up the bad things and
try to stick them back in to make it look great. No, he's making
me, renewing me into the image of him who created me. So when
I think about this idea of sanctification, which is from God, in spite of
my independence, I need to remember He who began a good work is faithful
to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. And it's absolutely
necessary for me to see something like this, to see those areas
where there's great danger, and for me to repent of these things
and to cry out to God, I need your help, because guess what'll
happen? Slowly, I'll be taken from this
worthless piece of clay to something that's golden. I'll be like Jesus,
and that's what he's doing, and that's the process, and the process
is to become more, more dependent upon him, more faithful to him,
more like Christ. But it starts, as Agor tells
us, it starts with our prayer life. It starts with our relationship
with the Lord. It starts with this desire of,
I need you so much. I need you in everything. Help
me not trust myself, but help me trust you. May the Lord give
us both the will and the ability to do all that we heard today.
Let's go ahead and let's pray. Father, we are so very thankful for your
word. We're so very thankful for the things that you've given
us. So very thankful for this country that you blessed
us with, that we don't have to worry about that second part
of that prayer of don't let me be poor. But Father, we desperately
need you. We desperately need your help.
We need the help of your son. We need the help of your spirit.
Help us become dependent upon you. Help us become submissive
to you. Help us to realize that our victory
is found in you and not in our own abilities. Father, I'm just
so very thankful for everyone who's here. I'm very thankful
for the work that you're doing in their life as you're making
them more like Jesus. We're very thankful for some
of those people who've been away for a little bit and you've brought
back. We're so very thankful you've brought them back to us.
And Father, we're also so very thankful for little baby Christian
who's here with us. And we thank you for the answer
of prayer that we've had over this past month or so. and we're
just so very thankful that he's here. We also pray for the Davis
family, and as Maya goes off to Bible school, we pray for
the family, that they'll be comforted. We pray for Maya as she goes,
that one, you would use your word in a mighty way in her life,
that you would mold her and shape her into the image of your son.
And then as she's there in class, that you would lead her and guide
her to what you want for her and give her guidance, help her
with her studies, realizing that her studies are not trivial things,
but that she's dealing with the weighty things, the things of
you, the things of your son. We just ask for your blessing
for the rest of the day. We ask for your safety and help
us come back tonight as we continue on learning and learning from
your word. We thank you and love you. In
your son's name, amen.
Sanctification from God despite Our Independence
Series Proverbs
Join Pastor Caleb Hilbert as he dives into "Sanctification from God Despite Our Independence," an exploration of Proverbs 30:7-17. Discover the importance of divine guidance in our lives, recognize behaviors that are rooted in self-reliance, and understand the profound outcomes of neglecting God's teachings.
| Sermon ID | 86231741287234 |
| Duration | 43:44 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Proverbs 30:7-17 |
| Language | English |
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