JAN 7 2024 | Proverbs: Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World S2E2

Sea Change Church · JAN 7 2024 | Proverbs – S2 Ep 2: Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
Proverbs 3:1-4
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

God, we love you We thank you God, we give you this service We give you our worship We give you ourselves We give you our problems Church, we've got to let go We've got to let go Let this be the year That you give everything to the Lord Your marriage Your relationships Your kids Your families Your jobs Your debts Your worries Your health God, we give it all to you Pray that you bless this service Lord Jesus Let it be a sweet fragrance And a sweet sound To you, Lord Jesus Thank you for your word Thank you that you're accessible Thank you that you love us And that you are faithful Even when we are not God, you are so good You name me pray Amen You may be seated Amen Good morning, church My name is Drea I am the minister of operations I have just a few Important announcements for you First, if you're new here I want to welcome you And let you know That there's a communication card Inside of your bulletin That'll help you connect with us There's also a prayer request Option on the back On that bulletin If you're interested In getting to know more About our church We have our DNA class Beginning next week We hope that everybody Will take this class At least once Pastor Adam leads it It's one hour long And it takes you through Like the history The governance The values Everything we are here At LJCF So that you can get to know More about your home church And make sure that you Are aligned with those values So please sign up for that If you've not taken The course already Once you've taken the course If you want to become a member You're eligible So that's helpful If you're on that track as well But you can do that In your bulletin On that communication card Or online The website has the DNA On the homepage there For you to register for I also want to let you know Next week is Baptism Sunday And if you guys have Baby dedications Or baptisms That you're interested in For your family Or for yourself Please let us know You can do that On your communication card As well Or you can email us And just let us know We'll get you connected With Mike Munson Who is our baptism coordinator To get you all the information You need to be able To have your child Dedicated Or to get baptized yourself So please let us know We really want to do that And partner with you on that And see you get baptized I also want to let you know About winter camps Okay let's talk about Winter groups I'm just kidding That's my fault Not the media's team Not media's team fault My fault Winter groups is next And we want to talk to you About these groups Because they're really important So we have Our fairs are coming up On the 21st And the 28th We'll have our fair outside So you can get to know All of our leaders And see all of the groups That are available If you yourself Are interested in leading a group We can get you Everything that you need To be able to do that Please don't be intimidated by that Many of us just go through The pastor's notes together And fellowship with each other We'll get you everything you need To be able to run a group yourself We'd like to have a few more Of those out in the community So we're definitely recruiting For small group leaders And if you're interested in that You can let me know Anybody on our team So Joe Brandy Noel Any of our staff really Just let us know We'll get you connected And plugged in But for the rest of you Be thinking about What day and time Is going to work for you We want to make sure Everybody gets rooted And connected in a community group We really are more than Just Sunday here at church We want to make sure That you're in fellowship With each other Throughout the week And in the word Together with each other And just in Yeah Doing life with each other So be thinking about that And the last announcement I have Is the winter camps The middle school camp Especially I want to talk about Because that's coming up Here in January So if you have a middle schooler It's not too late to register They still have a few spots left Please let Pastor Harry know If there's any special questions You have Or financial need Or anything like that But all of this information Is on the website for you And ready He also wants me to mention That if you're a parent Of a child in any grade At all They have a meeting today After second service In the fellowship hall To go through the vision And some of the updates They have new curriculum And things like that Happening So he'll talk to you About that after second service If you want to come Stick around for that Please join him So you can see What your kiddos are doing In the rooms next door That's all I have By way of announcements Except that as we get ready To transition into giving I do want to let you know About your end of your tax statements I'm starting to get questions About that Those will be out By the end of the month I just want to let you know that But in the meantime If you want to get to Your tax statement early You can do that Through the app That we have Which is the My Church Suite app If you don't have the app Please come check it out At Next Steps We'll help you get set up With that But everybody who's in our database Got at least an invitation to it So we can get you situated And you'll be able to see All of your own giving And print your own statements From there as well In case you need it And with that in mind I'd like to transition To a time of worship Through giving So here at this church We want to make sure That you know that There's no compulsion to give We just want you to think about it If this is your home church And you want to partner with us And what we're doing here You can tithe To the church You can tithe Or I'm sorry Do special offerings If you're interested in things Like legacy We also have What we call GPS So give is one of them Pray is the other one We have a lot of prayer opportunities There's a Tuesday prayer meeting That we do There's prayer on the back Of that card We have a prayer team If you want to be involved In that Please let us know And then of course serve Which is one of the best ways To help your home church Is to serve So talk to Pastor Sean If you're interested in volunteering Always a high need there And let's just take a moment Silence to reflect And what God has for you And then we'll pray For our offering today Lord we just want to lift up Today's offering to you I pray that you will use Every last sentence Every hour Every minute That we volunteer All of it Lord To just expand your kingdom We want to serve you Jesus And just help make you known We give this day And all of our offerings to you In your name Amen Please join us And sing our hymn for today Hymn number 572 Blessed Assurance And let's stand together Blessed Assurance Jesus is mine Oh what a fortress Of glory divine Heir of salvation Purchase of God Born of His Spirit Washed in His blood This is my story This is my story This is my soul Praising my Savior All the day long Let's sing verse 3 Perfect submission All is at rest I am my Savior Am happy and blessed Watching and waiting Looking above Filled with His love Filled with His goodness Lost in His love Lost in His love This is This is my story This is my song Praising my Savior All the day long This is my story This is my story This is my song Praising my Savior All the day long Let's sing This is my story One more time This is my story This is my song Praising my Savior All the day long The book of Proverbs Chapter 3 Verses 5-10 Trust in the Lord With all your heart And lean not On your own understanding In all your ways Acknowledge Him And He will make Your paths straight Do not be wise In your own eyes Fear the Lord And shun evil This will bring health To your body And nourishment To your bones Honor the Lord With your wealth With the first fruits Of all your crops Then your barns Will be filled To overflowing And your vats Will brim over With new wine This is the word Of the Lord A new one A new one A new one A new one A 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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. do these things. One of the things people often miss amidst the practicality of the Proverbs, if you're a very practical, pragmatic person, this is your bread and butter. You're going to live here. You're going to love the Proverbs, right? But we often miss in the pragmatism of the Proverbs just the metaphysical nature of it. Now, what do I mean by metaphysical?

Well, metaphysical is beyond the physical. It means there's invisible things happening. There's God's power. There's God's grace. There's mercy. There's all these things that are invisible in the world and in the universe and in the heavens that the Proverbs says when you do these practical things, very pragmatic, you know, put the shovel to the ground, that when you do things like this in your life, be honest, things of that nature, don't lie, that all of a sudden there's like a supernatural spiritual info dump into your life. You've ever heard where they, you know, they dump a trove of information. You know, a lot of times that'll happen on a Friday if they want you to miss the story or if they really want you to get it, they'll wait till Monday so we can talk about it.

Well, when you have the practical things happening, when we do these things, God tends to step in and bring invisible elements, powerful, his stuff into your life. And we oftentimes miss that. We're in Proverbs 3. And in Proverbs 3, you probably find a verse that many people might put in the top 25 verses in the Bible. If you had 25 verses, John 3, 16 might be one of them, or you go on and, you know, or Romans 8, 28, you know, for all things work together for good for those that love God and call according to his purposes. Many people would put this verse. In the chapter, in Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6 would be two verses that you would, I mean, if you were going to put one of those posters up in your house of a verse in Proverbs, this might be one of them. Let me read it.

It says this, trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not on your own understanding, and in all your ways acknowledge him. And here's the supernatural part, and what will he do? He will straighten the paths that you walk on. We have a tendency to walk crooked, right? We do things, we go left, we go right. And what this says, that if you do these things, if you trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him, he'll be in front of you, and he'll be way-making for you. He'll be path-making for you as you go. And that actually goes with the verse I just gave a moment ago out of Romans that says, for all those that love God, everything you do, even the bad stuff, the mistakes that we make, that he will cause it all to work out for your benefit. It doesn't mean we do bad things on purpose, but he is a way-maker, he is a path-maker, and he makes our paths straight. What I want to look at is some very practical things over the next couple weeks before we get into Genesis. We're going to go back into the life of Abraham soon. But I want to look at practical things that really open the door, that create a way for God, the practical things we do, we way-make for God. Remember John in the desert, he's a voice calling in the desert, making a way for the Lord. When you do the pragmatic, practical things that it says that are really easy to follow in Proverbs, then our way-making for him allows him to way-make for us. See, it's a coalescence of way-making. We way-make for God in the way that we live our lives and the choices we make, but then he way-makes for us. And how he does that is the metaphysical part. How he takes a mistake of ours and turns it in to something for our benefit is incredible, and that is part of the metaphysical. Now, as you look at this verse, let me just read this again. Everything in verse five and six is very passively active. What I mean by passive activity sounds, once again, like an oxymoron. You've heard of passive-aggressive, right? It's kind of like the same thing. As we look at these verses, everything is a surrendering in verse five and six. In Proverbs three, five and six, everything is a surrendering, but it's an active surrendering. Look what it says.

Verse five, trust in the Lord. Well, what is trust? Trust is surrendering what you think you can do on your own and trusting that something beyond yourself can take care of this. Trust in who? The Lord. From where? From all of your heart. Well, look at that. The core of trust is the heart. If trust in the Bible has a root, that root is planted in the fertile soil of your heart. So trust is the first one. It's passive. The second one, and its activity, is lean not on your own understanding. So you see an active leaning, right? We tend to lean, like I'm leaning on this pulpit, on what we know, on what we understand. But the Bible says here, passively, it wants you to do something actively. It wants you to lean, which is active, but it wants to passively tell you not on what you understand, but on what God's understanding. We're going to dive into these two words. There's a Hebrew word and a really cool Greek word we're going to look at that shows that understanding has two different ways in which it is understood. And I won't ruin it for you now, but we'll get to that in just a second. And then the final one, in all of your ways, so in everything that you do, in the decisions that you make, whether you go left in the morning, whether you go right in the morning, whatever you're doing, in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end, you are acknowledging him. You are acknowledging God. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. One of the questions I regularly ask myself is, can I acknowledge God at the beginning of this decision? Can I continue to acknowledge God and invite him into the middle of a decision after I've made it? And in the end of it, can I look back and say, God was a part of that the entire way? In the beginning, in the middle, of the end, acknowledge him in all of your ways, not just at the beginning, not just in the middle, not just at the end. And it says that he will do that metaphysical thing. That's where heaven meets earth. And he comes in when we do this, and he will make your paths straight. Let me tell you something about path making. No one has ever gotten lost on a straight path.

Facts, right? No one has ever gotten lost on a straight path. What I love about the Proverbs is it tells us that we will know where we are on the map. That we will not be lost. We will not be anxious off to the side, off to the right. We will not, we will have a sense of security that comes in this, because when we do these things, these three things, when we trust, when we understand what God would have us leaning not on our own understanding, and we acknowledge him in all of our ways, then we will be on a path and we will no longer be lost. If you feel lost in your life right now, I want to give you some encouragement.

There's three simple things that you can do that will immediately get you on that straight path, because God will start making that path in front of you. Let's go to verse five again. We're going to look at these three things that it has. Trust, understanding, and then knowledge. Verse five, trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Trust is an interesting word. What is trust? Trust is tangible in that what you trust in you tend to do, you tend to follow, you tend to go to the things that you trust, right? But it's intangible, because if I were to ask you where trust exists in your being, what would you tell me? Maybe in your mind? Maybe it's something that you've come to understand in your mind that you understand, and because you understand it, then you trust something. The scripture here tells you where trust needs to be, and it tells you how you build that trust. Look at what it says. Trust in whom? The Lord. So we're trusting. Our trust is not in ourself. We're trusting in God. With what? With all of our heart. And so when the Bible talks about trust, it talks about trusting from a place, a deeper place than just your mind. Let's say that human spirituality, no matter what kind of spirituality it is, is going from a deeper place than just a secular looking at what you can discern around you and making decisions based on that.

It's trusting from a holistic, deeper place. And so when Proverbs, when the writer of Proverbs, Solomon says to you, trust in whom? Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. He's talking from an ancient understanding of the heart. In most ancient cultures, when they use the word heart, and this is definitely true for the Hebrew. If you were to look up the Hebrew word for heart, when it speaks to you about the heart, it is talking about your emotions. It is talking to you about your mind. It is talking to you about the way that you live. It is a holistic understanding that flows from the heart, and it means your entire, the entirety of your being. We live in a world that is telling us that you can just compartmentalize all these things. You can do whatever you want with your body, and it's not going to affect your soul. You can think whatever you want with your mind, and it's not going to affect your body.

The scripture, the ancients, the ancients had a way different understanding of this. And they said, and what they believed is, if the trust that you have, if you begin to say, in this, God, I just trust that you are in charge. I know I can't see how you're going to do it. I don't know why you're going to do it. I don't know, you know, whatever it is. I don't understand, but I trust in the Lord. If that is in the root of your being, from that place, all of your soul, you're in the totality of everything will become holistically better, and there will be straight path making for your emotions, for your mind, for your heart, for your health. The scripture even talks about, you know, things like if you laugh, or if you have a good attitude towards things, it actually brings health to your bones.

There's this holistic. So when you read this verse, realizing that it's saying, trust in the Lord with all of your heart, that means all of your being as the ancients spoke. Now, before we got to verse five, there's a few verses, and I added them there in your notes in a box. And the question is, how do I begin to trust? How do I actually do that? There's a lot of ways to do it in the Bible. There's a multiplicity of ways, but I want to give you a very simple way to begin to trust in the Lord. And one thing is to take his word and make it integral to your being, which means memorizing the scripture. Finding the scripture of God and beginning to memorize the scripture. Let's go to the, a little bit earlier, Proverbs, same chapter, a few verses earlier, and this is Solomon speaking, okay, to his son. He's saying, my son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart.

Now, the commands that he's giving, when Solomon gives a command, he's giving a command, he's speaking about the commands of God. He's speaking about the Ten Commandments. He's speaking about, you know, the, the Mosaic literature. This is what he's speaking about. He says, keep my commands where? Where do we keep the commands? It says, in your heart. Now, this is the same place a few verses later, he says, you know, that trust in the Lord with what? With all of your heart. Well, what are you trusting in?

You're trusting in what you have made true for yourself by committing it to your heart. When we memorize things, they say, memorize it, I know it by what? By heart, right? When you memorize something. One of the things I've done this year is I've committed to begin to memorize the scripture. When you memorize the scripture, what you are telling God is, I believe in your word, I believe it has power, I'm going to take time, and I'm going to take your actual words and inculcate them into my heart that actually changes the neuropathways in your heart. You might be saying to yourself, what do you mean neuropathways in your heart? That's a brain thing.

If you look at recent science, they found that the heart actually has more neurotransmitters than your brain. The heart is full of neurotransmitters, and that's why the Bible often speaks about knowing things in your heart, knowing things by heart. So, in order to begin to trust, what do we do? You begin to put God's commands into your heart. You begin to learn them by heart. Don't underestimate the power of the knowledge of God's word being bound to your heart. Remember, he says earlier in this passage, if you actually were to go on in chapter three, he says, take these words and bind them to your heart. Bind them around your forehead, and you'll see if you've gone to Israel, a lot of times they'll have these phylacteries, is what they call it. I was on a plane, and they have these little boxes, and inside the box is the Torah. It's a little tiny mini Torah, like you get out of Cracker Jack, right? And they would just sit there, and there was a guy, and he put it on, and he had this box on his head, and he had his scrolls there, and he was praying. We were on the flight to Jerusalem, and there he was praying with the symbolism of the word of God on his mind, but it's also on his heart.

If you're struggling with trust, if you're struggling, because trust is the cornerstone of all human relationships. Trust is a cornerstone of our risk ability, right? Like you take risk according to what you trust to be true. The more we begin to take the word of God, the truth of God's word, and put it into our heart, you're going to take more steps of faith-filled risk, and then we're living according to the spirit, where the spirit can begin to guide us, because we have actually changed the neuropathletic.

You've actually changed your physical body. This is where the physical and the mesaphysical happens. By trusting in the Lord, making the scripture, his commands in your heart stored up, like Solomon says, that it actually changes that, and allows us and gives us that power to walk forward and make decisions then in the real world. That's why this sermon series is called Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World. That's the first one we see, is trusting. Trust in the Lord, the heart. I wrote in the, I think there in the notes, it says, the heart was often seen as the center of a person's emotions, thoughts, and wills. When we're trusting God, we're coming to a place of giving over to him. Next one is understanding. So the first big one, I said there's three, that's really going to help you get a straight path. And if you don't feel you're on a straight path, the first one is begin to trust.

And a real practical way to trust, like I said a moment ago, is begin to commit God's scripture to memory. The next one is understanding. Now there's two, go to verse five, part B. It says, and lean not on your own understanding. How good are we at leaning on our own understanding, right? I mean, we have this perspective and then we shackle ourselves to our opinions. I saw a YouTube video recently and it showed a person and then it backed out to like above their house and then it backed out again to like above their city and then it backed out again to above the nation and then it backed out again to above the world and then it backed out to the space. Next thing you know, there's a picture in the YouTube video from like so far away and it gave a perspective that I'm a lot smaller than I think I am. And my perspectives and my understanding is a lot smaller and a lot, has a lot less scope than I think it does. When you look at the word understanding in the scripture, whether it's in the New Testament or the Old Testament, I'm going to show you two words. There is a juxtaposition between understanding.

There's human understanding and then there's divine understanding. And the Bible is very clear that those two things are not the same. Now it doesn't mean that they are opposed to one another. There are times when we understand something, right, where God has given us understanding or we have something within our own understanding and you actually got it right. We're not incapable of actually getting things right on occasion. And God's understanding, divine understanding, will come along like wind into the sails of your understanding and it will increase and back up what you believe is understanding.

But then there's other times where you have an understanding. You know, you know you're so right that you're right because of what you understand. And think about that high perspective again compared to what we really understand. And then God comes along and he says something a little bit different in your heart. And it's a different understanding than you know. I'm going to give you an example of this. I was working at another church ways back before I wrote my first book.

And it was actually about a year and a half, two years before I even got offered to write a book. And I was excited about that. But before that happened, there was an offer from the church and they said, hey, if you want to buy yourself a computer on the church's dime, the church will own it, but you can just have a computer. And I was like, oh man, back then it was like the one I wanted was like 1,500 bucks. I'm like, that's a lot of money. I don't really want to spend my own money on it.

And I'm like, bingo. You want to give me a free computer? Let's go. I'll go pick it out. I mean, the Apple store is right down the street. It's fun to go into the Apple store. It's very minimalist. And I like that. It's very German. Just straight down the line and clean and organized. And should I go on? That I like the Apple store. And something in my heart, just something in my heart that don't, don't. I was like, why? Something in my heart was like, don't take the offer. And I was like, this makes no sense. This makes no sense. It's a free computer. I don't have to spend it. And I needed the new computer. Mine was glitching at the time. And I just, for once, it doesn't always happen. But for once, I'm like, okay. Okay, God, whatever your reasons are, because you're God, I'm just not going to buy the computer. Thanks a lot, bro.

So I go by my own computer. It's two years later, my first book. I'd gotten offered a book after that. Wrote my first book. And I was going back to my computer. I logged in after staff meeting. And there was an email from HR. And it was to everybody, because people on staff were starting to write blogs and do all these things. And other people were putting out articles for different magazines. I was doing that as well. And this was not on purpose. It was just separate. But this email came out. It said, by the way, if you happen to write anything on church's time, the church owns it. Oh, and by the way, if you happen to write anything on the computer, the church owns the copyright to that as well.

And they didn't do that on purpose. It was just an HR decision separate of the computer people decision who wanted to bless us. And I was like, I was like so glad. Because at that point, it was like, boom, you own that. I don't own that. Because I wrote that whole book on that computer. That was just one time where there was a simple, gentle voice that made no sense to me. But something underneath the scenes that made no sense. It made no sense for me to spend my money. It made no sense. But there was a still small voice of understanding that knew something better that knows those things. And so when the Bible talks about this, it talks about having this understanding that comes from God. Here's the two words. In the Old Testament, the word is banah. Banah means understanding, knowledge, meaning, wisdom.

It's like your basic understanding, okay? So that's the first sense. It's like human understanding. That's used in the Old Testament, banah. In the New Testament, they have a word called noose. The word in the noose really speaks to the difference between divine. It can be used in two ways. But it has a multiple use of divine understanding and personal understanding. Now I just want to ask you the question to start. Do you lean more on your immediate understanding or do you lean more on God's understanding? What I have found, not always true, is that understanding from God oftentimes comes a little bit slower down the pipeline than my understanding. My understanding shows up right away. Flash understanding. It gets there quick. When God says, you want to take time and acknowledge me in these important decisions, and I'm not talking about navel gazing on, you know, should I get the Skippy peanut butter or go non-sugar with the Laura Scudders? I'm not saying that. I'm saying that when we are looking at what God is called, and important decisions, do we slow down enough to wait on his understanding and this divine understanding? Now, Philippians uses this word noose, and Philippians 4, 6, and 7. And look what it says.

It really says when you're, when you have an understanding coming from God, once again, we're living in the metaphysical. In Philippians 4, 6, and 7, it says this. It says, do not be anxious about everything, but in every situation, and that's in all your ways acknowledge him, in every situation, by prayer and petition, that's trust, and thanksgiving, present your requests to God, to God, and the peace of God, which what? Transcends understanding, will guard your heart and minds in Christ Jesus. I mean, imagine your heart. How often is it troubled, right? Do not let your hearts be troubled, Jesus says all the time. Imagine if there was a guard at your heart, and that guard was the peace of Jesus. And it was there with a sword, like the sword was in the angel's hand that guarded Eden after we had to be, we were kicked out of the garden. But God was guarding your heart. The peace of Jesus was guarding your heart, not by giving you understanding, where you got it figured out. But he was giving you a peace that was beyond your understanding. So you don't have it figured out. The check hasn't come in. The person hasn't sealed the deal. The relationship hasn't been sorted. Things have not been fixed, according to your understanding. Because, right, we all get peaceful when we get in our own understanding. You need some money, and a check comes in out of nowhere, and all of a sudden, you understand that you can pay the bill, and now you have peace, right? Now you can sleep and go enjoy yourself and watch your Netflix in peace. But what this says is it doesn't have to be sorted.

And the peace of God that transcends understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Pow! I mean, that is so powerful. And it's saying, God, I don't need to understand this. How do we actually practically live that out? We actually say to God, I don't need to understand this. Because I trust in you in all of my heart, because I have filled my heart with the word of God through memorization. I have filled it, and I trust in that, and I don't need to understand this.

This doesn't mean that we're not proactive, because that verse in Philippians shows you're being proactive. You're petitioning, you're praying, you're submitting things to God, you're doing all this stuff. But then that you're letting him have a spiritual download into your life when you do those things that you don't have to understand. I think one of the most powerful principles of Christian maturity is getting to a place where you don't have to understand, and you can still walk in peace and walk in truth. You see, God wants you to understand what his laws and what his ways are. And we can, he wants you to know that, but he doesn't always need you to understand what's happening behind the scenes. So the first is trust. The second is understanding. And then finally, we get to something that kind of just blew me away. And I can't believe I've never seen it before. Verse six, in all of your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Now, this word acknowledge, it's actually yada in the Hebrew. Whenever I've seen the word acknowledge, I've never realized that knowledge was part of that word. I mean, I've just looked at it, and I've seen it as a separate word, but not act, and then the word knowledge. I've seen it as a word of identification. I just, I knew it was there, but I just never recognized that knowledge was a part of acknowledge. Acknowledge just as identification.

Oh, that's LeBron James. I just acknowledged it. You know, this is, it's, it was windy out this morning. I'm going to acknowledge that. It was just a word of identification to me. What I didn't understand is behind the scenes of the word acknowledge, the etymology, etymology of acknowledge is the word knowledge, which means you are testifying to something that you have knowledge of. You are testifying to something that you know is true. Now, I love words, and so I went to go look this word up, this yada word, and I want to find out, well, where did that come from? Where did the word knowledge come from?

It actually had something I'd never seen before. The answer to that question was primitive root. I was like, primitive root? It usually says, rooted in the word, and it explains, and it says, in a baking concept, and they were baking things, and you get all into the words. This one was like primitive root. What does that mean? It means this is the beginning. This is one of the earliest words ever known. How do we know that? Because Satan uses that word yada when he's speaking to Adam and Eve about the knowledge of God. You will know like God. Matter of fact, one of the first conversations ever used this word. It has no root because it was one of the first conversations ever had. It was just there in the beginning, and so he says, in all your ways do what? Acknowledge. Testify to what you know.

Testify to the knowledge that you have of who God is, where God is, what God does. It is constantly acknowledging God. It is testifying to the knowledge that you have, and that knowledge comes in many ways. Some knowledge is divinely given. The Bible talks about that. Once again, there's human knowledge, and then in the Old, in the New Testament, if you look up this word knowledge, I think it was used 21 times in the New Testament, this understanding of acknowledge or a word like that, it's usually speaking to something that God shares with you, and so when you're speaking, it is God giving you knowledge of a situation. There's lots of knowledge that we can get, but he will give you understanding, he will give you knowledge to actually, he wants to make known to us what he is doing. He's not trying to keep secrets from us, but you see that there. I put, to acknowledge God means to make him known at the beginning, in the middle, and in the end of everything that you do. How does that practically work out? It means when you're starting on a project in the beginning, you say, God, I'm frail. I'm a human. I don't know what I'm doing, but you do. I acknowledge you. I give my knowledge of you at the beginning of this situation.

You're halfway through that business deal, or that relational conversation, or whatever it is, and in the middle of it, you say, God, I can go on my own way right now, but I'm going to trust you. I'm going to follow the words that you have put in my heart, because I've memorized them in my heart. I'm going to trust in you. I'm not going to lean on my own understanding. I'm going to acknowledge that you are God.

You see, the acknowledgement is a bow around the trusting and the understanding. You see, we trust in him. We don't lean on our own understanding, and then we just keep acknowledging him, because acknowledgement means we're acknowledging that we trust him. We are acknowledging that we don't understand, and over and over again, we just put a bow on our life of saying to God that you are good, and testifying to the knowledge that we know who he is, and who we are not, or who we are as children of God, but it is constantly testifying. This week, as I had the privilege as a career to get to spend time in God's word, I mean, it's such a privilege, I began to say, I'm going to start doing this.

I'm going to just acknowledge you. I had some conversation. It was a little bit tough, and in the middle of the conversation, just under my breath, I'm like, God, I just acknowledge you in this conversation. I don't know what I'm doing. You're such a good God. As I'm driving all day long, and I found it just became repetitive at the beginning of the day, in the middle of the day, at the end of the day, over and over again, acknowledging who he is, because you know what?

I want that promise. What's the promise at the end of that? And he will do what? Make your paths straight. I mean, just this sermon alone, you've got Jesus guarding your heart with peace. That's pretty good, right? That's like a 10 out of 10. You got him path-making for you if we acknowledge who he is. So here's three practical takeaways before we take communion today. Here's the one on trust.

I want to be a Thursday preacher, a Wednesday preacher, so you're thinking about what I said on Wednesday, and the Word of God is just, you know, emulsifying your life during the entire week. You just don't leave and have a dinner conversation. You forget about it. And so the first thing is with these three elements, trust. I want to say, take a moment to surrender before you fix. Take a moment to surrender before you fix. I started working on this myself, because once again, I'm trying to live through my sermons, and I realized how much I immediately go to the fix.

I mean, they say that's a man thing, okay? I immediately go to the fix. I'm like, oh, you got a problem? I'm going to fix that so I can get back on with my life. You know what I'm saying? And I realized God's like, hey, I don't need you to fix this, bro. I got this one. Sometimes God wants you to be part of the fix, right? And so that's understanding. That's learning and following the Spirit, okay? But surrender. I want to practice surrender. One of the ways you, the best ways to build trust, besides memorizing Scripture of who he is, is to surrender before you fix. Second one has to do with understanding. It says, lean not on your own understanding.

Ask yourself a question when you come to difficult parts of your life. Is the decision I'm making right now based on something I'm understanding, or do I feel that there's a divine voice speaking to me beyond it? Either confirming what I understand, because all your understanding is not wrong. God gave us the ability to understand things. But asking yourself the question, the decision I'm going to make right now, because like I told you, my understanding is lightning quick. It is greased lightning. It shows up quick, immediately. To ask, to just stop, to slow down after the surrender, and then ask yourself, where is this understanding? Is this God's understanding?

Do I feel that I sense that still small voice? There's a verse in Romans that says, for those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God? You feel like you're being led. Man, that's so hard, right? Who wants to be led? You ever seen, like, you know, I remember that movie, The Horse Whisperer. The guy would like lead the horse. It's such a slow process, you know what I mean?

I just want to charge ahead. With our understanding, are you being led? And then the final one is acknowledge. Acknowledge. Constantly testify. Testify to what you know. In Revelations, it says that the enemy, Satan himself, was overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. Satan is overcome by a bunch of things. One is resisting the devil, and he will flee for you, standing firm in your faith. But another one is acknowledging. Just begin to speak God's goodness.

Don't become an annoyance, because there are those annoying people that just want to constantly just hit you with the Scripture. But just to yourself, speak, God, you're good. I trust you here. Acknowledge who God is, because God has a path for you, and he wants to make that path straight. Because like I said at the beginning, no one has ever been lost on a straight path.

We're going to do our communion now. Stand, if you would, for the communion. I want to ask our communion team to come forward. Lord, we've moved to a liturgy. If you come from a smells and bells church with kind of things are the same. I grew up in that myself. We've tried to really work on creating a liturgy, and a liturgy just means the steps you take to experience the things of God. And in the breaking of the bread, we want to do that together. We're going to invite everyone here in a moment to come forward to take the bread and to take the grape juice together. And let me begin to pray. And then after I pray, we're going to invite you to come forward. We'll hold on to the elements until we take them all together, okay? So after you come forward to get those, we'll bless you, and then you'll hold those together. And then as a community, and that's how we want to live as a community, we want to take those together. Lord Jesus, I want to pray, God, that you would bless your people, that you would bless this communion, God, as we hold it, the body of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. God, we invite you to make this meaningful and special. In Jesus' name, amen. One more thing.

If you are not, if you have not made a decision to follow Jesus, as Jesus Christ is not your Lord, I want to encourage you to just wait and not take communion, because it is something that the Bible says is for believers. And so if you have not done that, I would ask that you just chill. No one's going to think anything wrong of you. Or even if your heart right now, if you said in your heart right now, Jesus, I want to follow you, come take communion. He knows what you're doing. Then we want to get you baptized. Speak to us after that. Please come forward.

I can go. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. I can. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. He took the cup. He said, this is the covenant sealed in my blood for you, shed as a remission for your sins. Whenever you drink of this, do it in remembrance of me. That our sins have been forgiven. Let's take it together.

Thy will be done. On earth as it is in the Lord, amen. Give us this day, amen. And forgive us, amen. And forgive us, amen. As we forgive those who trespass against us, amen. And lead us, amen. Take us not into temptation, but deliver us, amen. But deliver us from evil, amen. For thine is the kingdom, amen. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever, amen.

Would you extend your hands? Let me bless you, if you would. It's a privilege to bless you. Lord Jesus, I want to bless your people now with this passage. To lean not on your own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. And in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. And for those that don't have a straight path, God, show them the ability to make a way for you like John did in the desert.

God, so that you can make a way for them. And we bless you with a straight path this year. If you feel lost, that you will be found. God, Lord God, bless your people, God, with wisdom, understanding, divine understanding beyond what they know, Lord God. We bless you with health and with relationships. We pray again that the prodigals would come home.

For those that need housing, that they would have housing, Lord God. And that as a church, we learn how to shrink our comfort zones, God, to give away your love and your prosperity, God. Bless their homes. Bless their hearts. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. We love you. See you next week.