Fellowship in the Word

Announcer: Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bil Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functional follower of Jesus Christ.

Bil Gebhardt: An image-bearer is not only one who bears God's image, but God has given responsibility to them to be in His place where He sends them. So Adam and Eve were to subdue the earth, they were to be fruitful and multiply. They had responsibilities as image-bearers. So my question was, what should our lives look like? In the first week, I said, and this is one that's always hard for us, God tells us we're to be holy. And that's hard for us because of the way we think of holiness. He commands us to be holy, and His reasoning is, for He said, "I am holy."

Announcer: Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bil Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bil Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world.

Bil Gebhardt: On October the 2nd, 1950, someone was introduced to the world in four hand-drawn frames. His name was Charlie Brown. And Charlie and his friends and a dog and a bird were introduced to the world in what would come to be known as the Peanuts comic strip. Eventually, they ended up in 2,600 different newspapers in 75 different countries, and the readers were an avid group of 335 million people.

The question is, why was it so successful? Obviously, there was humor in it and relationships, and clearly both children and adults understand what it is to be a child and childhood relationships. But one reviewing writer said those were all important, but that wasn't really what made it work. He said there were often real pearls of wisdom given by these children, which enhanced and enticed all of us to read it.

Charlie Brown once said, "I've developed a whole new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time now." Linus van Pelt said this, "Life is like a 10-speed bicycle. Some of us have gears we never use." And Marcie Johnson said, "It's just human nature. We all need someone to kiss us goodbye."

Those are very wisdom-oriented ideas. They're wonderful. Now we know they didn't come from the characters, they came from Charles Schulz, who was an adult and obviously much older. In fact, Job said this, "Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding with the length of days." And that's kind of an interesting thing that Job would write that because when you think of God and He's called through the Old Testament in like Daniel, for example, the Ancient of Days.

So the question is, how much wisdom does God possess? Wisdom is the ability to live life successfully. It's the ability to take knowledge and apply it to living in the very best way. Now I'm in a series that I'm finishing up today and the series was simply this: How should image-bearers of God live?

And you and I are image-bearers, and I don't mean image-bearer in the sense that we often think. I don't mean an image-bearer as every human being's an image-bearer of God to a degree, but that's not exactly what God means when He uses the term in Genesis. An image-bearer is not only one who bears God's image, but God has given responsibility to them to be in His place where He sends them.

So Adam and Eve were to subdue the earth, they were to be fruitful and multiply. They had responsibilities as image-bearers. So my question was, what should our lives look like? In the first week I said, and this is one that's always hard for us, God tells us we're to be holy. And that's hard for us because of the way we think of holiness. He commands us to be holy and His reasoning is, "For," He says, "I am holy." You're My children, I'm your Father, you should be like Me. You should be holy.

Then the second week, we find out about an image-bearer. An image-bearer is to love people like God loves people. And this is very difficult for us. It's the agape love, and Jesus makes it clear to us to what extent are we talking? You have to love your enemies. You have to pray for those who persecute you. You have to love people the way God loves people if you're an image-bearer, a follower of which we are as believers in Jesus Christ.

Then the third week, I said that we have to be people of the truth. Truth has got to be very important to us. And I said at that time that we have to know the truth, we have to study the truth, we have to obey the truth, speak the truth, and we have to enjoy the truth. We should be people who live in the context of truth.

And then last time I spoke, I said we also should be people of grace and mercy. And I said I don't mean recipients. Christians love being recipients of the grace and mercy of God. We don't like the idea of giving others grace and mercy. But we are not only to be just the recipients of grace and mercy, we are to be the people who give others grace and mercy who don't deserve it any more than we do. And that requires what on our part? Forgiveness. You want to know if you give grace and mercy for people? Do you forgive people? Because you should, if you're an image-bearer of God.

So today what I want to do is I want to talk about this idea of the last one in this series. I want to talk about that we should be people who live our lives wisely. We should be people of what I'll call biblical wisdom. And the reason this is such an important thing for us to understand is simply this: Over all these years, I am amazed of just how unwise we live.

I run into it often in counseling scenarios, but the wisdom of God is left out of their lives and the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of themselves has taken its place and they have nothing but turmoil in the context of whether it's a job situation, a marriage situation, a family situation, child-rearing, and all those things. And so that's what I want to deal with today.

It's interesting in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, it says the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom. Now, Paul doesn't think God's foolish, but he's trying to make a comparison. There's absolutely no comparison between any of these things. But the whole idea is and what I want to get across is you and I operate on wisdom, but I'm afraid that a lot of the wisdom we operate on is our wisdom, not God's at all.

And so I want you to go to 1 Corinthians chapter 3 with me and verse 18. In 1 Corinthians 3:18, Paul's going to say this and it's interesting the idea that he puts behind the two kinds of wisdom you can live by. In verse 18 he says, "Let no man deceive himself." In other words, what he's saying is the natural wisdom in which you operate your life is a deception.

He said, "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, 'He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness.' And again, 'The Lord knows the reasoning of the wise that they are useless.'"

So here we see the natural wisdom we're talking about from God's point of view is foolish and it's useless. And Paul is trying to write this to the Corinthians. And there's a reason. The Corinthian church is easily the worst church in the New Testament era. Easily. Almost every single thing they did as a church was wrong. It was foolishness. It was awful.

And yet you have to understand a Corinthian. Corinth is located in Greece, and except for Athens, Corinth is the next greatest city in Greece. And the Greeks considered themselves the wisest people on earth. "Greek wisdom is what makes us wise. We are Greeks, we are so wise." And what Paul's writing is, the way you're doing things is foolish. This is not right at all.

And so now what I want to do is I want you to go with me to James chapter 3. The book of James, chapter 3. And James is going to pick this up and he's going to start defining for us these distinctions that I've been talking about so far. The question is he starts out with, "Who among you is wise and understanding?" Who among you has wisdom?

Now notice what he says next, "Let him show by his good behavior in his deeds in gentleness of wisdom." Wow. How do we acquire wisdom? We would say, well, if you get a really good education, you can really come up with wisdom. The Jewish thought was if you sit under a great rabbi, you have wisdom. You see, we assign wisdom in a sense to what we know and that's only part of it.

Notice what James says, though. James goes on and says, "Let him show by his good behavior and his deeds of gentleness in wisdom." Wow. Yeah, if you said to James, "I'm wise," he'd say, "Show me." And do you have gentleness? You think, why does he use that term? Watch as I read on.

He says, "But if you have bitter jealousy, selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth." Their problem was in the context of the Jerusalem church, they're fighting with each other. They're fighting and they're having all those kind of inside fights that Christians have. It could be theological, it could be behavioral, but they're fighting. And they're all standing for what they believe is true.

And so they have nothing but chaos in the church. And so he says, look, the very fact that you're bitter tells me you're not biblically wise. You see, because if I was biblically wise, those other things that I just talked about that we've done over the last several weeks, the whole idea of loving even your enemies certainly means by loving your brothers and sisters in Christ.

The whole idea of being a recipient of grace and mercy means that you're giving grace and mercy to others and forgiving. They're not doing any of that. They're living their life in a very different way. So then he says this after that, "This wisdom is not from above. It is earthly, natural," and then shockingly, "demonic."

That's a really interesting term, isn't it? Wisdom that does not come from above, from God, ultimately comes from Satan. That's the wisdom. It's natural for us, it's earthly for us, it's demonic. Ultimately wisdom comes from two completely different places is what he's trying to tell us. And that's really a shocking way.

And notice what he says, "For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there's disorder and every evil thing." The very fact of the way you're interacting with each other and fighting tells me you're operating on natural, earthly, demonic wisdom and you're not applying the wisdom of God at all.

He said the wisdom from above is first what? Pure, then peaceable, then gentle, then reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, and has no hypocrisy. All the other things I've talked about over these past weeks is included in this wisdom. He said, that's the way this wisdom operates. So whenever you find yourself in a certain way trying to make decisions or making a wise choice, is this how you feel? Is this what you demonstrate? Or do you demonstrate the other things that he talked about from earthly wisdom?

Jen Wilkin in her book, she contrasts the two in an interesting way. She says this: Worldly wisdom is self-promotion; godly wisdom elevates others. Worldly wisdom seeks the higher place; godly wisdom seeks the lowest place. Worldly wisdom avoids the mirror of the Word; godly wisdom submits to the mirror of the Word. Worldly wisdom trusts in earthly possessions; godly wisdom trusts in the treasures of heaven.

Worldly wisdom boasts; godly wisdom is slow to speak. Worldly wisdom says trials will crush you; godly wisdom says trials will mature you. Worldly wisdom says that temptation's no big deal; godly wisdom says temptation is a big deal, it leads to sin. Worldly wisdom says seeing is believing; godly wisdom says as John writes, "Blessed are those who have not seen and believe." Worldly wisdom wields might; godly wisdom is meekness.

It's a tremendous difference between the two. And I'm afraid of what happens so often because it's natural and earthly, our default wisdom is not from above. Our default wisdom is ours. And it's a really interesting to see just how this works. It's everywhere around us. See, the earthly wisdom you got you got from your parents. They may have had good wisdom or not.

Or if you were a teenager, where do teenagers get their wisdom from? Other teenagers. Okay, so they don't see life like that. They make a lot of very unwise choices as a teenager. It happens to all of us, we all go through this. You see, there's a natural way in which we just operate and what the Scriptures are saying is you can't do this, you're going to have to operate in a different way.

And so the question comes down to, is this kind of wisdom then available to me? And it surely is. I want you to go with me now to Proverbs chapter 8. And this is Solomon. It's interesting how he starts this particular chapter. He says, "Does not wisdom call?" It's an interesting thing as you go through Scripture and he's going to personify wisdom here.

Wisdom calls to us. God's wisdom calls us to be wise. He calls us, "Please live wisely. Please. I'm calling you." Now watch what he writes. He says, "And understanding lift up her voice. On top of the heights beside the way, where the paths meet, she takes her stand. Beside the gates and the opening to the city, and the entrance of the door she cries out. To you, oh men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men. Oh naive ones, understand prudence. Oh fools, understand wisdom. Listen, I will speak noble things to you."

And then look down to verse 22. Listen to what it says, "The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old." So when did God's wisdom exist? Always. In fact, before there was ever a creation, God's wisdom already existed. That's why He's called the Ancient of Days.

But the point of it is He said, "Before His works of old, from everlasting I was established." He writes, "From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no springs abounding with water, before the mountains were settled, before the hills I was brought forth."

"While He had not yet made the earth and its fields, nor the first dust of the world. When He established the heavens, I was there. And when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep. When He made firm the skies above, when the springs of the deep became fixed. When He set for the sea its boundary, so that the water would not transgress His commandment. When He marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was beside Him as a master workman, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the world His earth, and moving my delight in the sons of men."

An interesting thought. Wisdom is so important in what wisdom when he personifies it here he says, the wisdom and the joy of wisdom precede all creation. In fact, He created all creation in the context of wisdom. And notice he's trying to make the appeal and make it more here to man. The wisdom that I've had, this joy that I had in wisdom before there was ever a created thing is a joy that's available to us.

So as he goes on he says, "Now therefore, oh sons, listen to me. For blessed are they who keep my ways. Heed instruction and be wise and do not neglect it. Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at my doorsteps. For he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who sins against me injures himself; all those who hate me love death."

What an interesting section that he tells us here. Blessed, happy is the man who listens to wisdom, watching daily at my gates. One thing we're going to learn here about wisdom: it has to be a day-in-and-day-out pursuit. And I'll explain that in just a moment. He said, "For he who finds me finds life and favor with God." This is going to be the most wonderful thing you can come up with is to have this idea of wisdom.

Now, who wrote this? Solomon. And if I ask you how wise was he? Well, you'd say, "Well, he's the wisest man who ever lived, he got a supernatural gift from God that he asked for." Sounds right, doesn't it? Maybe not as right as you think. Now, I understand he was wise. Remember what he did when he was an early king. Two ladies, each of them had a baby, and then one of the babies died. Then the other lady grabbed the other baby and she said, "That baby's mine, yours is the dead one."

So they show up to this young King Solomon and they play their case. "That's my baby, that's my baby." So Solomon, in his wisdom, said this: "Cut the baby in half and then you'll each have half." Wow. And immediately one of the ladies said, "Do not do that, let her have the baby." And Solomon said, "Give the baby to the woman who just said that." That was his wisdom. He understood what the true mother would do.

You see how this works. So he was really wise. However, and he got a supernatural gift, but I want you to think about it a little bit differently now. He resisted God's wisdom for most of his life. In certain ways completely resisted them. That's what the whole book of Ecclesiastes is.

You see, he resisted God's wisdom in every possible way. He did everything imaginable. He was the ultimate hedonist. He did nothing else. He said, "I didn't prevent anything from coming into my life. I did every experience man can do." He had a thousand wives and concubines. Okay? I mean, yes. And think of everything else he did.

He said, "I had parties, I had accomplishments, I built amazing things, all kinds of things. I tried every single experience man can experience." And the book of Ecclesiastes tells us what was his conclusion? "It's all vanity." But you would have thought with the kind of wisdom that he was supposed to have because God's wisdom can be resisted and ignored because of our nature. And Solomon ignored it for a long time. That's what's so wonderful about the book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon finally came to a point where he actually thought this is worthwhile, this is a really good thing.

Announcer: You've been listening to Pastor Bil Gebhardt on the radio ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you'd just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast but also many of our previous audio programs as well.

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If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bil delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbc-nola.org. That's F-B-C-N-O-L-A dot O-R-G. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bil's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember you can do all this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbc-nola.org.

For Pastor Bil Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.