Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
I want to pick up where we left off last week.
Turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4.
Ephesians chapter four. Last week we talked about, boy,
this doesn't sound like a Hallelujah moment, but we talked
about the darkening of the understanding.
I think that's that that's a sobering subject.
And the darkening of the understanding in Scripture is
not an event. It is a process that is
initiated by human decision. We can make decisions that
actually close us off from revelation.
So I want to talk about the opposite of that this morning.
How do we position ourselves for revelation?
There are there are things that you can do.
You can position yourself in your relationship with God.
There is a heart posture that will actually open you up to
inside in Scripture. There's the the darkening of the
Understanding Proverbs 2814. It's one of Solomon's Proverbs.
Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived.
And one of the proverbs that he wrote was chapter 28 and verse
14. It says this He who fears the
Lord. Essentially, it's juxtaposing
the fear of the Lord. Let's look at it.
I I can't. I won't be able to quote it.
Proverbs 2814 Let's read that. Listen to what he says here.
This is sobering. 2814. Blessed is the one who fears the
Lord always. But whoever hardens his heart
will fall into calamity. That that's an interesting
passage when you think of the author.
Solomon was through an encounter made the most wise man that ever
lived. I got with some young guys this
week on Friday and we were discussing some some things
scripture. I call them the young bucks.
So we got together for a theological discussion and one
of them was asking about Solomon and and what matter of fact, my
17 year old son was the one who asked the question.
He said, Dad, last week you said that God will not give you
wisdom that you can't handle. He won't give you understanding
or insight that you're not ready for.
And he said the what do you do with Solomon?
And he just sat there and looked at me and they all.
Kind of looked at me. Now we got him, you know, we got
the old man and and so good question.
What's the deal with Solomon if God will not give us wisdom that
we can't handle? Insight that we can't handle?
Because like we talked last week, one of the primary ways in
which God administrates his Kingdom, one of the primary ways
in which God governs his people, is through revealing and
concealing mysteries and revelation.
We see these themes come up in the New Testament.
So what? What is that all about?
God will actually hide things from us and for us.
He will hide them from us until we're ready to handle them.
And what He wants to do is awaken a hunger in our heart.
And the seeking, the desire, the hunger that he ignites in your
heart, if you will cooperate with that, will actually work to
prepare you. It will qualify you to steward
what you're longing for. But if we're satisfied with not
knowing, you know what you'll get.
You'll just stay this. You'll not know if you are
satisfied to stay ignorant about the things of God, you will stay
ignorant about the things of God.
One of the Revelation requires hunger.
God will release to those who hunger and thirst.
He will give you revelation if you ask for it.
But you've got to ask, and you've got to seek and keep on
seeking. You've got to knock and keep on
knocking. And so we need to understand
that there are things that we can actually do.
Revelation is not, oh some people are, that's their
inheritance. And I'm over here just I'm not
going to be a word person. I'll be a, you know, I'll be a
spirit person. That that is not a category
within God's mind, OK? There's not the non word people.
God wants you to understand the word of God.
He wants to give you wisdom and revelation.
But there are things that we need to do to qualify, and it's
very clear in Scripture. There are several criterion, and
perhaps we'll get into this this morning.
But I'm telling you, hunger is one of them.
There's there's this fascinating dynamic, you see in Jesus
teaching ministry. He teaches you remember the
sermon on the soils of the heart.
And he says there's four types of soil.
There's the the trodden path. The yeah, the trodden path that
the the the seed of the word just skidders across the top.
It can't penetrate because it's been walked on so much.
It's too hard. The word, the seed cannot
penetrate the soil, which and thank God that Jesus interprets
this for us himself. This is Matthew 13 that when the
seed of the word hits the top of your heart, if it doesn't
penetrate your heart, you have no understanding.
And he's not talking about unbelievers.
He's talking about those who sit under the teaching of the word
week in and week out. Now that alone needs to make us
tremble a little bit, that we can actually sit under the word
of God and not understand anything that's being said and
actually be content with that. And that's exactly what happened
in Matthew 13. There was a crowd pressing in on
Jesus. So Jesus rolls out this teaching
on the parable of the soils and he tells him, he said there's
four types of human heart. There's the farmer went out to
sow and he sowed it on the trodden path and he said the the
the seed could not penetrate. Therefore they did not
understand. Then the second type of soil was
that the soil, That it was the Stony ground.
And So what happened is there were stones underneath the
surface. There's very good soil on this,
on the the the evidence surface, but underneath it there's
stones, unyielding things that will not allow the root system
to dig down deep. And so it looks real good.
When the seed hits it, the word hits that heart, all of a sudden
it springs up and everybody thinks, Oh my goodness, this
this guy's growing like a weed. This woman's going to be an
evangelist by the end of the week.
This is amazing. Look at this growth.
But then the trials of life come and the sun.
When the sun begins to bake that soil the the the moisture in
that top surface soil is dried up.
And so the root system begins to dig down to get find more
nourishment and it can't penetrate the stones.
So it goes out and all the energy that would have gone down
creating roots goes up, creating appearances and then it dies.
And most of us have seen believers like that man.
They get radically saved, seem like they're going to follow
after Jesus. They're on fire, and then
they're no more because the trials came and exposed the
unyielded places in their heart. Then the third type of soil was
the the weed, the the thorny ground here.
And so it says the seed went in and it grew up, but there were
thorns that grew up with the plant.
So simultaneously, along with this plant are these thorns that
begin to choke out the word. And he defines it like this.
He said it's and you got to take several of the passages
together. There's, I want to say it's Luke
4 or Luke 8 and Mark four. It's Mark 8 and Luke 4 and it's
Matthew 13. I know that one's right.
OK, so check it out for yourself.
The synoptic gosels, you lay them against each other and you
get the full picture. And he says that the the thorns
are the cares of this life. The deceitfulness of riches and
the worries are are are the pleasures of this life.
So there's cares, and then there's the deceitfulness of
riches. The deceitfulness of riches is
that it will actually solve your worries.
And if you've lived any time at all, you realize that ain't
true. More money comes, more concerns
because you buy more stuff and more stuff breaks.
Kathy and I went into our laundry room this morning.
And there's a leak in the ceiling.
I'm like, oh, nuts. You know, I'm going to have to
go look at that. I'm thank God for my home.
But now I got this concerned back.
We worked at Teen Challenge. I would have called you Roger.
Roger was the maintenance guy. Roger fixed my ceiling.
It was awesome. Now I got cares.
And so that's, you know, it's the cares of this life begin to
choke out, though. And then there's the good soil
that brings forth 60 or 3060 and 100 fold.
And again, he's talking about believers here, people who sit
under the word. So we see even in that parable,
there are some who are able to receive and some who are not.
Some people who will receive and they do great until the trial
comes, some people who will pass the test of the trial but will
fail in the blessing stage. There are people that will
endure a trial and fall away in a blessing.
And then there's those who bring forth much fruit.
We need to strive to be that that last company.
Now when Jesus told this parable, he didn't at first tell
him what it meant. And so I've heard people preach
from this passage because you look at Matthew and it he says
to his disciples the knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom
have been given to you to not to them, and that he tells them
what this means. And they asked him in there.
They said, Jesus, why do you preach in parables?
And he said I do it so that they will hear and not understand.
Now, I don't know about you, but that troubles me about my Jesus.
When I first read that, I was deeply troubled that Jesus would
intentionally teach in such a way that his audience would not
understand. But you know why he did it?
Because what he was teaching was too valuable to be given to
those who wouldn't treasure it. So some people read Matthew 13
and they say, well, see. There there are those who are
appointed for Revelation and those who aren't the disciples.
They were chosen and so therefore they were appointed to
Revelation. But that's not the whole
picture. You got to look at the other
gospels and you find out they were just as clueless as the
rest because they and the other Gospels, they say to Jesus, we
don't understand what you're talking about.
What is this stuff about soil and and hearts and all that?
And Jesus then begins to unpack to them what he was talking
about. So you need to understand the
knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom weren't just sovereignly
given to some who are the elected some and then withheld
from the others. No, nobody understood what he
said. He taught that way
intentionally. He awakened their hunger by
teaching something they didn't fully understand and the the
understanding of it was only given to those who stuck around
after the meeting and said, Jesus, don't leave us hanging,
we've got to understand what this means.
We want to understand the Kingdom, and Jesus looks at him
and said the knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom have been
given to you. And then he explained it.
He was about to give them the knowledge of the secrets.
And we need to understand that happens every Sunday morning all
over the world. The teaching of the word goes
out and it lands on different types of soil and you get to
choose what kind of soil you are.
You get to choose if you're going to be a Stony ground here.
Hey, let's let's face it, we've had a lot of traffic on our
heart this week. Are you going to allow your
heart to be hard and not not understand and be content
without understanding? You see, none of them
understood. You could have made the case
that all of them were trodden path hearers initially, but the
disciples took a tiller to their soil and came up to Jesus after
the meeting and said, Lord, we're not content to sit and
listen to you and not understand.
We want to know. So one of the primary criteria
for revelation is that we've got to press in for more.
We've got to ask and keep on asking.
If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask.
There are a lot of people who lack wisdom, but they don't ask.
The Lord spoke to me about probably 12 years ago.
Joel Budd was preaching that morning.
I was sitting on the front row and the Lord began to speak to
me. And he said, many of my children
live. And ignorance of my principles.
And then get frustrated with me about not how how their life is
not working, but rather than press in for insight, they get
offended. We need to press in and say,
God, this thing's not working. And the problems on my end,
there's something I don't understand and if we'll press in
for insight, God will give it to us.
But the first criteria is hunger.
We've got to ask and keep on asking.
And what Solomon gives us here is he gives us a picture of two
types of people. The fact is, every time God
speaks to us, we are at a fork in the road and we have a
decision. We can go this way, which is
called the hardening of the heart, or we can go this way,
which is what the fear of the Lord He juxtaposes these two
dynamics over against each other.
Let me read it again. Blessed is the one who fears the
Lord always. That's the key.
Solomon should have abided by his own preaching.
When my son asked me. And all those young guys leaned
in with a grin on their face when he said, what about
Solomon? What do you do with that one?
This is what I told him, and this is a scary reality.
Solomon broke into supernatural wisdom.
One of the guys was asking about dreams.
This is how we kind of got on this subject.
He was saying what what's the deal with dreams, Pastor?
Is that, you know, he he has a dream.
And this thing, it's like a reality in his life.
What is that? We need to realize that we can
have encounters with God in the night, watch in a dream and wake
up a different person. That's what happened to Solomon.
God can encounter you in a real way.
And there was an impartation that made him a different man.
He woke up the wisest man, whoever lived.
But here's the scary reality, and the answer to that question
that wisdom is not necessarily permanent.
You can step into revelation, but if you don't steward it
well, you can actually lose the insight that you received.
The revelation that once inflamed the passion of your
heart and caused you to fall more in love with Jesus can
become just cynical insight that actually mocks you with its
emptiness. Solomon, the wisest man whoever
lived, wrote his first book, The Song of Songs.
It was a song of a passionate love affair, and it's a picture
of that, that love affair between King Jesus and his
church. It's been preached all down
through church history in that manner, and it's a valid
interpretation. It's about the the heart that is
captured by him. Solomon started out well.
Then he went on to write his much of his books of proverbs
about great wisdom and great insight, including this verse,
telling us that if we will always fear the Lord, we'll be
blessed, but if we harden our heart, we'll be tormented.
And Solomon didn't heed his own words because he hardened his
heart against some dictates that God had given to the kings said,
you're not to amass a bunch of wives.
Solomon had 300 wives, 300 motherinlaws.
I'm sorry. I got outside the text.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 303 hundred wives and
700 concubines. He said not to amass a lot of
gold and not to amass many horses.
And Solomon hardened his heart on all three of those spots.
And Solomon ended up to drifting away from the Lord.
And he closed his life out writing this depressing book
that many people read and think. I bet people ask me, what is the
deal with the Ecclesiastes? Why did God put that in the
book? You ever wondered that?
If you haven't, you haven't read it yet.
Everything is meaningless under the sun.
You work hard, amass great wealth, and then your kids
squandered at your funeral. I mean, that's pretty much what
it says. It's like, It's like, this is a
bummer book. But the operative phrase, the
key phrase to understanding the book of Ecclesiastes is that
phrase under the sun. It's what philosophers call a
closed system. In other words, you're not going
to look above the sun. You're not going to look outside
of creation for meaning. You're going to try to find
meaning within life itself. And this was written by a man
who had the most beautiful women to be his his partner.
He had more money than any of us can fathom and all the academic
learning that anybody he's was the smartest man that ever
lived. And at the end of his life, he
said everything is meaningless under the sun.
And the revelation that once ministered to his heart
tormented him, because he cut himself off from the life of
God, because he hardened his heart.
Now those of you that weren't here last week, go back and
listen to the podcast from last week.
But let me just I'm going to do about 3 minutes, review
Ephesians Chapter 4. Paul says this in Ephesians
chapter four, he says. You must no longer live, as the
Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.
He also uses that phrase in Romans 1, The Futile Thinking.
Both of those passages Ephesians 4 is talking about the
digression and the hardening of the heart and an individual
scale. Romans One is talking about it
on a corporate or national scale, the darkening of the
understanding. And we need to understand we are
living in an hour where the darkening of the understanding
is, is rapidly increasing in our nation where people cannot
connect the moral dots. And the first defense against
that is to make sure it doesn't happen in our own heart as an
individual. So, and Paul says you must no
longer live as the Gentiles doing the futility of their
thinking. Paul wouldn't warn us about
that. He wouldn't tell us we must not
do something that wasn't a possibility of us doing so.
We need to realize this is a possibility for the believer to
slide into this lifestyle, he said.
You must no longer live in the futility of the thinking.
And then he he reverse engineers as he talks about the end result
of this mindset and works his way to the root, the fruit down
to the root, he said. They are darkened in their
understanding and separated from the life of God because of or
the cause of which is the hardening of their heart do or
or the ignorance that is in them because of the ignorance that is
in them due. To the hardening of their heart.
And so the root of this thing is the hardening of the heart that
Solomon talks about, that we harden our heart and we put our
hand up and say God. I don't want to hear that
uncomfortable truth because it will cost me something.
And what we need to realize is ignoring the voice of God will
cost us much more because we can't compartmentalize that
process when we harden our heart in one area.
There is a process that sets in and we not only lose the one
truth we were ignoring ignorant sets in and we begin to lose
touch with the truths we once. And then finally, we're darkened
in our understanding. We lose the faculty, the moral
faculty to receive more revelation.
We can't receive instruction from the Lord.
It's like we're closed off and people can preach.
And it's like, it doesn't make sense to us.
We can't connect the dots and Paul's warning us.
It's exactly what Solomon is talking about here.
So what is the opposite? The fear of the Lord.
The fear of the Lord is when we hear something from the Lord,
even though it's costly, we understand that God is weighing.
God is the judge of all the earth.
Remember when Abraham prayed for Sodom and he said will not the
judge of all the earth do justly?
It was a rhetorical question. What Abraham was insinuating is
God is intimately involved in the human affairs, and he's
evaluating our lives and we there is a reaping and a sewing.
The law of the harvest is enforced by the God of the
harvest, and that is the basis of the fear of the Lord.
We realize that God is intimately involved, and there
is. It's impossible to please God
without faith, and faith means that you believe he is the
rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
There are rewards in the Kingdom that will motivate you.
And if we don't have that concept, I'm telling you this
thing. Let me get a little little
rabbit trail here, OK? The grace message, the grace of
God that gives us salvation is a very real thing.
But that same grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness.
And if your revelation, your vision, your understanding of
grace is simply that God allows you to skate by and make it into
the Kingdom, then your revelation of grace is
insufficient. That is, there's an element of
grace. Part of the definition of grace
is that God invites you. He makes provision for you to
come in, that you don't earn your salvation.
But that same grace is to teach us to say no to ungodliness.
And when we lose this idea that there are that God is balancing
the scales, there is discipline from the Lord and there are
rewards from the Lord. And some people, when you talk
to them, they have no frame of reference for this kind of
thing. Rewards Boy, you that sounds
like works. It's right there in the word.
The parables of Jesus are very clear.
The master called his servants. He gave them talents.
Then he went off on a long journey.
They put it to work. One buried it.
He comes back and he wants to settle accounts.
This is not merely talking about the end of the age.
This is talking about a dynamic in the Kingdom that is
continually happening. Jesus would not have told a
parable that was irrelevant to his hearers.
He's talking about this is how God operates.
God will impart to you in a very real sense.
He'll impart and depart. He'll give you something in His
presence. He'll withdraw, and then he'll
see what you're going to do with it and what you do with in His
absence. What He gave you in His presence
will qualify you or disqualify you for the next wave.
And so God will come. And when we invest what He gives
us and steward it well, we get more.
God will give us more revelation.
God will give us more the the resources of the Kingdom.
But if we bury those things and we don't treasure them and we
have this mindset, well it's all by grace, then at best we stay
immature. And God wants to grow us up in
the things of Him. He wants us to understand that
there are rewards in the Kingdom.
That's why Hebrews 11, when it defines faith, it says we need,
we must understand He is the rewarder of those who diligently
seek Him. Is that a part of your frame of
reference when you think of him, that there is a reward at the
end of this seeking? If it's not if your idea as
well, that's kind of arbitrary. God gives blessing to some and
not to others, and that's a sovereign choice.
And we're just down here and life happens to us.
No, there's an engagement of the human heart that we cooperate
with him, that we can posture ourselves for blessing, for
breakthrough, and for wisdom and revelation.
And God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, and
those who don't are left without the breakthrough they could have
had. Because God, there's an effort
that is expressed that actually changes us.
God, God uses that to grow us up.
And we need to understand that this is not a lack of grace.
That is actually great cooperating with grace.
Grace working in us, creating a hunger and teaching us to seek
Him. And when we do that, we begin to
grow with Him, and so this thing of revelation it.
Starts with the fear of the Lord.
We we yield to His dealings. The fear of the Lord is it.
It lives. It makes decisions today based
on the consequences tomorrow. We weigh everything in light of
the consequences of our decision.
The opposite of the fear of the Lord is the hardening of the
heart. But the the the the mindset is
foolishness. The fool.
He says in his heart, tomorrow we made, you know, eat, drink
and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
Don't worry about how your irresponsible behavior affects
you, because you might not even be alive tomorrow to reap the
consequence. Just live it up for the moment.
Whereas wisdom looks at the long term and it says I'm going to
make the right decisions now, I'm going to make my decisions
now based on the long term results and people who live like
that. There is a slow accrument of
blessing. That begins to snowball in their
life in every area, including your finances.
I used to, I used to be in the drug culture and as I got saved,
some of my friends, they came out of that.
And I remember one guy saying it's just amazing.
Now that I'm not doing drugs, I don't know what to do with my
money. I actually have more money to
spare. The guy had a great job, made
really good money, but he blew it all on drugs and alcohol.
When he got sober, all of a sudden he had money.
He wasn't even living for the Lord, but he was living wiser
than before, and he was reaping the benefits of that.
God invites us into those things.
So, okay, here's how we posture our heart for revelation,
because revelation is a very real thing.
Not everybody has the same insight into the Word.
Do you? Recognize that?
And that's not some sovereign thing.
Well, well, they're graced for it.
It's an invitation to you. Ask, seek, and knock.
If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask.
Search for wisdom. Cry aloud for understanding.
Search for it as hidden treasure.
Why? Because it is because with
wisdom comes all the other things you long for.
And so God invites us into it. So what do we need to do #1?
We need to have hunger. We need to ask.
If you are content to not have wisdom, you'll live in your
present state. But if we begin to ask, God will
begin to give it to us. The other thing is the purity of
heart. It's interesting when you look
at Solomon, he has this encounter with the Lord in a
dream. And the Lord said ask of me
anything you want. What an opportunity.
What an amazing thing to be told by God.
He's in this dream And the Lord said ask of me anything you
want. And Solomon says, Lord, your
your favor was on my dad and I've inherited his position and
I don't have what it takes. I I'm like a child.
I don't need to know. I don't know how to go in and go
out. I need wisdom to lead your
people. And the Lord was pleased, and he
said, Solomon, because you did not ask for wisdom or fame, or
the death of your enemies. I'm going to give you wisdom.
You will be the wisest man that ever lived.
None, none will be like you in the on earth or in to come.
And then he went on to say, and I will also give you riches and
fame. I'm going to give you what you
didn't ask for. You know, it's interesting.
Later on, Solomon would write with the fear of the Lord, the
fear of the. Lord is the beginning of wisdom
and with it comes riches and honor.
That wasn't an anomaly. It wasn't a one time thing that
that God tells Solomon well, because you feared the Lord and
because you made the right decision, because your heart was
pure and you didn't ask for things for yourself.
You were really thinking of my Kingdom, that I'm going to do a
special. Thing I'm not doing for anybody
else, I'm going to give you wisdom and honor and riches.
Solomon later on realizes that the very way he answered that
question was a Kingdom principle open to all of us.
That with wisdom comes rich is an honor, and the secret of
wisdom is the purity of heart. If you go to the book of James,
the book of James is one of the primary books of wisdom.
We don't think of it as a wisdom book, but it most definitely is,
he says in chapter one. If any man lacks wisdom, let him
ask. But if he's going to spend it on
himself, he shouldn't expect to receive anything from God.
You see how? Solomon postured himself to pass
that test through his answer later on in the book we see in
chapter 4 It's like verse 1314. He says the wisdom that comes
from heaven is first of all pure, then peace.
Loving, sincere, he goes to this list.
But he is very careful to say the first manifestation of that
wisdom is heart Purity. He says it's first of all pure,
then peace loving. You look in the Beatitudes, it's
in the same order. Blessed is the pure and heart,
for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers.
Same idea, because those two things always come together.
But the wisdom, the the wisdom that comes from heaven is first
of all pure. Blessed are the peacemakers.
They will see God, and you'll see God in every page of the
book. If you can really get your heart
where it's pure before the Lord. That's why James says later on
in that passage, he says purify your hearts.
You doubleminded, weep, mourn and wail, turn your laughter,
mourning and your joy to gloom. And in due season the Lord will
lift you up. What he's talking about is go to
work, really dig down deep and say, God, uproot this stuff in
my life that is keeping you from giving me what I need because
you can't trust me to steward it.
Well, I have a double. There's a double mindedness.
I want your glory. I want you to be glorified, but
I also want some for myself. And so he says, let's go to work
on this. Purify your hearts.
Because the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all
pure. That's what that whole passage
is about. It's about qualifying our heart
for Revelation. John chapter seven.
We see Jesus answer this question.
The Pharisees asked him, John. Or they asked Jesus, Jesus,
Where did you get such insight? Where did you get such wisdom?
And true to form, Jesus answers his question in such a way that
they don't really think he's answering the question.
They said, Where did you get such insight?
He said. I came not to glorify myself,
but the one who sent me, and I guarantee you all the people
that were asking that question are thinking, Jesus, We're not
interested in your motive for learning.
We want to know your source. Where did you get this insight?
And Jesus was giving them the answer.
The secret of my source is my motive.
I'm not here to please myself, but the one who sent me.
That is the essence of heart purity.
If we can get to the place where our heart burns for his glory,
if we can get to the place where we say God, I just want what you
want. There is a dynamic that opens up
that God will begin to give us wisdom and revelation.
But James already warned us in chapter one.
If we ask for wisdom so that we can indulge ourselves, the
heavens are closed over us. But if we can deal with that, if
we can, if we can deal with that impurity of heart, that
doublemindedness, then God will begin to open up to us and give
us revelation. And the foundation of that is
the fear of the Lord. So we can posture ourselves for
wisdom and revelation. We we really need to understand
there there are people who are gifted to teach the word of God
and and I'm grateful for those people that and I've received a
lot from people but John is very clear.
You are not dependent upon teachers.
You don't have he. He actually says you have you
don't have a need of a teacher. You have an anointing that
teaches you. Now we got to balance scripture
with scripture. God gave us teachers so we can
benefit from them and we and it we do well to, you know, avail
ourselves to their their gift. But we're not dependent on that.
It's not like, well, there's a people that are anointed for
insight. None.
There's the rest of us. It's available to all of us.
The invitation is open. Do you want wisdom and
revelation? Do you want to understand the
word of God? Do you want the the dots to
connect Then hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Ask him. If any man lacks wisdom, let him
ask. Begin to ask the Lord, and God
will begin to give to you what you need.
He'll begin to give you that wisdom and that revelation and
some of it. We talked about it last week.
There is asking level and there's seeking level wisdom.
There's some that you're just asking to receive.
There's other, there's the seeking, and it's a process, but
that process will actually build the character in you to qualify
you to steward it. But there's this process that we
enter into this life, this lifelong student.
You know, being studious the rest of our life, saying God, I
want to understand your Kingdom. I don't know what you I I feel
that this morning there is an invitation from God.
Some of you you there are things you're longing to look into.
Let let me see if I can find this document.
I just told you what the Lord spoke to me a number of years
ago. I.
Doubt if I'll be able to find it, but I'm going to try.
Because essentially what he was telling me is that too many of
us live frustrated when actually the frustration from our
circumstances needs to provoke us to press in for greater
answers. If your life ain't working, I
know that's not good grammar, but it's good preaching.
If your life ain't working, it's because you need greater
revelation and God longs to give it to you.
He's not a bad father that's just down there tormenting you
with your frustration. And you'll, you know it'll lift.
When you get to heaven, God is wanting you to press in for
Revelation and ask him for that what you need, and God will give
it to you. But often what He does is He
withholds it from us because we're not yet ready to hear what
He needs to say. And that pursuit there, there is
a there is a hunger and a pursuit of God that will cause
us to begin to throw things overboard.
Okay. I'll get rid of this, and I'll
get rid of that. Lord, I just want more of you.
And that process purifies us so we can qualify that for that
greater revelation. But God is God is too great.
See, someone's crying out back there.
They're already getting the message.
There's there's greater revelation that's available to
us if we will ask for it. But God is too good a steward to
just give it to people. Who won't value it?
And in that sense, he will not give it to us.
Before our time, Solomon had qualified for wisdom.
But here's the scary part. You can receive wisdom and not
maintain it. Let's land it with this Solomon
in in Proverbs chapter. I want to say it's six and
seven. He's got that little scenario
where he's talking about. He looked out his window and
there was a a fool, a foolish youth and he went down by the
way of the immoral woman's house and he he went by her house and
she was standing on the street corner and she seduced him in.
And she said my husband is on a long business trip.
He won't be. He won't be around for a a while
here. And what she was doing is she
was attacking the fear of the Lord.
This thing in him, there's going to be consequences.
What if I get caught and she's trying to seduce and we'll get
away with it. She's trying to remove that
barrier of the fear of the Lord, which was a safeguard in his
heart. And here he was seduced and it
said her mouth is the opening to the grave and many are been
destroyed by going in her door. It's a terrifying picture.
And he says he gives that as the picture of foolishness.
Standing in the high point of the city advertising.
It swears there is a seduction to sin that is bold and brazen
and tries to lure a sin. And then he gives this picture
of wisdom being a female. I find it really interesting
that there's these two females. One is foolishness, this is
Solomon, one is foolishness, and one is wisdom, and wisdom is
more. Discreet wisdom is like a lady.
You have to win her. Years ago, when I was single, I
I have the works of Shakespeare. I've never read it, but it
looked good on my shelf and so I pulled it down.
One day I opened it up. I'm a single guy and this is the
one line I know. From Shakespeare, it says she is
beautiful, so she is to be wooed.
She is a woman, so she is to be won.
I put it back and I thought that guy knows women.
It's an amazing quote. There is when, when there is
something about. The feminine that needs to be
pursued even at this the smallest expression the sperm
and the egg. The sperm goes to the egg, not
the other way around. The sperm pursues the egg.
The egg just sits in the waiting room, waiting.
Hi boys. You know she's got her fixing
her hair, you know, looking pretty.
And it's a picture of righteousness.
Righteousness has to be won. Wisdom has to be one.
You have to pursue wisdom, but foolishness will pursue you and
promise you the world and leave you empty and destroyed.
And here's the scary thing. I've been married to this
beautiful woman on the front row for 34 years.
I'm looking for a conga 34 years, 34 years, a week and a
day ago. And you know what?
I still have to pursue her. I didn't just win her 30-4 years
ago. You know, I'm Norwegian and
Norwegians are usually known for not being real expressive.
I heard about this Norwegian or this lady.
She was married for 35 years and she told her husband, She said
you never say you love me. The only time you ever told me
you love me was on our wedding day.
And he said, well, woman, I told you that day and if I ever
change my mind, I'll let you know.
Thought that was okay. That ain't going to work.
Wisdom has to continually be pursued.
Solomon courted wisdom and broke into wisdom.
But he didn't maintain the marriage.
He didn't keep the relationship with wisdom.
Wisdom is precious. It's to be guarded.
Proverbs chapter 2 says search for it as hidden treasure.
If it really is treasure, you will treasure it, You will guard
it. You will continue to pursue
those things and you won't. Let it out of your sight.
The things of God. We can break into wisdom, or we
and but we can harden our heart and actually lose what we once
had. It's called ignorance setting
in, according to Ephesians 4. So we need to pursue wisdom and
we never outgrow the courtship. We still we need to value
wisdom. I was talking to you guys.
Remember Dean Briggs? I was talking to Dean Briggs a
while back and we were talking about this dynamic and I found
it interesting, He said we were talking about how the Lord, it
seems like the Lord will bring you back to a truth.
You ever notice that you'll be studying something and then you
find yourself three years later and you're studying that same
thing, but it's deeper this time.
It's like he's speaking to you, got it again.
Then three years later, it's like, wow, there's more here.
And he was talking. He said, I I think it's like
going up a mountain. You're ascending up the
mountain, You're you're in the same spot, but you got a higher
vantage point. I thought, man, that is so good.
Then this week I was listening to Dutch Sheets and he was
talking about how the Lord recently told him, I I've
brought you full circle. But then in this picture the
Lord gave him, he said full circle.
He's on the same place. But then the Lord gave him the
three, the 3D vision. And he realized, yeah, he'd gone
all the way around the circle, but he'd gone higher.
And that is how the Lord operates.
The Lord will revisit those truths and he will build on the
truths you once had. But you've got to maintain and
guard those truths so you don't have to keep learning the same
old lessons again and again and again.
The writer of Hebrew says, I don't want to have to lay again
the foundation. That's immaturity.
We should be beyond this. He says, let us move on to
maturity. There is so much more the Lord
has for us. Let me land it.
Go ahead and stand. So, you know I'm going to quit.
Let me land it with this, what I felt this morning.
And and I was just really. Groping about, trying to figure
out where to jump into this. But there is such a thing as
individual wisdom and revelation, and there is
deposits of wisdom and revelation that God will give to
a corporate group of people, to a tribe of people, to a local
church, because it fits with their assignment.
And only in stewarding those truths can they move into what
God has for them. And there is more the Lord has
for us as a church. There are things he wants to
teach us, but we've got to have our heart positioned because he
will withhold from us unless we have the hunger enough to really
begin to pull on that. There are there's some of you.
You are so hungry. It's like the Lord has you on a
new track there. It's like there's all kinds of
new things are popping in your head.
There's there's new things you're bumping into, and you're
saying I didn't know this even existed.
And if you will just begin to ask him, then there is so much
more that hunger itself is a sign God's already working.
It is the invitation Jesus said in Matthew 13.
He said when he told the disciples, I hide it from them
so they don't understand. He said because if they see it,
they can have it. Think about that.
As you begin to see certain things, it's because God is
wanting you to step. Into a new reality and you step
into and there's a new reality in the Kingdom.
That was a game changer. But you've got to go after that.
And too often we are satisfied with little crumbs.
God gives us a little truth and we're like, oh man, that's
amazing. And we get distracted by the
thorns of this life and we don't go deeper.
And there's so much more he wants to give us.
And I believe there's things that God wants to roll out to us
as a congregation that become part of the the working fabric
of this church. Because there's things he wants
us to move into, but we're going to have to come up to a higher
level in the knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom.
So, Father, we just pray right now, God, that you'd awaken our
hearts. God, we ask you to forgive us.
Lord, we confess before your throne.
We are so easily distracted. Like little children, a squirrel
runs by the window, and we're off looking at that.
We're distracted from what you're doing.
Lord, we're asking that you would create in us such a hunger
that the whirlwinds around us cannot take our gaze off of you,
your Kingdom and your word. I just feel it very.
Strongly there's some of you and Elliot.
There there are things that God has begun to deal with you
about. There there's things that you're
it's like lately there you, you begun to realize, man, there's
more in the Kingdom than I realized.
And it's God's doing. And there's an invitation to
you. There's you.
Just go after. I'm telling you, God's going to
open some things up to you. There are questions you have,
and those questions are given to you by the Lord that quest.
There, there's a quest. He's taking you on through the
questions that he's going to begin to fill out some things
that you've longed to know. And that fascination is not a
side issue. It's not you're not getting
distracted by minor things. It is the thing.
Okay. It is the quest in the Kingdom.
And I believe that's for. But I believe there's others of
you in this room. There are things.
There's an awakening in your heart.
There's just this hunger, and sometimes it's like an
excitement. You just want to burst.
You want it. You want more.
I'm telling you that is the invitation from heaven.
Seek for understanding. Cry aloud for Revelation.
I believe that me, that means what it says.
Cry aloud. There's something about the
passionate ignition of your heart saying, God, I've got to
know, sometimes we just need to lose our decorum and just go
after this thing. And the Lord will reward that
because he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
If there's been a a growing hunger this this isn't for
everyone I don't think. But if there's been this growing
hunger of late, just this fascination, this hunger there,
it's like there's things that have been been gripping you,
ideas and concepts and things and you've been asking, Lord,
how does this fit together? And I feel like for some of you
that it's even been this question, man, I don't know am I
getting off. And now I'm telling you that is
how the Kingdom works. God will lead you along through
truth. He takes you on a quest and if
that's you it it's been, there's been this ravenous hunger that's
awakened. I even feel like there's some of
you about six months ago that happened and it began to die
down through the busyness, and the Lord wants to reignite that.
This morning, there's a fresh invitation to you.
If that's you this morning, I'm going to ask you to come up in
the altar. We just want to.
I want to pray over you right now.
If that's you there. You know that there's this
hunger that's been stirring in you.
And I want to tell you that that hunger itself is a gift from
God. It's at.
The fact is that we even want him.
Martin Luther, the great reformer.
He said it takes God to love God.
The fact that we even hunger him and want him at all is an work
of His grace. He is so gracious to make us
hungry. Thanks for listening to our
podcast. If you'd like to help more
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you can do so at Heartland Church, online.com/give.