Satan Entered Into Judas

Now, I'm going to start by asking you a question. It'll be a simple question. How do you know when winter is coming? Go ahead. I can't hear you. Eh, yeah. Yes, that's true. What do you think? Yeah, and before that, the leaves change color, right? Now, all of you knew that, right? When you start to see the leaves changing, you go, summer's almost over, unfortunately. Fall is coming. Now, there are other ways you could get that information, right? We could look on a calendar. But I want to ask you another question. I don't know if this one is as obvious. How do you know when spring is coming? We all know that when the leaves change, that fall is coming. But how do you know when spring is coming? What do you think, Nathan? Yes, yes. When leaves come back and the buds start breaking. Now, yes, Gabe? There start to be birds singing in the morning, yes. Now, the reason I bring these things up is to say,

You wouldn't know those things unless somebody had taught you those things. Maybe you would have deduced it about the fall, but the spring, and if you think the early spring, what plants do you watch? What are the earliest indicators that spring is coming in terms of plants? Crocuses. Okay, do you guys know what crocuses are? They're these little tiny plants that will grow up through the snow, and they have these little yellow or purple flowers on them. And they're only there for a little while, and then they're gone. Okay? Another one is forsythia. Do you know what forsythia is? It is a giant weed. That's what forsythia is. But the reason you want forsythia in your yard is that it will be the first thing to flower in the spring. Bright yellow. I mean, middle of July sun yellow. Bright. And it's that way in April when everything's still kind of drab and dreary.

dark and cold and you're not quite sure that you want to put your hope in the weather getting warm yet, Crocus and Forsythia are going to tell you spring is coming. But they'll only tell you that if you know that. If you know that that's what those flowers indicate. They're telling you spring is coming. We can wait until the trees start to flower and until the buds start to break. But that's obvious to everybody. The question is, do we know early on what's coming? Now, the reason I bring this all up this morning is not to give you a gardening lesson or, you know, here's when the seasons change lesson. My point in bringing this up to this morning is to say that as Christians, we have to learn to understand what's going on around us. We have to be able to discern the signs that are happening. Because if we lack this understanding or this wisdom, we'll be left missing things that we cannot afford to miss.

This is what our text is about this morning in Luke chapter 21. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word from Luke 21, verses 29 to 38. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Then he told them a parable. Behold the fig tree and all the trees. As soon as they put forth leaves, you see it, and you know for yourselves that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, recognize that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Be on guard so that your hearts will not be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life. And that day will come upon you suddenly like a trap, for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth. But keep on the alert at all times.

praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place and to stand before the Son of God, Son of Man. Now during the day he was teaching in the temple, but at evening he would go out and spend the night on the mount that is called Olivet. And all the people would get up early in the morning to come to him in the temple to listen to him. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I bring up the local plants this morning at the beginning. The ones that tell us that spring is coming because Jesus uses the same example to teach his hearers about what's going to happen around them and to them if they miss these signs. And so what this is called is a similitude. What he does at the very beginning is he takes something that's familiar or common to them and he says, you know how this works. You know how when the trees break bud and they start to shoot forth leaves, you know that spring's coming, right? And everyone says, yeah, we know that. Yeah, of course. Who doesn't know that? And he says, okay.

You learned to look and see a sign, and when you saw that sign, you knew something was about to happen. There's another thing you need to pay attention to. Here are some other signs that you need to be attentive to. Now, we've already talked about those signs the last couple of weeks, the destruction of Jerusalem as well as Jesus' second coming. And so I want to recap for a second from last week, verse 28 from last week's sermon about the destruction. Verse 28 says, When these things begin to take place, straighten up, lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. Jesus' intention is to prepare his hearers for the difficult time that was ahead of them. And he means in their lifetimes. They were about to experience the destruction of Jerusalem, and he wanted them to not be caught flat-footed because the consequences of them being unprepared was what? That they would be dead. That they would be put to death. And he didn't want his people to be put to death, and so he prepares them.

This wasn't something that was way, way, way far off in the future only. It was something that had to do with their real lives. They had to learn to read the signs of what was going on around them in their life so that they would be prepared to respond faithfully when it came about. And so as we study our text this morning, we're not going to be focusing on the impending judgment that was looming for the Israelites or Jesus' second coming because we've already covered those things. This week we're going to be focusing on recognizing these things, or rather how to recognize them. How do you know, how are we supposed to understand as Christians the things that go on around us? Because that's what he's calling his people to. You need to pay attention to what goes on around you. You need to understand what they mean. What does this mean? You guys know what a tell is? If you play cards, you know what a tell is? Someone has a twitch, they have something they do. Maybe it's when they play cards. Maybe it's when they're lying.

It's to do something when they're lying. Everybody has these little indications, these little signs. And if you're to be a good card player, one of the things you have to learn to do is you have to learn to read the signs. You have to learn to read the people. What do they do when they're lying? What do they do when they're bluffing? What do they do when they have a good hand? You have to learn to read it. And you have to learn to read things that are obscure and that are hidden and that they don't want you to see. And so you have to be very attentive or you'll miss it.

And this is what Jesus is calling his people to. He's told them a number of times already over the last couple of weeks to be on the alert. He tells them twice in our text this morning to be on the alert, be on the alert at all times. He wants to make sure that they're not led astray when the difficult times come. Now, he's also told them what they're to look out for. What will be the sign when the destruction of Jerusalem is imminent? Well, he tells them, last week he told them, when you see the city surrounded by armies, know that its destruction, its desolation is near. Very clear sign, not a hidden sign. When you see this, know that it is time for you to get out and far away from this city. What was the sign that would be given to them of his second coming? When you see the son of man coming on a cloud.

In his glory. And it's sort of a strange thing to us to think about. So what's that going to look like? Well, I think you'll know it when you see it. You'll have never seen anything like it before. And you'll never see anything like it again. And yet he calls his people to discernment, to these very simple, to reading these times. And so this morning, what I want to focus on is discernment. What is discernment? What is its place in the Christian life? Because this is what he calls his people to. Don't be distracted. Don't be misled. Don't misread the signs. See the signs, read them properly. That's what discernment is. And so if there's only one thing that you're going to take away from this morning that you're going to remember, it should be this. There are things going on around you all of the time that you don't understand or even recognize. And that ignorance, ignorance not meaning to be pejorative, just meaning to say a lack of knowledge.

Your inability to process or even notice what's going on around you is a danger to you. It's a threat to us and to our souls to not know what's going on around us, to not be able to read the signs of the times that we live in. And so if you're only going to remember one thing, that's it. There's things going on around you right now that you don't know or understand. And those things can prove to be a threat to you if you don't learn about them. And so we as Christians need to learn about them. So what is discernment? Does anyone want to venture a guess as to what discernment is? Discernment, as I understand it, is simply the ability to make judgments well. To be able to look at a group, a body of information, and to draw the conclusions that this body of information produces. All right? Think of it in terms of, for a moment, Baking a cake or making a soup, some sort of recipe. Once mom's made the soup or the cake and she tries it, what does she say? Needs more something, right? Now, how did she learn that it needs more something? Well, because she knows what it's supposed to taste like, smell like. She knows what its texture is supposed to be. She's got some knowledge about it.

And so she can just simply taste it, and her taste is discerning, and she can say, it needs more pepper. It needs more basil. Maybe not at Daniel's house. She has discerning taste. Now, are there other people who could taste that soup and not know that anything's amiss with it? Oh, yeah. Well, I didn't know any different. I didn't know it was supposed to be different. Or what if she's making the rest? You know, we're making a cake, and we're missing an ingredient. What does the one with discernment do? Well, she knows what has to be put in the cake to make up the difference. What do you do when you're missing eggs? What do you do when you're missing baking soda? Emily says, don't bake. Trina concurs, I don't know. But the fact that you do know that proves the example. You know when there's something missing. You can read the ingredients and you can say, yeah, that's going to be okay. No, that's not going to be okay.

This is discernment, the ability to judge well the outcome based on the ingredients beforehand, beforehand. It is not discernment to be like, oh, well, I'll put it all together and we'll see what happens. That's not discernment. That produces all kinds of bad tasting dinners. And so discernment is the ability to judge well beforehand what the outcome will be based on the facts or the ingredients, if you will, that you have in front of you. The signs are the indications. Now this takes practice and instruction. People aren't born with this natural ability to know these things. Now what was the strange thing? What was the thing that Jesus was teaching his people as he was working through his description of the destruction that was coming? What he told them, what he taught them, what they would not have naturally known was when all of this bad stuff happens, What does that mean for me? If you were left to your own devices, you're supposed to figure out what that means when all this destruction is going on. The natural conclusion would be, it means destruction for me. When everything else is being destroyed, it means I'm going to be destroyed along with it. And Jesus says, no, that's not what it means. He says, when these things happen, this was verse 28 from last week, when these things happen, when they begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near. And so they're taught to discern, to read what's going on around them.

And it's not a natural conclusion. And so to gain discernment, you have to be taught. It's not something you just gain all on your own. You just figure it all out on your own. You're able to surmise and figure all this stuff out. It takes instruction. Discernment also takes practice. Now, I want to ask you a question about discernment. Is discernment, do you think, a common gift or do you think it's a particular gift that some people have and other people don't? Just think about that for a minute. Because it's an interesting question. And the reason is because I'm convinced people think discernment is a special gift that some people have and other people just don't have it. They're unaware. But I don't think that's true. I do acknowledge that some people have it more naturally. It comes more naturally to them. You can call it street smarts, common sense, experience, whatever it is you want to call it.

It does come more naturally to some people than others. But I think discernment is like faith or joy or any other gift that we're given. There's a basic allotment that everybody has. Not everyone has the gift of faith. Their natural inclination when difficulty comes or hardship comes, they say, I trust God. I can trust God with this. I can see that it's going to be, I can see what he's doing and I trust him, whatever it is the outcome. Some people have a gift of faith. Others of us don't. And when something difficult happens, we go, oh no. What are we going to do? How are we going to fix it? It's all going to fall apart. But I think discernment's the same way. I think everybody's got some measure of discernment. Some ability to judge what's going to happen. If this continues, this is what the outcome's going to be. The problem is, in our day, We're not allowed to draw those conclusions. We're not allowed to say, this is what will happen. How do you know my heart? Are you God? Do you know the future? I say, no, I don't. But I know me. And I know how these things normally go. Here's an example. It's debating whether to use it or not. But I'm going to use it. You got two high school kids that are dating. All right? And they spend time together and they date for a long time. A couple years.

all through high school. And they're allowed to go out on dates and they're allowed to have their private time and to be out unsupervised. Can we know anything about their relationship? Marianne thinks so. Daniel thinks so. I certainly do. But are any of you uncomfortable to be like, no, you can't. Who are they? What are they like? I mean, I have to have more information before I could know what's going on. And of course, we're all thinking what the dangers and the temptations that these young people are going to face. as they're out and as they're about. But can we acknowledge out loud before the problem happens that a problem's going to happen? There's going to be a problem. Because when I look at young people, I think surely they wouldn't do that. Their parents wouldn't allow them to do that. They wouldn't be so foolish as to do that. They've been taught not to do that. And then I remember when I was their age.

And I think, why in the world do I think they are so, so different in the temptations they face than what I faced when I was their age? And then I realized, they're probably not. They're probably not any different than I am or was. And so the cautions or the warnings that would have helped me or did help me as I received them would be helpful to them. This is just an example of reading the signs. When you see a young couple that's dating and dating and dating and dating, they're in high school, they're in college, they're 30, but they're dating and dating and dating and they never get married. Can you know anything about their relationship? I say yes. And if I'm wrong about it, they are the exception to the rule. They are not the norm. This is a small example of discernment. You're able to take and you're able to look and you're able to to say, I see this, I think this is what's going to happen. That's what discernment is. But be willing to say it ahead of time. Now, will you always be right in your judgments? No, you won't. I often find myself wanting to write things down on a piece of paper and put a date on it. Just put it in a sealed envelope with the situation written on the cover and just put it away in a drawer somewhere and just leave it there and see if,

what I thought was going to happen did happen. Because I want to learn, and the reason I want to do it is not because I want to be proud and be able to say, I told you so. It's because I want to actually train myself to read the signs better. I want to remember. I want to learn discernment. Jesus tells his disciples, when you see the tree and the breaking forth and putting out leaves, you know that the summer is now near. We as Christians ought to have a principle of learning discernment. It's a danger to us if we won't learn discernment. And one of the things I have to tell you about discernment is it's not a popular gift today. It's not a popular thing. People don't like, our society doesn't like when the truth or the natural consequences of things are acknowledged. And so you have to be taught discernment. You have to practice discernment, not because you don't have discernment, but because you've been taught that you can't have discernment. You can't say what you think is true.

And you'll contort ourselves and our minds into all kinds of positions to say, well, maybe not in this situation. And I'm here to tell you, you're learning the wrong lesson, if that's what you think. Maybe I shouldn't say this. Maybe I shouldn't think this. Maybe I should create a whole other scenario in which what I know to be true or feel to be true or see to be true isn't true. I say, no, it's probably true what you think. You should test it to see if it's true. Discernment's like a muscle. It has to be exercised, cerebral atrophy. Now, I want to give you a couple of examples of men who have discernment, who are not afraid to draw conclusions. Have you guys heard of Jordan Peterson? Have you heard of Ben Shapiro? To some extent, Joe Rogan, lesser, but these are three men, none of them Christians, who all are willing to exercise discernment. Now, I told you, none of these guys are Christians.

But they're able to back into what's true simply because they're willing to read the signs around them and draw the conclusions of those signs. And they're able to say, this is what's true. This is what's a lie. If you haven't heard of these men or you don't know who they are, just go home and Google them. Go home and Google Jordan Peterson and just listen to some of the stuff he says. And remember in your mind, he's not a Christian. And he'd tell you that. If you asked him, I'm not insulting him by saying he's not a Christian. If he were here, he'd tell you, I'm not a Christian. But I know this is true. And one of the things he talks about a lot is a state of manhood in America today. And he doesn't talk about biblical manhood, and he doesn't talk about what the Bible says about being a man. He doesn't talk about that stuff. All he does is look around at what's going on in our culture, read what the different advocates of different things say,

look at history and go, this isn't going to end well. We're destroying the men of our society. This is what he would say. It's no longer in vogue to be a man. A man has to become a woman. And he would say, this is the fruit of feminism. This is what feminism has done. It's emasculated men. It's removed from them their male principle. I watched an interview of him recently, of a woman talking to him about the wage discrepancy between men and women. You know, well, it's not fair. Men make more than women in the workplace is what she's saying. And he goes, there are lots of things in our world where it's easier for women than it is for men. And there's lots of difficult things that happen to men that women never have to deal with. My point this morning is not to tell you the whole interview, but simply to say, he's willing to look at a woman on camera and say, you're wrong. It's destroying us. Things were better when men were taught to be men.

The thing that, in my understanding, the thing that put Jordan Peterson on the scene was him saying, men, make your bed. That was like the first thing that he did. Make your bed. Here's why you need to make your bed as men. And men from all over the country were just like, make my bed. It's important for me to make my bed because it has these implications about me. And he teases it out in two, three hour long lectures on YouTube and men listen to it. Men who don't read, men who don't write. Men who don't study are flocking to these men in droves. And the reason is because they're simply willing to exercise the slightest bit of discernment, to draw the natural conclusions of the things that they see going on around them, and then to say it. And so one of the discouraging things to me about this whole situation is that none of these men are Christians. And these men, all of the truths that they've come to, they've backed into. They've just kind of fumbled their way into this truth.

But we as Christians ought to outdo these men. We ought to know more than these men or be able to explain it better than these men because we've been given so much more than them. They come to their conclusions based on general revelation, simply what they can look around and see of what God's made, and their ability to read history and to follow the recipe and say, well, when this is what's going on, this is the conclusion it produces. We, on the other hand, have God's word. which is where these things are explicitly taught. We have his Holy Spirit to guide us and to teach us and to instruct us. We ought to be further ahead than these men. I ought to be further ahead than these men, is what I think. So this is what discernment is. This is what it means simply when Jesus says, you can look at the tree and you can know when spring is coming. He's calling his people to discernment. And this is all it is, is being able to look at what goes on around you and say, I know what's going to happen next. So how do you grow in discernment? Well,

It's different for us than it would be for, say, Jordan Peterson. How does a Christian grow in discernment? If they're supposed to grow in discernment, well, Jesus tells us, the things that you can observe, the things that you can see, the things that are around you that you think are the most stable and fixed things that exist, they're going to fall apart. Now you say, he didn't say that in our text. And I say, yeah, he did. He says, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words shall not pass away. So how do you grow in discernment? Well, these men, Jordan Peterson is an example, has gotten as far as he's gotten simply observing the earth that God's made. But Jesus says, those things are going to pass away. But my words won't pass away. And the implication is, my word is the foundation of your knowledge, of you understanding what's going on. In this context where he speaks these words, he's dealing with the doubt of his hearers. When he says, Jerusalem's going to be destroyed. The judgment's going to be as awful as anyone could ever imagine.

And he deals with their doubt saying, and he says to them, no, earth and heaven are going to pass away. They're going to be consumed. But the things I have told you concerning these things will not fade away, will not be destroyed, will not falter, will not shift, will never pass away. And it would be easy in this passage to cover over what Jesus says here about heaven and earth and about his word. But I don't want us to do it. What Jesus says here applies not only to what they're dealing with. and their time, the destruction of Jerusalem, but it applies to all of life. The things that Jesus has said about this world and about us and about the consequences that we will face or the destruction that will come or the blessings that will come, these are the things that will never pass away. These are the things that will never change. My kids and I were sitting around the dinner table last night, or not last night, earlier this week, and we were talking about mountains and which mountain was the tallest.

and eventually Mount Everest came up, and they said, well, how tall is Mount Everest? And I said, well, you tell me how tall Mount Everest is. And one of my kids says, well, you can ask your phone. And eventually we did. But I got looking and reading about it. How tall is Mount Everest? Well, did you know that the height of Mount Everest changes? It grows. You'd think that big, giant protrusion of rock that's almost 30,000 feet tall. would be stable, but it doesn't. It moves. It grows millimeters a year. It grows. I never would have thought that it grew or shrunk, but there you have it. And yet God's word will never change. It will never shift. It will never leave you without the things it promises. So as you grow in discernment, you have to base your discernment or your judgment on the word of God.

Because it's the only thing that doesn't change. It's the only thing you can count on and trust. And Satan would have you trust a hundred other things other than what God has said. Now, there are dangers. If you say, well, okay, well, I'll trust what God says. There are dangers that will come because there are consequences that will arise. One of the temptations or the dangers that you'll face in trying to grow in discernment is to be ashamed of God's word. You'll want to state the truth, but not Because God said so. We'll want our truth to have some other source than God. Well, if that's where Jordan Peterson's at, or that's where Ben Shapiro's at, that's fine for them. We can't change them. They don't say they're Christians. But we as Christians have to say the truths that we believe and hold dear to and base our whole life upon come directly from God.

not from some other place, not because it makes sense, not because it's popular, not because it's easy, not because everyone else is doing it, not because it's just the tried and true way of doing things. None of that. We do what we do. We say what we say. We believe what we believe because God has said. He has spoke and his word never changes. Jesus says in Mark 8, whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, Isn't that a description that would suit our generation, this adulterous and sinful generation? Whoever's ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the son of man will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his father with his holy angels. And so you and I are going to face temptations to be ashamed of what God has said. And Jesus cautions us not to be. I'm going to tell you the story of an example of a man who's gone through this, faced this temptation. Have you guys heard of Thomas Cranmer? It wouldn't surprise me if you haven't, but

Thomas Cranmer was a pastor in England around the time of the Reformation. So late 1400s, early 1500s. So 500 plus years ago is when he lived. Some of the fruit of his life, the biggest thing he did was he wrote down or formalized the worship in England and he produced what's called the Book of Common Prayer. This is the work of Thomas Cranmer. The wedding liturgy that we use. still to this day, was written by Thomas Cranmer. And so he was a prominent man used of God in England during the Reformation. Well, right about that time in England during the Reformation, the country was in turmoil because whoever the king was dictated what the religion of the land was. And so there was this flip-flop, this back and forth, this constant tension between Protestantism and Catholicism.

And during Thomas Cranmer's lifetime, Queen Mary ascended to the throne in England. Now, who's Queen Mary? Well, have you heard of Bloody Mary? She's Queen Mary. Queen Mary was a Catholic. And one of the things that she did was try to snuff out all of the Protestantism in her land. And she did it by killing the pastors and killing the people and killing the women and killing the children. She was ruthless. And Thomas Cranmer was one of her victims. Now here's the way that they would do it. They would arrest these men. They put them in jail for years. They would always be offering them freedom if they would simply recant and say Protestantism was wicked. And if they would align themselves with the Roman Catholic Church and swear allegiance to the Pope, they could be set free. But if they didn't, they were going to stay in prison and eventually they were going to be burned at the stake, which is one of the most miserable ways to be killed.

And so Thomas Cranmer was in prison for a number of years, wouldn't recant, wouldn't recant. And finally, he did recant. He did renounce the Protestant faith and affirm his commitment to the Roman Catholic Church. Now, why did he do that? Why do you think he did that? It's pretty obvious. He didn't want to die. Do you know what they did anyway? They killed him anyway. And as he died, Being burned at the stake in his home city, in front of his congregation and his church, and most likely his family, he repented of his shame. He was ashamed of Jesus' words. And so he recanted, thinking, I'll save my life. And he didn't save his life. They killed him anyway.

And so when I tell you to grow in discernment, there's going to be a cost. I want to give you Thomas Cranmer as an example, a severe example, but one that gets to the point. You're going to be tempted to turn away from God's words and what you believe to be true for the sake of saving your own skin. Heaven and earth are going to pass away, but the word of the Lord will not. And so you put your faith in his word and you don't be ashamed of it. How else do you grow in discernment? What are the dangers that you'll face? Well, one of them is simply ignorance. You will not be a student of or study or grow in your understanding of God's word. You can't grow in discernment if you won't grow in your knowledge of God's word. You may grow in your willingness and your ability to make judgments. None of us have any trouble making judgments. But if you want to grow in making righteous judgments and godly judgments, you have to...

You have to put aside your ignorance. You have to grow in knowledge. Proverbs 4 tells you, the beginning of wisdom is acquire wisdom. And with all your acquiring, get understanding. Prize her and she will exalt you. She will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a garland of grace. She will present you with a crown of beauty. And so if you want to grow in discernment, You can't remain ignorant. You can't remain slothful. You can't neglect God's word and expect to grow in discernment. It just simply will not happen. It will not fall into your lap. Godly judgments will not. Hosea 4, 6 says, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. They're destroyed for lack of knowledge. They don't understand the consequence of what they're doing. And I would have it be that that would not be the case for you and I, but that we would put our faith in Jesus' words.

That we would trust that they're not going to fall away. They're not going to fade away. They're not going to change or shift. The third danger, the final danger I'll bring up this morning is in verse 34. Jesus warns them. He says, be on guard so that your hearts will not be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the world, the worries of life. Dissipation simply means decadence or excessive living. Be on guard so we could restate it this way. Be careful that your hearts aren't led astray. by your concern for all of the comforts you enjoy. This is what dissipation is. And so dissipation, drunkenness, the worries of life, what do you worry about? That's all you should think when you read this. What do I worry about? Okay, well, now that you have that fixed in your mind, Jesus tells you that's a danger to you. It's a distraction to you. The things that you worry about, the things that you fret about, the things that keep you up at night, the things that you oh no about. Jesus says, be on guard that your hearts not be weighed down, that your hearts not be turned away, turned aside.

from reading the signs of the times and understanding what's going on around you. Don't give these things your attention. Seek to grow in understanding. Seek to grow in discernment so that you'll be prepared to be faithful. There are two quick things I'm going to end with to answer the question positively. How do you grow in discernment? The first is you pray. Jesus tells us in this passage that we ought to pray. If you go to the next slide, verse 36, keep on the alert at all times praying that you may have strength. to stand. And what you're praying for, what he's telling them to pray for is pray that you will have strength to read the signs and act faithfully. Pray that you will have strength to stand, or to escape rather, and to stand before the Son of Man. Pray that you'll be able to read the signs well enough that you won't be caught up in the destruction. And so you pray for wisdom.

That's the first thing. James 1.5 says, I began by saying we need to grow in discernment. We need to grow in understanding. We have to ask God to give it to us. This was Solomon's prayer. Give me the double portion of wisdom. And he's blessed for it. You have to pray for understanding. The second is you have to study. And what I mean by study is you have to read God's word and... It can't simply be threading words through your eyes. Well, I have my devotions today I read. That's not study. That will not help you. You can do that your whole life and it will benefit you nothing. Simply reading words on a page with no understanding is a waste of time. It's unprofitable. It's destructive to your soul. And so when I say you have to study, the first thing you have to do is, yes, you have to read, but then you have to say, so what? What does this mean? What does this mean?

This is the things that we do at my house and I want you to do at your house. When you read scripture, simply summarize it when you're done. Just a sentence or two. You don't have to cover every detail. You don't have to know every verse. You don't have to do all of that. Simply say, we read this chapter. It was about this. In my own words, this is what this chapter says to do or not to do and why. And you'll grow in understanding as you start to do that work. These are the things we ask my kids. I ask myself when I'm preparing that Vanessa and I talk about. So what's it mean? What's it mean? I don't know what it means. And I say, well, that's your opportunity to grow. But if you take that opportunity and you go, nah, you won't grow. You won't grow in discernment. So we pray and we study God's word. And we work to not be distracted by the details of life.

This is Satan's way with us. He would distract us and tell us that we have all kinds of stuff we need to pay attention to that we're so essential to that if we don't do it, it won't be done and there will be trouble. We don't listen. We give ourselves to growing in discernment. And God will give us the judgment and the wisdom that we need. The ability to draw the conclusions that are necessary. That we might be safe when difficult times come.