590. We All Need to Have a Vision - July 5, 2024

[00:00:06] Welcome to Wisdom Today. My name is Bill Kelley and I'll be your host. In this podcast we will be exploring the book of Proverbs.

[00:00:21] An Enquirer. Father God, I thank you for anyone listening to this podcast today. Lord, I pray that you would reveal to everyone listening how much you truly love each and every one of them. I ask this in Jesus name, Amen. This is Proverbs 5, beginning in verse 1.

[00:00:41] My son, pay attention to my wisdom, lend your ear to my understanding that you may preserve discretion and your lips make keep knowledge.

[00:00:53] For the lips of an immoral woman, drip honey and her mouth is smoother than oil. But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death. Her steps lay hold of hell.

[00:01:13] Lest you ponder her path of life. Her ways are unstable. You do not know them. Therefore hear me now, my children, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

[00:01:28] Remove your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house. Lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel one.

[00:01:41] Lest aliens be filled with your wealth and your labor's go to the house of a foreigner and you mourn at last. When your flesh and your body are consumed and say,

[00:01:57] How I have hated instruction and my heart despised correction. I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to those who instructed me.

[00:02:12] I was on the verge of total ruin in the midst of the assembly and congregation. Drink water from your own sister, and running water from your own well.

[00:02:26] Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets, let them be only your own and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth.

[00:02:45] As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times and always be enraptured with her love. For why should you, my son, be enraptured by an immoral woman and be embraced in the arms of a seductress.

[00:03:06] For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponderes all his paths, his own iniquities, in trap the wicked man. And he is caught in the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of instruction and in the greatness of his folly. He shall go astray.

[00:03:30] Friends today I'd like to take a closer look at verse 1 and proper five verse one says this, my son, pay attention to my wisdom, lend your ear to my understanding.

[00:03:48] Friends we will take a closer look at that verse prior to closing today, but what I'd like to do today is something a little bit different. And we are going to be looking at a rather obscure book in scripture. It is from the minor prophet, Habakkuk.

[00:04:09] And we are going to find out a few things. And one of the reasons I chose to do this on this particular podcast is, my wife and I just returned from a 19 day trip to Europe.

[00:04:26] And in that trip we visited five countries, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia. And it was an absolutely fantastic trip. I'll be talking about it a little bit on the dates podcast. But what I'd like to do is begin chapter two of the prophet Habakkuk beginning in verse 1.

[00:04:54] I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart and watch to see what he will say to me and what I will answer when I am corrected.

[00:05:09] So, friends, the first point I'd like to make up today is that we should expect to be corrected. And when I talk about being corrected, I'm talking about from God himself and the Holy Spirit is the teacher. So he is the one who does the communicating with us today.

[00:05:34] A friend I am reading out of the Nelson study Bible and what I'd like to do is go over the commentary for verse 1. It says, my watch on the rampart.

[00:05:49] Habakkuk stationed himself as a watchman to look at the nations as God had commanded him. The prophet also waited expectantly for God's response to his three charges.

[00:06:08] What he will say to me, Habakkuk's faith is seen in his anticipation of a response from God. And when I am corrected this phrase indicates the prophet's submission to God.

[00:06:28] So friends, in light of this commentary for this particular verse, may I suggest that God is still in the business of speaking to anyone who seeks him on a regular basis.

[00:06:46] Some people are not used to praying to God. And what we need to do is incorporate a plan in our life, where we can begin to reverence and to praise God and try to get into a habit of praying to Him regularly.

[00:07:08] God wants to have relationship with us. But friends, there's only one way that that can happen. We are going to have to be the initiators of that. We are going to have to pursue God by ourselves.

[00:07:29] He will pursue you, but if you're really not in tune with Him, he will reach out to you and a lot of times we miss it. And we don't know that he's trying to do that. Let's continue with verse 2.

[00:07:59] My second point of today's lesson is we need to have a vision. Let me be clear, I'll say it again. We need to have a vision.

[00:08:14] Now, many people in our world today do not lead productive lives. And if you ask people what their goals are, a lot of them will look at you with a blank face.

[00:08:29] They don't know what you're talking about. But this first tells us that if we are to lead productive lives, we need to have a vision.

[00:08:40] Verse 2 actually tells us to write the vision down. Now that's going an extra step that most people won't say, because a lot of times when people talk about the Bible and what the Bible says it's done orally.

[00:08:57] But this is instructing us to actually write the vision down. Let's look at what the commentary says for verse 2. The command to write the revelation is unusual. Generally, prophets vote the word of the Lord first.

[00:09:17] The term vision here is related to the verb translated Saul in chapter 1 verse 1. The noun speaks of a prophetic revelation.

[00:09:31] He may run who reads it. Messengers would proclaim the divine oracle. Now, friends back in the days of a backache and if you were a prophet of God, God would speak to these people on the regular basis.

[00:09:51] And they were open to hearing from God because they literally seeked him out.

[00:09:59] And I'm going to suggest that anyone listening to this podcast today would do the same thing, that we would literally seek God out and ask him what it is that he wants us to do for him. Let's go to verse 3.

[00:10:18] For the vision is yet for an appointed time. But at the end it will speak and it will not lie, though it carries wait for it because it will surely come. It will not carry.

[00:10:39] So friends, my third point for today is our vision will come to pass. And friends, if you have a desire to do something in your life and you seek it and you press forward and go in that direction, it will usually come to pass. But we need to be intentional.

[00:11:05] Let's look at the commentary for verse 3. And appointed time speaks of a determined time in God's eyes, though it carries wait for it.

[00:11:19] God knows his plan and the outworking of all things in accordance with his purposes. The God laid our responsible to study and proclaim his revelation while awaiting its fulfillment.

[00:11:37] We will surely come the assurance of fulfillment lies in God himself. It will not carry. The fulfillment of the vision would not take any longer than God had planned. But friends, the only way this is going to happen is if you purposely have a relationship with God.

[00:12:06] I would like to next go to the book of James and talk about do not boast about tomorrow. And we're going to go to the fourth chapter and begin in verse 13.

[00:12:21] Come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city. Spend a year there by and sell and make a profit, whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.

[00:12:40] For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.

[00:12:59] But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil and the reason it is evil is because whenever we boast, it means that we have pride.

[00:13:15] And I often mention on this podcast in James chapter 4 earlier in this chapter, it says that God resists the proud. He doesn't want us to have pride.

[00:13:29] Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it. To him it is sin. And friend that's a profound statement. Let me read that one more time.

[00:13:44] To him who knows to do good and does not do it. To him it is sin. Now friends, a lot of times people think of sin as only the things that you do that are wrong. This is a different type of sin.

[00:14:05] This is when you should be doing something because you know it's the right thing to do and you simply do nothing at all. So this first is telling us that that is sin as well.

[00:14:22] And what I'd like to do is talk just a moment about our trip to Europe and one of the things I've realized is how different Europe is than the United States.

[00:14:36] And one of the main differences is the church. And when I talk about the church here, I'm not talking about the people that go to church. I'm talking about the physical building of the church itself.

[00:14:54] And one thing that every church in Europe has is they have a cross with Jesus on that cross. They show him as he was dying on the cross. In other words, they have a reverence for him. These people who did these crosses for these churches knew.

[00:15:24] About the importance of God. There is a reverence there that I don't say in churches in America today. Another thing is they would have altars and when I say altars is basically on the wings of basically every church in Europe.

[00:15:46] But they have particular altars that are ascribed to certain saints of that particular time period. So they may devote one altar to Saint Bartholomew or one to Saint Matthew or one to Saint Peter.

[00:16:07] It's marvelous because there was so much care that was taken in the constructing of these altars. There are sculptures in many of these churches and these cultures I can tell just by looking at the intricacies of these sculptures probably took five or six or even 10 years to do one sculpture.

[00:16:33] So they obviously had a devotion and a love to God. And another thing is a lot of these main cathedrals. They also have humongous paintings and the paintings will ascribed to certain things that happened in Scripture. In other words, they may have the three people that hung on the cross.

[00:17:03] And the two people next to them that will have a painting of that or they will have Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary.

[00:17:14] And it's awesome. It's awesome and when I go to churches in America today, I'm not going to say there's no reverence for God. I'm just going to say they're really missing the point. Many churches today don't even have Jesus on the cross.

[00:17:30] There might not even be any indication that Jesus ever existed. And to me, that's sad because Jesus was the beginning of the church.

[00:17:45] So anyway, before we close today, I'd like to go back to our verse of the day today. And we are talking about Proverbs 5 and verse 1 said this,

[00:17:59] my son, pay attention to my wisdom, lend your ear to my understanding. So friends, the point that I really want to convey today is the fact that God is requesting and desiring relationship with us today.

[00:18:22] That's quickly review our three points of the day. We should expect to be corrected. And friends, if you have an intimate relationship with God, expect him to review you from time to time.

[00:18:38] Number two, we need to have a vision. Many people in our world today are walking about aimlessly. They have no purpose in their life. They simply go on autopilot.

[00:18:53] It's almost like some people are robots. They get up in the morning, they get dressed, they go to work, they come home, they fix dinner, they take a shower, they brush your teeth, they go to bed and there's no meaning in their life.

[00:19:11] Number three, our vision will come to pass. But friends, it won't come to pass. If you don't have a vision, don't have a plan for your life and don't write it down.

[00:19:27] Friends, I hope this has been helpful for some of you today. And my call to action is very simple today and ask yourself this question, do you have a vision for your life?

[00:19:42] And if you can't honestly state yes to that, may I suggest that you see God in prayer and ask him and say, Father God, I'm not sure why I am here on earth. I really don't have a clue.

[00:20:01] And what I'd like for you to do is over the period of the next week or two or month reveal yourself to me, reveal what your plan for my life is. What would you like me to do in my life that I'm not doing now?

[00:20:21] I asked this in Jesus name, amen. Friends, I will never end a podcast without giving anyone an opportunity to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

[00:20:36] If there is anyone listening today, you've never taken that step. I invite you to repeat a simple prayer after me right now. Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God.

[00:20:49] I believe that you died on a cross for me. Jesus, I ask you to forgive me of all the bycins.

[00:20:57] I ask you come into my heart. I ask that you lead me and guide me from this point forward in my life. I make you my Lord and Savior.

[00:21:10] Friends, this is the weekend. What I'd like to do is suggest that you take out your wife, take out your kids, go out and have a great family time. Let them know how much God loves them and how much you love them.

[00:21:30] Now, make a Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make us face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.