The Vanity of Earthly Wisdom and Knowledge (Ecclesiastes 1:12-18)

And we are back in Ecclesiastes.

The most depressing book in the Bible.

On three, everybody sigh with me.

One, two, three.

But the good news is we're finishing chapter one today.

The bad news is there are eleven more chapters.

But uh, you know, I I don't like doing this, uh, what I'm doing.

I'd rather Pastor Dan do this.

But I have to tell you this, and this kind of fits into what we're talking about today.

When he tells me I'm up to do the message, where does that take me?

To God's word.

I have to go to God's word.

And I find so much in God's word that I get excited about it.

I'm like, wow, this is just such cool stuff.

I can't wait to get in front of you all and tell you about it.

I just wish Dan was doing it instead of me.

So, anyway, so here we go.

The vanity.

Notice the title, the vanity of worldly wisdom and knowledge.

And that's very depressing.

And then we have so I got a subtitle there, and the subtitle questions go like this Is wisdom truly an exercise in vanity?

Is it pointless to gain knowledge?

And you all are answering those two questions in your head right now, and the answer that you guys are coming up with, I bet the majority of you are saying no to both questions.

No.

In other words, is wisdom truly an exercise of data?

No, it's not.

Is it pointless to gain knowledge?

No, it's not.

So that's where we're gonna take this trek down as we look at these uh verses in Ecclesiastes finish up chapter one.

So, as always, my apologies to you, but I am a teacher, not a preacher.

So I always insist on review, and in for Ecclesiastes, the review is always really, really, really simple.

Again, as I told you when we first started in Ecclesiastes, Solomon, as he writes this, he uses the phrase under the sun, or some synonym for under the sun.

He does it around 38 or more times.

This this phrase keeps coming up and up and up and up.

And as I've told you, really what Solomon is pointing to, he's pointing to life under the sun.

Uh Jason talked about that a little bit.

Life on this earth under the sun.

And then what then is above the sun?

Well, above the sun is God.

He's above the sun.

So, really, we have two things here, and this is going to fit into today.

A person who lives under the sun is a person who lives without Christ in their life.

That's who that person is.

They live under the sun.

So, a person for today, a person who lives under the sun, who lives without Christ, you must rely on insufficient.

This is good.

Closer?

This is our first time, folks.

And you guys get good?

All right.

Am I talking too loud?

All right.

A person who lives under the sun, a person who lives without Christ, you've got to rely on insufficient worldly wisdom and knowledge.

That's that's where you have to go.

But for a person who knows Jesus Christ, you live above the sun.

Your life is not just on earth alone.

You have this life that is above the sun.

And so godly wisdom and godly knowledge is yours.

It's yours for the taking, it's yours for the use.

You can tap into that all the times that you need to tap into that.

So, as we get into Ecclesiastes now, we're gonna go verse by verse as we usually do here at Sovereign Grace.

And 112.

Also, if you look at the back, I've got all the verses there.

We're gonna start in 112, 13a.

I, the preacher, have been king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under the sun.

What we have here is this really, really good positive beginning.

Now remember, always in the first 11 verses, Solomon has spent his time and he's been like, life stinks, life's useless, life's vanity, life has no point to it, life is pointless.

He does that in the first 11 verses in all kinds of different ways.

That's what he does.

Then you get to verse 12, and he says, I, the preacher, have been, and I applied my heart to seek out thy wisdom.

So now he's going to turn to really what is the strongest, one of the strongest elements of Solomon's life.

He's going to turn to wisdom.

Remember, God made him the wisest person on the face of the earth.

Nobody's been wiser than Solomon since.

So now Solomon and say, Hey, let's talk about wisdom.

Let's bring wisdom into this picture.

And notice that he says, applied my heart.

He's going to be diligent about this.

He's going to say, yes, let's study wisdom.

Let's get into this and see if this has the answer.

Is this the answer to all?

But look what else what he says.

Where's it at?

Where's this wisdom at?

Under heaven.

He's keeping it under the sun.

He's looking at it from just a worldly wisdom.

That's all.

Worldly wisdom and worldly knowledge.

He's keeping it under there.

Which leads then logically, what we have to look then, it leads logically to this in 13 B 14.

It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

I have seen everything that is done.

Where?

Under the sun.

And behold, all is vanity and a striving after the wind.

What's the unhappy business?

Life.

Life.

Life is the unhappy business.

Who's giving us that life?

Unhappy business given by who?

God.

God has given us this unhappy business.

So now he's back under the sun.

And he's saying, and it really is what he's saying to all of us is you can't escape this.

You can't go to Mars and have drinks on the house.

You can't.

This is it.

This is what you have.

This is what I've given you.

So what we have to figure out is why?

Why has he given us this unhappy business?

What's his plan in giving us this unhappy business under the sun?

And with that.

Now, I want to, before I leave here, I want to I want to ask you this.

Would this be different?

Let's suppose 1213 BC, it is an unhappy business that God has given to the, now pay attention.

It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of God to be busy with.

Does that change it at all?

Does that change it for you as a believer?

Does that change it for you?

And the answer is yes.

That does change it.

That's not what the scripture says, but that does change it if it said that.

But as we go through this, I want you to see how that changes for you.

Why that makes it different for you.

That's a picture of me.

I've just finished trying to teach sophomores about Shakespeare.

What vanity?

What vanity is this?

No, it's not really me.

But I want you to take that idea.

Now, the reason why I said Shakespeare, does anybody recognize the heading there?

Now is the winter of our discontent?

Anybody recognize that?

Guess where that's from?

Shakespeare.

Shakespeare, Richard III, that play.

Such a good line.

This is such a good line.

What Shakespeare is saying, discontent, unhappy business.

Let's connect discontent, unhappy business.

What's winter saying?

It's the lowest of the low.

You can't get lower.

Unhappy business, but it's the winter.

It's the worst possible.

It's the worst possible life I could possibly have.

This is the bottom.

I'm at absolute bottom here.

I guarantee you, if you talk to somebody who is contemplating suicide, they would say, now's the winter of my discontent.

I'm over this.

I'm done.

I guarantee you that if you talk to somebody and they were turning to alcohol or to drugs, they would be basically saying, I need an escape.

I need out of here.

I need out.

And this is the only escape I have because this is the winter of my discontent.

This is the lowest of lowest.

So we as believers in Christ, we hear these questions all the time.

Why does God allow this?

Why?

He's God.

Why can't he do something about this?

Hear those that kind of question all kinds of ways and in all kinds of circumstances.

What do we believers, what do we believers know?

What we know is what's found in Genesis 3, verses 17 and 19.

Genesis 3:17

Let me read that.

Cursed is the ground because of you.

In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

What's the state of the world?

It's cursed.

What are you gonna do about it?

What can you do about it?

It's a cursed life.

God has made it so.

He has cursed the world.

Nothing you can do about that, folks.

It's cursed.

You cannot do it, you can't change it.

But we also have to believers, number one, as believers in Christ, we need to know this.

We need to know that this world is cursed, it's not gonna get better.

Number two, we need to know how we are going to operate in that and why.

Why are we going to operate this way?

And the why of how we operate that way has everything to do with what?

Him.

Him.

The way we operate under that curse has to do with him.

Always in every way.

And that's hopefully where we land as we get to the end.

So I'm gonna flip the script for you.

This comes from 1 Kings 10, Queen of Sheba.

Now I got to set this up for you.

The Queen of Sheba had her had her uh kingdom, it was south of Solomon's kingdom.

She was south.

She kept hearing all these great and good things about what Solomon was doing.

Uh people would come back to her after visiting Solomon's kingdom.

They say, Oh man, you that guy, he's he's rocking it.

That guy's doing everything.

That guy, he's amazing.

You gotta go, you gotta go up there and see that.

You gotta go do all that.

You gotta go see what he's doing.

So, what does she do?

She packs up and she says, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go find out about this guy.

So she goes up uh to visit Solomon, and this is what happens when she gets there.

And when the Queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, his burnt offerings that he offered to the house of the there was no more breath in her.

That doesn't mean she literally died.

I mean she's just breathless.

She's like awed by what she's seeing.

She's like, oh my goodness, look at what this guy's done.

She's breathless.

She's in complete awe of what he's doing.

Then we go on.

And she said to the king, the report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came, and my own eyes had seen it.

And behold, the half was not told me.

Has anybody ever shown you this picture?

And you know, they they got this beautiful picture and they show it to you, and then their next thing is, yeah, the picture doesn't do it justice.

That's exactly what's what she's saying there.

The half of it was not, I had no idea.

I heard all Patrick, I just broke it.

Patrick, it's fixed.

So she's saying, This is more than I could even imagine.

This is incredible.

So uh it surpasses the report that I heard.

So she is amazed.

Now, think about what she's amazed about.

She's amazed at how Solomon used his wisdom, Solomon used his knowledge to create this wonderful kingdom in all kinds of different ways.

And she gives us some of those examples there, all the different great ways that he's created this kingdom.

It's very, whoa, check this out.

My point and my question to you, then therefore, is knowledge and wisdom, can it be a good thing?

Yes, it can be a good thing.

How many of you would rather, let's say you are you need some doctoring?

How many of you would prefer to have a doctor from today who has today's techniques and today's knowledge?

Or would you prefer to be doctored by a doctor out of the 1800s with their techniques and with their knowledge?

Which way do you want to go?

Okay.

Would you rather ride drive around in your air-conditioned car or have to go around a horse and buggy?

Which way?

Car?

Thank you, Juliet.

Yes.

Aren't you glad that pizza made it from Italy over to here?

Yes.

Yes.

That's progress, right?

Knowledge and wisdom is good.

It has so much good to it.

And God verifies that.

He sets the curse, right?

He's he's he's made the curse.

We're in a horrible, horrible world, but he also promotes wisdom and knowledge.

From Proverbs 1:22, how long will simple ones will you love being simple?

Proverbs 1:22

How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

Get wisdom, get insight, do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.

The beginning of wisdom is this get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.

From Proverbs 18:50.

An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.

You nailed it.

Yeah, I gotta ask you this though.

You've got four verses up there.

Which verse is the most important verse?

I'm gonna give you a hint.

It's not number one or it's not number four.

So which one is the most important verse?

Good job, yeah.

That was well, hey, fist bump, girl.

Okay, no.

No, two! Listen, Abby.

Two.

Why?

Why is two the most important verse there?

Get wisdom, get inside, do not forget, and what?

Do not turn away from his word.

His word is central to it all.

We are never ever to turn away from his word.

That is where we find knowledge, that is where we find wisdom.

If we turn away from that, we're in trouble.

What's it look like?

This idea hit me, and I thought, I'm gonna run with this and see what happens.

I'm gonna put two camps up there: spiritual Christianity versus intellectual Christianity.

All right, let's talk about in a worship service.

For those who lean towards spiritual Christianity, in a worship service, typically it's the songs of worship that is that they are attracted to most.

They they love the songs of worship.

They're in the the spiritual Christianity, or you could say the emotional mood.

It's the singing, it's the songs, and it's all that.

Prayer's always going to be important, but the message is not quite as important as the singing for a spiritual.

Now you say, Dan, how do I know this?

Well, I grew up in a Pentecostal family, so there you go.

I loved going home to my mom and dad and going to their Pentecostal church with him.

I love that.

I really enjoyed that.

The reason I enjoyed that, I enjoyed being with a group of people where this spiritual life was so important to them.

This spiritual way of having worship was just so important to them.

And I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this.

Another group we have is the charismatics.

The charismatics, this this spiritual way, this spiritual way of doing things is so key to them.

Over on the other side, we have intellectual, intellectual uh Christianity.

Now we've got a shift.

The intellectual Christian, it's the message that's most important.

They come to church, they come to the worship service because they want to hear a good, good, strong message.

Prayer's in a good spot, and then the song's like, okay, yeah, I'll get up, I'll sing, yeah, whatever.

And that's kind of how they they approach that.

Now, where's the best spot?

Probably in the middle, right?

In the middle where you want the message and and you want that.

Now, how do you tell?

I think it's always funny when outside church.

When you get into a car with a person who's more towards the spiritual side, what's the radio on?

Kla.

It's on K Love.

It's like, okay, let's do K love.

Yeah.

If you get into an intellectual Christian's car, number one, they don't even know what K love is, right?

You say K love to an intellectual Christian, they're like, number one, you didn't complete your sentence.

Number two, it's not grammatically correct.

It should be K loves, and then somebody over here, K loves Dawn.

That's the way it should be.

Because they don't they don't have any clue.

And so that's again how you begin to pick it out.

But as they live their life, uh, spiritual Christians kind of tend towards, I want, you know, music does something to me.

Christian music does something for me.

So that's okay, that's good, right?

And so, yeah, you go that way, and then the prayer, and then the Bible study, and all that sort of stuff is kind of down.

Reverse that with an intellectual Christian, and you've got they want Bible study, they want listening to sermons.

An intellectual Christian comes into our church and they they they meet they leave mad because the message wasn't two hours long.

Why didn't he go two hours?

He needed to preach two hours, they're just ticked off.

He only went an hour, but that's what they desire.

They want to know the Bible, they want to, they want to study God's word, they want to do all that, right?

And listening, Christian music, yeah, okay, whatever.

Those need to be melded.

That needs to be together, right?

There needs to be that meeting where we find that.

So let's look at that.

Because there is, there's a part of this that is more important than the other.

All right, you guys, and you guys stay, you gotta stay with me with this.

One is more important than the other because one is more foundational to the others.

It's found this way.

Uh, Bill read from Psalm 19.

What's the best way to know God?

Two paths.

Thank you, Diane.

We're gonna come back to that, lady.

First one is through his creation.

Psalm uh uh Psalm 19, one and two.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out knowledge, and night to night reveals knowledge.

We know him through his creation.

We go out and say, Yeah, God created this, God made this.

So, there, Diane's to Diane's point, the other way is through his word.

That's the only two ways.

That's the only two ways you can know God through his word, through his creation.

Psalm uh 1978 says, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple, the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

What's all that talking about?

His word.

He's talking about his word.

You have to know his word.

The word is foundation, a person who is In his word, a person who is in Bible study, a person who is opening his his scriptures and he's studying his scriptures, he's laying or she's laying this great, great foundation for the spiritual side of his or her worship.

It doesn't work well the other way.

It doesn't work the other way.

Yeah.

If I uh if I lean over here and is if my experience as a believer in Christ is emotional, what happens to my emotions?

Do they go up?

Do they go down?

I don't feel like praising and worshiping today.

Oh, today I feel like praising worshiping.

I don't feel like club today.

Yeah, I feel like K Love today.

What's that?

That just that just jerks you around, right?

But when your foundation is God's word, when that's where you start and begin, and you're knowing more and more about Him, then that really elevates your spiritual worship.

It works really, really well that way.

So I go to Yeah, there we go.

So believers in Christ, guess what?

You must teach yourself to be a dogged, dogged, dogged pursuer of God.

Pursue Him, pursue truth, pursue beauty, pursue knowledge, pursue peace, pursue all these attributes that he has.

He's a perfect being.

He has everything that you could ever want.

All we need to do as believers in Christ is to pursue him in whatever ways we can pursue him.

And the path is you've got to pursue him through his word.

You've got to open your Bible, and you've got to be in Bible study, and you've got to have devotions, and you've got to have this Bible cracked open so that you can pursue him.

You can't pursue him any other way.

There's no other way to pursue him.

That's the path.

That then amplifies your ability to worship, your ability to praise, your ability to break into song, your ability to go to Caleb and say, Yes, let's do this, Caleb.

Whatever that means.

Let's.

But it begins with his word.

Does God limit knowledge and wisdom?

Oh yeah.

In verse 15, this is what Solomon writes.

What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

Guess what?

We lived in a cursed world, so guess what?

Thank you, Addie.

Good go.

Utopia does not exist.

It doesn't exist.

If you're going through life, you're thinking, man, this is gonna cause, this is gonna give me utopia.

This is gonna give me the life I want.

This is gonna be the answer to everything.

This is this is it.

This is nirvana, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

No, it's not.

Guess what?

You're gonna you ain't finding it.

Just not.

There's no utopia.

What is crooked cannot be made straight?

The crooked things of life.

Can you stop death?

Can you stop disease?

Can you stop injustice?

Can you stop tragedy?

The crooked cannot be made straight.

Can't do it.

What are the things that are missing?

Do you have perfect peace?

It's missing.

Do you have perfect joys?

No, it's missing.

Do you have perfect goodness?

No, it's missing.

Do you have perfect truth?

No.

There's all things in life that are missing that we just we can't get.

As much as I want to have perfect peace, I can't get it.

I can't have these slivers of peace.

As much as I want goodness in my life, I can have a sliver of goodness, but there's not a way in the world I can have perfect goodness.

I cannot do it.

The curse on this world is alive and well.

So why?

Why has he put us here?

Why doesn't he fix things?

Why doesn't he make it right?

Why does this person die?

One of the great injustices of the world is a child dying before the parent dies.

What's right about that?

What's good about that?

But it happens, it happens again and again and again and again.

It happens.

All that is intended for us to be drawn towards him.

Not drawn towards suicide, not drawn towards the bottle, not drawn towards drugs, but drawn towards him.

Two great verses out of Romans 11:33.

Romans 11:33

Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways.

And then from 1 Corinthians 13, 12, for now we see in a mirror all dimly, but then face to face, now I know in part, then I shall, then what's then?

What's the then?

When Paul goes to be with his Savior, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

There you go.

That's why we don't get wrapped up in this life.

We as believers in Christ, we do not get wrapped up in there.

We don't.

We don't allow that.

We recognize there's a curse.

We recognize that life stinks.

We don't get wrapped up in that.

Why?

We live where?

Above the sun.

We don't dwell under the sun.

We live above.

I'm going to dim mirror question you up there.

Do you think God might be excited about the moment that you come to be with him?

You think he might be excited about that?

Do you?

Is he going to be excited when you show up?

We find that answer actually in John 14, 3.

Jesus talking to the disciples.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that what?

Where I am, you are.

You think he's excited about that?

Absolutely he's excited.

He can't wait.

Sinner that I am, despicable that I am, he can't wait for me to be there.

He can't wait for me to show up.

Yeah.

Dan Ashton's coming.

Right?

Yeah.

Right.

Also, wisdom knowledge is insufficient minus God's wisdom.

This is this is how he ends in Ecclesiastes.

Uh Solomon writes, I said in my heart, I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me.

And my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

Okay.

Here's Solomon again.

Hey, I'm it.

I'm the wise guy.

I mean that in a good way.

I'm I'm the wise.

I got all the wisdom.

Then look what he says.

And I applied my heart to no wisdom and to no wisdom.

Well, I screwed that one up.

And to no wisdom and to no folly.

That's the way that should read.

My bad.

I perceived that I screwed that line up, that this also is but a striving after wind.

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Anytime we tap into worldly wisdom, anytime we tap into worldly knowledge, and we don't even attempt to find godly wisdom, godly knowledge, and where do we find godly wisdom, godly knowledge?

Where do we find that?

Where do we find that?

His word.

We find it in his word, right?

So it be very insufficient.

Then we're just left with worldly wisdom.

And James writes about this.

This comes from the God uh the epistle of James.

Verse 13 Who is wise in understanding among you?

Who's wise in understanding among you?

By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.

Then James comes back to wisdom.

This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, and even what?

Demonic.

But the wisdom from above, and get these qualities, great qualities.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, then gentle, open to reason, full of mercy, and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

Queen Sheba goes to Solomon's kingdom.

She sees, she's just like, wow, look at this.

Look at all the good that this man has done in building his kingdom.

Look at the prosperity.

She mentions his prosperity.

She mentions his look at this.

Look at this.

And the point that she's making is that even while we live here, us having wisdom and knowledge is really, really, really good.

How does man screw that up?

Every single time.

And I I've got one example, nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy is the most efficient, it's the most least, it's the least expensive, it's the cleanest energy on the face of the earth.

There's no better energy than nuclear energy.

What has man done with that?

He took that same information and he created what?

Bombs.

Bombs that destroyed life.

Man is always capable of taking knowledge and wisdom and creating something good out of it.

And then man says, Oh, you know what?

We need something evil here.

We got something really good.

Now let's make something really evil, and this is gonna be so cool.

We're gonna blow up the world.

That sort of thing.

I've got proliferation of genders, and I need to talk about this too, because I think this is important.

And I need to say this first.

If a transgender person came to me and talked to me, and I would I would pretty much say, you know what?

You do you.

You, you know, you you believe this, you you just go ahead, you do you, right?

You do you.

What I would never allow them to do though is say it's truth.

Me pretending, you pretending to be a man when you're a woman is not truth.

You pretending to be a woman when you're actually a man, that is not truth.

How do I know that?

How do I know that?

Is that an opinion of Dan Ashton?

It's in God's word, it's in the word.

Right at the very beginning of Genesis.

God created male and he created female.

XXXY.

There's no XXY XX.

You know, there's none of that.

It's XXXY.

That's it.

That's it.

What we have now is we have this progressivism, and that progressivism is saying we don't need the Bible.

We are many gods ourselves, and we can create progress and we can create wisdom in and of ourselves, and we keep going down that road.

That's where James is speaking to.

That's not wisdom.

That's not wisdom, that's wrong.

That's demonic.

That's evil.

That's not true.

That's not the way it should be.

And I'll never buy that truth.

I'll never say you're true there.

So that's what we're left.

We subtract God's wisdom, all we got is earthly wisdom.

And it's that's not good.

It's not a good spot to be.

Just not.

So what do we do?

How do we walk?

Do we walk in despair?

Do we walk in depression?

Do we continue to walk under the sun?

Resoundly, no, that is not how we walk.

We don't.

We are believers in Christ.

We are people who live above the sun.

We are people who know what's happening under the sun, and we say we're not gonna live there.

We're not gonna stay there.

And why can we say that?

Because of these three truths.

Whatever happens to you in your life, whatever happens to somebody in your life that you love, whatever happens, is God still on his throne?

Is he?

Is Jesus Christ still your Savior?

Yes.

Does the Holy Spirit still reside within you?

Will he ever leave you?

No, he will not.

And so, also, too, one little side bit there.

We need to desire wisdom and knowledge, and it needs to be godly wisdom and knowledge, but we don't desire it for our gain.

That's not why we're doing this.

We don't desire that for our gain.

We desire it in order to bring glory to God.

That's why we're here.

When we get up in the morning, what's our big thing?

What's our big goal?

What should be our big goal?

We get up in the morning, what's our big goal?

I gotta glorify God.

How do I glorify God this day?

This is the day the Lord has made.

This day.

I will glorify him in this day.

I'm gonna close here.

As you guys know, I'm one my favorite prayer in the Bible is Philippians 1, 9 through 11.

In my opinion, which is wise, which is truth.

The best prayer in the Bible is in my opinion, Philippians 1, 9 through 11.

This is a prayer that I pray for you all regularly.

Pam, I pray for you in this way.

Sierra, I pray for you in this way.

Gary, I really, really, really, really pray for you.

It's such a good prayer, and I'm not gonna go through it, but I want to point out two things.

And it is my prayer that what?

Your love may do what?

Abound more and more in what?

Knowledge and discernment.

Discernment's a synonym for wisdom.

My prayer for you is that your love is going to abound in wisdom and discernment.

In other words, my prayer is that your love, your love, is going to meld with your wisdom and discernment.

That's that's the prayer, right?

What kind of love are we talking about?

What's the greatest commandment?

What is the greatest commandment?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and body, right?

That's the greatest commandment.

Put that commandment with wisdom and discernment.

Now you've got something, right?

Now that's really, really, really good.

Love and also, too, you know, I told you that an intellectual Christian and a spiritual Christian, they kind of have to merge together.

That's basically what that first part of that verse does, is that merges that together.

Now, a lot of blah blah blah blah blah.

You guys gonna let me get away with that?

It's not blah blah.

I want to go to the end.

Comes through Jesus Christ to what?

For what reason?

What reason?

To the glory and praise of God.

May your love abound still more and more in wisdom and all discernment, all to the praise and glory of God.

That's us.

That's us.

Everybody got that?

All right.

I'm gonna use that for the benediction.

Consider yourself benedictized, and I'll be done.