You’re Not God: Wisdom for Life | Week 1

You’re Not God (That’s Where Wisdom Begins)
📅 Message from April 19

What if the biggest reason life feels confusing, frustrating, or out of control… is because we’ve been trying to live like we’re in control?

In this message from our Wisdom for Life series, we explore the true starting point of wisdom: recognizing that God is God—and we are not. Real wisdom isn’t just knowing what’s right… it’s choosing to live God’s way in God’s world.

Too often, we make small decisions we know aren’t right—ignoring warning signs, giving into pressure, or choosing convenience over obedience. Over time, those small choices can lead to big consequences. But there is a better way.

The Bible teaches that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” That doesn’t mean being afraid of God—it means trusting Him, submitting to Him, and living with a deep awareness that He knows best.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, off-track, or unsure how you got where you are—this message is for you.

It’s time to start where wisdom truly begins.

🙏 In this message, you’ll discover:

What biblical wisdom actually is
Why knowing right isn’t the same as doing right
How small decisions shape your future
What it really means to “fear the Lord”
How to begin walking in God’s wisdom today

📖 Series: Wisdom for Life
📍 Church: Grace Church Lititz

👉 If this message encouraged you, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share it with someone who needs it.

#Faith #Wisdom #ChristianLiving #Sermon #Bible #Jesus

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning, Grace Church. Pleasure to see you all again for the second time this morning. Uh, if you have a Bible or Bible app, you can open up to Proverbs chapter 9, verses 10 through 14. Again, that's Proverbs chapter 9, verses 10 through 14. And thank you to all of you who are joining us online or watching today's service from another venue around our building. I'm really excited this morning to kick off a brand new teaching series called Wisdom for Life. And Proverbs is going to be our primary book during the next several weeks because Proverbs is a gift of God to us that reveals the wisdom of God on how to live in this world. And as I look around the world and I'm living in now, and as I watch the news and as I hear what's going on in my neighbors and in my communities' lives, we are desperate for wisdom. We are desperate for God's wisdom to be poured out among our leaders, among our neighbors, in our own life, in our own families, because we need to see the fruit of God at work in this world. We want the kingdom of God to come here. And so over the next couple of weeks, the primary arc of this teaching series is really about learning how to live God's way in God's world. That's what wisdom's all about. Learning how to live God's way in God's world. That means that there is a right way to live, God's way, and there's a wrong way to live, which is any other way. It's that simple. That there is God's way and there is every other way, and one is right and one is wrong. And guess who decided which is which? God. See, God, who's the creator of heaven and earth, the creator of you and me, the creator of all things in existence, he's the one who sets the rules about what is right and what is wrong and what wisdom really is, which is the ability to do what is right according to God. And so I want to give you my definition of wisdom. This is not the definition you're gonna find in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, if that even exists anymore. What you will find, though, is this according to God's word. Here's how I understand wisdom. Wisdom is knowing the difference between what is right, God's way, and what is wrong any other way, and choosing to do what is right. That's all it is. It's not real complex, it's not real profound, it's actually as simple as it could possibly be. And what you learn with wisdom is that most of the time, wisdom is cut and dry. It's really simple in terms of understanding, and it's incredibly difficult in terms of doing. Because this definition does have two parts to it. The first is knowledge, knowing what is right and what is wrong. And God has been gracious to us, He's given us His Word to help articulate about what is right and what is wrong. But also, because we're created in His image, we have a moral conscience. That moral conscience testifies to the law of God of what is right and what is wrong. So we have access by God's grace to great knowledge. And yet, very rarely do we apply that knowledge in such a way that we experience the deep fruits of wisdom. Because wisdom is the right knowledge applied rightly. If we neglect to apply the right knowledge, we're stepping into what the Bible calls foolishness or folly. That's what the opposite of wisdom is. So anytime you choose to do anything other than God's way, you're being a fool. I'm being a fool. And the majority of us live our lives in such a way where we see the evidence of foolish behavior, but God calls us to a different way of living, a way of wisdom, and this way of wisdom comes with incredible blessings upon our lives. Now in 2010, there was a major natural disaster here in the United States. It took place out in the Gulf with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Does anybody remember this? Five or 4.9 million gallons of oil leaked into the Gulf when a deep water rig drill bit broke, and it ended up killing all kinds of marine life. But when it broke, it also created a giant explosion. It killed 11 of the workers, injured 17 other workers, and it took uh British Petroleum, who owned the rig, 87 days to actually cap it. And so if you were watching the news at that time, it was daily on the news for like the first 30 days, and they started giving you progress reports week by week. But it was a major, major natural disaster. Now, in the reports around what caused this issue, what they learned is it was foolish human behavior, and it was a totally preventable accident. You see, all the engineers and all the operators for a couple of days knew that the test gauges weren't right. They're all pointing towards danger. They all had pressure failure systems and gas that wasn't supposed to be in certain areas, and according to their own protocol, you are to shut down and then investigate the source of these problems. But they didn't. Why didn't they? Two weeks from the day of the explosion, two weeks after was the day that that drilling rig was supposed to stop drilling, cap the well, and go home. Which means you got a bunch of workers who've been out on this oil rig for six months drilling this oil rig, and if they were to shut down, it was gonna cost them a lot more time. Now, I think a lot of you have had this experience. It's the end of the working day, it's about 3:30, 4 o'clock, you have a project that you need to do or a task you need to fulfill, and you know you got to get it done by the end of the day, and so you cut some corners. It's not as good as it should have been, but it was good enough that you got it done. That is what's going on in the hearts of the people who are on this rig. They're out there for weeks, they want to go home, it's the end of the working day. If they shut down, it could extend it by a whole bunch of time. And on top of that, it's very costly to shut down an oil rig. It would have cost tens of millions of dollars to understand what was going on. And so you had outside pressure and you have internal pressure that swayed the operators of the rig from doing what they knew they were supposed to do. Has anyone in this room ever had an experience where outside or internal pressures swayed your judgment and then kept you from doing the thing you knew that was right to do? Yes, Pastor Dad. I've all we've all lived in that scenario where we know what the right thing to do is, but for whatever circumstance, maybe it's pressures from your family or pressures from your job or internal pressures that you're experiencing, or just temptations, you make a different decision. Even though all the warning signs say, stop, there is danger. Friends, this is the way of foolishness and wisdom in our life. Usually, a foolish decision is not a large decision, it's a small decision, a simple decision to say, I'm not going to do it God's way today, I'm going to do it my way. And the consequence of that at first is almost nil. There was no immediate explosion the first time somebody ignored the pressure gauges. In fact, generally everything operated as normal. But when you ignore the signs day after day after day, the pressure continues to build, the chaos continues to mount. Just like in our life, if we continue to do things our way in these areas of life again and again, sooner or later, we will reap a harvest of disaster in our life. That's what foolishness and folly really is. So if we avoid doing things God's way out of fear or out of convenience or pride or lust or greed or comfort, you can fill in whatever your pressure is that's keeping you from choosing God's way. If we continue to perpetuate that existence, eventually we're going to reap a harvest of disaster. Because big disasters never come from just one bad decision. They just don't. They come from a period of decisions again and again and again. And when major disasters happen in our life because of our own folly, doing things our own way, do you know what the most common response is? To get mad at God. Mad at him for not preventing it, mad at him for not stepping in. In fact, Proverbs tells us in verse 19:3, this is man's response. When a man's folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord. They point fingers at God, not realizing the entire time that when you got one finger at God, you got three fingers right back at you. People don't like to take responsibility or have accountability for their own actions or the results that have come into their life as a result of those actions. And so I gotta ask you a couple questions this morning because you need to understand how you got to where you got. Look, if your marriage is falling apart, or if your finances are in ruin, if you are always exhausted and you feel like you can't catch up in life, if your anxiety or mental health is is your anxiety is high and your mental health is all over the place, if you feel like your kids don't respect you, if you keep choosing the same kinds of toxic relationships again and again and again, if you constantly feel like you're far from God, if you feel like your reputation's always on the line and people don't seem to trust you, if you feel like you're drifting instead of having real purpose in life, you need to understand something. The probability of what's happening in your life today is because you are the one who put yourself there. And it came from either knowingly or ignorantly refusing to live the way God prescribes us to live. And so our response is generally to get mad at God. But what it's supposed to do, the discipline of going through hardship, right, the discipline of experiencing the consequences of our folly, which is what God calls that, He calls it godly discipline. When He lets you have the consequences in your life for what you did, this godly discipline, it's meant to bring you to sorrowful repentance. That's the purpose. So when there's great consequence in your life from reaping the harvest of your the our foolish decisions, that weight, that consequence should put us on our knees before God and say, I've been doing this my way for so long and it has reaped me nothing. And so, God, I repent. I just repent, I I acknowledge that you know more about this than I do, and if I just start living your way, then Lord, I expect to see that your promises according to your word are true, that you can deliver me from the consequences of my sin. And here's the good thing about wisdom. Here's the good thing about God. When we repent, God always delivers us from the consequences of our sin. Always. He first did it with your sins when he Christ died on the cross and he gives you eternal life. But he's in the business of saving more than just your soul. He can save the entirety of your life. And he can do that through the Holy Spirit of God, who generously and lavishly pours out upon wisdom in your life when you learn how to live God's way and God's world. And here's what's so beautiful about wisdom. Wisdom is fully attainable, it is within reach. The Bible says if you don't have it, ask for it, and it'll be poured out upon you. It is 100% applicable. When you even get an ounce of it today, it'll stretch for a mile in every area of your life. It's good in every single circumstance. And wisdom, aside from the saving grace of Jesus, is the most transformative thing about your life this side of eternity. It'll transform every aspect of your life if you press into learning and receiving the wisdom that God has for you. And so, if we're going to look at wisdom, then we have to understand what wisdom really is. Wisdom is the pursuit of wisdom, is learning how to live God's way and God's world. We're going to learn together how to live God's way and God's world over the next couple of weeks. And we're going to look at all kinds of areas. We're going to look at labor. How do I use my work in this world to glorify God? How do I use my time to glorify God? What do I do with my money when it comes to retirement and blessing others and serving other people? How do I handle my sexual lifestyle and what does it mean to have a proper sexual ethic that glorifies God? How do I restore the marriage conflict? Or how do I bring my marriage back into a healthy place? And God is good with all those topics. And God gives you more than you can imagine in every aspect of that part of your life because he wants you, as Jesus says, to have life and life to the full. That's John 15, 15. I've come to give you life and life to the full. This is a beautiful thing about God. He loves you, and in his love for you, he can lavish his wisdom upon you that can radically transform your life. So here's where we got to go. If you don't have wisdom, I want you to know a very important thing. Wisdom has a beginning. There's a starting point to this whole thing. Wisdom has a beginning. Listen to Proverbs chapter 9, verse 10. It's going to be on the screen here for you. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Do you see what God's Word says here? Wisdom has a beginning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It's not the end all of wisdom, it's not every aspect of wisdom, but it's where wisdom begins. And knowledge of the Holy One becomes understanding. So the fear of the Lord is the beginning, which means if you don't start there, you have not started this journey at all. If you don't start with fear of the Lord, you actually have not even begun the path of learning what wisdom is here in the world. Now, a lot of you have been in church for a long time. Some of you have just started coming recently. And when you sit through a sermon or you sit through a Bible study or you hear what other people say or read books, what you're getting there is information. You're going to get information about who God is. You're going to have all kinds of intelligence in the world, and you can have all kinds of experiences about what God is and who he says he is. And as all those things sort of come together, what you learn is you begin to develop a sense of understanding of the Holy One. And that's the fruit of wisdom. But if you get information and knowledge and experience about how to live life in this world outside of God's Word, while some of that is supplemental, it can be good advice, but you don't yet have wisdom. Wisdom has a source, and the source is from the Word of God and the Spirit of God, and it begins with God Himself, the fear of the Lord. Now, I'm going to give you a definition of fear that some people probably have never heard before. And it's not really the definition of fear of the Lord. It's more like what fear of the Lord looks like in action. Okay, it's one thing to fear the Lord, have a respect for God, but it's another thing to see fear of the Lord in action. So here's what fear of the Lord is: it's faith-filled obedience because God is God and I am not. That's the fear of the Lord. Faith-filled obedience because God is God and I am not. Now, this is where it gets tough for people. You ready? Intuitively, you agree with me. Of course, God is God and I am not. But in your heart, you disagree with me. That's the sense of human pride. Human pride gets in the way and it says, Yeah, God is God and I am not. But I don't want to do it that way. I want to do it this way. That's where we acknowledge something to be true, but we don't live it out to be true. If God is God and I am not, it means that you fundamentally agree and then submit your life to all the things that God reveals. It means that I, as a Christian, truly believe that God is wiser than me. That he is always right and never wrong. He's always right and never wrong because he sees everything in the past, everything in the present, and everything in the future. That because he's all powerful, he's in control of all of those events, he can work all things together for his own glory inside of those events. And because he knows everything in full, and I know only things in part, that means that he is never confused, he's never learning, he's never guessing. So when he tells you that this is what you're supposed to do, it's not rocket science. You just have to do it. But you have to believe that God is God and I am not, that he's worthy of glory, he's worthy of honor, he's worthy of praise, he's worthy of me orienting my entire life around doing what he says. I mean, do you believe that? Oh, come on, church. Do you believe that? Either you do or you don't. Right? I mean, that's what it comes down to when we understand that God is God and I am not. Either he is who he says he is, or I know more than he does. And I have some really good news for you. I don't know anything according to my own knowledge that's real wisdom. Only God has real wisdom. So here's the point. If you don't fear God, you will not take him seriously. If you do not take him seriously, you will not follow his way. And if you do not follow his way, you cannot live with wisdom. That's the structure here. So the fear of the Lord is the beginning of the whole pathway of wisdom in your life. When you take God seriously and do what he says, you then begin to reap the rewards of wisdom. Let me give you the example of Noah. Listen to what the Bible says about Noah in Hebrews 11, verse 7. By faith, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. If you understand the story of Noah, you understand that Noah was the only righteous man on earth at the time. Everybody else was incredibly wicked in God's eyes, and God had made the decision to wipe out all of humanity. But there was Noah, a righteous man. And Noah was spoken to by God, and God said, No, you need to build an ark, build it out of gopher wood. When God said that to Noah, Noah was 500 years old. And then God told Noah, No, I'm gonna bring rain waters down on the earth. Now at this point in human history, the reason Hebrews says in 11.7, things not yet seen, is because it had never rained. So now imagine a God that you worship speaks to you and says, something's going to happen no one has ever seen before in history, and you need to build a giant boat in the middle of a big old desert. The Shinar Peninsula, if you don't know where it's at, it's in Saudi Arabia. That's where the ark was built. He's building this giant ark out there for a hundred years. Now, to the world around him, just put yourself in this scenario. Imagine you go home today and your neighbor begins building an ark in their front yard. And they tell you that this invisible person that you've never seen or heard from told them to build this ark. And for 100 years of your life, which most of you are not even a hundred years old, you watch your neighbor spend every dime they have and every hour they have building this giant boat, and they're telling you that it's gonna rain, and there's never been rain before. The water's gonna fall from the sky. This person's crazy. You would think to yourself, my foolish neighbor is out there again building this massive boat in the middle of this desert for no good reason at all. What a dum-dum. That is the circumstances. But Noah's foolishness was proved to be wisdom the second that first drop fell from the sky. Then all the world around said, Oh boy, we're really not in good shape. But Noah and his family were saved. Look, friends, here's what you gotta understand. Godly wisdom. Godly wisdom looks foolish to the world. It just does. I wish I had a better story to tell you. I wish I could help you understand that everybody will see that you living according to God's world is beneficial. No, what's gonna happen is that when you begin living God's way in God's world, everybody who's not a follower of Jesus, who has no biblical understanding of the text or who God is, they're gonna look at you and think, you're crazy. You value traditional marriage? Are you out of your mind? You value living a life of financial stability? Are you crazy? You don't take on massive amounts of debt to have everything your heart desires? You live within your means and you give generously to people who don't deserve it? Are you out of your mind? The things that you do are not going to make sense to the world when you start living by God's wisdom. And we don't live by wisdom once, we do it daily. Again and again and again. Noah had to be obedient for a hundred years before his obedience looked like wisdom. Now, here's the key to knowing if you have godly wisdom or worldly wisdom. Godly wisdom is always going to have some kind of reward here in the world. Okay, it's always gonna have some sort of benefit. But the greatest KPI, if you're a business person, for understanding if you have God's wisdom or not, is the measure of your knowledge of God and who he is. Because true wisdom, when enacted, produces a rich measure of understanding of who God is. That's why Hebrews 9.10 says, Knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. The day that it began to rain and the day the flood waters came up, the most important thing about Noah was not that he was obedient, it's actually about what he learned about God. What did Noah learn that day about God? When he was obedient for a hundred years and the rain finally fell, what did he learn? He learned this that God keeps his word. God said something was gonna happen and it happened. That God's warnings are real. That God really, when he says there's judgment coming, there really is judgment coming. That God, even though he's going to judge, God does. Provide a way of salvation. God provided a way of salvation. The way of salvation was in obedience to his word. And God honors faithful obedience. God saved Noah, God saved Noah's family, God saved all the animals in the world as a result. And that he learned that God is incredibly patient, allowing people time to respond to repentance. You know, if God wanted to, he could have spoken to Noah one day, provided all the resources to build the ark the next day, given Noah a reasonable time to build the ark, a couple of months, and then he could have flooded the world immediately thereafter. Because God is God. He can do what he wants. But God allowed Noah to work for over a hundred years and to allow the ark to stand as a testament to people being asked to repent. Because, you know, I really believe this. If the world had repented of their sin and gone back to God, he would not have flooded the earth. He would have, he would have withstood the flood and he would have redeemed mankind in another way, but no, they wouldn't. It was a testimony of their own foolishness that they were refusal, that they refused to repent. But God is patient. Man, he is so patient. And here's the good news about repentance. I preached it last week. If you are finding yourself in a situation where your life feels like there's a flood coming upon you because you have found yourself in error, here's what we know about God: God is faithful to safe. And when we repent of our sin that have led us to these circumstances, God then steps into our life and our circumstances and through his way and his world rebuilds our lives, and then he gets the glory. I love wisdom. Wisdom, when you truly understand who God is, you begin to orient your life around his values, around his way of doing things. You start to see the fruit of all of his promises in your life. The most important one is the knowledge of the Holy One. When you know God, when you really know him, you know what he values, you know what he cares about, you know how to make the right decision and do the right thing no matter what circumstance comes upon you. Because you know what God would do, and then you align your life in accordance with it. Now, knowing the Heavenly Father is a lot like knowing anybody here on this earth. Some of you have some really close relationships. One of my close relationships in my life is my father Tim. I know my father Tim Bowl really well. I've known him for about 40 years. When you know somebody that long, you know the things they value, you know the things they don't value. And here is what's true about Tim. There is a right way to eat an Italian hoagie, and there is a wrong way to eat an Italian hoagie. That's one of the things I know about my dad. He understands exactly in his worldview that there is a right way and there's a wrong way. Now, for Tim, the right way to eat an Italian hoagie is with no mayo. I eat hoagies the wrong way. I eat hoagies with mayo. In fact, the only thing Tim Bull wants on his hoagie is oil and vinegar and tomatoes and lettuce. This is how to eat an Italian hoagie. It's the right way, according to him. So here's what wisdom looks like in a relationship with my dad. If I go to Bruno's today and I decide to order the number one sharp Italian on a seated roll, which is the hoagie of choice, and I'm buying it from my father, acting in wisdom is acting in alignment with his values. Because I know him, I know how to order this sandwich. I would order it without mayonnaise. And when I bring it to my father and give it to him, he would appreciate it and he would enjoy it, he would accept it with gratitude, and he would say, Thank you, my blessed son, you are so wonderful to me. Dad, right? You'd say that? Because I lived in accordance with his values. Now I would not choose to eat a sandwich that way. But I submitted to my father's desires to get a sandwich the way he would want to eat it. And it's the same way with God the Father. Wisdom is acting in accordance with God the Father's values in spite of my own preferences. I know how I want to live sexually. I know what I want to do with my money. I know how I want to handle my business. I know how I want to treat people in my life. I know what I want to do. And generally, they're not at all what God would want me to do. But I align my life in accordance with his values to live his way in this world. And who knows the values of their father better than the Son? This is who Jesus is. He's the Son of God, he knows the values of God, and the Bible tells us he is the wisdom of God. Listen to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 30. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God. That is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Friends, Jesus is the living, embodied person of God the Father. He's the self-disclosure of God the Father. So when Jesus says, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. When you look at Jesus' life, you're seeing the wisdom of God in full display on how to live as a human being in this world. So if you want to see what wisdom looks like in action, you look to the person of Jesus. If you want to understand what wisdom looks like in teaching, you understand the teachings of Jesus. You always have to begin with Jesus because he's the embodiment and the revelation of the full wisdom of God here on earth. How Jesus acts, what Jesus values, all of these things are the revelation of the wisdom of God. And it's powerful. So if you want to know what God is like, if you want to know what the Father values, what the Father thinks, who the Father is in his heart and his core and his actions, you look at Jesus, you listen to Jesus. And if you want to learn how to do the same things as God the Father, you follow Jesus. That's what we do. We are a Jesus church where the gospel is central. We are people being transformed into the very image of Jesus Christ so that we can live God's way in God's world. Look, when you understand who Jesus is and you live according to what he says, that is ultimate wisdom. That's where the source of wisdom is, that's where the beginning of wisdom starts, and when he speaks, he listens. In fact, the book of Hebrews, when you get to the end of Hebrews, it says in Hebrews 12, verse 25 through 28, see to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. That's Jesus. Friends, Jesus is a living God, resurrected at the right hand of the Father. He speaks to us through his written word, he speaks to us through the Holy Spirit of God that indwells in our hearts. And if you're not a follower of Jesus, you know the Holy Spirit speaks to you too? He speaks to you as an outside pressure, convicting your heart and your mind of what is true and what is false. So when you feel the outside pressure of the word being taught or the Spirit of God moving, that's God speaking to you. God speaks. When we see Jesus speak, and that's the wisdom of God, we listen and we obey, for our God is a consuming fire. Listen, if Noah, a righteous man, heard God speak and he obeyed it in holy fear, because he obeyed God in holy fear, he was saved when the flood waters came. The same is true for us. If we obey God in holy fear, he can save us from the flood waters of this life. So if your world is in financial ruin, if your world is in relational ruin, if your world is in drug addiction ruin, whatever your ruinous flood is that has come upon your life, because you have not yet been wise enough to follow after Jesus, when you begin following after Jesus, our God will save. Just like he saved Noah, just like he spared his family, God will save you as well. And so when Jesus speaks, you're hearing the very wisdom of God. You just have to decide what are you going to do with it? Are you going to listen and obey, or are you going to ignore it and reject it? Friends, if you listen and obey, wisdom has a promise, has a real promise. The promises of wisdom are great. Proverbs 9 11. For through wisdom your days will be many and years will be added to your life. Now, if you just take this at face value, wisdom will increase the days of your life. Proverbs tells us that we're not to have any other master than the Lord. So if alcohol becomes your master, if gambling becomes your master, if drugs become your master, if you allow something else to be your master, it will eventually can lead to ruin and it has real physical consequences and can shorten the lifespan. So just by cause and nature, if you keep your life morally clean from drugs and addiction, you live longer. That's the face value of this particular passage. But it goes so much deeper than that. If Jesus is the very embodiment of the wisdom of God, and Jesus says that we are to follow after him. And the Bible again gives us a promise in Romans chapter 10 that if we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, we believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, and you will receive the gift of eternal life. Friends, the wisest decision you will ever make in your life is to place Jesus as the King of your life and the Lord of your life. And then you immediately reap the reward of this promise. Your life will be lengthened. Not just physically here on earth as you live wisely, but you have now received eternal life and you will live eternally with God the Father. This promise is a promise of life and life to the full, and it's the immediate reward of saying yes to the wisdom of God, the gift of eternal life. But there's additional rewards. Because wisdom has other rewards as well. Allow me to read for you Proverbs 9:12. If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you. If you are a mocker, you alone will suffer. Wisdom comes with the reward of internal transformation first. The day that you repent of your sin, the day you receive forgiveness, is the day that you've received new life in Christ. Then it's the internal reward of choosing Jesus, the wisest decision you will ever make. But then you receive a second internal reward, the deposit of the Holy Spirit, who leads and guides according to the wisdom of God, who repairs and redeems the brokenness of whatever folly has brought into your life. And then you have the external reward. You see, when we follow after Jesus, there are real external benefits to our life. Jesus has the ability through his wisdom and through his power to restore your marriage, to set you free from addiction, to place your finances in a place that are legitimate and real according to his will and to his word, to heal your body if you've been sick. The wisdom of Jesus is profound with great and amazing external benefits. But the ultimate reward, and I really believe this, the ultimate reward is you get knowledge of the Holy One. You get genuine knowledge of who God is. When Christ died on the cross, he died to give you access to the presence of God the Father. Sin has kept you separate from the presence of God. It's hard for us to know God. But through Christ, we enter the very presence of God, and we can know his heart, we can know his mind, we can know his soul, we can know so much of who God is, and that is the gift that we have as believers. To cherish growing in our knowledge and understanding of who God is and what he wants for our lives. Now, as I end today, I feel compelled by the Spirit of God to do one thing. Some of you need to verbalize this phrase God is God and I am not. First one. Boom. Keep going. Keep going. God is God and I am not. It's fun to hear you all shout that out loud independently. Thank you for leading the way with that. God is God and I am not. If you start there, you are on the pathway to the beginning of wisdom. That's where I want to leave it for today. Grace Church, I love you. Let's pray together. Lord, we recognize that you are God and we are not. We recognize that your ways are higher than our ways. We recognize that as we choose to act in holy fear and obedience, your promises will be made new and realized here this side of eternity. Jesus, we pray that your kingdom would come, that your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. But that means it has to begin in our hearts first so that we live a life in accordance with your will. And that the fruit of wisdom would rain down upon this body of believers in our community and therefore in our world. God, in your mercy, fill us with wisdom. So we can glorify you, Jesus. We ask that in your holy name. Amen.