Who Is Wise? (Part 2 of 2)

Few people would argue that education is not important, but Scripture teaches us, there is no intellectual road that takes us to heavenly wisdom. So how does one become truly wise today on Truth for Life, including a message titled, who is wise.

Alistair Begg is teaching from the book of James chapter 3 in verses 13 through 817 oh and the reason for the funding of Yale was because Congregational believers that had believers in the Congregational church were disappointed by the growing apostasy at Harvard and Edwards and his colleagues a marriage from Yale is that we better try another place, and they founded Princeton University as a reaction to Harvard and Yale.

What is the what is the point of declension at every point is the departure from wisdom and the embracing of earthly perspectives, simplistic analysis.

Undoubtedly, faithfully true. Yes, in other words, such cries are far removed from the contemporary president of Harvard who said just recently things divine have been central.

Neither to my professional nor to my private life. I admire his honesty. At least it's true, but it is a long way removed is just pause and acknowledge something that is that is patently obvious. Ideas have consequences, and people know that ideas of consequences and that's why advertising is is profoundly impactful as it is. David Myers wrote a book called the American paradox spiritual hunger and age of plenty was the subtitle was published actually by Yale University press and this paradox he described as follows will better fed answer paid that your house better educated and healthier than ever before, and with more human rights, faster communication and more convenient transportation than we have ever known.

Alongside all this largess, however, are the signs of life in pain and travail. Since 1960. The divorce rate has doubled teen suicide has tripled violent crime quadrupled the number in prison has queen tuple illegitimate children 6×6 to on the number of those cohabiting has increased sevenfold. These are facts, ideas of consequences. The idea that there is a God to whom men and women are accountable has an impact when believe on the lives and lifestyles of those who believe the idea that we are simply a random collection of molecules held in suspension with no particular significance of tall also has implications not least of all in how we spend our time are money and with whom we spend our time and money, and it may be with whomsoever we choose, and on whatsoever we desire depending on the source of wisdom. I gave cute us to Scotland.

I think some of it back. Now in relationship to the Enlightenment the Scottish philosophers can wiggle out of that they had a large part to play in doing what in taking the notion of Revelation that God has spoken in his world and putting it over in a corner and replacing Revelation with rationality so that instead of our route to God, being a root which comes as a result of his revelation and his initiative any lingering route to God would be a root that would come through our own intellect.

Therefore, having set aside the notion of Revelation and having embrace rationalism.

We then follow that track down and it leads us to nowhere in the end. And no surprise because God has made foolish the wisdom of this world so that the will that so that man by his wisdom cannot know God that there is ultimately no intellectual road to God as good as apologetics are. They cannot argue to God. If you are an atheist. That won't be apologetics, that brings you to Jesus. It will be the five a.

God reveals himself to and maybe in the strangest person may mean somebody that you think is I'm not.

Maybe in some and couldn't even stand with you in intellectual discourse.

Maybe it is in a child. Maybe it is in looking into the eyes of someone and seeing the compassion of Christ.

There it will buy be by means of Revelation by the Enlightenment shifts Revelation replaces it with rationalism.

The ensuing years follow you fast-forward up to the 21st century and where are we now, you don't have any scientific rationalists really left at all used to be a lot of them all over the place, Case Western Reserve. There are some that the Cleveland clinic University hospital and all those kind of people but not many is fascinating talk with the may have crystals hanging from the members, they may be asking you about angels, they may be wanting to talk to you about the healing power of prayer on the little believe the prayer means that everyone goes anywhere or doesn't think but if he can possibly make them feel good. Then the be happy to think about it, but of course if you have a view on it. Don't hold it in any sense vociferously because they will know immediately that you must be wrong because rationalism argued for the goalpost being in place in the lines being drawn in the referee with a whistle 21st century.

There are no goalpost.

There are no lines, there is no referee. There is no need for a whistle because there is no in the minds of contemporary philosophy. There is no objective basis whereby we can. The juice right from wrong and jurisprudence is full of how can you have the Menendez brothers trial which they can fax and in a hung jury first timer, and we can go through almost of these things. What's the problem.

The problem is that the jurors who set unwise they may be intelligent, but are not wise because they don't have the wisdom that comes from heaven. The wisdom that comes from heaven, which is moral before his intellectual which is ethical and practical before it is simply intellectually absorbable hence the teaching in our schools.

Much of it is very effective but it is not why he's the decisions that are made in the schools, wise decisions. Why, because in order to make a wise decision. You have to become a wise man or a wise woman. How did you become a wise woman or a wise man by bowing down before God and acknowledging that he is the creator that we are accountable to him as creator that we depend upon him for our life and our breath in our existence and our minds and everything else besides. And for an end. Contemporary men's unprepared for such an admission on a bow down before someone I can see. So what are we well aware were just a culture in crisis, and the reason for the culture in crisis or Western civilizations in crisis is because were individuals in crisis because the average person can answer the question.

Who are you who are you okay maybe joke about what's her name and the live coming in and going out and what she's doing or are who knows any of them. I see them when I'm with every so often I try to help my wife about once a month and go to the grocery store and there when you're getting cartons of milk you can just get all the civilization there just you don't have to be there about a minute and 1/2 to get the whole deal. Who's leaving who's getting back together whose marriages divorce, whatever else it and you look at it you can disdain it. Or you can just burst into tears when you think about because I don't have an answer to the request. You see, if a person can ask the question, who am I and answer it properly and say well I am a moral being made in the image of a God to whom I am accountable and before whom one day I will stand in the bathroom of the something else. I I am my jeans, the great search, you know, the great genetic search. We understand from a medical perspective, what's the big deal.

Are you really that fascinated by your chromosomes, who are you on my jeans.

I am my sexual orientation. I am my past. I am my self-image.

I am my personality. I am my experiences. I am what I possess. I am what I eat. I am what I don't eat I am what I do. I am what I know. I don't know what I am okay now you're being honest ideas of consequences. Children cannot be taught in school that they were born without reason that they prolong themselves by chance in the dying to go into oblivion without it will make an impact on their lives and on their tiny minds.

There's all the difference in the world between put your head on the pillow at night as a teenage boy trying to make sense of your existence, knowing that God is in heaven, and he will care for you if you call out to him and being told that there is no possible explanation for your existence. So whether you are awake or will you die with you live or where your significant is entirely irrelevant. Ideas have consequences unless otherwise in the understanding stand over by the trees at J. Let me give you one long quote and then a short cord and then were done.

This is from Walter Lippmann in a book called a preface to morals, in which he describes the experience of what he refers to as man in the 21st century.

Listen carefully to this moments of blank misgiving in which he finds that the civilization of which he is a part leaves a dusty taste in his mouth. He may be very busy with many things, but he discovers one day that he is no longer sure that they are worth doing. He has been much preoccupied, but is no longer sure he knows why he has become involved in an elaborate routine of pleasures, and they do not seem to amuse and very my he finds it hard to believe that doing any one thing is better than any other thing or and five is better than doing nothing at all. It occurs to him that it is a great deal of trouble to live and that even in the best of life's the thrills are few and far between. He begins more or less to seek satisfaction because he is no longer satisfied and all the while he realizes that The Pursuit of Happyness was always a most unhappy quest to locate font.

No no no no no not so fast. Are you and assign a living will and have a physician who fits that description. Make a decision about the end of your life clever enough to become a doctor but not a wise man clever enough to put the machinery in place and to understand the chemistry but not a wise woman, someone who when she awaken in the morning and got in her car and drove into the Gary said, I don't know whether it is significant for me to be a doctor or not. I don't know whether it is significant for me to live or not. I don't know whether I have any reason for existence whatsoever. Let me go in now and make sure I take care of the rest of the universe when there will presented to me in my surgery ideas and consequences and the old pictures of the doctor with a stethoscope hanging around his neck and the black bag and everything else well regarded as a charming pastor and that's the old days of whoever that painter was that everybody had, or has the getting Gary sales with the doctor and the dentist and everybody else was. He called who Jan S and Rocco plates he has plates.

I remember that the reason that there is a nostalgia in that because you can imagine a Norman Rockwell play. Can you for euthanasia. The normal rock the Norman Rockwell plate with the children being removed from your grandmother's wrist. Ideas have consequences love ones don't.

Don't don't miss this and don't think for a moment that this is what happens when you read books and sit in the library all day. This is down the popular level, this is down in the grassroots 1953.

Samuel Beckett's play, waiting for Edgardo or Goodall as he said here. I don't know where they and facets should be in the cell level but it's so you know the play.

It opened in Paris in 1953 I miss the opening I was only one and it's amazing to me that player still is still out there.

Have you ever seen it.

Have you ever read. There's no plot, there's actually no play no movement, nothing happens. No one goes anywhere. No conclusions are reached, no issues are resolved and then the curtain closes. Everybody goes through that was fantastic. Why did you make a sign is wasted 27 bucks. That's what I made of that. That's unbelievable. I can do that to myself if you pull a curtain or shower curtain over and sit in front of.

How can we do stuff like that because were not wise is an expression of foolishness sit expression of nihilism is an expression of emptiness is an expression of lostness is the wisdom that is earthly and sensual and irredeemable and in just in case you say well you know so what II don't who Beckett was and I frankly don't care you need to go there. You turn your TV on.

Watch the reruns watch the reruns because waiting for Edgardo has reincarnated itself. A number of times and best of all, in a show about nothing on the commercial are nothing was there who would who would write a show about nothing Seinfeld is going to be terrific Wednesday night was a show about nothing. Can you believe that now I can while you wait and see who will be terrific. Thomas hip says a show about the comical consequences of a life in a world devoid of ultimate significance or fundamental meaning. The comical consequences of life in a world devoid of ultimate significance or fundamental meaning is what is all about and that's why you see in that show. It always goes back to the base guitar does not think simple, now rock and George's having a cuppa tea with somebody in our lane is over here try to get Kramer out of whatever else it is, how do we get from here to there doesn't matter doesn't matter.

There is no from here to there there all disjointed random events in a random world full of random people going nowhere at all its wisdom, and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates my final quote all of the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail. When we leave this error if only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sale.

Perhaps some divine war tiny raft hang in all of our hopes on a fool's wisdom.

If only there was some foundation. If only there was a lifeboat coming from somewhere in the race. The foolishness of the cross is the wisdom of God and the wisdom of God is powerful and its impact. We used to sing about it. We were small we made it easy living on the quiet in Glasgow because these huge oceangoing liners came up maybe liners and commercial liners, but he couldn't navigate the client until the pilot went out from a done by good work agreement and his employer would always watch as the tiny tugboat went out as the huge liner got so far installed and then the fellow would claim up the steps and he would get on the nothing would reconvene and then it would be taken safely into the harbor guy got it so far but couldn't get it to his destination.

The pilot came and it Sunday school. We were we taught a little song was do you want a pilot signal then did Jesus do you want a pilot then bid and come on board and he will safely guide across the ocean. Why until at last you reach the heavenly harbor. There is only one person in the whole world that can make it possible for anyone of us to safely reach the harbor of heaven, and that is Jesus Christ himself on notion which is regarded as abject total foolishness, but which is says Scripture. The very wisdom I commend you to Jesus as your only Savior is our only hope in life and in death. Wisdom that comes from heaven oral it's ethical and it's practical before it's ever intellectual.

We become wise only when we love and honor God were listing to Alastair big on Truth for Life and Alastair returns in just a minute to close today's program.

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Forgive us for thinking we can do it on our own.

Figured it out. We put our hands over our mouths and we sale God, and take control today. Fill me with the Lord Jesus Christ and all of his wisdom and his righteousness and his truth, and may grace and mercy and peace father and the son and the Holy Spirit be the abiding portion of all who believe. Today and forever more. Then about Lapine. Thanks for listening.

If true wisdom isn't a product of advanced education or some kind of super intelligence, then what is the defined join us tomorrow. Find out how the book of James describes wisdom from heaven Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life Learning is for Living