Let us go to Proverbs 3 and I will read the first several verses there. Proverbs 3:1-7 says:
My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Trust in JEHOVAH with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear JEHOVAH, and depart from evil.
I will stop there.
For a long time, I have thought about these verses and what God is saying here. This is a passage that is very helpful to the child of God, to the Christian, in their life. I have wondered how many people might have thought about these verses or meditated on these verses or tried to memorize these verses, because this passage is very comforting to the believer. This is God Himself speaking to us, to His people, and saying, “Trust Me. Trust in the Lord. Trust Jehovah.” He is also telling us what not to trust or whom not to trust: you and me, ourselves. Do not trust yourself.
This is unheard of in the world. We are not to trust ourselves? Away with that kind of idea! You have to be all that you can be. You are the one! You are the man! Wisdom is in you! It is all up to you. You have to do it. You can do it.
The world thinks so very highly of a person’s self. Anyone who would take God at His Word here and not lean upon his own understanding could cause others to want to counsel you. They might even want to put you through some kind of therapy where you will need to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist because you have such a bad self-image. They will believe that you will really need to improve your self-image. Like yourself! Love yourself! Trust yourself! This is the attitude of the world. This is what the world says in numerous ways.
Well, God does not say this. The Bible does not say this. God says, “Trust Me. Trust the Lord. Trust in Jehovah.” This, of course, is something that has always been very important, but this is extremely important today, in our day. One big reason for this is because of what God says in Daniel 12:4:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
Then He says in Daniel 12:9-10:
And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
God is saying that He gave information in the Bible concerning the end of the world and He sealed it up till the time of the end. He is saying that once the world reaches the time of the end, He will open up the seals and reveal things to His people from His Word, and then knowledge will increase. They will then know many things that they were never able to know before. The Lord also tells us that only the wise will understand this and that none of the wicked will understand.
Why does God say this? Is this because only very intelligent people or only very well-educated people will be able to understand this? Is that what He means by saying that the wise will understand?
No, He does not mean that. He means that only His chosen people who were predestinated from the foundation of the world will be able to understand this. When God speaks of the wise, He has in mind the elect. This is because when a person becomes saved, they receive the Holy Spirit. They receive the Spirit of Christ, and Jesus is Wisdom. He is the personification of wisdom. He Himself is said to be wise.
For instance, if we go to 1 Corinthians 1:17-21, it says:
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
This is an interesting way that God puts this. It is by His wisdom that the world by its wisdom does not know Him.
Let us read 1 Corinthians 1:21 again:
For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God…
This is how it is today. The world by its own wisdom does not know God.
This is the reason why the theory of evolution is being taught as a fact in the schools. The theory of evolution is not put forth by idiots. It is not put forth by stupid people. It is put forth by the best minds of the educators of the world. The best minds, the scientists, the most intelligent people have studied this issue and they have determined that we were not created and that, instead, we somehow evolved from lesser lifeforms that have turned into us, as well as the whole world that we see around us.
This is the wisdom of the world. The world has decided that this is what happened. They think that there is no God; so, of course, creation is ridiculous to them. Instead, it makes more sense to them that there was a big bang and then some ooze developed from which everything began to develop, to where we now have all of this complex life that we see all around us. The world sees this as being really very simple. Not only that, but this happened tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or billions of years ago, depending on which book you are reading or which author you are listening to.
Well, it is great for the wise of this world that they were able to figure this out and that they were able to learn this, because then this means that there is no God and that nobody has to be concerned with sin or with the wrath of God or with the judgment of God upon sin because, to them, all of this is foolishness. To them, this is all something that certain religious and crazy people have been leaning on and trusting and believing in because they just cannot make it in this life and in this world without trusting in this kind of thing. They believe that those who trust in God need some kind of crutch, something to get them through the day. They also believe that those who believe in God are not enlightened like they are.
In actuality, it is a relatively small remnant of the world who developed this theory of evolution and puts it out there. But, basically, this is the wisdom of the world; and the world, God says, by wisdom knew not God. The Lord permitted this; He allowed it. He could clearly have prevented this kind of idea and teaching that has practically taken over the whole world, but instead He allowed this because this was part of His plan.
1 Corinthians 1:21-22 goes on to say:
…it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
For example, Plato and some of the philosophers we hear about.
It goes on in 1 Corinthians 1:23-25:
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
Now let us go to 1 Corinthians 1:30:
But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:
He is Wisdom. If you read Proverbs 8, it clearly teaches that Jesus is personified as wisdom.
So when God saves a person and He gives that individual a new heart and a new spirit, that is Christ in them, the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus, and He is Wisdom. Therefore, even a baby, like John the Baptist, upon the moment of salvation, is counted wise, or a thief on the cross a couple of hours before his death after a wasted life is counted wise, or anyone else at the time that God saves them is counted wise. It has nothing to do with their intellect, with their education or anything like that. It only has to do with whether or not Christ, who is Wisdom, is in them.
However, if you do not have the Spirit of God, you are a fool. And this is the distinction that God makes in the Bible of the whole human race. There are fools and there are those who are wise.
The people of the world highly regard and respect education. If you ask them, “How is someone counted wise? What do you consider a wise person to be?,” their response would most likely be, “Well, number one, a wise person is someone who has graduated from high school, then goes to college, and graduates from college.” There is some wisdom in that; however, if someone goes on to get a Master’s Degree, then they have picked up a little bit more wisdom as well as respect in the eyes of others. Then if someone goes from there to get a Doctorate Degree, whether they become a physician for a PhD in something, then they have attained a certain plateau of wisdom and they are then, of course, considered to be a wise person.
Many times, it is the doctors, the scientists or the medical doctors, who have developed theories like the theory of evolution, and, of course, they cannot be spoken against, especially by the common people, especially by all those who do not have all of this education. We are considered ignorant. We just do not understand properly what they learned in college or in medical school or in law school or in whatever higher degree of learning that they were in.
Actually, I am kind of being cynical and I am not speaking truly, but this is the way that the world operates; this is the way that the world views things. But the Bible tells us that many of the scientists or many of those who would do away with God are biased, those who would do away with God with theories like the theory of evolution.
Let us go to Romans 1:18. It says:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
This means that they suppress the truth.
I think that there is a good example of this recently with the subject of global warming. We were told that global warming was going to destroy the earth if something was not done about it. Of course, God’s people realize that May 21, 2011 will be Judgment Day and that five months later the earth will be destroyed. We know that it is not going to be by global warming. In one way, it will be a very severe global warming as God says that He will melt this whole universe with fervent heat. It will be destroyed by fire, but I do not think that this is what they had in mind by global warming.
However, this was an example of very highly trained people in their field, great scientists, well renowned in the world, who were recently discovered through emails that they had been sending back and forth to be suppressing the truth of certain facts dealing with global warming in the last couple of decades. They did this because their findings did not agree with their position, which was that the world needed to do something.
Now, I do not want to get into politics because I do not care about politics. We only have about 500 days left and it does not matter whether or not we are spending millions or billions of dollars to combat global warming because it is never going to happen, so this is really not a problem.
I just think that this illustrates that here were these men, the very same men who put forth the theory of evolution and who deny God, and these men were hiding facts and information about global warming because they were biased. They were not honestly examining all of the facts, which is what a scientist should do.
God knew this was the nature of man thousands of years ago. Continuing in Romans, He says in Romans 1:18-22:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold [suppress] the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
This is what the Lord said in 1 Corinthians 1. The world considers the Gospel and those who bring the Gospel, “the preaching of the cross,” as foolishness and fools. It is foolishness! Very educated people do not even talk about the things that come from the Bible. Very educated people avoid the Bible completely. But God says that it pleased Him “by the foolishness of preaching” to save His people.
So let the world think what they will. Let the best minds, the brilliant scientists of the world, come up with their theories, but the Bible tells us what is going on. It all comes down to whom you trust. Whom do you trust?
We tell the world that May 21, 2011 will be Judgment Day, and it is mocked by many. “Are you kidding? Are you off your egg? Are you just out of your mind? Are you a gullible fool? Are you such an idiot that you would believe this?”
Well, okay. This is what the world thinks about those who trust the Bible, when God says to trust in Him, to trust in the Lord, to trust in Jehovah.
So let me ask you something that God Himself points out. What do you trust in? What is your trust in? If you do not trust the Lord, if you do not trust His Word, if you do not trust the Bible, what do you trust in that allows you to mock such things? Whom do you trust in that gives you the authority to say, “No way!”? What is it that your trust is in?
Well, I thought that, first, it would be a good thing for us to look at what God tells us not to trust in. He tells us to trust in the Lord, but He also tells us in many places what not to trust in. I have several verses. To begin with, let us go to Psalm 146:3-4. We read there:
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
God is saying, “Do not trust princes, nor the son of man.” Princes would be referring to royalty. Of course, this could be kings or princes or anyone with royal blood. We would say today that this could be referring to the leaders of governments, the leaders of the world. Are they trustworthy?
Before I get into this, the Bible tells us to obey our leaders, and we would want to do this in all things lawful. But to trust them in their thinking about their perspective of the world or of the creation or of spiritual things, does anybody trust their government in these things? Do you trust the dictators or the kings or the presidents or the prime ministers of this world?
I think that most people give evidence that they do not trust a lot of things their governments do in just about every government on earth, no matter what style of government. The people eventually learn not to trust their government in certain things. Yet, again, if we are under communism or socialism or a democracy or a dictatorship, it does not matter because we are to obey our government in everything lawful. But we do not trust in them for information about what comes after death or about what they think is going to happen on May 21, 2011.
Let us go to Jeremiah 7:4 and look at this verse:
Trust ye not in lying words…
We are to trust not in lying words, and this is a big problem for mankind. This is because the Bible tells us that even at the time that we are born, we are speaking lies. Even when we are born, we are speaking lies in our heart. This is what the Bible says.
Let us go to Romans 3:10-13, a passage that most of us are familiar with:
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
Using deceit would mean that they are lying. They are not being honest, and this is the nature of man. Man, naturally, is a liar. This goes for every person, you and me included. Man is naturally a liar.
Look at Roman 3:4:
God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar…
This is a fact. Did you ever meet a truly honest person? You will meet plenty of people who will tell you that they are honest. You will meet plenty of people who will tell you that they are basically good people. You will find that many people testify these things of themselves, but find a person who has never lied. You can ask even those who say that they are basically good, “Have you ever lied?” And we do not have to be fifty years old to lie. Do children lie? Do they lie when they get caught doing something that they should not be doing? Do they point to a sibling? Yes, because we are all natural liars. When we are put on the spot, we lie.
Does this change when we get older and become a scientist and we develop a theory called evolution? No, especially if we have a position that we would really like to hold onto, especially if there is a bias. Like those concerned with global warming, they had a bias. They wanted those facts and that information to be true so that they could teach, “Yes, the earth is warming,” because their whole business was involved with it.
What is the benefit for those who teach evolution and who basically say that there is no God? Well, they think that they get freedom, freedom to do what they want as they wish, which really means that they just want to sin at will and to live a life without constraint and without fear of an angry and wrathful God judging them.
So there is strong motivation in all of this for man who is naturally a liar—he is born a liar—to kind of cover over the facts a little bit. But God says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” The entire universe with the sun and the moon and the stars teach us that there is a Creator and a God. There is no way that anyone could actually be thinking reasonably if they are thinking that this world came into being—with all of this complex life within it—through itself somehow. That is not even a possibility. It was not even possible for that to have happened.
Well, God says that He is true. “Let God be true,” and He is true. He says, “Thy word is truth.” It is impossible for God to lie, but it is very possible for man to lie. So whom do you trust? Whom are you leaning on? You say that you do not believe this information concerning May 21, 2011, “That is just silly.”
The sad thing is that many people are going to trust their buddies and their friends. This is because when you try to bring something like this up to your friends, they say something like, “Are you for real? Are you serious?” Or you get that smirk, “Get out of here with that!”
Is this all the evidence that they have? They have a simple, superficial, negative comment and that is supposed to tell you how ridiculous this information on May 21 is? But where is their proof? Where is their evidence? What are they trusting in? How dare they just write this off just like that! Where did they get their wisdom from to make that kind of declaration?
So that is it? A few friends mock this information and so you are going to believe them? You are going to trust them? Really, would you trust them with other things in your life? Would you trust them with your valuables? Are they really that trustworthy? Would you give them your money? Would you give them the things that you are very concerned for and care about in this life?
No. No, you would not do this; however, it goes deeper than this because that bias is also in you as well as in the scientists. It is in your nature. It is in who you are, because every man is a liar.
Let us also look at a few more verses. Let us turn back to Jeremiah 7:4 again:
Trust ye not in lying words…
Also look at Jeremiah 9:4:
Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders.
We could look at this in a couple of different ways. Number one; do not trust your neighbors. Number two; do not trust your family members. Number three; do not trust your spiritual family members, as Christians do at times speak of fellow Christians as brothers or sisters.
We are living in the time of Great Tribulation, and God says, “Do not trust princes, do not trust the son of man, and do not trust brothers/sisters or neighbors. Do not trust them. They are not trustworthy because they can lie.”
So whom do we trust? Well, we keep coming back to that trust in the Lord. Trust in Jehovah, yes, but do not trust these other things, these other people.
Let us go to Jeremiah 17. Jeremiah 17:5-7 says:
Thus saith JEHOVAH; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man…
Jesus knew what was in man. Do we know what is in man? Do we recognize that man is spiritually dead and that he is in rebellion against God and that he will do anything to avoid the light of the Gospel of the Bible from shining in his life to reveal that he is not as good as he would like to think that he is, that he is not as great as he would maybe present himself to others. Rather, he is inwardly full of all manner of iniquity and wickedness and evil that flows from within his heart. He, therefore, does not like the Word of God because it reveals these things to him.
…Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from JEHOVAH. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in JEHOVAH, and whose hope JEHOVAH is.
Trust in the Lord. Trust in Jehovah. Do not trust in man.
A big reason why is because of what we read in verse 9, Jeremiah 17:9:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
What does deceitful mean? It means to lie, to deceive, to trick. And man’s heart is so deceitful that God says that it is deceitful “above all.” So the biggest liar you know is yourself. It is you. You may not even know this, because God says:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
You may not even realize that you are lying to yourself. You might think that all is well with you according to the way in which you paint that picture of yourself to yourself. Everything about your whole life may be one big lie because this is the nature of man. This is why God warns, “Do not trust yourself or anybody else who is in this world.”
No human being alive now on the face of the earth should be trusted. Actually, we should also not be trusting in the dead human beings who have written confessions and creeds and theologies and doctrines. They are not to be trusted either; only the Lord, only God.
Let us go to Micah 7 and look at Micah 7:5-7.
Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide…
“Confidence” means the same as “trust.” Again and again and again, God is saying that we are not to trust whomever you can think of.
Of course, we do not want to be paranoid as we think of others. Yes, we have learned that we can trust some people to hold our money. Yes, we have learned that we can trust some people to keep our secrets. Yes, we have learned that we can trust some people to be our friends. But none of this is the same thing as trusting someone with such an incredibly important matter as that of the Word of God and the Gospel and whether or not May 21 in 2011 is Judgment Day, because what do they really know?
This is especially true if you are young and you have young friends; for example, if you are ten and your friends are between 10 and 12, or if you are a teenager and your friends are 13 or 14 or 15 or 16. How much do they really know? How much information can a young person gain in this world in such a short period of time? How much do they really know? Do not even compare them to the geniuses of the world, but compare their knowledge to God and His Infinite Mind. He tells us that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and that His ways are above our ways “as the heavens are higher than the earth.”
This is how great His thoughts are, and so He tells us:
Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.
Do not even trust Mom. Do not trust Mom. This is what the Bible says, not when it comes to truth. Children, yes, you are to obey your parents. For those of you who have wonderful mothers whom God has saved and are instructing you, that is good; however, still the responsibility for each person is to check out whatever it is that we hear when someone is teaching from the Bible. We are responsible for checking it out to see if it is so, as best we can.
It continues:
Therefore I will look unto JEHOVAH; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.
Again, God tells us whom not to trust. He just basically covers the whole earth. He covers the whole world and all of the people in it.
Let us look at another verse. Let us go to Proverbs 28:26:
He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered.
If you even trust in your own heart, you are a fool. Why? Because it is “desperately wicked” and “deceitful above all things.”
We know that many professing Christians trust that somehow they are a child of God. We know that there are nearly two billion professing Christians in this world, and we know that the great majority of them are deceived.
So God is telling us not to trust in our own thinking, not to not trust in our own understanding, as He says in Proverbs 3:5:
Trust in JEHOVAH with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
What if I decided that there was a nice solid wall in front of me here when there is nothing here? If I decided to put all of my weight on it, is it going to hold me up? No. I am going to hit the floor and I could wind up hurting myself.
Well, God is saying that what we trust in is what we lean on, and He is the only One who is worthy of our trust and nobody else, nobody else, only God, not even our own selves. We are not to even lean on our own understanding.
We have common sense, of course, and sometimes we get things right. We know not to walk in certain neighborhoods at certain times. We can figure out a lot of things that have to do with everyday living. But when it comes to the truth of the Bible and what God is opening up from the Scriptures concerning these last days and the time that remains, we would be a fool to trust in our own thoughts or in our own thinking. We are to not to lean on that in anyway at all. God says to trust in Him.
In Psalm 37:1-5, we read:
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in JEHOVAH, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in JEHOVAH; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto JEHOVAH; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
This is what God is doing now. He is testing all of us. The entire period of the Great Tribulation has been a time of testing. This is why so many of these doctrines have been uncovered. These are tests that are designed to aim right at our hearts, and they are also tests to see if we believe Him and if we trust Him, if we trust God.
If not and we do not trust God, who is it that we do trust? These tests can reveal this. They can show us that maybe we are trusting in our family, “After all, they speak so badly about these things, so I am not going to continue listening to these new doctrines.” Or maybe we are trusting in our friends, because our friends want nothing to do with the Bible or with the Gospel, “Every time I bring these things up, they kind of mock me and it causes me to feel badly. I like my friends and I want to keep them, so I am going to just stay with them and I no longer want anything else to do with this information that is coming from the Bible.” Or maybe we are trusting in some knowledgeable theologian or in some pastor or in some church. However, if we are trusting in anyone or anything other than the Bible, God is going to reveal this to us because He tells us whom to trust: Him alone.
Let us go to Psalm 119 and just read one last verse. Psalm 119:42 says:
So shall I have wherewith to answer him that reproacheth me: for I trust in thy word.
May 21, 2011 comes from the Bible, only the Bible. It is derived from the Bible, which means that we can trust this wholeheartedly, absolutely, and completely. This is because God completely identifies with His Word and He tells us to trust Him, “Trust My Word.” To “trust in the Lord” is to trust what the Bible says.
May 21, 2011 did not come out of a hat. It is not a theory put forth by a council of pastors. This did not come from any other source than the Bible. So do we trust God? Do we really trust Him? Are we going to lean on Him and not on our own thinking or on the thoughts of others? Since God is true and every man is a liar, He is the only One who is to be trusted and is trustworthy because His Words are true and faithful.
Let us close with a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we do pray that You would grant us faith and trust in You, that we would cast our cares upon You, for you care for us. We pray that we would follow You and realize that we only have a short amount of time to do what you would have us to do as Your servants. Father, we pray that You would have mercy on our children, that as we go along and as they hear their friends or neighbors or anyone else say things that are contrary to Your Word, we pray that they might think, “Well, where does that person get their authority? And how can they make that kind of statement?” Father, we pray that You would save them. We are thankful that You saved Noah and his family and Lot and some of his family, so we do know that You do work in families. You tell us that You save “one of a city, and two of a family.” Lord, we pray that You would have mercy on all of our children, even though we know that it is in Your hands and that You will save whom You will save and have mercy on whom You will have mercy. We do ask that You would open their eyes and make them wise, for “the wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness.” We do pray that You would help them to see just exactly where we are and that they would be warned and take warning. Father, we ask for Your blessing on Your Word, once again, and we pray that You would guide us the rest of this day and that You might bless those who are handing out tracts and those who will be receiving them. We also ask that You would bless Family Radio as they send Your Gospel out into the world today, and we pray for those people who are in India and Pakistan, those who will be under the hearing of Family Radio. May you lead more of Your elect people to listen, to hear, and to become saved. We pray that You would strengthen Mr. Camping and continue to give him wisdom towards Your Word and open up his understanding even more as we go along. For all of those who work at Family Radio, we ask that You would bless all of them there and their families also. Father, we pray these things in Christ’s Name. Amen.