Dr Greg Bahnsen - Proverbs: Proverbs 14:12, 16:2, 25; 21:2 (Spiritual Self-Delusion) (Part 61)

Turn with me in your Bibles this morning to Proverbs the 14th chapter, where we will begin a series of readings from Proverbs having to do with spiritual self delusion. We'll begin at Proverbs 14, verse 12, and then I will announce the successive verses through Proverbs we'll be looking at as well. We begin our reading then in the 14th chapter. Hear now God's word at verse 12. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Then Proverbs 16:2. All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes, but Jehovah weigheth the spirits. And Proverbs 16:25 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Proverbs 21:2. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but Jehovah weigheth the hearts. Proverbs 28:26 he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool, but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered. And one more, Proverbs 30, verse 12. There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet are not washed from their filthiness. And thus far the reading of God's word There is no deception quite so common as self deception. It's been said, however, there are individuals who wonder whether the whole idea of self deception makes any sense. There are people who have suggested that that at best is a metaphor, that we really can't lie to ourselves, we can't fool ourselves about things, because after all, in order to deceive myself, I must know that what I am saying is wrong, or else I'm not a deceiver. And yet to be deceived, I must believe that that same thing is right. And so at one and the same time I know that something is wrong, and I know that something is right. And that is a contradiction. It's impossible there to deceive ourselves. Well, it turns out that's what I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the possibility of self deception and whether it can be analyzed without contradiction. However, it's interesting that often when people ask me about what I did my doctoral work in or what I wrote my dissertation on, I'll have people look at me like, why did you bother with something as obvious as that? We all know about self deception, and I think we do. That maybe is a comment upon philosophy or maybe upon the wooliness of the thinking of people that philosophers can help get cleared up. But it's a comment as to how this issue is not really a challenging one to most of us because we know that self deception takes place. We see it in others, and wouldn't it be nice if we saw it more often in ourselves? Self deception is a very common human trait. In fact, when I finished my dissertation, after trying to show that there is an analysis of self deception that doesn't fall into self contradiction, I concluded by saying that we can accept this analysis or we can commit one more act of self deception and fool ourselves saying that there is no self deception at all. We do deceive ourselves. And the Bible is very honest about that fact. The Bible is very clear about that, that we are all as human beings, subject to spiritual self delusion. We're going to look at these proverbs that we read in our scripture reading this morning and then I'd like to draw three lessons from them. First, Proverbs 14:12 and Proverbs 16:25. I think you've probably noticed in the reading that they're exactly the same. Proverbs 14:12 reads, There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. And if you turn over to 1625, we find that proverb repeated, there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Why did the Holy Spirit do that? Why did the Holy Spirit choose to have exactly the same proverb written into God's Word twice? For us, there are some lazy and not very reliable approaches to the interpretation of God's Word that say that what happened here is that the scribes made a mistake or that the editor of this book of the Bible made a mistake. The scribes or the editor just didn't notice that there was something being repeated. And so it's just, it's sloppy work and it ended up in the Bible. Well, I want to suggest that they didn't forget what was written already. In fact, the Holy Spirit deemed that proverb and we're going to see some others like it. So important, and God knows our hearts so well and knows that we are so prone to forget this truth and the wisdom of it that the Holy Spirit repeated it to ensure we wouldn't overlook it. And so we read it here and we read it later. We're going to see in the next couplet of proverbs that I look at the same thing, a virtual repetition of the same proverb over again. The proverb that we have before us in the 14th chapter, verse 12 reminds me both in form, because it's repeated. And in content of what is a repeated refrain in the Book of Judges? You look at the Book of Judges, chapter 17:6, or the book of Judges 21:25, and you see this refrain. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. Now why does the Book of Judges repeat that over and over again? Because it's driving home a point. And it's a point that we need to pick up on. It's a point that we need to reflect upon. It's one we need to be honest about as we look at ourselves and our lives and our behavior. And that's that we don't know what is right in our own eyes. That we do fool ourselves about our own innocence and purity. We choose ways that seem right unto ourselves. And yet the end of the path we have chosen is death. In the Hebrew of Proverbs 14:12, where you read, there is a way which seems right unto a man. The word right, interestingly means level or straight. There is a road that seems level or straight to a man. Now that language of a straight road is often used in the Bible and used in the Book of Proverbs. In a moral sense, that word right stands for righteous or upright. In fact, if you just look back one verse, you'll see the very same word in Hebrew translated the tent of the upright shall flourish. And so the word could be taken in a simple moral sense here, and we wouldn't have any difficulty with it. There is a way that seems morally correct to a man, morally right, and yet the consequences of following that way are the ways of death. That might be one way to take it. However, it's also possible that that this imagery of a flat or straight road is to be understood in a non moral sense. That is, there is a road that seems the fastest or the easiest to your destination. There is a road that's nice and straight, nice and level, and it's going to get you there quickly. In which case, what we learn beyond just the idea that we morally make mistakes in the road that we travel, the verse warns us beyond that against deceptive shortcuts to success. The deceptive shortcuts we take when we are impatient or when we're lazy or when we're unscrupulous. I can't help but think of the movie that just came out this weekend, Wall street, where of course this is the unbelieving world's attempt to let us know that people do take such shortcuts in the way of that shortcut turns out to be the Way of death, the way of self destruction. And so the proverb, to put it very simply, says, be careful of those deceptive roads. Jesus will later in the New Testament say the same thing when he warns us that the road to hell, the highway to hell is a very broad and easy road to travel. And he says many people are on it. The narrow road, the one that leads to life and to everlasting blessedness in the presence of God, however, is not a convenient road, not a difficult thing to get onto. Have you ever been on a vacation and thought that you were on the right road and just kept going and going and going because it just looked like it was the right way? It seemed right. It was so easy. You're on a nice highway and interstate and you say, well, this just can't be wrong. It seems like it's going to where we want to go. Well, when you have that feeling, you realize the destructiveness of that is that just because you're so confident you're on the right road, just, just because you don't check the signs along the way that might have told you, wait a minute, I shouldn't be seeing a sign for that or a sign for this. Just because you're so confident before you'll ever correct yourself. Jesus is saying that about the road to hell. That's the real danger of the road to hell, is that it just seems so right, it seems so easy, it seems so convenient, so broad, so many people are on it. Can I possibly be wrong? And yet that road leads to death. Be careful of deceptive roads. Self deception is a cardinal sin in the Bible. And it's not only a sin, it's self destructive. Proverbs 12:15 says, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he that is wise hearkens to counsel. A person is willing to let someone come and instruct him. He's a teachable individual, he's easy to be entreated. To use the words of James, he is willing to hear objective correction to his self deceptive evaluation of things. Let's look at another couplet in Proverbs that are virtually identical. Again, Proverbs 16:2 and Proverbs 21:2, the 16th verse. Excuse me, 16th chapter and second verse we read, all the ways of a man are clean his own eyes. But Jehovah weigheth the spirits. Then if you turn over to chapter 21, verse 2, just a slight variation. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes. But Jehovah weigheth the hearts. We have to Notice in these verses the sovereignty and the independence and the unchanging holiness of God. You see, God's not manipulated by, nor is he obligated to honor the evaluations and the self conceptions of sinners. There is a way that seems right in a man's eyes, but God weighs the heart, but God weighs the spirit's. The author of Proverbs is telling us that sinners must give way to the ultimate standard and to the unaffected standard of God himself. That's an interesting metaphor, isn't it? God weighs the spirit. Of course, the Spirit is supposed to be like the breath. It's supposed to be like the wind. And in that sense you can't weigh that. But God can weigh everything. He knows the very thoughts of our hearts. He knows what our plans are, he knows our motives. He sees us through and through, and he weighs us accordingly. Remember the story that we read in Daniel, the fifth chapter of Belshazzar, great king of Babylon's father, Nebuchadnezzar. If you read the book of Daniel, you find a very interesting literary feature that is arresting. But it's part of the message of Daniel that Daniel does this. What happens is you read about in the fourth chapter, you read Nebuchadnezzar being humbled under the hand of God. How Nebuchadnezzar wanders as a wild animal for a period of time until he comes to his senses and realizes that the most High God rules in the affairs of men. And and that Nebuchadnezzar, for all of his pride, for all of his arrogance, must be humbled under God's hand. He must recognize the king of Kings, the sovereign of heaven. And that story no sooner ends in chapter four than we read in the very first verse of chapter five. Belshazzar gave a feast, you say no transition. Daniel let us know about Nebuchadnezzar passing away and Belshazzar his son, taking his place, and so forth. Why this immediate literary transition to Belshazzar? Because it's part of the same theme. That's why Daniel is telling us the same story, just with another edition of it. And now we have Belteshazzar, who is so arrogant as he's putting on some pagan party has the holy instruments and vessels of the Tabernacle, the temple from Jerusalem, brought out to his party. The that he might show his opulence, that he might show his immunity from judgment, that he might flaunt the holy things of the Jews and even drink out of them in his pagan revelry. And then Belteshazzar has a vision which absolutely makes him crumble. In fact, the Hebrew says his knees were knocking. He was so scared, he. He had the vision of a hand writing on a plaster wall across from him at the party. Many, many tackle you, Farson. And he didn't understand what the message was, and he was scared of the circumstances in which the message came. And he called all the wise men and the soothsayers and the magicians of his kingdom in and said, what does this message mean? And not one of them could understand it, not one of them could interpret it. And one of Belteshazzar's wives says, but there is a man of the Hebrews here who can understand these things. And you know his name, don't you? It's Daniel. Daniel was brought in. And Daniel looks at the message. Belchester says, daniel, if you can interpret this for me, I'll make you third in my kingdom. I'll give you royal purple robes to wear and great gold to make you rich. And Daniel says, I don't need your gifts. Keep them for yourself. Give them to somebody else. I'll tell you what it means without any price. And you remember the message. Can you imagine what the heart of Belshazzar must have felt like? As Daniel said, what this means is that you are weighed in the balances and found wanting. God has seen through you, Belshazzar. God knows you. God sees your arrogance and your pride and your self deception. And he says, you come up short. All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes. Proverbs says, but Jehovah weighs the spirits. But when you go home this afternoon and you pray about this morning's message and you reflect upon it as you're alone, you had best be humbled before the fear of God that he sees you. You know, we all put on such a wonderful front. We wear our name badges and we come as members of the church and we dress in our nice clothes and we smile at one another. But who knows what evil lurks within the hearts of men? Who knows even behind the wonderful Christian facade of a congregation such as this, what is in our hearts? I'll tell you who knows. God does. God sees you. He knows what motivates you. He knows what you desire. He knows your plans, he knows your intentions. He knows you through and through. And the message is you are wanting. Well, that is a theme of scripture in itself, worthy of exposition. But you see, the message this morning is much worse than just that. We are found wanting. The message Is we are in fact wanting in the eyes of God. But in our own eyes, we are pure and innocent. That's the frightening thing. As we look at ourselves, we say, well, can we be so bad? And though the answer is yes, we convince ourselves that it's no. And after all, I'm not like the people I read of in the paper. I'm not some kind of a criminal. I'm not as bad as those individuals I know in my family circle that are so rotten, that speak so poorly, that act so horribly toward one another. I'm not like them. So, yes, I'm imperfect. Of course I'm imperfect. We'll all grant that. But I don't think any of us grant the degree of our imperfection. To some degree we think we are right. We are pure, we are innocent. In our eyes, it seems like we're okay. And we do that because we bought into the relativism of our age. We do that because we are under the deceptive hand of Satan. Satan wants you to believe that. He wants you to think, you're a pretty good guy, you're a pretty good gal. Of course you're all right. The Bible says you are wanting in the sight of God. The most hardened criminals rationalize their crimes to themselves. And of course, anybody else will listen to them. It's really appalling, a study of human nature. You might talk to individuals. There are some in our congregation that work with people like that. It's amazing the excuses that people will make for their crimes. And yet my thought this morning is not about those hardened criminals who seem to be almost insane. Insane their ability to rationalize their crimes. My problem is with those decent citizens and professing Christians like ourselves who manage to talk ourselves into doing just about anything we want. Why don't you stop and make a list of things sometime? A list of those things that you've denied to yourself in all honesty, and a list of those things which you found a way to make all right. I guarantee you the one list those things you've denied yourself much shorter than the list of things that you've found a way to say is okay in your life. We can talk ourselves into anything. But God, according to the proverbs, is not fooled by all of our special pleading. God is not fooled by any distorted line of reasoning. He judges us and he judges our very motives. He judges the spirits. He judges the heart. And so let's learn from this proverb, and actually from both of them, that we must measure our own thinking against an absolute standard of righteousness, one that we find in the Bible, or else we will forever be adrift in a sea of self doubt. Forever adrift in a sea of because if you're honest about what the proverb says, you really can't trust yourself. The only thing you can trust is the sure word of God. And you'd better take all of your motives and all of your reasoning and all of your plans and all of your behavior and hold them up to that yardstick to see whether you come out okay or not. Of course, if you read the New Testament epistles, I think you know what the outcome is going to be. John tells us in his first Epistle, if we say we have not sinned, this is not in us. Let's turn to another proverb on the same subject. Proverbs 30:12. There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet are not washed from their filthiness. We learn from this proverb that the self deception of which we've been speaking up to this point is not simply an individual thing. That self deception, the error of leading ourselves to believe things that are not true, that we know are not true, takes place on a corporate scale too. There is kind of a group scale self delusion that overcomes a circle of people. There's a whole generation that can fool itself about its innocence. And though this generation, I think, has been a recurring generation since this proverb was penned, it's not written specifically and prophetically about our day. It certainly fits our day. It fits it like a comfortable shoe, doesn't it? Aren't we a generation that's pure in our own eyes and yet the furthest thing from being washed of our filthiness. There's an egomania in our culture as a general spirit of the age, I think an egomania, a spiritual self delusion that leads us to believe somehow, amazingly, that we as Americans are a culture that can stand in judgment and can censure other nations for their sins. It's amazing to me how we set ourselves up as Americans, as judges of all these cultures of the world. We can so easily use Hitler as an example of a terrible person, the Holocaust against the Jews that he brought. We can stand in judgment of Soviet Communism for the oppression of men's lives and the killing of the innocent that we know takes place through that evil regime. We can set ourselves up as moral censures of the human rights violations of other nations around the world. And yet look at our own nation. Look how far we are from having clean hands in the sight of God. A nation that can have a gay pride week in San Francisco and not blush. A nation that can promote sexual perversity and obscenity. A nation that can kill over a million unborn children a year and just think it's business as usual. We are a generation pure in our own eyes, but not at all washed of our own filthiness. We are blinded as Americans to our own faults. We are deaf to the rebukes. We are, to put it very simply, spiritually arrogant. You do not have to read very much of God's word to understand that the spiritual spiritually arrogant are ripe for judgment. Pride goes before not just the fall. Pride goes before destruction. And the pride of our nation and the self confidence of our culture and the self delusion that we have about ourselves and our spiritual condition will one day come crashing down around us. Don't be deceived, my friends. God's not mocked. Whatever a man and whatever a nation sows, that shall it also reap. And we shall reap this even though we continue to pride ourselves that we are clean, we are not washed from our filthiness. One more proverb on this subject, Proverbs 28:26, where we read, he that trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoso walks wisely, he shall be delivered. If you want to walk wisely in light of the truths about human nature that have been revealed to us this morning, if you want to walk wisely and avoid that inclination to self deception, then don't be so foolish as to trust your own heart. Proverbs says, to put it very bluntly, learn to distrust yourself. Learn to say, I don't. I don't trust the wiliness of my heart. I don't trust the self pleading of my mind. I don't trust all those excuses that I've learned to make for my behavior and for my faults. I don't trust myself. And amazingly, the minute you learn to not trust yourself, you've taken one big step toward trustworthiness. The person who knows that he cannot depend upon his own sinful or as a Christian, partially sanctified human nature is the person who's got some wisdom, the person that you might listen to. We need to learn where trustworthy wisdom can be found. And the Bible tells us it can be found only in the holy Word of God. The holy Word of God is understood and applied by the enlightening of the Holy Spirit to us. Jesus put it in Matthew, the seventh chapter, in a way which even children can understand. And I Wonder if the children among us today remember that story that Jesus taught in Matthew 7, when he said, the wise man built his house upon the rock and the foolish man built his house upon the sand. And we learned the song that goes with that. And our children know the story. They can probably remember the flannel graph where that was first expounded to them. What happens to the man who builds his house upon the sand, children, when the storms of life come raging against it like the wonderful winds we had last night, and the rains that can come with them, when the storms come, that house collapses. But the man who is wise enough to build his house upon the rock doesn't have to worry about anything that will come. Any storm can be weathered because his house will stand. What we have to remember is that Jesus said, my words are rock. The man who hears my words and obeys them is like a wise man building his house upon the rock. Don't trust yourself. Don't trust your own thinking. Don't fly by the seat of your pants. To put it bluntly now, what does this mean to us as Christians? It means we'd better stop assuming we understand just by osmosis, what God's word tells us. The problem we have, I think, as Christians, is we tend to think, well, I hang around with the right people, I have the right instincts. I can make a snap judgment about what's right or wrong. I can trust my feelings. And I know we do that because as I do pastoral counseling, I hear people saying things which if they knew the word of God better, they wouldn't dare say. And yet I know that they're being sincere. They honestly think they thought this thing through in a Christian way. They picked up bits and pieces of what Christianity is, bits and pieces of wisdom within the congregation. And. And they've tried to make that the whole picture. They've tried to extrapolate so they have solid principles of guidance for their life, but they don't. What I'm suggesting, as I ease in here to step on your toes this morning, what I'm suggesting is that if we really take seriously this proverb, we ought to be much more thorough in our study of the word of God. What does it say about you when you don't read the Bible every day? What does it say about you when you never think you have to pull down a dictionary or a commentary or a concordance and work on something so that you understand it properly? What does it say when we think we can just get by with two or three minutes of spiritual reflection every day. What it says is we trust our own hearts. What it says is we think we're pure in our own eyes, that we can choose the right path to follow and it's going to be perfectly alright. And yet Proverbs says over and over and over and over and over again, you cannot trust yourself. Trust only the Bible, trust only true wisdom. Trust only what the Spirit says to the churches. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths. Well, what lessons can we take from this as we end this morning? Three in particular strike me there are others as well that we've picked up along the way. But let's see if we can draw this together. First of all, let's see this morning the perversity and the pervasive of self deception. The perversity and the pervasity of self deception. Secondly, the inadequacy of sincerity. And thirdly, the necessity of illumination by the Holy Spirit. That first lesson, the perversity and the pervasity of self deception. First among the irreligious, Paul tells us In Romans, the first chapter, verses 18 and following that the word of God, the revelation of God, comes to all men, and yet they suppress that truth in unrighteousness. That is the classic that tells us about man, sinful man, rebellious, unbelieving, unregenerate man's ability to fool himself about God and about God's moral requirements. God has made himself perfectly clear to all men through creation and providence, perfectly clear through his image in all men and the voice of conscience. And yet men can find a way to get around that by suppressing the truth by means of unrighteousness. In First Corinthians, the first chapter, verses 18 and following, Paul tells us the world is so lost in self deception, the world is so lost in suppressing the truth of God and unrighteousness that it actually sees the wisdom of God as foolishness and sees its own foolishness as great wisdom. And so let's learn this morning that unbelievers, the irreligious are a terribly self deceived lot of people. But the pervasity of self deception does not end there. Self deception does not end. You see at the doorway of the church, self deception does not go on vacation just because you begin professing Jesus Christ as your Savior. There is self deception among the religious as well. I already this morning referred to First John 1:8. If we say we have no sin, we deceive Ourselves, John says, and we make God a liar in the process. In James 1, verse 26. Let's look at that for a moment. James 1:26 we read, if any man thinks in to be religious, while he bridles not his tongue, he deceives his heart, and this man's religion is vain. It's so easy to profess religion, not nearly as easy to live a religious life. And James says, if you say these things about yourself and yet you don't know how to control your tongue, you're not really religious. You're deceiving your own heart. And so here's the interesting thing. Not only do unbelievers suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness and call wisdom foolish and foolishness wisdom, but believers do the same sort of thing in their own way, in their own circle, in their own patterns of behavior. We deceive our hearts about our sin, about our tongues. Classical Testament Illustration David and Bathsheba. Right. David set up Bathsheba's husband to be killed. He committed adultery. Which Bathsheba. And you have to ask yourself, did David just forget, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery. Was it a mental mistake in David's part? Or do you think David just perversely and with a high hand went into those sins? No. David somehow had brought himself to believe that he had an excuse. Maybe because he was the king, maybe because he had accomplished so much. I don't know what it was, because the Bible doesn't to the deceptive pattern of thinking that went on in David's heart. But you know that he deceived himself. Here's the man after God's own heart who knows the commandments of God, who said, oh how love I thy law, who yet fell into that sin. You'd better believe the religious are capable of self deception. So look at the perversity and the pervasity of self deception. Look at human nature. Among the irreligious, we see it. Among the religious, we see it. And we must see all of it as the work of Satan. In 2nd Corinthians 4:4, Paul says that Satan blinds the hearts of Men. In Second Timothy 2:25 26, Paul tells us we must be rescued from the snare of the devil. In Revelation 12, 9, he's called the deceiver of all mankind. Satan's most effective deceptions are those which he teaches us to buy into as our own, and yet we label them as truth. We are caught in the snares of Satan when we deceive ourselves so secondly, let's learn this morning of the inadequacy of sincerity. Now, don't get me wrong. Religious sincerity is a very necessary thing. The world rightly shuns us and censures us and indicts us when we prove to be hypocrites. And in our religious professions, when the world sees people saying one thing with their mouths and living another way in their lives, rightly condemns us is not being sincere. The world rightly condemns a dead orthodoxy which is so possible, especially, I think, in churches which have prided themselves in their doctrinal purity. The world looks at us and says, boy, I mean, we've got all this edifice of thought and doctrine worked out, and yet there's no life to it. We don't follow through by having life transforming truth make us into healthy people, spiritually alive people who know how to obey God and bring glory to his name. And so religious sincerity is absolutely necessary. But my point is that though it is necessary, it is not sufficient. To be sincere in your religious convictions is not enough. It is something you must have. And we are chided for not having it, and rightly so. But it is not sufficient in our democratic, tolerant age. The spirit is one of ethical relativism. Everyone has the right to believe whatever he wants as long as he holds to it sincerely. Everyone has the right to believe these things. And more than that, none of us have the right to criticize anybody else. I probably don't have to illustrate that. My guess is we can take an hour. And you'd give me illustrations galore of that. You know that's what you run into. You see that in your families, don't you? Haven't you been accused of being censorious as a Christian? Look, everyone has right who makes you think you're right all the time. You've seen that at work, you've seen it at school. You hear it from your neighbors, you hear it from your friends. That is the spirit of our age. It's relativism. And what it says is if this person is slightly. He may have believed something that is absolutely absurd, but if he was sincere, he's a good man. And if you buy into that, you're the fool. If you buy into that, you're not listening to the word of God. The word of God says sincerity is not enough. How many proverbs have we read this morning about people being right in their own eyes, pure in their own estimation? Spiritually, they think they're perfectly all right, and yet they are going to hell. It is not enough to be sincere. It is good to be sincere, but it is not enough to be sincere. One must also be right. For you see, it is possible that people are sincerely wrong about themselves, that people are sincerely wrong about their philosophy of life, that people are sincerely wrong about their religion. That is possible. And if everybody's right, or to put it the other way, if nobody is wrong, then we have just bought into the worst self contradiction and logical nonsense conceivable. It cannot be the case that when somebody says it's all right to eat human flesh when you are hungry, and someone who says it is not all right to eat human flesh when you're hungry, that both of those people can be right. One of them is wrong. One cannot grant that cannibalism has a right in our culture just because the cannibals are sincere. Sincerity is not sufficient. And so what do we need? Thirdly, the necessity of the illumination of the Holy Spirit. If we cannot trust ourselves, if all of us must grant our inclination towards self deception and spiritual delusion, then we need the illumination of God's Holy Spirit. Now, Westminster Confession of Faith, as so often speaks so beautifully and so correctly when it tells us of the way in which God effectually calls men out of sin into salvation. We there read in the confession that his gracious work includes, and I quote, enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God. And the Spirit does that by the word and by his own power, enlightening our minds to understand the things of God. In Acts 26, verse 18, we read of the work of God through the power of His Spirit to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they might receive forgiveness of sins. To turn them from the power of Satan, the deceiver of all mankind, who has us in his snare, to turn us from the power of Satan, which is to say from the darkness to light, to open our eyes. Only the Spirit of God can do that. I could preach and preach and preach. I could go on for hours and I could not convict you of one sin. I might be the instrument of the Spirit to tell you the truth, but only the Spirit can open your heart. Only the Spirit can tell you the truth, the ugly truth about yourself. Only the Spirit can enable you to read the Bible and to understand its message of hope and salvation in a way which no unbeliever, who is unregenerate and cannot receive the things of the Spirit could. Only the Spirit can do that, open our eyes and turn us from darkness to light. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 2, now we have received not the spirit of the world, not the deceptive lying spirit of Satan, but rather the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God. What hope do you have of escaping self deception? Your only hope is the grace of God powerfully at work through the Holy Spirit to enlighten your eyes. Because you have the spirit of God, you might know the things freely given to you of God that makes all the more guilty our unwillingness to read the Bible. This is a closed book, a closed book to the majority of people in our culture. To us it is an open book. The light is now on, the light is shining. We can understand it. And so what we do is we keep it closed and on our shelves, on our coffee tables, on our desk. But we have the spirit by which we can understand those things freely given. Paul prayed for the Ephesians that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him and having the eyes of your heart enlightened. That's my prayer for you this morning too, friends. That you'll have the wisdom that doesn't trust yourself, the wisdom that sees the pervasity and the perversity of self deception in human nature, the wisdom that knows that sincerity in flying by the seat of your pants is not sufficient. The wisdom that will come and ask for God's spirit to open your heart, open your eyes, enlighten the Scriptures and that you'll pay attention, that you'll listen. That's our only hope, to be rescued from the deceptive stare of Satan. That's our only hope, to be rescued from the self deception of which we are all so guilty that God will turn us around and by his Spirit enlighten us so that now the Scriptures will shine brightly not only to us, but I trust through us as well. Let's pray Father. We have often thought of ourselves and professed ourselves to be religious people. And yet we haven't controlled our mouths and we haven't acknowledged our sin and we haven't listened attentively to your word nor obeyed it. We've been hearers that are not discovered. And so we come this morning and humble ourselves by confessing that we are self deceived. So often we have such a high evaluation of ourselves it is unwarranted. And because you weigh the spirits, we need to Acknowledge we are found wanting. So today we ask you to receive us as your children. Not for any good in us, and not at all because of how we think of ourselves, but only because of the objective merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. How he came into this world and lived a sin free life and died upon an accursed cross in the place of people who were too arrogant to admit their sin. Teach us to admit that. To throw ourselves upon the mercy of Christ this morning to plead with you for your Spirit, to enlighten our eyes, to understand things correctly, to understand our sin, and above all to understand your Word and Father. Make us people of the Word. Having opened our eyes and having taught us to distrust ourselves, teach us to trust what you say, to read what you say, to take it to heart, to study it hardly, to put great effort into it, to seek to apply it to our lives and to live in its light. And we know that you receive and that you alone deserve the glory for all these things that are accomplished in our horrible lives. Because you are the Father of glory, the Father of grace, who has shown us mercy in His Son and continues day by day to nurture us by His Spirit. Father, we give you praise for these things and ask that our gratitude would be transformed into obedience. We pray in Jesus Jesus name. Amen.