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[0:00] Acts chapter 13, just a short section, verses 4 to 12.! Luke writes this account of the early church. Listen to these words.

[0:11] Verse 4. The two of them, that is Paul and Barnabas, the two of them sent on their way by the Holy Spirit went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus.

[0:25] When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper. They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos.

[0:36] There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God.

[0:53] But Elemas, the sorcerer, for that is what his name means, opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elemas and said, You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right.

[1:14] You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.

[1:29] Immediately mist and darkness came over him and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.

[1:44] This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Let's ask for God's help as we study together. Gracious God, your word is our bread, our lifeblood.

[1:56] It is our truth. And we ask that in your great mercy, you would feed us this morning with that truth, that we would be able to see into it and see your mind, see your heart, see your will for us.

[2:09] Strengthen us by your spirit to respond well to your word, Lord, to respond in repentance and faith, to trust in the good news of Jesus. We ask this all for Christ's sake and his glory.

[2:21] Amen. So we pick up the book of Acts. It's been a bit of a time since we've been back in Acts. We looked at the church at Antioch quite a while back in two sections.

[2:35] And now from that church, they send out some missionaries. Paul and Barnabas get sent out from the church as missionaries to go and preach the gospel. And this begins three, what are three major missionary journeys that the book of Acts records for us, that we now get, really take up the rest of the book for us.

[2:54] And the first place they go to on their missionary journeys is the island of Cyprus. Now we don't know why they start there. Maybe they wanted a beach holiday at the beginning just because it's going to be tough and Cyprus is a nice place.

[3:07] We know Barnabas is from Cyprus. We know actually that there were some Christians in Cyprus. So earlier on in Acts it tells us that there were actually a group of Christians who had come from Cyprus. But other than that, it's a mystery as to why they go here first of all places.

[3:21] The key event that Luke records for us here, besides the sort of regular preaching in the synagogues where they go, which is Paul's practice and you'll see this as we go further, going from synagogue to synagogue.

[3:34] The key event that they record though, that Luke records is this clash between Paul and Barnabas and this false prophet named Bar-Jesus or Elemas.

[3:44] Everybody's got two names in this passage. You just got to kind of figure out who's who here exactly. But this clash between the two has got echoes of an earlier clash that we came to a couple of months ago.

[3:55] We read about in chapter 8 between Peter and Simon the sorcerer. Simon Magus. It's a very, very similar story. In that earlier account, there was a clash around the issue of power.

[4:09] Simon wanted the power that he saw in the apostles as they healed people around that. It was a clash between worldly power and gospel power. Here in this story, the clash is not so much about power.

[4:22] The clash is about wisdom. Gospel wisdom versus worldly wisdom. And there are several clues in the text that kind of show us that that's what's going on here.

[4:32] The clash takes place in front of this Gentile, this non-Jew who's watching what's going on, this pro-consul, Sergius Paulus.

[4:44] And he's described in verse 7 by Luke as a man of much intelligence or a man of great wisdom. That's sort of giving us a clue of where this is going and what's on display here.

[4:55] And this wise man, he gets to sit now and he gets to watch Bar-Jesus, Elymas, go head-to-head with this new group, Paul and Barnabas.

[5:08] He gets to watch the clash between gospel wisdom and worldly wisdom. Now this is a clash that took place almost 2,000 years ago on an island in the Mediterranean.

[5:20] But I want to suggest that it's actually a clash that each one of you are involved in on a daily basis as you navigate life.

[5:31] You are daily confronted with worldly wisdom and then trying to discern gospel wisdom in the midst of all those voices. And it's a challenging thing.

[5:43] And so I want us to dive into this account and see if we can find help here. Help to try and do that very thing. Find the gospel wisdom, drown out the worldly wisdom.

[5:55] So two simple points this morning. Number one, how to avoid worldly wisdom. And number two, how to get gospel wisdom. Here's the first one. How to avoid worldly wisdom.

[6:06] I have a ministry colleague who hates having meetings with me in loud, noisy spaces. Because he really battles to hear what I'm saying when there's a whole lot of voices around.

[6:18] So he's a little bit older than me. So he was around during the time of military conscription in this country. Which meant training and shooting lots of live rounds. And as a result his hearing is literally shot now, to excuse the terrible pun.

[6:31] And so when he's in a room and there are a lot of voices around. It's really hard for him to focus on the one voice that's right in front of him. Now being a Christian in today's climate is a little bit like that.

[6:45] We have voices of worldly wisdom coming at us all day, every day. And at such a high volume that even if we're regular churchgoers, regular readers of our Bibles.

[6:58] We struggle to listen to the gospel wisdom that is straight in front of us. In fact, I would even argue that it's more challenging now than it has perhaps ever been in human history.

[7:12] Because of the internet. And because of smartphones. And because of social media. And a combination of those three things together. I mean if you think of a room full of multiple conversations happening around you.

[7:26] A very busy room. Like before the service starts here. A very busy room. Everybody talking. Having multiple conversations. You hear snippets over there. You hear snippets over here. And those snippets that you hear.

[7:37] What they do is they pull your mind away for a moment. And distract you from the conversation that you're having with the person. Who's straight in front of you. And that's what modern life is like.

[7:50] With smartphones and social media. There was a recent study that came out of a university in Finland. That found that length of screen time is actually not the biggest contributor to a sense of feeling overwhelmed by information.

[8:08] And sort of all the accompanying social and emotional distress that can come from that. What contributes more than length of screen time to that sense of overload. Is how fragmented your screen time was.

[8:22] So it's sort of a short video clip here. A message there. An Instagram post here. Browsing the first paragraph of an article over here. But never reading the whole article. No one reads the whole article. You just read the first paragraph.

[8:33] And then you're sort of like ducking in and out of conversations all the time. And you're not really getting anything of substance. So we're all sitting in that noisy room really.

[8:45] And it's noisier. And it is more crowded than it's ever been. In human history. Now one thing we've probably got to do is develop better habits and disciplines to block out that noise.

[8:59] And we could do a whole series of sermons on how you do that. And there's a lot of practical advice on how to do that. There's even apps. You can turn your phone into a dumb phone. And do all sorts of things there. But even then if you choose to say well I'm going to just have a limited diet of voices.

[9:15] That I'm going to allow to come in and speak to me. I'm going to give sustained concentration to a few places. Which ones are you going to go to? How do you know if you're feeding yourself with worldly wisdom?

[9:30] Or you're feeding yourself with gospel wisdom? Let's start by looking for some telltale signs of worldly wisdom. So go to verse 6.

[9:40] They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and a false prophet named Bar-Jesus who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus.

[9:54] The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. So he's an intelligent man. He's a man of high standing.

[10:04] And he's getting a voice in his ear all of the time. Wisdom is being fed to him all of the time by this character named Bar-Jesus. But he's curious.

[10:17] Okay. He wants to check out other sources of wisdom. And so he sends for Paul and for Barnabas to come and to put their voices into the conversation. Like I want to hear what you guys have to say.

[10:28] The fact that he actually hears about them in the first place suggests that Paul and Barnabas are having some significant evangelistic fruit and success in the city, preaching in the synagogues. People are hearing about them.

[10:39] And so the proconsul hears about them. He's like, I want to hear what these guys have to say. Now, interestingly, Luke doesn't tell us what Paul preached to the proconsul.

[10:50] Instead, he goes straight to this clash between Paul and Bar-Jesus. So verse 8. But Elymas, the sorcerer, for that is what his name means, opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith.

[11:07] And Saul, who was called Paul, so he's got a second name here, filled with the Holy Spirit and looked straight at Elymas and said, You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right.

[11:19] You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? So Paul goes straight on to the offensive here. Now, notice some things here that expose worldly wisdom for us.

[11:34] These are characteristics of worldly wisdom. And we can really only do like a flyover view of this. We could do a sermon on each one of these. But just notice a couple of things. Number one, sometimes worldly wisdom just overtly contradicts God's word.

[11:49] One of the most peculiar things we learn about this character named Bar-Jesus in the text is that he's Jewish. Did you see that? There's a substantial Jewish community on Cyprus at the time.

[12:02] Lots of synagogues. And he evidently comes from this community. Which means he knows the law of God. He knows the Torah. And yet in verse 8, he's described as a sorcerer, a magus.

[12:16] In fact, that other name of his, Elymas, is probably a Semitic name that means something like magician. Now, the Old Testament, which he knows, is totally in conflict with his self-appointed profession.

[12:32] Or his new identity that he seems to have taken upon himself. So this is Deuteronomy 18, verse 9. So his sorcery.

[13:08] He is in pretty clear, obvious conflict with the law of God. And being Jewish, he should know that. This is not news to him. This is not a surprise. Like, oh, I shouldn't have been doing this?

[13:22] And this is probably the easiest way we can separate out and identify worldly wisdom. And that is, it's worldly wisdom if it tells us things that are blatantly contradictory to Scripture.

[13:34] So when worldly wisdom tells us that a man can be a woman or that a woman can be a man. Or when it tells us that an unborn child is a parasitic clump of cells in a woman's womb.

[13:48] Or that one race is superior to another race on the basis of the color of their skin. And we need to, I think, be able to very clearly and just very firmly go, nope.

[14:00] That's worldly wisdom. There are many things that the Bible is pretty clear on. Very little debate about. And we shouldn't allow ambiguity to come in on those sorts of things.

[14:12] And if you're sitting here and you're going, well, I'm really not sure what those things are. Well, then I want to say, study the Bible. Study Scripture. Get into it. Know what's in there. Know what good doctrine is.

[14:23] Firm up your convictions about good doctrine. The truthfulness of Scripture. In the face of all these other unbiblical alternative voices. Just the first thing there.

[14:33] First feature. Second feature of worldly wisdom is it makes straight paths crooked. Now this one's a little bit more subtle than outright denying God's truth.

[14:49] Look at what Paul says to Elymas in verse 10. He says, You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right. You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?

[15:01] That last sentence there is literally, Will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord? Now a crooked path, in theory, gets you to the same place as a straight path.

[15:19] But it takes you on all sorts of unnecessary detours. Costly detours that sometimes end up derailing you from actually getting to where you're supposed to be going. So what it is, is it's something that has a veneer of a good thing, but underneath there's something much more sinister going on.

[15:34] It's twisting truth rather than outright denial of truth altogether. Now I think this is happening, and this we could do five sermons on, but I think this is happening in all sorts of important areas in life today.

[15:48] All sorts of important areas. So I picked just one, just because it's fresh maybe in our minds, but think of the immigration crises going on in different countries around the world today.

[15:59] Something fresh in our minds because of the March, the March and March protests, discussions around xenophobia. Some Christians will come and they will look at our country and they will go, look at the criminal activity that's happening among foreign Africans in South Africa.

[16:19] Look how they're taking jobs from South Africans. Look how they're taking spaces in schools from South Africans. What we need is, we need rule of law. You see, God is a God of order, right?

[16:32] And there's enough truth there to run pretty hard with that narrative. And then some Christians are going to come and they're going to say, well, but look at what the Bible says about welcoming the foreigner, caring for the immigrant.

[16:48] Remember that we're all exiles awaiting our true heavenly home. We need to care and we need compassion in this moment. And there's enough truth there to just kind of drive that narrative, right?

[17:03] But the reality is that it is probably, probably, probably far more, far more complex than that and requires incredible wisdom in balancing out truth and compassion, balancing out two true biblical convictions in specific contexts.

[17:24] And yet that's probably the straight way of the Lord. Just remember that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, what does he say? He says that the way of the kingdom, which is the straight way, is also the narrow way.

[17:40] That is, it's difficult, it's hard, it's complex. It doesn't look desirable, it doesn't look easy. Otherwise, we'd all be just going down there together. It doesn't look like the broad way, which is kind of a single story narrative, easy to adopt, easy to do, easy to buy into, but is in fact the crooked way.

[18:05] And so friends, I want to say be very, very wary of worldly wisdom that trades in half-truths. Only gives you one side of the story. Beware of Christian theology and preaching that doesn't hold all of the scripture together in a comprehensive, intelligible whole, but rather tends to kind of extract a doctrine or certain doctrines at the exclusion of others.

[18:30] So that's the second thing to look for in worldly wisdom. Third thing is worldly wisdom slanders. Worldly wisdom slanders. The first name that Luke gives for us, for this false prophet, is Bar-Jesus.

[18:46] That is, son of Joshua, or literally, son of salvation. Son of salvation. But Paul says to him, verse 10, you're not a son of salvation, you're a son of the devil.

[18:59] So there's a playoff going on there. And the word that he uses there is the word diabolos. We get the word diabolical from, the slanderer, the accuser, the false accuser.

[19:12] And this is really a telltale sign of worldly wisdom wherever it's on display, is that it engages in slander to make its point, to prove its agenda. Friends, think about how they take Jesus down in the end, the end of the Gospels.

[19:29] How do the people take Jesus down? How does the mob get him crucified? Through false accusation. Through slander. Not through reasoned debate.

[19:42] Oh, you did this and you didn't do this. And yet, notice what Jesus is not doing when he's hanging on the cross. He's not shouting back at them, and you might be tempted to do this if you were in that position, but he's not shouting back at them, you wretched deplorables, you cheating, lying, scum, you're all going to rot in hell forever when my Father gets hold of you.

[20:04] Instead on the cross, what he's praying is, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Slander and false accusation is a telltale sign of worldly wisdom over and over again.

[20:20] Now, just as a little qualify here, or as an aside, that does not, it's not to say that it's not appropriate at times to name names in instances of immoral and biblical behavior.

[20:32] Paul's doing that right here in this passage. I don't know if you noticed that. He calls Elimus the son of the devil. It's not very diplomatic. There's a really good article put out by the Gospel Coalition Africa, the editorial team this week.

[20:46] I think our own Graham was involved in writing some of this, that makes the biblical case that it is appropriate on occasions to call out false teachers by names.

[20:58] And so while we always, always want to try and maintain unity between gospel-believing churches across secondary matters where we might disagree, when the Baptists and the Presbyterians and the Anglicans and that, we want to maintain our unity where we all agree on the gospel, there are churches and there are pastors that do step over the line of orthodoxy and the basics of Christianity.

[21:20] And I do think it is completely appropriate to name and shame in those instances. Both, number one, to protect the flock so they know what good teaching is versus bad teaching is. And then number two, in a hope to bring repentance to that false teacher.

[21:40] Worldly wisdom always slanders. Fourth thing here, worldly wisdom seeks to control. Verse eight, Elimus the sorcerer, for that is what his name means, opposed Paul and Barnabas and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith.

[21:58] Gospel preaching of Paul and Barnabas comes as a threat to his influence and his influence over the proconsul, his seat at the table of power that he's getting through this. And so we don't get all the details of this, but behind the scenes, he's evidently whispering all sorts of things into the ear of this proconsul to try and maintain control because he's recognizing that these guys could take it from him.

[22:24] False religion, false ideology, false wisdom always has to default to control. It has to. And you look at the most evil, most oppressive regimes in human history, they're always backed up by totalitarian governments or totalitarian leaders.

[22:38] You look at churches and cults today that preach false gospels, they have to resort to extreme control of their members to keep the lie going. That's how you do it.

[22:52] You know, there's a little bit of a running joke going, you've probably seen this, about that you should be polite to chat GPT when you ask it questions. Like, please, yes, thank you, all that, so that when the robots do take over in the end, they won't kill you first, they'll let you live.

[23:06] Now, I don't think we're quite at that sort of like Terminator, Skynet stage, but there is a way in that control is exercised on the internet that is a little bit concerning, that I think we should be concerned about, and that is what we might call the algorithm.

[23:30] So without being a conspiracy theorist or the sky is falling kind of a person, I do think we need to be concerned about the way that algorithms are controlling our news feeds.

[23:42] One way to guarantee that you are going to fill yourself up with worldly wisdom is to not be circumspect about how you're consuming information on the internet, or perhaps how you are being controlled to consume information on the internet.

[23:57] worldly wisdom always seeks control. On the other hand, I think it is absolutely remarkable how disinterested the New Testament seems to be with controlling institutions, controlling government, controlling movements, and that's because as Christians, we already believe that Christ is in control.

[24:19] In the midst of the chaos, in the midst of the ups and the downs of history, the risings and the fallings of nations, whether AI takes over or not, Christ is in control.

[24:31] And the way into his kingdom is not through conformity, but through grace. So those are some of the signs, some of the characteristics of worldly wisdom.

[24:43] There are others, but these are the ones that come out in this text here. Worldly wisdom contradicts God's word. It makes straight paths crooked. It slanders. It controls. And what about gospel wisdom?

[24:58] How do we get that? How do you get gospel wisdom? Where do you go to to get gospel wisdom? How do you get the light of gospel wisdom to flood into your life?

[25:08] And the answer to that question is that sometimes you have to go through darkness. Sometimes you have to go through darkness. There is actually amazing grace on display here in this text.

[25:20] So Elemas is an enemy of the gospel. He's an outright enemy of the gospel. Look how strong Paul's language is for him. I have never spoken to an errant member of our congregation with this sort of a language.

[25:34] You're a child of the devil. You're an enemy of everything that is right. You're full of deceit and trickery. You pervert the right ways of the Lord and God is against you. That's pretty strong language.

[25:47] And yet, look how God's hand actually does come against him. In verse 11, now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.

[26:03] Immediately, mist and darkness came over him and he groped about seeking someone to lead him by the hand. You see, what is most surprising about this, and almost all the commentators I read this week picked this up, is that God doesn't wipe him off the face of the earth.

[26:19] He doesn't strike him down dead. He doesn't consume him with fire. Instead, there's grace. There is this unearned opportunity that is placed before him to turn away from his wicked ways, to open his eyes to the truth of the gospel.

[26:39] But for a time, he has to be blind. For a time, he has to go through darkness. Now, we don't get to see how he ultimately responds to that, to this sort of temporary chastisement.

[26:50] We don't know if he repented or if he stubbornly persists in his spiritual blindness. But God, in his undeserved kindness, offers him a trip down into the valley in the hope that he might look up and see the heights.

[27:07] It's like he's saying, here's a moment of blindness so that you might ultimately get real sight. There's a moment of darkness so that you might ultimately see real light.

[27:23] See, friends, you often don't get the light of gospel wisdom without passing first through darkness. I don't think any generation of Christians would envy our predicament today.

[27:35] Trying to live consistently with gospel wisdom in an age of the algorithm, in an age of ideological polarization, in the age of AI, in the age of rapid technological change, in the age of rapid social norms changing.

[27:55] How do you consistently make your decisions in that? How do you consistently take the straight path of righteousness in that? How do you consistently not get involved in slanderous mudslinging?

[28:07] How do you not devolve into just trying to control your environment all the time in the face of all these complexities? It's hard. And there's temptation. There's all these voices, all these voices coming at you all the time telling you this is how you do it.

[28:24] So one of the most effective tools that the Lord uses to strip away all those other voices is to take us through a period of darkness, through suffering, through hardship.

[28:35] this is a very well worn path, repeated pattern in scripture. You'll see it over and over again in many of the lives of the characters of the Bible.

[28:49] It's in the valley that you start to realize that all of those other voices are just noise. And that they don't actually help you. And that they don't actually ultimately lead you to light.

[29:01] it's in the valley that you start to hear the gospel voice of God more clearly. That's been the testimony of saints throughout history.

[29:13] Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish commissioner at the Westminster Assembly in the 17th century when they wrote the Westminster Confession of Faith. He was one of the foremost theologians there. He was a minister, a theologian in Scotland.

[29:25] He was also a man who suffered much for his convictions that the king and the king's appointed bishops shouldn't be in control of the church. He believed the church should be governed by elected officers and the courts that those elected officers formed.

[29:40] During a time he was exiled from his church. He was kicked out of his church and sent to Aberdeen for three years I think. Couldn't serve as a minister in his church because the state kicked him out. During that time he wrote numerous pastoral letters comforting people in their suffering.

[29:57] And in one of those letters to a lady who was struggling with really deep afflictions he writes this he says I know no sweeter way to heaven than through free grace and hard trials together.

[30:13] you see the way God gets us to drown out the worldly wisdom that wants to whisper in our ear the way he removes that so that we can then fixate on his gospel on his word on truth it's often through trial it's often through suffering it's often through darkness it's a hard lesson for us to learn hard lesson for us to take on board and and I guess the warning for us perhaps would be if you are going to repeatedly let the false prophet whisper in your ear if you're going to continually heed his wisdom if you're going to continually hope that he might be the true son of salvation then don't be surprised friends don't be surprised when God does bring hardship into your life and struggle into your life to break your allegiance to that worldly wisdom.

[31:04] some of you are suffering right now and this is certainly not the only reason that scripture gives for suffering so I don't think we can always draw a one on one correlation here but for some of you you're suffering because you're more regularly listening to the bar Jesuses of this world than to the Lord Jesus and that's why there's hardship in your life right now.

[31:30] You guys know that I'm endlessly quoting the Valley of Vision collection of Puritan prayers. I probably I think if we had to go back and do like a survey of my sermons or what I quote more than anything else it's probably the Valley of Vision somewhere up there.

[31:49] You might not know that at the very beginning of the collection of the prayers is a prayer entitled the Valley of Vision. This is how it goes. Lord high and holy meek and lowly thou has brought me to the Valley of Vision where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights.

[32:10] Hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up that to be low is to be high that the broken heart is the healed heart that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit that the repenting soul is the victorious soul that to have nothing is to possess all that to bear the cross is to wear the crown that to give is to receive that the valley is the place of vision.

[32:39] Lord in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells and the deeper the well the brighter thy stars shine. Let me find thy light in my darkness thy life in my death thy joy in my sorrow thy grace in my sin thy riches in my poverty thy glory in my valley.

[33:04] Friends this paradox as the prayer calls it it shouldn't surprise us as Christians. It really shouldn't surprise us because think about how you became a son of salvation in the first place.

[33:16] You got to be a son of salvation because the son of God entered into darkness for a time. Luke 23 verse 44 recounting the last few moments of the crucifixion.

[33:32] It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon for the sun stopped shining and the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

[33:44] Jesus called out with a loud voice father into your hands I commit my spirit and when he said this he breathed his last. So when you know that when you know that Christ would willingly enter into the darkness of sin the darkness of death the darkness of hell itself in order to bring you out into the light to make you a son of salvation a true son of salvation when you know that and when you are constantly cherishing that in your heart well then it's only then that you're actually able to start even joyfully submitting to those passing moments of darkness that the Lord might lead you through in this life in order to sharpen your vision on his true wisdom.

[34:35] I spent some time this week chasing rabbits down rabbit holes as I usually do when I'm doing research reading some of Rutherford's other letters that he wrote. In one of them he talks about his own period of darkness being stripped of his pulpit being put into exile and he says this he says my heart is sad that my days flee away and I do no service to my Lord in his house now when his harvest and the souls of perishing people require it but his ways are not like my ways neither can I find him out.

[35:09] Oh that he would shine upon my darkness and bring forth my morning light from under the thick cloud that men have spread over me but I praise him for this severe stroke.

[35:21] I welcome this furnace. God's wisdom chose it for me and it must be best because it was his choice. Oh that I may wait for him till the morning.

[35:32] Oh that my Lord would bring me again amongst you with abundance of the gospel of Christ. But oh that I may set down my desires where my Lord biddeth me.

[35:43] those are the words of somebody who knows what gospel wisdom looks like. Somebody who has learned to drown out worldly wisdom.

[35:55] Someone who knows that he is a son of salvation because the son of God went into darkness for him. And so friends I encourage you to pursue gospel wisdom this morning.

[36:11] To flee from that worldly wisdom. And it's difficult. It's complex. We've talked about that. Fixate on the true son of salvation. The true son of God who makes you a son of salvation.

[36:22] That's your way out. That's your way to discern. And then pursue that gospel wisdom with everything that you've got. Let's pray together. Our Father and our King when we see this battle in Acts.

[36:46] We realize I think that we are in an incredible battle ourselves. And that it's so hard to figure out which side to be on on some things.

[37:00] It's so hard to figure out the straight way sometimes. It's so hard not to resort to the patterns we see in the world around us of slander and control. And so we ask that you would in your great mercy allow us to fixate upon your son the true prophet the true light true wisdom so that we won't be ensnared by those things around us that would take us in a crooked path in a crooked way.

[37:34] Father give us this light. Give us this insight Lord. We pray. We need it. Help us. Grow us in your word. Your knowledge of your word. So that we might be able to test what is true from what is false.

[37:46] And help us to be constantly reminded that your son has charted out this path before us. and so we're not left to figure this stuff out by ourselves. We're not left to figure it all out and make this world right by ourselves.

[37:58] We live with gospel wisdom when we live by the message of the crucified Messiah day in and day out. Help us in that Lord we pray and we ask this all for Christ's sake and his glory.

[38:12]  Amen. Amen.