Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Karma Chaj podcast.
[00:00:05] I believe that we're meant to position ourselves to receive wisdom this afternoon.
[00:00:10] And I don't mean a generic wisdom.
[00:00:14] I think often, you know, we'll have somebody all pray, you know, that you may receive, you know, wisdom and knowledge and revelation, and it's beautiful. But I think we tend to kind of make it generic, this broad brush.
[00:00:27] And I believe the Lord wants to release the gift of wisdom.
[00:00:34] Three of you agree with me?
[00:00:37] How many of you need wisdom?
[00:00:41] Yeah, me too.
[00:00:43] So, Father, I ask right now that outside of my ability, we position ourselves to receive from you the gift of wisdom.
[00:00:56] It's a gift.
[00:00:58] It's in your book.
[00:01:01] It's a gift, and we need it.
[00:01:06] We need it for our individual lives, for our corporate lives.
[00:01:11] The nations of this world need it.
[00:01:16] Our trigger finger on our social media needs it.
[00:01:20] We need it. We need wisdom.
[00:01:23] And so I ask that you would position each of our hearts, whether we're leaders in business, in church, in government, in any sphere of society, ask that you'd give us the gift of wisdom that we may position ourselves for what you are doing at such a time as this, in Jesus name, as when I.
[00:01:57] I think. I'm not quite sure how our conversation, Steve's and my conversations go about this event. They kind of like, they're.
[00:02:05] They're sort of this growing sort of awareness of what we're doing is happening. And then we get here and we sort of watch it happen kind of a thing, you know, so we have conversations, the four of us, or Steve and I'll have conversations. But when I knew it was the word, it coincided with what I had, the sense that we've asked for kingdom. How many of you have prayed for kingdom?
[00:02:32] All of you, because you prayed the Lord's prayer.
[00:02:35] Thy kingdom come.
[00:02:38] And I felt like the Lord started just to say to me, you've begun to see the answer to the prayer for kingdom.
[00:02:46] But if you don't ask for wisdom, the kingdom that you've received will not come into maturity.
[00:02:54] And then I just started to kind of create this series of thoughts in my head that comes out of Proverbs 9. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I think that's one of those verses that we can kind of like throw out.
[00:03:11] Fear of Lord's beginning of wisdom. But actually, you know, the fear of the Lord's beginning of the wisdom.
[00:03:16] The word of the Lord.
[00:03:18] The fear of the Lord begins with the word of the Lord.
[00:03:22] Yeah.
[00:03:24] And the word of the Lord leads to Faith in the Lord and faith in the Lord leads to living the way of the Lord.
[00:03:33] And so I could see that the word of the Lord is right in the heart of the subject of wisdom.
[00:03:43] And I know about you.
[00:03:45] I hope you do. I hope you love this book.
[00:03:49] I just. Love never ceases to amaze me.
[00:03:54] You know, I'll get an idea of something that I feel like the Lord wants me to talk about and. And then I start looking at it and I realize that the whole book's littered with the subject that I'm randomly looking at, like wisdom. And then Juliet stands up and talks about the tabernacle and the guy that helped build the tabernacle is Bezalel. And what did he have?
[00:04:19] Wisdom.
[00:04:22] This is one of those messages where those are my notes. All right, I'm weird. I can't help it. I just start scribbling ideas.
[00:04:30] The challenges in our world today. I want to suggest to you that every challenge in our world today can find its answer in seven different words that are translated. Wisdom in Proverbs.
[00:04:44] Every problem in our world, every challenge, every difficulty can find its solution if we can learn to access the wisdom that we find in proverbs. And even this, which Proverbs is written by who?
[00:05:07] Solomon. How well did Solomon end?
[00:05:11] Not well.
[00:05:12] We live in a world that rejects people and rejects their teaching if they end well, badly.
[00:05:20] So even in Proverbs is a lesson for us to learn to receive from men and women who are flawed.
[00:05:30] Which is good because you're going to receive from me this afternoon.
[00:05:34] I'm hopefully not quite as flawed as him. I just have the one wife and we both speak the same language, so.
[00:05:43] But every problem in our world, you know, the challenges of our world, I mean, the challenge today of truth.
[00:05:52] It's scary, isn't it?
[00:05:56] Generation that are growing up who have completely been indoctrinated by the world of social media and, you know, now maybe too late, we're trying to work out, should we ban an under 16 year old having social media.
[00:06:12] I think the problem is that we've eroded the standards so much in society that actually that's no longer the issue.
[00:06:19] The issue is that we haven't actually created a foundation on which our young people can pick up the social media and know how to respond. Probably because they lack wisdom.
[00:06:32] So whilst it may be a piece of a solution, I don't know, I'm not convinced. You know, we've got challenges about really, I think in the church about how we love each other.
[00:06:48] The division in the church the brokenness in.
[00:06:52] You know, it's crazy to me. You know, we air our dirty washing so publicly in the church, and yet other religions don't do that.
[00:07:02] I heard a message last year by a guy called Jedediah Thurna that stunned me, probably partly because I. I kind of knew what he was saying, but I'd never articulate. And he basically said, the united Church, the United bride is. Is one of the greatest evangelistic statements the world will ever see. I in them and now in me, that the world may know how much I love them.
[00:07:24] We need to unite, and there's a wisdom for that.
[00:07:27] You know, the challenges in our world, really, of accountability.
[00:07:34] We live in a world with so many challenges.
[00:07:38] Yeah. I want to suggest to you, and I could write down long lists of them. You know, some of the global individual challenges, social isolation. We got people who are lonely, they're socially isolated, they don't have friends, they're being fed the lies of social media. They don't have relationships to bounce those things off of each other.
[00:08:00] They're isolated, they don't have relationships. They end up with mental health problems, and they are unclear what their purpose is in life.
[00:08:11] Those are pictures of people that we know, aren't they?
[00:08:18] But there's so much going on.
[00:08:20] Let me give you a couple of more negatives just before I go any further.
[00:08:25] You know, other aspects of our culture, the polarization of our world.
[00:08:30] I'm sick and tired of people putting me in boxes.
[00:08:35] We get put in boxes, we get given labels, which somehow justifies the demonization of people by putting them in a box. And we forget that the person that we're putting in that box is made in the image of God.
[00:08:49] We end up saying, oh, they're this, they're that.
[00:08:52] Everything's polarized. Putting in boxes. I was trying to find the lyrics of that old song, you know, little boxes, Little boxes. You know, some of us are old enough to remember that stupid song. And they're all made of tiki Tacky and they all look just the same. It's almost like that was a prophetic word and we ended up being put in these little boxes.
[00:09:09] And if you utter one word of one politician, you're put in that box and you're tarred with the entire, you know, sort of set of paintbrushes related to that one person.
[00:09:23] I wrote a poem. I won't read it out, but I wrote a poem a little while ago called Nuance that the robbery of nuance, we have been robbed of it.
[00:09:34] And so you Know, especially in social media, there's no space for nuance.
[00:09:39] And that's why we need face to face relationships where there's nuance, where we don't part after having coffee with somebody we disagree with and say, I'm unfollowing you now and I'm going to let the whole world know that I'm unfollowing you because of this reason. No. We sit across tables, we look each other in the eye, we're able to embrace nuance.
[00:09:58] Of course there's division in the church. We could divide in here. I'm sure we've got different ways of expressing our love, our faith, the sacraments, what we believe.
[00:10:08] It's tragic to me that Ephesians, chapter four, the chapter of the Bible that's written for unity, ends up being one of the chapters of the Bible that creates the most division.
[00:10:19] It's a chapter that says one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father, have a Lord Jesus Christ united. It ends with until we all fit together. One body, one body.
[00:10:31] And yet we divide over one. Verse 4, 11 over the fivefold. And what we may or may not think it means polarization in our world, populism that's in our world.
[00:10:42] Just the approach to everything that, you know, suddenly we run this way because that's the popular thing to do, or we run that way.
[00:10:50] The politicization of everything, the atomization of individuals, the effects that we're allowing ourselves to have from influences, whole bunch of global issues. But there's good news.
[00:11:05] We live in the days of the greatest opportunity.
[00:11:11] Three of you.
[00:11:12] We live in the days of the greatest opportunity.
[00:11:17] There are 8 billion people on this planet.
[00:11:20] We, we have gone from 1 billion in 1890.
[00:11:25] Then in 135 years we've added 7 billion people to the world's population.
[00:11:33] That's a fact. When there were 3,300,000,000 lived in cities. There are now 8,000,000,000 and half of them live in cities.
[00:11:44] We live in the days of the greatest opportunity. It is an opportunity revival just because of sheer numbers of people.
[00:11:53] We live in the days of the greatest opportunity.
[00:11:56] Because of that, we also live in the greatest season of change this world has ever known. And we can either have our heads down and go, oh, it's change, change, change, or we can look and go, there's an appetite for change, there's a hunger for change.
[00:12:14] I've taught that in greater length. I won't worry about it now.
[00:12:17] We also live in the days of the greatest access to creativity the world has ever known.
[00:12:23] It's an invitation.
[00:12:25] It's an invitation for men and women of God to ask the Creator to release creativity in us so that we would point mankind to the Creator.
[00:12:36] It's an opportunity. Opportunity, change, creativity are about revival, Reformation and Renaissance.
[00:12:45] I teach about it. It's not the main reason for my teaching, but the reason I'm bringing it is because they all need our wisdom, the wisdom of heaven. And we also live in the days. And you know, this geopolitical changes are scary, aren't they?
[00:13:02] But it's an opportunity for the reestablishment of government built on Judeo Christian principles.
[00:13:11] The opportunity is opening up.
[00:13:16] There's an emerging hunger in our world.
[00:13:18] I don't like everything I see, but there is an emerging hunger for righteousness.
[00:13:24] I don't like everything I see because sometimes it's cloaked in populism, sometimes it's cloaked in polarization, sometimes it's cloaked in too much politics. But there is a hunger for righteousness.
[00:13:38] And Jesus said, blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
[00:13:42] There is a hunger for righteousness.
[00:13:47] There is a hunger for truth.
[00:13:49] I loved it in this house. And Juliet did it when she read the word stand up. Now, there was a generation where that was religion.
[00:13:58] But this generation, there's a hunger and a respect and a reverence for the word of God. I was in a meeting a little while ago and I was trying to give an illustration about how on your computer you justify the text.
[00:14:13] You know, you do that, don't you?
[00:14:16] You line it up with the edge of the page.
[00:14:18] And I wanted to give the illustration. I was in a room, and they were all under 24 years of age.
[00:14:24] And I'm going, who's using a computer to take notes in here? Not one of them was.
[00:14:28] They had pens and paper, and nobody had told them they had real Bibles.
[00:14:36] I said to Sue a little way. We don't actually personally lead a life group, but if I was involved in informally leading life groups in a church, I would say no digital Bibles.
[00:14:48] Do you know why? Because psychologically, if you're looking at your phone, I think you're doing your texts.
[00:14:54] I don't think you're reading your Bible.
[00:14:56] It's distracting.
[00:14:58] There's a hunger for truth. There's a hunger for the word of God. There's a hunger for purpose and influence in our world.
[00:15:05] There's a generation that want to know why they're alive, and there's a hunger for influence. Now, it doesn't always look great, but There is a hunger for influence and there's an opportunity to influence. There's good stuff going on is my point.
[00:15:20] There's a hunger for rest and rhythm.
[00:15:23] Have you noticed that?
[00:15:25] There is a hunger for that. And there is a generation that are paying much more attention to themselves than my generation ever did. I sometimes get frustrated with them, to myself, oh, I don't have time to do that. It's like, yeah, but you seem to have time to go to the gym every day. And in my head I'm thinking, that's really good. I'm probably just jealous that I didn't have that when I was younger.
[00:15:45] Anyone else concur with that?
[00:15:47] Like, my son uses my car all the time. I don't think he ever has time to clean it. But he does manage. I mean, he's super busy young man. He really is incredibly busy young man. But it's just a different mindset and I love that hunger.
[00:16:02] There's a hunger, of course, for identity and it's messed up because there are false versions of all of these.
[00:16:08] But the fact that there's a hunger for it is another place of an opportunity for us to step in and that's where we're going to come in and look a little bit at wisdom.
[00:16:17] There's a hunger really to sort out our relationships and there's a hunger for emotional, mental, relational well being.
[00:16:28] There are false versions of all of these. Why am I bringing them up though? Because this is our opportunity. We have all the answers.
[00:16:37] We do.
[00:16:39] We have everything that this world needs. The principles laid down in the Word of God about rest and rhythm are what the world needs. There's a hunger for them and if they go to the Word of God, they'll find the answers to to the things that they are pursuing.
[00:16:59] And there's good news.
[00:17:02] I know we joke about it. The Quiet Revival. My understanding is the reason why the Quiet Revival is called. The Quiet Revival is because it's not about a person and nobody said it was going to happen.
[00:17:13] It's not that quiet.
[00:17:15] It's exciting though, to walk into a church with six 718 to 30 year olds on a Sunday night at 5 o' clock and it's happening all over the place.
[00:17:28] It's exciting.
[00:17:32] There's an increase of popular famous people finding Jesus.
[00:17:39] I'm not a great fan of Arsenal football club, I make no secret of that. I'm Man United supporter, which I'm not necessarily that proud of at the moment. But hey, you know, it's good for your faith and Your prayer life.
[00:17:53] Arsenal are full of Christians.
[00:17:58] Pat Rice, the other day, there was a picture, he left a 900 pound tip and a verse for a waitress. I'm like, kind of nearly got me supporting Arsenal. Not kind of, but he's going to play for England, so that's good news. You know the England women's team that won the euros in the summer and one of their players, what did they do for her? They shipped her piano to the training ground so that she could worship for an hour and a half before she went out and played the game.
[00:18:33] There are popular figures. Stephen Bartlett's best friend. Stephen Bartlett, one of the most popular podcasters in the world. His best friend has found Christ. And there are people saying he has a jealousy about this because his best friend has found a peace and a contentment that he hasn't found.
[00:18:50] There are significant people in our world who are finding Christ. We should be encouraged.
[00:18:59] And that's why I started thinking, we need wisdom.
[00:19:04] We really do need wisdom. You know, some of these young, you know, young Christians, they find Christ, the last thing that we need to do is put them on a stage with a microphone. We need to take care of them.
[00:19:18] That's wisdom. It's wisdom. I remember when I was working at Feltham, when I very first was prison officer went to Feltham and there was a young man and he got saved in Feltham. And within 24 hours I was in a meeting in the Royal Albert hall and he was on the stage sharing. And I'm like, don't do that.
[00:19:39] I knew that way back then. But we need wisdom.
[00:19:44] We are going to be called to steward and disciple, men and women who are multimillionaires, billionaires who have influenced the whole world over. And we need wisdom.
[00:19:58] And that's why I want us just to start to look at wisdom. You know, the Bible is so full of it. And of course you go to Solomon. It's fascinating. I think we jump over this 2 Chronicles 1. I probably won't do the standing up because I'm going to jump around a bunch of verses, but that's not because I don't honor the house, it's just that I'm going to jump all over the place. And you get a workout, I suppose, which would be good, good for you. But you know, 2 Chronicles 1, 7, 13.
[00:20:32] In that night God appeared to Solomon, said to him, ask what I shall give you.
[00:20:38] We know this really well. Solomon said to God, you have dealt with my father David with great loving kindness, have made me king in his Place. Now, O Lord God, your promise to my father David is fulfilled. For you have made me king over a people as numerous as. As the dust of the earth. Give me now wisdom and knowledge that I may go out and come in before this people. For who can rule this great people of yours? God said to Solomon, because you had this in mind and did not ask for riches, wealth or honor or the life of those who hate you, nor have you even asked for long life. But you have asked for yourself wisdom and knowledge that you may rule my people over whom I have made you king. Wisdom and knowledge have been granted to you. And I will give you riches and wealth and honor such as none of the kings who were before you has possessed, nor those who will come after you.
[00:21:35] He asked for wisdom to rule the people.
[00:21:41] And one of the things that jumps out to me there is that they were always God's people.
[00:21:48] They were always God's people.
[00:21:51] My wife and I have been around one or two scenarios where people have talked about my church and my people.
[00:21:57] Now I understand you can slip into it, but it must never become a mindset.
[00:22:04] And that's why we need to ask for wisdom to govern God's people.
[00:22:08] If we keep those two things in place, we are asking for his wisdom to look after his people.
[00:22:15] That's what we need.
[00:22:18] Solomon had the opportunity in a dream, and God granted it to him. Go to.
[00:22:25] Where should we go?
[00:22:27] I have a bunch of verses. Go to Colossians 1.
[00:22:33] Check. I've got my verses right somewhere. I wrote them somewhere. They're on the back of a piece of paper. Colossians 1:19.
[00:22:46] Have I got that right?
[00:22:48] Why does it feel like I'm reading the wrong verse?
[00:22:52] Did I write down my wrong verses? Go to Ephesians 1:17. That'll work.
[00:23:02] Well, let's start at 15. For this reason, I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus who exists among you, and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you while making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Where did Paul get that from?
[00:23:25] Paul got that I believe.
[00:23:27] And he writes it, of course, to the Corinthians, Paul got it. I believe on the road to Damascus he had an encounter with wisdom. And wisdom is a person, and wisdom takes territory.
[00:23:41] We see that because in Proverbs 9, Wisdom shouts in the streets. She shouts in the streets. Wisdom is a person, and wisdom takes territory now, here's the thing. If you look at the makeup of the word wisdom, it's the makeup the same as the word kingdom. Kingdom is the dominion, the domain of the king. And wisdom is the dominion, the domain of the wise.
[00:24:05] Wisdom takes territory, but it never becomes my territory. It's always his territory. It's always for him. We're looking to take territory for him. Paul would write in 1 Corinthians 2, When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature. But a wisdom, however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory. The wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. One of the greatest ironies in the Bible, that verse. I think if we'd had the wisdom, we wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory. And if we hadn't crucified the Lord of glory, the foolish wisdom of heaven would not have come to earth.
[00:25:36] It's the most ironic sequence.
[00:25:40] So we need wisdom. We need to ask for wisdom.
[00:25:45] And wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, and fear of the Lord begins with the word of the Lord. And the word of the Lord will lead us to faith in the Lord and faith in the world will lead us to walk in the ways of the Lord.
[00:25:58] That's the sequence.
[00:26:00] We need wisdom.
[00:26:02] The fear of the Lord.
[00:26:05] How does that kick in?
[00:26:09] See, if I say I'm afraid of my wife, my fear is that I will break any place of covenant of walking closely with her.
[00:26:23] I'm not afraid. She's going to hurt me.
[00:26:26] And that's the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is what I want to be to my wife is, I want to walk so well with you that nothing I do will ever damage the precious covenant that I have with her.
[00:26:39] That's my fear. I'm not. She's not going to hit me or beat me up or anything like that. But I never want to hurt her. I don't want to damage that relationship that we have. That's the fear of the Lord.
[00:26:54] The fear of the Lord is like, you know, I don't know. Steve ends up with a brand new beautiful car and he throws me the keys.
[00:27:03] I'm not going to drive as recklessly as possible. I'm going to drive as safely as possible.
[00:27:08] I'm not going to drive near the edge of the cliff. I'm going to drive near the center of the road.
[00:27:14] I'm going to take care of what he's lent to me.
[00:27:18] It's that kind of fear. It's not that if I crash it, he'll hit me, because he probably wouldn't, because he wouldn't think I'd be a reckless driver. But I want to make sure that I protect my covenant relationship with my brother.
[00:27:29] It's that kind of fear that we're looking for. You know, we misunderstand, I think the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are not the way that we normally see them. I believe the Ten Commandments are to keep us out of lack.
[00:27:47] They're actually to keep us in abundance.
[00:27:52] They are guidelines for how to live in this human body on earth in abundance and that breaking them. God gives us those commandments because he wants us to walk close with Him. He's for us. He's jealous for us.
[00:28:12] See, the ten commands begin with I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I'm jealous for you.
[00:28:19] I'm not jealous of you.
[00:28:22] So if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, if you can follow this wisdom, therefore is so that we learn how to protect our covenant relationships with God, with our fellow brothers and sisters, to steward the assignment that we've been given to bring heaven to earth and to steward the assignment of expanding the influence of the King.
[00:28:54] That's what it's for.
[00:28:56] So the fear of the Lord is not that we are afraid, afraid of him in the way that we would be afraid of being attacked walking down the street, or that somebody can harm us. It is a reverential fear that we want to do everything in our power and in our capacity not to damage the covenant we have with him, the covenant we have with our fellow man, the assignment that we have to bring heaven to earth, and the assignment to expand the influence of the King. Does that make sense?
[00:29:24] You see, if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Now we have some clues. Now we have the clues of where Do I apply my wisdom?
[00:29:34] Where do I apply that? I apply it to bringing heaven to earth. I apply it to my relationship with God. I apply it with my relationships with my brothers and sisters in Christ. And I apply it to my assignment to expand the influence of the King. It's what we need wisdom for.
[00:29:55] So I'm not going to go through this in for a couple of reasons. One, I don't understand the language because I'm not a scholar. So when I look up words, I look them up on an iPad and I pretend that I know something. But I just noticed that there are seven words for wisdom in Proverbs.
[00:30:18] I've tried actually quite hard to work out whether that, you know, when wisdom, it says wisdom's built her house in Proverbs 9, she's hewn out her seven pillars. And I'm like, what's the seven pillars? Although the seven words I don't think it is. But anyway, so I just started going through it and having a look through Proverbs and maybe what I'll do is I'll stimulate you on a journey.
[00:30:39] But in Proverbs 1:2, you know, Solomon says to know wisdom. Now that wisdom there is something like shockma or Hokma or however you pronounce it. All right. I've never been able to get that guttural thing. It's like I'd be hopeless living in Holland or somewhere like that. I just couldn't ever get their language. But it's the art of alignment.
[00:31:06] That's what it. It's a wisdom that is the art of alignment between heaven and earth.
[00:31:12] Now that's a wisdom that we all need. It's really what Juliet was talking about. It's the alignment of bringing heaven to earth. Now, it's actually the word that is used to describe Bezalel, who was pointed out as being the one who had the spirit of wisdom on him.
[00:31:35] And that spirit of wisdom was skillful in crafts and in working stuff in silver and cloth. And all of that is stunning, incidentally, just as an aside. Is there a bottle of water?
[00:31:54] Yeah. Nobody's used that. Sorry.
[00:31:57] Here's what's stunning about what? The verses, some of my favorite illustrations in Exodus. Did you notice the four colors of the material?
[00:32:10] Did you notice that it's white, purple, blue and red?
[00:32:15] You know that you see that? This is why I love the Bible.
[00:32:19] This is a rabbit trail. I think it's okay.
[00:32:22] The four colors represent the four Gospels.
[00:32:27] They do.
[00:32:30] And the four Gospels represent. Are connected to the four faces in Ezekiel.
[00:32:38] It's interesting. How many of you have been to Garda Familiar in Barcelona?
[00:32:43] Not many of you. It's a great place to go.
[00:32:47] It's stunningly beautiful. He and I have just one slight difference over which face we'll put with which gospel. But, you know, you've got. And then you've got the genealogies. How many of you know this? How many?
[00:33:00] Does anyone know this?
[00:33:02] Okay. All right. The genealogies. Yeah, the genealogies are different in the four Gospels. You know that, don't you?
[00:33:10] And so you've got the genealogy of Matthew, which goes back to the son of David, because it's the Gospel of the king, and it's the face of the lion, the king, and the color is purple.
[00:33:26] True story.
[00:33:28] Mark.
[00:33:29] Mark. What have you got with Mark?
[00:33:32] There's no genealogy. No, because it's the Gospel of the suffering servant. It's the ox. It's the face of the ox, and the color is red of the suffering servant. Luke, you've got the Gospel of the Son of man, and the genealogy goes back to Adam, and it's the genealogy of the pure Son of man. And the color is white. And John, the genealogy goes back to in the beginning, and the color is blue, and it's the face of the eagle. I love that stuff.
[00:34:02] And if you don't, I'm sorry, but I love it.
[00:34:06] To me, it's just so beautiful. Well, you've got Bezalel, who's got wisdom.
[00:34:11] Yeah.
[00:34:12] And he's designing that. And he takes the blueprint from heaven. And little would he have known that he was weaving four colors of cloth. The white, the blue, the. The purple, the red. And that those colors were actually a prophetic sign of the one Jesus who would come, who will be the king of kings, who will be the suffering servant, who will be the pure, spotless man of God, who will be the Son of God, that the genius that Bezalel had enabled him to build the tabernacle, that had such incredible imagery. And if you lay out the imagery of the tabernacle, you see the symbols of the cross, and you see every detail of Jesus. And it was built by a man who had the spirit of wisdom. That's what we need to pray for. We need that kind of wisdom. And so the first wisdom in Proverbs is however you pronounce it, and it's to do with heaven on earth. The second wisdom is in Proverbs 2. 2. Is everyone doing all right?
[00:35:07] I'm fine up here. I'm having a good time. I was just.
[00:35:10] I love, you know, the. The Garda Familia, just to finish that off. There are 18 spires.
[00:35:17] There are 12 for the apostles, there are four for the Gospels. There is one for Mary and there is one for Jesus. And Jesus will be the highest spire that Gaudi built, and it will be 2 meters less than the highest natural mountain in Barcelona, because Gaudi said no work of man must eclipse the work of God.
[00:35:42] It's stunningly beautiful. The symbolism is utterly incredible. I don't know what his theology was, but I love what he ended up having built.
[00:35:52] 2, 2.
[00:35:54] Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding, says Solomon. This is the wisdom of discernment.
[00:36:03] Do we not need this?
[00:36:06] We are going to need this, especially with AI.
[00:36:10] We already need it anyway. How do we know what's true?
[00:36:14] I think one of the greatest needs in our world is truly the gift of discernment.
[00:36:21] We need to be asking for it. And it comes in this context in the form of wisdom.
[00:36:28] It's insight. It's defined as its perception.
[00:36:31] The. The Hebrew word is binar b I n a H or tevunah. Again, I'm no scholar, so you can run with that.
[00:36:42] So, number two. So we've got heaven on earth alignment, we've got discernment.
[00:36:47] We need this. Remember I said that? These seven words are the answers to every challenge we face in our world.
[00:36:54] We need the heaven on earth wisdom. How does heaven work?
[00:37:00] Peter said. He said this. He said, we have become partakers of the divine nature.
[00:37:09] You see, we need to understand heaven on earth isn't just there's no cancer there. There should be none here. It's, how does heaven operate? How does the culture of honor, love, loyalty operate?
[00:37:19] How do they do things in heaven? We need that. And then we need discernment. We need the ability to perceive what's going on, what's in somebody's heart.
[00:37:30] We need that. We need that perception. Some of you ladies have this at a level that is beyond us male understanding. And I'm not being funny, I think we, you know, we don't train people in this.
[00:37:46] You know, there is. I don't understand it exactly, but it feels to me as though there is an instinctive element of the way God has made women that has a particular inability to discern and perceive.
[00:38:00] And we need to think about this. Is there something we should be doing? One of my passions, one of the things we're doing with strengthen that sue and I lead, you know, is working with couples in leadership. And I have a really strong belief that one of the strongest forms of leadership in the church is a husband and wife who lead together. And it's because we have complementary gifts and we need to work with those. So my wife's always perceiving things and saying you should see it this way. And it's like, yeah, you're probably right.
[00:38:35] Number three knowledge.
[00:38:38] Proverbs 1:7 I told you I was just skipping this because this is probably a complete years Bible study. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. This knowledge is the dayath D a t H It's actually root. It's got a connection to yada, which is the yada knowledge, which is the knowledge we often talk about, which is relational knowledge, which is what Paul was saying. He said, I want to know nothing but know Jesus Christ and him know me.
[00:39:18] So we have a wisdom that is to do with relationships, with experiencing relationships. And we need relational wisdom.
[00:39:29] We desperately need this.
[00:39:31] We see so much damage being done in relationships. We, we literally live in a world where we're having presented to us an almost legitimizing broken relationships like we popularized broken relationships. I think one of the most tragic at the moment is the Beckham family.
[00:39:55] It just grieves me to look at that family who you would think have access to everything and somehow where we're inundated. We need wisdom for relationships. And there is a wisdom. Number four.
[00:40:11] It's Proverbs 8:12.
[00:40:16] All of this is really, I'm not trying to teach this in depth.
[00:40:20] I'm just trying to get you hungry to ask for wisdom. Is that okay?
[00:40:23] Because I think we need it. I just don't think we understand what we're asking for.
[00:40:28] 8:12 I wisdom dwell with prudence and, and I find knowledge and direction. This is fascinating one to me.
[00:40:37] This is ormah o r M a h and it's kind of like streetwise wisdom.
[00:40:44] It's the kind of wisdom that you know you're probably not going to go away and do a major study before you come into the situation. It's the wisdom when you face a situation and you're able to act in the moment.
[00:40:58] It's street wise. It's being wise in tricky situations.
[00:41:03] It's the, you know, to be honest, I think it's what Steve has a lot of.
[00:41:09] He has an ability just to, without a lot of preparation to go, oh, that it's that that's what you do. I mean I literally, I called him three years ago, asked him for some advice. And he just said a one liner that was, I absolutely know 100% the right advice.
[00:41:30] So there's a streetwise.
[00:41:32] See some, some of you, you kind of are aware of this.
[00:41:36] I want you to get hungry to ask for more of it. This is the, you know, the, the gentle as doves and wise as serpent stuff. It's that, it's the streetwise stuff.
[00:41:49] I probably had a bit of it when I was working in prison, although I'm not sure. I don't seem to have it when I'm driving a car. That's the problem. But number five, Proverbs 2, 11. You can look these up and you'll see that they're different words. Actually it doesn't say wisdom in my translation, but it's in there. It's mezina.
[00:42:09] It's discretion will guard you, understanding will watch over you. And this is a wisdom that is really about being strategic and it guards wise living. It kind of gives you your boundaries for how to live wisely. And it's kind of like a strategic, longer term planning.
[00:42:31] Some of what we were sharing yesterday here about a fellowship of friends being built on principles. Those principles are related to this kind of wisdom. It's a wisdom that some of you need for your long term planning in your, in your churches and in your ministries.
[00:42:48] Number six is, I think it's spelled M A S A R and it's in Proverbs 1, 2 and 3.
[00:42:58] To know wisdom and instruction, to discern the sayings of understanding, to receive instruction in wise behavior. And it's the wise behavior. This is the wisdom of discipleship.
[00:43:13] This is the wisdom of being on a journey and being in relationship where we are taken on a journey and we're discipled, as it were, in how to live wise. Living wise behavior. If you read the Quiet Revival, very interesting. The Quiet Revival has four recommendations for the future.
[00:43:36] How many people have read the Quiet Revival? The full report?
[00:43:40] Honestly, I would. If you're a church leader, read it.
[00:43:43] It'll encourage you, if nothing else. But, but it's recommendations. There are four recommendations that are very, very interesting.
[00:43:52] One of them is discipleship.
[00:43:55] We. How many of you feel really confident in your discipleship program in your church?
[00:44:01] You're not too many.
[00:44:03] Like we need discipleship. That's back to the boy that comes out of prison one day and is on a stage the next day.
[00:44:11] And we've seen over the years, haven't we? We sometimes seen somebody very famous and successful who comes to Christ and it doesn't last very long with them. It's because they didn't have this wisdom put in them. This is the wisdom of discipleship. It's wisdom that is formed by discipling out of relationship.
[00:44:32] And then seven is Proverbs 13:5, and it's here somewhere.
[00:44:43] New Bibles are great. I mean, they just take a while to break in. I mean, I've read through it, but it hasn't quite broken in Proverbs 13:15. Good understanding produces favor. But the way of the treacherous is hard. Sorry. The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life to turn aside from the snares of death. Good understanding produces favor. Now this is actually more to do with the natural gifts we have and how we steward them to bring favor.
[00:45:17] I struggled for quite a long time, maybe most of my life, to understand why it says of Jesus in Luke 2:52, he grew in wisdom, favor and stature with God and man.
[00:45:29] I struggled with that. Why on earth would Jesus need to grow in wisdom and favor with God?
[00:45:37] And this is the conclusion I came to. I may or may not be right, but that's not really a worry of mine. It just helps me to understand something. I think that Jesus the man needed to grow in favor with God, but the God in Jesus needed to grow in favor with man.
[00:45:57] And I think that this is a lot of what this, this wisdom is about. And we need to bring, as it were, our practical gifts to the Lord.
[00:46:06] And, and we need to allow the skills that we have in the natural to grow in favor with God.
[00:46:13] And we, we, as it were, we bring our spiritual gifts and we need to grow in favor with man, with our spiritual gifts.
[00:46:21] As one of the reasons why my passion for particularly healthcare, but other people as well, other ministries, professions as well, is that, you know, I really want to empower the healthcare professional to marry the best of Jesus and the best of medicine. I want them to walk in being the best in their career.
[00:46:43] I really want that.
[00:46:45] I don't want to just see, you know, I do want to see miracles. But until everyone gets the miracle that we asked for at the time, we need our healthcare professionals and we need them to be empowered to be the very best they can be. And that's this wisdom, you see, what are the problems in our world? We need heaven on earth, don't we? We need discernment, we need healthy relationships. We need to have that street wise wisdom of how to react in moments and in situations so that we don't blow things up out of all proportions.
[00:47:18] We need to be able to plan, we need to have wise plans that as it were, protect. Somebody was saying to me earlier about the genius of the Methodist movement. And you know, John Wesley was a genius. He married evangelism and the gift of administration.
[00:47:35] And he actually then had philanthropists in his life that really enabled what he did. He was winning the lost, he was administering the movement and he was accessing the finances that were needed to build the hundreds of churches in this land. I mean, how many of you ever stopped to think how on earth did he manage to build that many churches?
[00:47:55] Like, you know, some of us having problems building one.
[00:48:01] That strategic administrative gift.
[00:48:05] And we need discipleship in our world.
[00:48:08] The quiet revival didn't finish off the quiet revival. Four recommendations. Discipleship, encourage the promotion of Christians in public places. In other words, make that something that our generation are pursuing, that they want a place in politics or the arts or whatever, that that becomes something desirable that we stop making successful Christians. People who stand on stages with microphones and we put them in every sphere of society.
[00:48:40] We need that. Which means we don't need discipleship that makes good church going Christians. We need kingdom discipleship that empowers people to go out into the world. Discipled to take their place.
[00:48:52] My wife and I were privileged last Saturday night. We went to Top Hat, a musical in London. I confess I didn't even know that there was a musical called Top Hat. And then my daughter in law said, it's probably one of the most famous of all time.
[00:49:06] You know, it's Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Like it passed me by.
[00:49:10] Then we sit in the theater and we're nudging each other going, we know that song too. We know that song too, you know, and it's like, then I'm going, I love this music. But the privilege was we went to the stage door because sue was friends with the lead.
[00:49:23] The lead, who's the tap dancer in the West End of London, stands and looks at us and if you're an alumni, you'll have heard Bill Johnson say this, have coffee with me in 20 years time and tell me you're still burning.
[00:49:38] And this young man looked at us, didn't he? And he said, tell Bill I'm still burning. He's on a stage, he's dancing, he's in that place.
[00:49:50] Discipleship, putting people, as it were, in positions in our society. And then the two other recommendations are multi generational relationships.
[00:50:02] Our young people need multigenerational relationships and they need to learn how to do peer relationships. Those are the four recommendations. That quiet revival, fascinating to me. So we need wisdom.
[00:50:15] It gives us the answer to everything that our world is crying out for. But I don't think we've asked for it. I actually personally have challenged myself and thought, paul, do you remember ever being in a room other than when somebody's prayed generically for wisdom and knowledge and understanding? But have I ever been in the room where I've been in the presence of somebody saying, holy Spirit, would you release the gift of wisdom?
[00:50:47] Has anyone?
[00:50:49] I honestly can't remember it.
[00:50:53] So that's what I want us to pray for.
[00:50:55] Now I just want you to take one moment.
[00:50:59] I'll be honest. In the last 24 hours, I actually asked the Lord for wisdom for something.
[00:51:05] Could you give me wisdom for that? And I got something and I wrote it. And the response was a good response.
[00:51:15] I think I need to learn to ask for this a lot more often.
[00:51:19] But there is a gift of wisdom, gift of wisdom that caused Bezalel. I mean, look at that. Do you look at that picture this morning?
[00:51:29] Do you not marvel at it?
[00:51:31] They're in a wilderness. Like, I would struggle to make a table in a fully equipped workshop.
[00:51:43] Like, I probably get there. I'm not too bad, right?
[00:51:49] With all the kit and all the equipment available, most of us would struggle.
[00:51:56] And he did that in a wilderness.
[00:52:01] It's stunning to me.
[00:52:03] How did he do it?
[00:52:05] Well, he did it because he got wisdom.
[00:52:08] He got wisdom. He got understanding.
[00:52:12] So I want to just invite you, take one moment. What do you need wisdom for, specifically?
[00:52:21] See, there's counterfeits hitting us all the time. There's wisdom for righteousness. There's wisdom for money.
[00:52:28] There's wisdom for truth. There's wisdom for influence. There's wisdom for purpose. There's wisdom for how to have rest. There's wisdom for identity. There's wisdom for relationships. There's wisdom for how to look after your body. But it's faith, false wisdom out there, and it's pummeling us.
[00:52:45] And it's created a foundation. And we don't have the foundation that Juliet was talking about, that beautiful sapphire path.
[00:52:56] And we need the foundation again.
[00:52:59] That's what we need. We need a foundation of heaven's wisdom so that we live this life.
[00:53:07] So ask the Lord, what do you need wisdom for?
[00:53:10] Get something specific.
[00:53:26] There's wisdom to bring heaven to earth, wisdom.
[00:53:36] There's wisdom to discern, to perceive, to see what can't be seen with the natural eye.
[00:53:45] There's wisdom for relationship with God, God the Father, God the Son, And God the Holy Spirit.
[00:53:53] There's wisdom for relationships with our husbands, our wives, our kids.
[00:54:01] There's wisdom for relationship with our friends.
[00:54:09] There's wisdom for the tricky situations of life.
[00:54:16] There's wisdoms to plan.
[00:54:20] See my least favorite phrase when I get around administrators, if they ever tell me I don't plan, I'm led by the Holy Spirit. Well, the Holy Spirit's the Great Architect.
[00:54:28] So be led by the Great Architect and he'll get a good plan.
[00:54:32] There's wisdom for plans.
[00:54:35] There's wisdoms for discipleship, for lifelong kingdom discipleship, to be discipled of how to live this life.
[00:54:45] And there's wisdoms for how to steward the gifts you've been given. The natural and the spiritual. There's wisdom.
[00:54:54] So let's stand.
[00:54:58] You see, James says if we ask for wisdom, he will give it to us.
[00:55:05] He'll give it to us.
[00:55:08] And all of the problems of this world, the stuff that we're reading, the way that our news can so easily be skewed with a leftist or a right wing agenda.
[00:55:23] And we need the wisdom of heaven.
[00:55:27] We need it.
[00:55:29] Holy Spirit, I ask that you would come and you would release the gift of wisdom.
[00:55:36] I pray that you would enlarge our view of what we're asking for.
[00:55:44] That it's not all heaven's wisdom. It's the marriage of heaven's wisdom and the wisdom that you caused us to have when you created us in your image.
[00:55:55] It's to bring the two together. Would you release the gift of wisdom for those in business who need the wisdom to make long term decisions?
[00:56:08] Would you release wisdom for the wisdom as well to make those inner moments, streetwise decisions?
[00:56:18] Wisdom for relationships.
[00:56:22] Wisdom for how to disciple a generation in a world inundated with false news, false purpose, false rest, false love. Wisdom to disciple the generation.
[00:56:43] Wisdom to discern, to perceive, to see what can't be seen.
[00:56:49] To trust what you put in our guts.
[00:56:57] Ask for the gift of wisdom so that we can establish the domain of the wise that has identity and that takes territory and that pushes back the nonsense of this world by expanding the influence of King Jesus, the very originator of wisdom. For wisdom was there at creation.
[00:57:29] Your word says wisdom is God and God is wisdom.
[00:57:36] Give us the gift of wisdom that we can push back everything that comes against you.
[00:57:45] Your name, your principles, everything that stops us from living in abundance.
[00:57:52] Everything that is pushing us away from you. Give us wisdom.
[00:57:58] Give us wisdom so that wisdom can shout in our streets.
[00:58:04] Wisdom can declare in our town.
[00:58:08] Lift up your heads O ye gates Lift up your heads, O ye gates, that the king of glory may come in we want to fill our streets, our towns, our churches, our homes, our businesses, our hospitals, our schools, our workplaces. We want to fill them with wisdom.
[00:58:29] We should be known for wise living.
[00:58:36] Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear of the Lord comes from the word of the Lord. Word of the Lord will lead us to faith in the Lord, and faith in the Lord will cause us to live the way of the Lord.
[00:58:50] Would you release right now and would you cause us to continually ask, perhaps for something we failed to ask for? We ask for wisdom.
[00:59:02] The promise of your word says if we ask, we'll receive it in Jesus name.
[00:59:10] Amen.
[00:59:14] Thanks for listening to the Chroma Charge podcast. If you enjoyed this message, you can like and subscribe. You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Cromer Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship and how to donate, visit our website at Cromer Church.
