In his sermon 'Wrong Ways that Seem Right', Peter Allison explores the dangers of following paths that appear correct but ultimately lead to destruction. He begins by reading from Proverbs 16, highlighting the verse, 'There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.' Using historical examples such as the mass immigration to Russia in the 1930s and the Plymouth Colony's failed experiment with socialism, Allison illustrates how sincerely held beliefs can still lead to harmful outcomes. He attributes these misguided paths to three main reasons: our finite minds, which are limited in knowledge; our fallen minds, which are corrupted by sin; and our fickle minds, which often lack faith in God's Word. Allison argues that because of these limitations, humans must rely on the wisdom provided by God through the Bible. He warns against the dangers of socialism, government schooling, and socialized medicine, arguing that they contradict biblical teachings. Ultimately, he emphasizes that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation, as all other paths may seem right but lead to spiritual death. He calls for a renewal of the mind through faith in God's Word and the teachings of Jesus Christ.

I'd like to read the larger portion of the section that we have been looking at. And so I'd like to read this morning Proverbs chapter 16. Beginning at verse 20. Beginning at verse 20. He who heeds the word wisely will find good, and whoever trusts in the Lord happy is He.

The wise in heart will be called prudent, and sweetness of the lips increases learning. Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who has it, but the correction of fools is folly. The heart of the wise teaches his mouth and adds learning to his lips. Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

The person who labors labors for himself, for his hungry mouth drives him on. An ungodly man digs up evil, and it is on his lips like a burning fire. A perverse man sows strife, and a whisperer separates the best of friends. A violent man entices his neighbor and leads him in a way that is not good. He winks his eyes to devise perverse things, and purses his lips and brings about evil.

The silver-haired head is a crown of glory, if it is found in the way of righteousness. He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord." May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Word. Almighty Heavenly Father, your Word is truth and it is light and life to us. We ask this morning that as we look into your Word that you would shine your light upon our soul, upon the innermost recesses of our heart, and that your Word, which is living and active and powerful, may act upon us.

Ask that you would sanctify these unclean lips that they might proclaim holy words through Jesus Christ. Amen. Through Jesus Christ. Amen. We have had a mass immigration from last week to this week.

A number of our midst are away on trips and traveling out of state, some for a couple weeks a month and so forth. But in the 1930s, there was mass immigration out of the United States. It's not very well known. It's often overlooked and ignored. But it happened.

There was an immigration to Russia. Yes, the communist nation that just a few years earlier had undergone the Bolshevik Revolution. It was an immigration by people who were under the mistaken belief that it was a better place to live, that it would be a workers' utopia, where everybody worked for the benefit of each other. Instead of everybody being for himself and just being a greedy capitalist, that this was a place where all of the people of the land were working together for the common good. And so, unemployed miners and factory workers and laborers of all sorts, as well as well-employed people who were enamored with this social experiment, immigrated to Russia, almost overwhelming their ability to handle these number of immigrants.

Some estimate as many as a thousand a week were immigrating in the early decade of the 30s. A hundred or so a week landing in Moscow itself. They were people that had been misinformed by journalists, misinformed by ambassadors who came back from Russia telling wonderful tales of what life over there was like. They were misinformed by influential leaders of our society, by officers of government, by university professors who all portrayed life in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a wonderful place, a great social experiment that was blazing a better way for people and nations to live. Now, it was all lies, of course.

The ambassador of the United States to Russia would come back and give these glowing statements about what life was like. Meanwhile, his wife would be awakened by the screams at night of families being arrested and deported. She was awakened by gunfire as these families are getting mown down. And she would say to her husband as they lay in bed, they're killing these people. And he would say, oh no, don't worry about it honey.

They're just blasting for the new subway Most of these people that immigrated the vast majority of them met tragic deaths in concentration camps in the Gulag of the Soviet Union. Proving once again that there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Now why is it that there is a way that seems right to us, but its end is the way of death? Why is it that these people, These otherwise intelligent people, seemingly intelligent people, ordinary people like you and I, could be so deceived, so seeming to follow a right way, and yet so tragically end in death. It certainly destroys the notion that it doesn't matter what one believes or thinks as long as one is sincere about their beliefs.

Sincerely held beliefs, no matter how sincerely they are held, no matter how devoutly they are followed, if they are wrong, bring death. It can be destructive. But why is it that a way can seem good to us and yet be so tragically wrong? Well I would suggest three things, three reasons. First we have finite minds.

We have finite minds. We have very limited knowledge about this world. Knowledge about this world even though we have a lot of knowledge there is more knowledge around then than any one of us could even begin to learn And yet even if one were to know all of this knowledge that is available to us today and has been available, even if one were to know all of this, it's still very limited. Our minds are finite. There are so many things that we just don't know.

So many very fundamental things that we just don't know. Just read Job. Job was a very knowledgeable man. Job was a righteous man who feared the Lord. Job was probably far smarter in his knowledge of this world than we give him credit for him and many who lived in his day.

But at the end of that book, Job has a conversation with God, starting in chapter 38, that reveals just how ignorant, how finite our mind is, How little we really know, even about the ordinary things that are all around us. God asked Job, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding who determined its measurements." Well, what is the foundation of the earth? God suspended the earth upon the thing. We are still trying to figure out how we did it.

We can talk about gravity, but we are just describing something that we don't see, can't know, don't know very well. God has suspended the earth on nothing. And that's about all that we can say right now, other than a lot of equations to describe how it moves, or even how we think it moves. We really don't even know that for sure, because as any scientist will readily acknowledge we can't determine absolute motion. We can only measure relative motion because we are finite.

We have to stand somewhere to measure something. So we can only measure things in relation to where we're standing. So God asked Job who determined its measurements. Surely you know. Or who stretched the line upon it.

To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone? We don't know. For all of the thousands and millions of articles of physics and gravity, we just don't know what the earth is, the foundation of the earth is laid upon, or who set the plumb line, or where its cornerstone is. When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy When the cornerstone was late or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst forth and issued from the womb When I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band when I fixed my limit for it and set bars in doors, when I said thus far, You may come, and no farther, and here your proud waves must stop." Who did that?

How is that done? Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place? Who brings the sun up every morning? The rooster? Have you entered the springs of the sea or have you walked in search of its depths?

Have the gates of death been revealed to you or have you seen the doors of the shadow of breath? Where is the way to the dwelling of light and darkness? Where is its place? I mean these are basic questions. Where is light?

Where is darkness? Where does it come from? That you may take it into its territory, that you may know its paths, do you know it because you were born then or because of the number of your days are great? Have you entered the treasury of snow or have you seen the treasury of hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble? Who has divided a channel for the overflowing of water, or the path for the thunderbolt, to cause it to rain in a land where there is no one.

The path for lightning. Where is it going to go? We don't know. That's not something that we can figure out. All we can do is to prepare for it when it happens.

Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades? He goes on to talk about the hydrological cycle, the evaporation of water vapor, its ascension into the sky, its movement across the course of the earth, and then its falling down to the earth again as hail or rain or snow or precipitation in some form. Do we know how that happens? We can describe certain principles, but we don't really know because we don't really know when it's going to rain. How many times have we said, well, it's going to rain today and then it doesn't?

Or, it's not going to rain today and then it does. I mean it happens all the time. We have jokes about the weathermen and their accuracy. Because we really don't know. We can guess but we don't know.

Our minds are finite. Can you bind the cluster of Pleiades? Can you loose the belt of Orion? Can you bring out Maseroth in its season? Or can you guide the great bear with its cubs?

Ursa Major, the constellation. Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth? You don't know, we really don't even know how many stars there are. We've been counting for thousands of years and really don't know how many there are.

There's just more than we can count. We don't really even know how far away they are. We just have some educated guesses. We've never been there. Our minds are very finite.

We are very finite. Can you lift up your voice to the clouds? Then an abundance of water may cover you. Can you send out lightnings that they may go and say to you, here we go? Who has put wisdom in the mind or has given understanding to the heart?

Who can number the clouds by wisdom? Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven when the dust hardens its clumps and the clods cling together? Can you hunt the prey for the lion or satisfy the appetite of the young lions? Who provides food for the raven? When it's young ones cry to God.

Do you know the time when the mountain goats bear young? Or can you mark when the deer gives birth? Do you know the time when they bear their young? They bow down, they bring forth their young, they deliver their offspring, they are healthy, they grow strong, they depart and don't return. Who set the wild donkey free?

Who loose the hind of the conager? Will the wild ox be willing to serve you? Will he heed you? Will He be fed by your manger? Can you bind Him with ropes?

Will He plow the valley behind you? Have you given the horse its strength? Have you closed his neck with thunder? God goes on and on and on, asking Job question after question about just this world. These are earthly things.

And Jesus said, if we can't understand when He speaks of earthly things, how can we ever understand when He speaks of heavenly things? God told Job, Now prepare yourself like a man. I will answer, question you, and you will answer me. Will you indeed annul my judgment? Would you condemn me that you may be justified?

Have you an arm like God? Can you thunder with a voice like his? Well then adorn yourself with majesty and splendor and array yourself with glory and beauty and disperse the rage of your wrath. Look on everyone who is proud and humble him. Look on everyone who is proud and bring him blow.

If you're so good, can you do all these things? Then he goes on for a whole chapter in chapter 41 to describe the Leviathan, a beast that is beyond any of our human ability to control or to tame. A beast that we're not even sure what exactly he may be talking about. Sounds very much like a dragon. But We have finite minds.

And so to our finite minds there are maybe many things that seem to be good, but aren't. Because we simply don't know. We don't know what we don't know. And so we are dependent upon God for wisdom. There are many, many areas of our life where we recognize that we are dependent upon God for wisdom because we are finite, we are very limited, and we just don't know.

What is the best way to feed a nation? Well, how many nations have we started and experimented with to know the answer to that question? Probably not even one. Our life just really isn't long enough to figure those kinds of things out. Because of the finiteness of our mind, we have to depend upon the wisdom of God as it's revealed in His Word.

And He gives it to us here in that next verse. Tells us about the best way to feed a nation. Well look at that in a minute. Or how do we raise our children? What's the best way to teach them and to train them?

There are many different people that are giving us many different conflicting opinions. About what is good and what isn't good. We have to look to the Word of God and recognize the finiteness of our mind. And Joshua forgot to look to God for counsel when the Gibeonites came to him. They brought their old moldy bread and their clothes that were worn, threadbare and full of holes, and said that they had come on a very long journey from a very far away place because they had heard of the marvelous things that God was doing and they wanted to come and make peace.

And Joshua forgot the finiteness of his mind and he forgot to ask counsel of the Lord. And he made a treaty with people who turned out that they weren't so far away, that the threadbare clothes and the moldy bread was just an apparition, just something that was a stunt, props that they had gathered together to make an appearance to Joshua of being far away and having traveled a long distance. Because of the finiteness of his mind, his inability to know where they actually did come from, he made an error. We are ignorant of what we don't know, and so therefore we are often ignorant of unintended consequences of the things that we do. We don't know what we don't know.

We don't know history. And I'm not saying that we've been lazy and therefore that's why we don't know. I'm saying that our mind is finite. No, maybe we are lazy. Maybe we do not know what we should know.

But I'm saying even if we had a good mind and a good education, our mind is finite. And there is so much that We just don't know. And so there are many ways that may seem right to us, but the end is the way of death. Secondly, not only do we have a finite mind, And that has nothing to do directly with sin. But we also have a fallen mind.

We have a finite mind and we have a fallen mind. Our reason is fallen. And so we don't think correctly. Our thinking has been corrupted. And Because we are fallen, we are sinners, we are in rebellion against God.

Because of that rebellion, we are often willfully ignorant of the truth. Paul describes these people in Romans 1, who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. See, what seems right to rebellious people is not right. So we have a problem of being deluded, self-deceived.

And we think that what we are doing is right. We think that it is good. But we are like those described in Romans 1, who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Anytime we are caught in sin, this is the foundation. We have deceived ourselves in exchange of the truth of God for a lie.

One of the big lies today is regarding God, the things that we read about in Job. Who has made this earth and when was it made a lot of us are like the like Joshua we are deceived by the appearances around us And what seems good to us and what seems right is not. And rebellious minds, minds that have rebelled against God, minds that seek to make themselves Gods, To put themselves upon God's throne, and to rob God of his glory as our Creator, have come up with very elaborate ways to account for the existence of this world, to account for our existence. It's a very pernicious lie, but it seems right to many people in their rebellion against God. It seems right, and as they look around at the earth, because their mind is fallen, because their thinking has been corrupted.

They interpret all of the evidence with a corrupted and fallen mind. And they find many millions of years where the Bible says there is only 6, 000 years. And they have come up with very elaborate schemes that seem good to them, that ultimately rob God of his glory, that displace God from being Creator. And we read in our confession this morning from the third commandment about that. It.

It is a sin to deny God His glory as our Creator. Opposing of God's truth and grace and ways. Misapplying of God's decrees and providences. His providence is how he governs this world. God executes his decrees in creation and in providence.

When we deny that God is our Creator, When we attribute what He has done in the work of His hands to other things, we are misapplying God's decrees and His providences. We are perverting the Word. God says that He made the world 6, 000 years ago in six days and all very good. When we come up with another scheme, another way of looking at the evidence around us. It seems right to us, but it is the way of death, because it rejects the Word of God.

And if we can reject the Word of God in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, where God tells us when and where He made the world, then what's the difference between rejecting that truth in 1 Corinthians 15 when He tells us about the resurrection and heaven? So what seems right to us, because we have a finite mind and a fallen mind, is in fact the way of death. But we also, there are also things that seem right to us because we have a fickle mind. We have a finite mind, we have a fallen mind, but we also have a fickle mind. We lack faith in the Word of God.

God says that He will provide for us. He says look at the lilies of the field. They don't toil, they don't work, and yet they are arrayed in beauty that exceeds even the splendor of the greatest king in Israel, Solomon. How much more, the Lord says, won't he provide for us, and for our needs, and for our food, and for our shelter? David said, I have been young and now I am old and I have yet to see the righteous, the children of the righteous, begging bread.

But in our fickleness, we lack faith in the Word of God. Faith to wait upon the Lord for His provision, faith to wait upon Him for His timing, and that can lead us to do things that seem right to us but are not. Sometimes those have smaller consequences, sometimes bigger consequences, but ultimately they are the way of death. Remember when Saul had come back from war in 1 Samuel 13. And he was waiting for Samuel to come and offer sacrifices.

He had defeated the Philistines. And Samuel delayed in coming. And so Saul gave up trusting that Samuel would come and said, well, the people are going to be scattered from me. They are going to get tired of waiting. And you did not come when you said you were going to come.

And so I went ahead and offered these sacrifices and offered the burnt-off. I felt compelled. It seemed right to him in that circumstance. Because of the fickleness of his faith. He didn't wait on the Lord.

He didn't wait for Samuel to come and offer sacrifices that he should not have offered. And Samuel said to Saul, you have done foolishly. You haven't kept the commandment of the Lord your God which he commanded you. For now the Lord would have established you as king over Israel forever, but now your kingdom will not continue. The Lord has sought for himself a man after his own heart, And the Lord has commanded him to be commander over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord has commanded you." His faith was fickle.

And he did what seemed right. It seemed logical. It seemed, humanly speaking, it seemed like the right thing to do in order to maintain His rule as the King in Israel. And yet it was wrong. And because of it, God took his kingdom away from him and gave it to someone else who would seek him with all of his heart.

You know, Martha was in a similar situation, Mary and Martha, the sisters. When Jesus had come, their house was full of guests. And Martha, it seemed good and needful to her to be busy getting the meal ready that seemed good to her and she was a little frustrated with Mary her sister because Mary wasn't seeing things the same way. Mary wasn't so urgently working to prepare food and show hospitality. She was just sitting at Jesus' feet listening to his teaching.

Martha was a little frustrated with this, and she came to Jesus and expressed her frustration. Jesus gently rebuked her, saying that Mary had chosen the better way. You see, it seemed good, and it really was a good thing to show hospitality. But because she didn't have faith that God would provide, She was frustrated when Mary chose the better way. What was more important at that time?

And so because of our finite mind, our fallen mind, and our fickle mind, There are the ways that seem good to us, that are in fact the way of death, their end, their result, they lead to death. These choices are all around us, they are continually before us. And it's not just people who are enamored with socialism, or non-Christians, that can fall into a way that seems good to them. I think in light of the next verse that there is a very obvious application. The next verse says, the person who labors, labors for himself, for his hungry mouth, drives him on.

The person who labors, labors for himself, for his mouth, his desire for food drives him on. This is a very biblical principle, and it's one that we ignore to our own peril. And It literally does bring physical death when we ignore this principle. You see, socialism is the idea that this motivation, that this verse here in the Word of God is not true. And that it's possible for mankind to work to feed everybody else first.

And people have tried that. One of the probably most interesting of these experiments was in the Plymouth Colony. When the pilgrims, these were godly people. These were people who had come over to this land to worship God in the way they believed God had commanded them. And they came at great sacrifice, great financial sacrifice.

They gave up a lot of comforts. They suffered Great death, great deprivation. I think almost half of the colony was killed in the first year or two. So these are not lazy people. These are not godless people.

These are people who do fear the Lord. But they forgot this principle. And they set up a government in the colony that seemed good to them. And it resulted in many many deaths. What they set up was socialism.

That Everybody would work a common ground for the common good of the people of These of these colonists these pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower. And Bradford writes about the failure of that idea. He said the failure of this experiment of communal service, which was tried for several years and by good and honest men. Good and honest men. These were men who did fear God.

It proves the emptiness of the theory of Plato and other ancients that taking away of private property and the possession of it in community would make a state happy and flourishing as if they were wiser than God. They thought they were. They followed a path that seemed good to themselves. Seemed good to them. Here they were this band of, it was a church actually.

They even brought over their own pastor. The first building they built was the meeting house. And it seemed good to them that they would all live together and all work the same land for the mutual benefit of each other. They thought that that would make them, they thought that would be the best. And it turned out that it didn't work for this very reason given in the text that the person who labors for himself for his hungry mouth drives him on.

His mouth drives him on. He's hungry, he wants to eat. And so the young men who were the fittest and the most able to work, they objected to being forced to work, to spend their time and their strength working for other men's wives and children without any recompense. Because the strong man or the resourceful man, the one who thought about and pondered his work and put his mind to it as well as his brawn, He didn't get any more benefit than the people who didn't do that, who were lazy or just unwilling to work. And as for men's wives, Bradford writes, they were obliged to do service for other men, such as cooking and washing their clothes and they considered a kind of slavery.

And it just didn't work. Nothing worked. If, he says, it was thought, all were to share and share alike, and all were to do alike, then all were on inequality throughout, and no one was as good as another. And so if it did not actually abolish those very relations which God Himself had set among men, it did at least greatly diminish the mutual respect that is so important that should be preserved among them. He's saying they actually began to destroy the very relationships that God had established.

Those important relationships of husbands and wives and parents and children. Because they, doing what seemed to be right, doing what seemed even to be, let's say, Christian. And that is having communal property and sharing it alike actually resulted in destroying the very community that they were trying to build And he says that no one argue that this is due to human failing rather than to this communistic plan of life in itself. He's writing this in the early 1600s, long before Lenin and Stalin ever came on the scene. I answer, seeing that all men have this failing in them, that God in His wisdom saw that another plan of life was fitter for them.

And then He talks about how they went on to give each family their own land and to make each family responsible for providing food for their own household, and how the Lord prospered that. We have our examples today. Government schooling. It's essentially the same idea. Wouldn't it be great if all of the wealthier people, The ones who are grandparents who don't have any children anymore, who have more disposable income, or just are wealthy, wouldn't it be wonderful if they would help pay for everybody's education?

When parents often first have children, that's when they're the poorest. That's when they're the least able to provide for their own children their own children's education wouldn't it be great if the community comes alongside and those who are farther along those who have more wealth wouldn't it be wonderful if they would help these young parents educate their children. After all, don't these older people know more? We can hire the very best teachers for them. Teachers that they couldn't afford otherwise.

And we can set up these communistic schools communal schools we call them public schools they're really government schools but they are The idea behind them is that everybody in the community will help to pay for the education of the community's children. And I don't have to tell you it doesn't work. It doesn't work. What's turned out by government schools is an inferior product. And people know that.

And the people that can afford better take advantage of that and abandon the communal school. Because it doesn't work. It seems right. It seems right to our finite, fallen, and fickle minds, but it's not according to the Word of God, which calls parents to be the ones to teach their children. Not that they can't have help, hire help, but it's help that they are able to hire out of their own wealth.

Because God has given to parents the greatest desire for the good of their children. And also God has given to parents the duty to teach their children, because that's what we as parents need. Because it's when we teach that we learn. I had a professor in college, in first year of physics, who said something to that effect the first day of physics class. He was a wonderful professor.

I had him for three straight semesters. I tried to get him. But what he said was something to this effect. He said, you know, I went through graduate school and I got my PhD in physics, and I learned how to work all these physics problems. But it wasn't until I taught physics that I learned this material.

So I understand where you're at. And see, we as parents have a need to teach to our children the principles and precepts of the Word of God because we need to learn them. And when we have community, communistic or government schools, we deprive our parents of that opportunity. You see, in the finitude of our own mind, we miss that unintended consequence. But God knows better.

God is all wise. He's all knowing. And we need to follow and listen to the precepts and the ways that he has given to us in his word. Because we just don't know what we don't know. We have the same thing going on with medicine today too.

The idea that it's terrible that some person should not be able to receive medical care because they can't afford it. Wouldn't it be good if all of the community, if all the people band together so that no one has to go without medical care. It's the exact same thing that the Plymouth colony tried to feed themselves with. The exact same principle. And it's wrong for the exact same reason, because the person who labors labors for himself, for his mouth, drives him on.

And there are all sorts of problems that happen, that come from this attempt at government medicine to be able to share equally in the costs. It's even a bit of an issue with some of the health sharing ministries. It's important how they are set up so that they don't become socialized medicine. It doesn't even work among Christians, as the Plymouth Colony found out. I totally support Christians bearing one another's burdens in the medical area as well as in any area.

But in doing so we cannot undermine or we cannot go against this principle that he who labors for himself, for his mouth, drives him on. And so there are principles that we need to remember, even in our Christians sharing costs together. Because I've heard even Christians say, well you know I Would do this cheaper treatment method but because Samaritans will pay for it or some other health ministry There's four or five of them in the country today. Well, then I'm going to do this more expensive thing. You see, when that happens, when people begin to think that way, then the costs begin to drive up.

And that's exactly what we are seeing in medicine. The costs are going up so fast, they are far outstripping even the horrific rate of inflation. Medical costs are climbing faster than anybody can handle, and it's because of this principle. We have government medicine that seeks to take from everybody to pay for one person's care. And it doesn't work.

It fails. And what actually happens is it brings death. It brings a reduction of the medical care that is available to people. And we see that when people from other countries come over here to try and get away from their socialized medicine to get treatment. But probably the greatest and most tragic are those who believe that there is another way to God other than Jesus Christ.

All of the false religions have essentially said, well, Jesus may be one way, but he is not the only way. There are many ways to God. There are many sincere people who do good, who take care of their neighbors. Maybe they're even better at caring for their neighbors and looking out for the well-being of others than the Christians around them, to our shame. But does it matter how sincere and how devout those beliefs are held?

The Word of God says that Jesus Christ is the only way. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. And so all of those who sincerely believe any number of doctrines, think that there is another way to heaven, that there is another way to escape the wrath of God for our sin, that there is another way to earn or to secure God's favor and His well-done, then through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His righteousness. They are on a way that may seem right to them, but it is the way of death. And if we love the people, we will gently tell them that.

Because you see, our mind is fallen, and it needs to be renewed. That we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We need to have our minds renewed because our thinking is fallen. We need to remember that it is God who is and God who was and God, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who always will be. It is God alone who knows all things.

It is God who has suspended the earth and laid its foundation and brings up the sun every day. It is God who is all powerful. And His word alone is truth. May God give us faith in His Word, in Jesus Christ, and renew our thinking in our fallen minds. And may he teach us his truth.

Father in heaven, we thank you for the truth of your word. We thank you that you have given your word to us, That it is indeed a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, and we ask your forgiveness for all of the times that we have doubted its promises, its precepts, doubted it and not put our faith in it, but have trusted in what is a broken reed that breaks and pierces us through. We ask, Lord, that you would instruct us out of your word, that you would teach us where we are ignorant, that you would correct us where we are wrong and in error and in sin, and that you would grant to us to believe your word, even if every other voice and mouth in this world is saying otherwise. Even if the wisest of the sages of this earth are telling us otherwise. Even if the most powerful voices, those in authority, are telling us contrary to your word.

Lord, we ask that you would give us a simple faith, like a child, to believe that what you say is right, and that it alone is the way of truth, and the way of life, and the way of salvation. In Jesus Christ we ask, Amen.