Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Understand God? | Taelor Gray | Jeremiah 9:23-24

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. And I'm Patrick Miller. Today we have a special guest sharing one of his favorite verses. It's his second time on our podcast. Taylor Gray is a pastor at Lyndon Life Fellowship, and he is also an indie rapper and a poet. He is the co-host of the Make It Plain podcast, which looks at the life and writings of Malcolm X and explores what we

Starting point is 00:00:34 as Christians can learn from that. I've learned a lot from Taylor, and I'm excited for you to hear from him today. Hello, my name is Taylor Gray, and today I have the privilege of sharing with you a little bit about my favorite Bible verse. This is a really tough one for me because there can be several different passages that come to mind, and the selection can even be seasonal. But I will say this, there's been one particular verse that stood out in my mind, and has been instrumental in shaping my growth as a follower of Christ. And it's in the book of Jeremiah, chapter nine. What I'll do is I'll read the new King James version,

Starting point is 00:01:19 because for me, it's important that I hold on to translations of particular verses that spoke to me in different ways. And this verse in particular, the language of the King James is often criticized and maybe discarded for our time today, but the new King James captures this pretty well. So let me read. This is Jeremiah chapter 9, verses 23 and 24. It says this,

Starting point is 00:01:48 Thus says the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches. But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these, I delight, says the Lord.

Starting point is 00:02:19 I love this verse. There are many reasons I love this verse. And I think one of the first things that comes to mind is how this articulates the attributes of God, or at least gives us an expansive view of how God. character can be understood and interpreted and even appreciated in different ways. So what he says here in this verse creates a distinction between what we would consider to be important or what we would consider to be notable or what causes us to be influenced or lift someone up in a heroic capacity. But he's creating a distinction in terms of what we

Starting point is 00:03:01 emphasize what we think is important and ultimately who the living God is, the true and living God is. The things that we lift up are typical. We lift up those who we see as wise, whether it be ourselves and our quest for knowledge, our quest to gain as much information as possible to achieve whatever academic baseline that would socially gain us the acclaim and the position of someone who's learned or a high intellectual. And he says, first of all, don't let the wise man or the person who's even pursued those things glory in what they achieve. He then goes to physical strength, the person who is mighty, who has a sense of strength and power that is comparably significant to most other people. And if you're able to gain this, then he gives a specific exhortation

Starting point is 00:04:01 And in this way, don't glory in that. Don't find your value, your worth, or even your confidence necessarily in that. Don't glory in your might, in your individual strength and your physical capacity to be strong. And then finally, one that is very near and dear to us here in our country and in this culture, the rich man, don't glory in your riches. This is something that clearly is a challenge for us. I think it's safe to say that we're socialized. into thinking that having money and gaining riches and wealth is a means of determining our

Starting point is 00:04:38 self-value or a place in society that is deemed as significant. And this specific exhortation is saying, don't glory in your riches or what you're able to accumulate in terms of money and power. That's not what the emphasis is here. So the distinctions are clear for us. the wise man who glories in his own understanding of intellect and information, the mighty man who builds all of his confidence in his physical strength and power, and the rich man who seeks after wealth and riches to determine his place of importance and prominence in society.

Starting point is 00:05:20 He says this. He turns the corner and says, let the person who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that he understands and knows me. That's really interesting because I would think that if you sat down across from someone who was a professing follower of Christ and asked them, do you understand and know God? depending on the answer you get, you could trail into an interesting conversation. But I've found, in my pastoral experience, brief as it is, I don't find a lot of confidence in the response to this kind of a question. Do you understand and know God?

Starting point is 00:06:09 The fact that he leads out with understands, it gives us an invitation to investigate what we do know about God or how we would interpret his ways or his attributes. And to understand God almost feels like an unfair pursuit is to say that in some way we can put all that we can study and interact with in the scriptures into some limited box and sum up the totality of his eternality, his power, his sovereignty, his providence. quite honestly, answering that question for myself, I can't say that I do understand God in totality. But I can say that I understand aspects of God. I understand the reasoning of God.

Starting point is 00:07:01 I understand the nature of God in human involvement, in human history, in the way that things have played out over time. I can say that. I think with confidence, any follower of Christ can answer, at least in part, that you understand why God does what he does. You understand that it translates to what we learn in Scripture about him. The second part, not just understanding God, but to know God, that connects to intimacy. That connects to our personal relationship with God. And to say that we know God to understand his ways, understand his involvement in mankind throughout history, and then to come away from that understanding with a relational connection

Starting point is 00:07:58 to God, I think that's extraordinarily valuable. And he even says, through the Prophet Jeremiah, to conclude these two verses, I am the Lord exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. So if you don't understand and if you don't know him, know that he is the Lord that exercises loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness on the earth. This is the part that I think we can spend a lifetime trying to investigate

Starting point is 00:08:33 and to gain a deeper understanding of is how this loving kindness plays out, how judgment is something that we can interpret from his lens and ultimately from his throne. And what does it look like for righteousness to permeate throughout this earth? Our witness is Christians, our witnesses, followers of Christ is a part of that. And what we understand about God and who we know him to be. We live in such a way that images or reflects what we know. and what he wants to make clear is that he is a loving God, a kind God, a God who exercises judgment, righteousness in the earth. And this is something that should give us comfort.

Starting point is 00:09:23 This is something that should give us confidence, not because we're just observing some distant concept that may or may not play out to our specifications or based on our preferences, but because he is God and he exercises them in such a way that sets him apart from any of us. The rightful response is to worship him, is to bow down and to find him to truly be God all by himself to worship him, to live as such in a way where we present our bodies as living sacrifices to this great and awesome most high God. He says he delights in those things. And in doing so, he delights in us.

Starting point is 00:10:06 So I just wanted to share that with you. I hope that it was helpful. I hope that you gained some perspective. This is just where my mind is today as I seek to understand God in new ways. As I'm living more years and more seasons in my life, I'm just thankful that I have the opportunity to know God, that he beckons me closer still, that the scriptures say that we draw near to God and he draws near to us so we can know him. And that's the only thing that we really should glory in is the fact that we are known by God and that he knows us in such a way that

Starting point is 00:10:46 affords us the opportunity to know him. And whether or not we understand the knowing keeps us secure and through the knowing, he invites us into understanding. So that's exciting to me. I hope in some way that's exciting for you. As you can see, I'll ramble on and on about the Bible because I just think it's fascinating what the Lord continues to teach us through his word. So that's all I have to share with you. I hope it's a blessing to you and that God's grace goes with you as he continues to invite us into knowing him. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating.

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Understand God? | Taelor Gray | Jeremiah 9:23-24

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