Now I would like to turn, if you will, please, to the second chapter of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs in the Old Testament, second chapter of Proverbs. From verse one. My son, if thou wilt receive my words and hide my commandments with thee, so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding, Yay, if thou cryest after knowledge and lifted up thy voice for understanding, if thou seekest her as silver and searches for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord giveth wisdom, out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He lays up sound wisdom for the righteous. He is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. He keepeth the paths of judgment and preserveth the way of his saints. Then shalt thou understand righteousness and judgment and equity, yea, every good path. When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee, to deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh forward things, who leave the paths of righteousness, to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the forwardness of the wicked, whose ways are crooked, and they forward in their paths. To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flatteth with her words, which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. for her house inclineth unto death, and her pals unto the dead. None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the pals of life, that thou mayst walk in the way of good men, and keep the pals of the righteous. For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressor shall be rooted in it. out of it. May God bless that portion from his word. Shall we seek God's face again, please. Blessed God, our Father, we bow before thee once more. We thank thee that, as we were hearing this morning, thou hast given to thy church the Holy Spirit. And we read this morning, he should guide you into all truth. He should take of the things of mine and reveal them to you, and bring to your remembrance the things which I have said. And so, Lord, tonight we cast ourselves upon thee, and upon the Holy Spirit. We thank thee. The Holy Spirit is in our midst. We cannot see, but he's here. And we pray, Lord, that he might speak to our hearts tonight. We do not have to have or do not wish to have words of our own. but we have thy precious word, the living, unchangeable word of God, which liveth and abideth forever, the word of God, the entrance of which giveth light. So we pray thy word tonight might be taken by the Spirit of God and applied to our hearts for thy glory. We ask it in the precious name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. Several weeks ago, Last Sunday night I was speaking here. We spoke on the first chapter of Proverbs and we said that possibly we might make this a study for the future Sunday evenings for a while if we get the opportunity to speak. I've been kind of led to study this book for several reasons. I think I mentioned last time that we were reading it in the Scripture Union portion. refreshed it to my memory. And then we received a book in the bookstore written by our brother MacDonald, Bill MacDonald, William MacDonald. It's called Listen, My Son. I noticed they're all gone. I told you about them last time. I'll get some more. It's a very good book, very simple. He just takes the thirty-one chapters of Proverbs and gives a little verse, a little commentary on each verse. For many years of my life, I did what many Christians do. And I learned this from an evangelist who stayed with us. Soon after we were married, we had an evangelist, two evangelists, two stayed with us for seven weeks when we had a wonderful big tent mission. And one of these men was amongst those men that made me what I am today. As I look back on life, I can perhaps count about five men. You know, you meet with some people and something in them brushes off on you. And this is one of the men that helped to form and make me good or bad, whatever it is. He helped to make me what I am. But this man told me this, that it would be a good thing, and it is a good thing, to take the thirty-one chapters of the book of Proverbs, and every morning when you get up and you tear off the calendar and you see the date, read that chapter in Proverbs. Thirty-one chapters. one chapter for each day of the month. And I did that for years. I don't know how many years, maybe five or six years. Every day I read a chapter from Proverbs. And I learned many, many things. Now years have passed by, and I don't remember. Some things are very outstanding in my mind. But to refresh them, I find it's great delight. We talked a little bit last time about King Solomon. What a wise man he was. The wisdom that God gave him. And he wrote these Proverbs. Now, as we said last time, the Proverbs is not like the majority of the books of the Bible, not like the New Testament books. The New Testament books, we have consecutive teachings. Each verse expands into the next verse, and God is unfolding and revealing his will and his mind to us for this age in which we live and for his future glory. But not so in the Proverbs. The Proverbs is a collection of Proverbs. of sayings out in the East. They have some very, very wise sayings. I learned that when I lived there. And Solomon gathered all the wisdom of the ages before him and put them all in a book called Proverbs. So it's little, trite, beautiful, meaningful verses gathered together, but you can't find a consecutive teaching in them. Although I think the Holy Spirit has really laid it out with some headlines and points here which God can apply to our hearts. In this second chapter, and I would like to talk our, I would like to call our talk tonight, the ways of wisdom, the ways of wisdom. The two words in this chapter which stand out, little words, the first word in the first verse is if, if. This states a condition, if. And we'll find in a moment that there are six things coming under this word if. Six things. And then go down further to verse five, it says then. And down in verse nine it says, Then. So these two are connected together. It's a matter of consequences. If you do this, then this will happen. Now this is God's way of working. This is what happens in many things in life. If I do this, then I'll get this result. And this is what Solomon is telling us. He's speaking to his son. And he says six things. And these are the conditions for acquiring the knowledge of God. You'll find down there in verse five, Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. How do I find the knowledge of God? Of course, we have to remember that this was written a thousand years before Christ. This was written back before the revelations of the New Testament, had been made known to the sons of men. This was written in the days... when Solomon built the temple in the days of the Jewish ritual and religion and the famous Ten Commandments which God gave to the children of Israel. Wonderful commandments. They've never been abrogated. They're as good today as they ever will. You can't get saved by them because nobody can keep them. The whole thing that we kind of get foul of in the commandments is that some people think that They can keep the commandments, and that's the way to get in heaven, but you can't do it. Because we break the very first. The first is, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. One of us here tonight that's ever done that. Love the Lord our God with all our mind. So we've broken it from the beginning. And if you break one, you're guilty of all. That's what the Bible says. So you can't get to heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments, but God has given commandments. All his word, as we said this morning, all his word, it's a commandment too. It's a series of commandments and rules for us. And so Solomon is telling his son, if you want to get the knowledge of God, there are certain conditions. There are certain things you have to do to get the knowledge of God. Now some people today, they search and search and search and try always to find out about God, but the last thing in the world they're going to do is open this book. And this is the only place they can find it. But somehow their minds are made up, that's old-fashioned. That's not for me. I'm not going to go that way. So they're going to go their own way and then never, never get there. The only way is in this book because God has revealed himself in this word. I sometimes sit down in utter amazement as I contemplate the fact that we've got this Bible in our hands. The God, the God of heaven, should write a book and should inspire certain men to write these wonderful words for us and to preserve them all down through the ages. We have this wonderful book. preserved and we have it in our own hands and wonder of wonders in our own mother tongue and we can read it and the weight of God is through the book now let's look at some of these gifts if thou wilt one receive my words now we must apply it in our modern time today receive my words Solomon might have been suggesting that his son listens to his words, his father's words. That may be true. But we today have got to apply it to this book. This is God's word. If thou wilt receive my word, that's the first thing. As we quoted in prayer, the entrance of thy word giveth light. The secret of salvation. The secret of the knowledge of God. The secret of the paths of life are all in this book. So he says to his son, if you want to be saved, let's make it quite straight. If you want to be saved and make a success of your life, receive my word. How I thank God as I look back over life for the wonderful influence of early days, for growing up in a meeting like this, for going and sitting by my parents' side, on the seat every Sunday morning at the Lord's table. I didn't know what it meant in those days as I grew up from infancy, the first place I ever went, the first place my mother took me. When I was one month old, she took me to the Lord's table with her. I've been there, I was there this morning too, after all these years. And this is how we learn the lessons in early life, the lessons from the Word of God. My son, if you'll receive my words, How I thank God that as a young man, as a teenager, earlier in that, God saved me at ten years of age, and from then nothing in the world would keep me from attending the Wednesday night Bible study. I was there every week. Never said one word, but listened and listened and listened. Until at twenty-five years of age, I had to leave, I left home. But all those years... Every Wednesday I was listening to those old brethren as they just talked about and talked about the Word of God. And that's where we learned. That was the Bible school we went to. And that's where we learned to receive God's Word. If ye will receive my words, one. Two. And hide my commandments with thee. The psalmist said, Psalm-a-hundred-and-nineteen. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Thy word have I hid in my heart. Hide my commandments. How good it is to memorize the Scripture. And I'll tell you something. The time to memorize the Scripture is when you're young. There are a few young people here tonight. Get to learn the verses of the Bible now whilst you're young. Because you won't be able to learn them when you get older. Some of us have struggled through. Miss Barsox and some of us have and Mrs. Bonnie and some of us have got through and said the whole five years course of memory of the Bible Memory Association. We've done that even in our later life, but I tell you what, you haven't got it there all the time unless you do like the navigators do. Review, review, review. That's to say, say them over every day, every day, every day. And in these busy days you don't have time to do that. But if you learn them young, they're with you all your life. And so he says, hide my word in thine heart. Hide my commandments with thee. Thirdly, cry after knowledge. We know, incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to understand. I think I missed that verse when I wrote this down. incline thine heart unto wisdom and apply thy heart to understanding the wisdom of God is in this book Christ is the wisdom of God and he's in this book so the wisdom of God is here he says incline let your life be that which is leaning towards inclining towards this wisdom I'm not talking about worldly wisdom I'm not talking about the wisdom you'll get in the universities good as that might be I'm talking about the wisdom of God which is found in the University of God. This book is God's University and this is where we learn. And he says, incline your heart to it. Lean towards it, press towards it, if thou wilt incline thine heart unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding. Get understanding, the understanding from the Word of God, and apply yourself to it. You know, this is the way of salvation. A man can be living in utter darkness and not know the way of salvation at all, but if you take the book, read the Bible. We had a lovely letter, we'll probably read it one of these nights. We had a lovely letter yesterday, I think, from Ellis Spees, that's Bill and Ellis Spees out there in Zaire. They were telling us of how the natives out there are applying themselves to these and learning the word of God. And they told us of one man, and he was a well-to-do native out there, a businessman, and they couldn't get first base with him, but they gave him a copy of the late great planet Earth. He read it and God saved him. There's salvation in that book, you know, because he brings the gospel in it. The late, great son of God, and God saved him. And now he's a great testimony for the Lord. And so you can get salvation by reading the Word of God. In fact, to me, I'd rather meet a man that has been saved alone with God. When God is revealed to him the way of salvation from the Word of God, that's a revelation. And that man becomes a strong Christian. I've observed that as I've gone through life. That those who get saved through the revelation from the Word of God, applied by the Spirit of God, they are strong Christians because it's a direct revelation from God. But the man you've got to bring to the front and shake his hand and push him and push him and push him and wonder if he's going to get saved or no. He doesn't come out so strongly as the man that's inclined his heart to it. and it's been revealed from the Word of God. If thou cryest after knowledge, and lifted up thy voice for understanding, oh, that men and women had a desire to really get the understanding and the knowledge of the Word of God. He says, cry after it, lift up your voice and shout for it to get the knowledge that's in this book. And people put the book on the shelf, and they tell us God is dead, and that book's out of date. But it's in other days, just the same old book, and the knowledge of God is in this book. So he says, cry after it. Thank God for all the young people that go to these Bible schools and study, because they don't learn as we used to learn when I was a boy. They don't have the Bible study. classes and the young people mix with the older people. They want to have the young people's church and the young people's this and the young people's something else. But when I was a boy, it was one church. We read of the church which is in thy house, the children and the parents all together, the family worship. That's how God intended it to be. We departed from that in these days. And the result is the young people don't grow up with the knowledge of the Word of God. And when they get saved and they have a desire to go and learn the Word of God, they have to go to a Bible school to learn it because they never learned it when they were young because it didn't apply themselves to it. So he says, if you seek after it, cry after it, search after it, yea, he says, if thou seekest her as silver, think of the man that go out long, journeys out into the far, away places and search in the silver mines and dig and dig and dig and search. What for? To find silver. And he says, if thou searchest, if thou seekest her as for silver, and searchest for her as for hidden treasures, this is the way we should come to the Word of God. And we Christians that have been on the road a long time, we can learn more and more and more about our blessed Savior. and more and more about His plan and will for our lives and the wonderful future He's prepared for His church and for God is prepared for His Son if we'll search it out. There is no easy way of learning the Scriptures. It's hard. You can't pick the Scripture up and like you could a textbook and get it all laid out beautifully for you. You've got to dig for it. You've got to search it out. You've got to get down that margin in the middle of your Bible and compare verse with verse and turn over the chapters and come back. Sometimes tiring. You've got to have something to keep in that place when you get over to this place, but you've got to come back to it. And that's the way to study the Word of God. Then you get out some commentary here and another one there. Sometimes I find out my just got a half a dozen books and a concordance and my Bible and some notes. And you wonder, well, where are we? But this is how it's done. You've got to search it out. like a man searching for silver, like a man searching for hidden treasures. Then, we get the word then. The conditions for acquiring the knowledge of God, these things I have been enumerating. Now the results of acquiring the knowledge of God. Then, I love the word then here. If I do all this and all this, then... And the word of God doesn't lie, you know. The word of God is sure. God says, you do this and I'll do that. This is what he does. Then, verse nine, verse five, thou shalt understand the fear of the Lord. The first thing he mentions is the fear of the Lord. What does that mean? That doesn't mean to say I'm afraid of God. That doesn't mean that at all. The fear of the Lord means that I recognize God is a holy person. God. I recognize that God is sovereign. I recognize that God has the right to do with me just what he wants to do with me. He's God. And I bow before him in reverence and holy adoration and recognize God as God. That's the fear of the Lord. I'm not frightened of God. There was a time when we were afraid. I remember when I was afraid to go to sleep at night when I wasn't saved. But I love Romans five, verse one. Wherefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Wonderful. We have peace with God. Not a cloud between us. Nothing between God and us. All cleansed and put away by his blessed son at the place called Calvary. We have peace with God. And if you do all these things, Jesus, you'll understand the fear of God. It means the reverence of God. It means the recognition of God. It means the very opposite of saying God is dead. It means that God is very much alive and God is in my life and every day I recognize him in every detail. And I'm not going to go here or go there or do this and do that, which would not be in accordance with the will and the mind of God, the fear of God. Then should thou understand the fear of God? How do I know exactly what God would have me do? How do I know what the holy God, that sinless, spotless, holy person, the divine being called God? How do I know what he wants to do in my life? How? He says you'll understand it if you take this book and you yield your life to him. I'll tell you what. If there's someone here unsaved tonight, you say, well, I don't understand the book. Can't make it out. How could you? The Bible is a spiritual book and spiritual things are spiritually discerned. If you haven't got the Spirit of God dwelling in you, you'll never know it. But if you search and diligently search out, there come a moment in your life when the Spirit of God will reveal it to you. And the moment that happens and you take Christ as your Savior, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That moment the Holy Spirit enters and the whole book becomes a new thing, a new thing altogether. You read verses, you read before, you couldn't understand and now they're glowing with light and wisdom and knowledge, the wisdom of God. And so he said, if you want real wisdom, this is the way. Then shall thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. What a wonderful term. The knowledge of God. To know him. The Lord Jesus said in that wonderful prayer as he crossed over the Brook Kedron, probably, no, just before he crossed the Brook Kedron, I suppose, somewhere on that rugged pathway leading down that zigzag path from the upper room down to the Brook Kedron, somewhere he stopped and he prayed and said, Father, the hour has come. And then he said this, verse three, I think, of chapter seventeen of John. And this is life eternal. This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God. That's life. That's eternal life. You might know God. And he says, you'll find the knowledge of God. That's eternal life. That they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast said, O friend, here tonight, do you know God? Do you really know him? is he your God, is he become your Father through Jesus Christ? Then shalt thou understand the fear of God and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord giveth wisdom. You say, well, the professor gives me wisdom in the university. That's not what it says at all. The Lord giveth wisdom. Out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. Jehovah the Lord, he gives wisdom. Out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. Now the Lord doesn't speak to us today like he did. He spoke to Solomon directly in a dream, it says. He doesn't do that today with us. But he speaks to us out of this wonderful word, I say once more. The Lord giveth wisdom and out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous. He's a buckler to them that walk uprightly. In these days when they, you don't know which way to turn. You can't believe this man, you can't believe that man, you don't, you read the newspapers and they're just a, it seems to me all they got is lies on every page. Imagination, innuendo, suggestions, They think something, they might say something about a man. Tomorrow it's a fact the man has done it, whether he's done it or no, because one day they said, perhaps he did that. Then tomorrow it's a fact he's done it. But the Lord gives wisdom, not the kind of stuff you get in the universities or in the newspapers. The Lord giveth wisdom out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous. It's a different in knowledge and wisdom. You might know a lot of things, but wisdom is the application of divine knowledge in our lives. The Lord giveth wisdom. Out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He lays up sound wisdom for the righteous. He is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. He keepeth the paths of judgment and preserves the way of his saints. How wonderful. He keepeth the paths of judgment and preserves the way of his saints. When we take Christ as our Savior, that's when we become a saint. Like the Roman Catholic faith, three or four hundred years after we die, they canonize somebody and make him a saint. They can't do that. We're saints here on earth. Paul wrote to the saints at Rome. I often thank God for that. He didn't write to the Church of Rome. Good job, he didn't. In God's infinite wisdom, although the book was written before the Church of Rome came into being, the Roman Catholic Church, I mean. Still, he didn't write to the Church of Rome because they would have said that was to them. He wrote to the saints at Rome. He wrote to the church at Corinth and the churches of Galatia and so on. He keepeth the powers of judgment and preserve it the way of his saints. Another then, verse nine, Then shalt thou understand righteousness and judgment and equity and every good path. Four things here. Righteousness. None of that left in the world today. But thank God we Christians can be righteous. And let's be fair about this now. We have to be righteous in all our ways. Everything we do has got to be right and just and honest. In our business dealing, when we're buying and selling or whatever we're doing, we must be righteous. The Lord giveth. Then shall they understand righteousness and judgment and equity, that's perfect balance, doing things straight and correct and right. Yea, every good path. You get all this knowledge out of the Word of God. When wisdom enters into thine heart, and knowledge is present under thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee. I call this the practical benefits of gaining this wisdom. The practical benefits, the results we've had just now, but the practical benefits in our lives are these. Discretion shall preserve thee. Understanding shall keep thee. How do I know which way to go and what to do? How can I know? I can't know. But if I know the wisdom of God, immediately when I'm in some fix and I don't know which way to go, the Lord will bring to my memory some words, something I've learned in this wonderful book. In the university we've attended so many years, you bring it to our mind and discretion will preserve us. Discretion from the word of God. Discretions shall preserve thee and understanding. shall keep thee. To deliver thee from the way of the evil man. Oh dear, how many evil men there are in the world today. How they can beguile you. How they can come with soft tongues and pleasant faces and voices and try and bribe us and catch us. But the Lord says if you've got this wisdom you'll be alright. I'll preserve you. I'll keep you. To preserve you, to deliver thee from the way of the evil man. from the man that speaketh forward things, who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice to do evil in delight in the forwardness of the wicked, whose ways are crooked, and they forward in their paths. How many in the world do I like that today? They'll do anything to make money. They don't mind how evil or wicked or wrong the thing is, as long as they can make money out of it. And how do we know? Somebody calls a door, some insurance man, or something else. We don't know what it is. But the Lord says, I'm going to give you wisdom. Don't do it. I have nothing to do with him unless I tell you to. My word is going to preserve you. He says, it will keep you. Give discretion. Discretions shall preserve thee and understand and keep thee to deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh forward things. Do you know I like to feel, I like to think of Joseph. in all his difficulties, in all his problems. There's one little term keeps coming up in Joseph's life. God was with him. God was with him. God was with him. In the prison, in Potiphar's house, God was with him. How God preserved him from Potiphar's wife. We'll see that in a moment. God was with him. And I sometimes feel as I look back on life, And I think of all the in business, the greedy businessmen I've worked for, striving, do any trick to get money. I look back and I wonder, how in the world did I get through all that without getting tainted or touched by it? I tell you what, I feel like Joseph, God was with him. God was with him. God was with him. And I believe that if we apply ourselves to the Word of God, And let the word of God be part of our life and being. God will be with us. He says, He'll deliver thee from the way of evil men. From the man that speaks forward things, who leave the paths of righteousness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the forwardness of the wicked, whose ways are crooked, and they forward in their paths. That evil men. Now he talks about evil women, and there's a lot of those in the world, too. Who forsake to deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flatteth with her words, which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgeteth the covenant of her God. For her house inclineth unto death, and her pals unto the dead, none they go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the pals of life. You know, I said in our last talk on the first chapter, when it talks about the woman there somewhere in that chapter, I made this statement that every false cult, I don't think there's any exception, every false cult has got a woman at the head. You think of them in your mind now. Mary Baker Eddy, Mrs. Besant, and even the Roman Catholic Church they put Mary at the head. Every false cult has got a woman at the head. And that's why in Revelation there in chapter three when he's dealing with the church which the era that deals with the era when the Roman Catholic Church came into power he talks about that woman Jezebel. That woman Jezebel. She was the head of it. That woman Jezebel. And I think in a sense this part of this chapter can be spiritualized. There are so many false religions today. How easily we could be laid astray if we didn't stick to this book and we didn't know the truths of the book, who will deliver thee from this strange woman, whatever that cult might be, from a stranger with flatters with her words. You think of these people come down knocking your door. and try and make you buy their stuff and listen to it. And they don't know the word of God, but the word of God will deliver us when we know it. For her house, and how many of there are these strange churches, and God is not in it. Her house in kind is unto death, and her pals unto the dead. None let go to her return again, neither take they hold of the pals of life. And now we get this summation of it, A summary here in verse twenty. Let thou mayest walk in the way of good men. This is God's plan for every one of us. Let thou mayest walk in the way of good men. What a wonderful place the world would be if all men were to heed to what Solomon is saying. If all men would read this Bible. And if all men would accept Christ as Savior and have their lives changed and lived for God in this world, what a world we could live in. Of course, in a little measure, we've got to depart for the pound. To meet Christians everywhere you go, every day, every morning, every afternoon, it's different. We don't fear anyone here. We don't think anyone's going to cheat us here. We don't think we're going to be tricked or treated wrongly because we love one another in Christ Jesus. But the whole world can be like that, and it will be. Because in the millennium it says, they won't say no the Lord. They won't be necessary to go and preach the gospel and say no the Lord. Because they will all know the Lord from the least to the great. They'll have the knowledge of God in that day. You won't have to say no the Lord. They'll all know the Lord. And what a life that will be. When peace is going to reign. And no more war. And no more of this deceitfulness. And a thousand years the Lord is going to reign. in the world in that lovely day. For that thou mayest walk in the way of good men and keep the paths of the righteous. That's what God wants us to do. And that's one reason why he's saving us. He's saving us that we might be conformed to the image of his son. That's the ultimate. But he's saving us that we might be for him in this world. Little patterns, little replicas of his son here on earth. The way of good men. Thou mayest walk in the way of good men. and keep the powers of righteousness. For the upright shall dwell in the land. Now, of course, this was true of Israel. The upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. That's true of the millennium, too. But I'd like to go a step further. We're not going to remain in the land. We don't belong to earth. God's called us out of it. But we've got an eternal home. We talked this morning about the father's house. That's where we're going to remain in it. The upright. Those who have accepted Christ are going to remain for all eternity amid the unsullied glories of heaven in the Father's house. Perfect did, made like on his son, and remaining forever and ever to share the glories of heaven with him. Then in Revelation twenty we read of a great white throne and a wicked small and great standing before the great white throne and the books being opened. And the terrible sentence, I never knew you. And whosoever's name was not written in the Lamb's book of life. It's cast into a lake of fire. Look at it. Verse twenty-two. The wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it. And it's the end of those who will not go God's way, who say, I'm going to do my thing, and I'm going to go my way, and I don't want God. And for me, God is dead. But God has got the whole thing planned out, and the ultimate end of them is them, is to be shut off from God for all eternity. Thank God he opened our eyes to see the way of salvation when we were young, most of us, and brought us to himself that we might in some little measure at least put into practice these wonderful things in this chapter. Now as I said it's kind of rambling It's not just consecutive teaching, it's verses all put together, but there's some kind of continuity in this chapter, I think, as we follow it down as we have tonight. May God bless it to our hearts for His name's sake. Amen. Blessed God, our Father, we thank you for this wonderful book. We thank you for the wisdom that is given to Solomon. We thank you, Lord, for the practical teaching we've had tonight. We think of these two little words, if and then. words of consequence. If we will do this, thou will do that. We pray, Lord, that we might do the if-side, that we might search out thy word, cry after it like a man digging for silver and hidden treasures. And then we know, Lord, thou give us the wisdom, the wisdom of God, the wisdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and understanding that our lives might come for thee. So we seek thy parting dressing once more and thank thee for another good Lord's day in our Savior's precious name.