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by Charlie Wolcott

“Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but they will not find me.” ~Proverbs 1:28

I started reading through Proverbs again to start out September, doing a chapter a day, and the first chapter leapt out to me. It’s something I’ve read numerous times, but this time there was an emphasis there which I had not seen before. The above verse of Proverbs 1:28 and the surrounding verses fly in the face of so many teachings we hear today.

The average church today describes how God will give us so many chances because He is so full of love and mercy. After all, He is longsuffering, not willing that any would perish but all might come to repentance. There is a lot of truth to this, but it’s often out of balance. Proverbs is telling us here that there may come a time where we may call out of to God for help, to seek wisdom in time of trouble, and because we refused to seek Him for so long, He won’t answer. Yes, I am saying that there could come a time where no matter how much we cry for help that God will not hear us. It happened at least once: with Noah’s Flood. God said He would not strive with man forever. He wasn’t going to let them sin for the sake of “love” and “mercy” forever. Many people would have banged on the Ark when the floods finally came, and God did not answer them. That should frighten us.

Jesus warned against the blasphemy of the Holy Spirt as being the unpardonable sin. While many interpret that as “rejecting Jesus as your Savior,” John MacArthur put a different twist on it that I had only vaguely heard of in this sermon 51 years ago. He made the comment that because this verse directly follows the Pharisees calling the acts of Jesus as being of the devil, that Jesus was suggesting that if you could see all the works He did and the only conclusion you could come up with was it was of the devil, then you were beyond the possibility of being saved. It’s a rather bold statement, but he’s not alone either.

Adrian Rogers, in addressing how God handles those who have never heard to the Gospel, said this: “Light received gives more light. Light rejected increases darkness.” Here is his message. Every person will be held responsible for the “light” or the knowledge he has been given. If someone did not have a lot, he won’t be held responsible for that which he wasn’t not given. But as Scripture declares every person has been given at least some knowledge of God, every person has enough knowledge and evidence to damn them. What is this knowledge? Paul describes both creation and conscious in Romans 1. None have any excuses. Each must make an account for what they know and how they responded to it.

So, what about those jungle warriors who never heard the Gospel? Paris Reidhead got to see that firsthand. He went to Africa initially thinking they had such a poor existence on earth that he’d bring the Gospel to them to give them hope, yet when he got there, he learned that the heathen there already knew more about God than he dreamed they knew of, and they wanted nothing to do with it. Reidhead noticed they knew of God, but they loved their sin and wanted to stay in it. God’s message to Reidhead shook him up. The Holy Spirit impressed upon his spirit this concept: “I didn’t send you to Africa for the sake of the heathen. I sent you to Africa for my sake.” Reidhead learned he was sent to claim what Christ purchased on the cross. God wasn’t so concerned about their “souls” as He was about His glory and what His Kingdom stood for.

We have got to learn that while God does take interest in us, we are not His first priority. His first priority is His Kingdom and His glory. That means when we choose to get in His way, things don’t go well for us. When we reject God and when we reject His wisdom, God is going to let us suffer the consequences. If we continue in that sin, then God will continue to let that sin boil and fester. Eventually the time will come when God will simply hand us over to a reprobate mind.

Several clichés come to mind. “If you made the bed, lay in it.” “Many people like to sow wild oats and pray for a crop failure.” Look, God is full of love and He is full of mercy. I am not questioning or challenging this. But we cannot use that as an excuse to take sin as flippantly as I’ve seen, including in my own life. I hate the fact that I don’t take God as seriously as I should. I know what I am, and I know what I can be apart from Christ. If God doesn’t apply His grace and mercy to me every day, even when I don’t ask for it, I know how evil I can become. And don’t think you are any different. You know who you are, too, and what you would be capable of doing if the guards and checks in your heart and mind were removed. Some of you may think you don’t do something because society says, “Don’t do it.” That’s fine. But if society didn’t check up on you about it, what would stop you? Don’t blame God when we choose to sin against Him and He lets us experience the consequences.

God gives grace and mercy when we disobey out of childish foolishness. Jesus prayed for His Father to forgive those crucifying Him because they knew not what they were doing. Paul affirmed that. If they did know what they were doing, they would not have crucified Christ. But when that childish foolishness becomes and grows into intentional defiance, then God will lay down the hammer of justice. And if it continues after repeated cases of mercy and grace being offered, there will come a point where God says, “It’s over. You are lost forever.”

Ahab was one such case. God revealed Himself to Ahab through a 3 ½ year drought, through fire from heaven, through an old prophet outrunning his best horses, through two battles against Syria, and even a final chance after getting Naboth murdered for a vineyard. In every case, God offered Ahab a chance to repent, but in each case a woman named Jezebel got in the way and kept him reeled in. Eventually God had enough and asked a lying spirit to convince Ahab to go to war to be killed in battle. Ahab rejected wisdom and rejected God. It cost him his life and to be forever marked as the evilest king of all the rulers, a king who refused to hear God despite the numerous attempts God made to draw him. Did God fail? No. He let Ahab make his choices. Ahab’s loss was Ahab’s loss, not God’s. Let us remember that. When we disobey God, we are the ones who lose, not God.

There is only one escape to this judgment. Accept the light while we can. What has God shown you? What truth do you know God has given you? Start with that. My pastor gives very solid advice: when you don’t know what to do, go back to the last thing you know for sure God told you to do and do it. You may not get further or clearer instructions until you do. Seek wisdom. Seek God’s knowledge. Only by obeying it can we get more, and the mine of God’s wisdom is inexhaustible. If we reject God’s wisdom, we truly become stupid, but if we receive it and search after it, we’ll keep getting more and more. And this treasure is simply invaluable. It’s beyond comprehension of how valuable it is. We are to pursue it, and if we get God, we get all that comes with Him. No words can describe that prize. Go after it and don’t scorn it.

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