Follow the Light of Wisdom | How to live with Godly Wisdom.

I'm glad we're together today in this space. My name is Mark Cummins. I'm the pastor at Church of Hope. And if you're a regular attender, welcome. So glad that week after week, we join together in this space. And if by chance, this is your first time, I'm really glad that we're beginning our friendship today. Understand that this broadcast literally goes around the world for free. See, we believe that life's at its best when people discover hope in Christ. There are people who give generously so this broadcast can be reached across every continent. If you've never given, I would invite you today to give. You can go to our webpage, HopeInOcala.com, and drop down on the giving bar and give a one-time gift. Or you can give generously beyond just today. And if God's blessed you, help us as we give hope around the world. But for now, I want you to open up your heart and your mind. Let Jesus speak to you. Because what I believe is that when we open up our minds and let Jesus speak to us, life doesn't become perfect and all the problems don't go away, but you experience his presence in you, with you, and for you. Open up your heart. Let Jesus speak to you today. Peace.

Good morning. I got a question for you. What's the one skill that when life is on the line, that you need most? What's the one skill that you want your son or your daughter, when the pressure's on, what's that one skill that you want them to have? This week, all the different choices that have been made around the globe, even this weekend, what's that one skill that humans need, unlike any other skill, that when the pressure's on, that when us humans are about to do stupid, we're about to do something that will forever impact our life, what's that one skill? That a young teenage girl at prom or homecoming, that skill that she would have when the pressure's being on to give away, or that young man, to give away his virginity? That if he had this one skill, what's that one skill when the gunman down in Australia last night went and murdered 11 people? What was the one skill that someone would have that you and I could have? What's that one skill? And what if that one skill is right in the middle of the Christmas story? Grab your copy of God's Word. We are in Matthew chapter two. A hint to the answer is in the characters that we're gonna find in Matthew chapter two.

Notice what it says in verse one. After Jesus was born, so this is after Christmas, the presents have been opened. In our world today, we're kinda on the other side. It's everyday life, so to speak. After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, the wise men, hint, the wise men, the magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him. Another question to ask yourself this morning is what are you looking for? What are you searching for in life? What do I know about all of us in humans? We are searching for something or someone. We are all following the star. The question this morning is which star are you following? Because who you follow, what you follow will become your destiny. These wise men are following a star and it's leading them in a particular direction. What direction are you headed in this morning? What direction are your sons and your daughters and your grandchildren, your business in your life? Here, go back to God's word. Verse three, when King Herod heard this, he was disturbed. And all Jerusalem with him when leadership gave him the word of God, he was disturbed. It's stirred up, everybody gets stirred up.

When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed. He's emotionally insecure. He's afraid. He has been propped up as a quasi-leader, and now he hears about a king being born, so he feels threatened. We do stupid when we feel threatened. When we feel that life is out of our control, we begin to make irrational choices. You saw that on the news this week. So he called together all the people, chief priests and teachers of the law. He asked them, hey, where is this Christ to be born? In Bethlehem, we talked about this a few weeks ago, the Bethlehem candle, a part of Advent, the Bethlehem candle, 700 years before the birth of Christ. Verse number six, but you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, by no means least amongst the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel. God had a plan 700 years earlier. He knew that we needed a Messiah. He knew that we needed a Savior. And so he brings Jesus. Notice now verse number seven. Then Herod called the magi, the wise men, secretly, and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, now go and make a careful search for the child.

And as soon as you find him, report back to me so that I too may go and worship. And we know the rest of the story, but he certainly is deceiving the wise men. You know, some of the decisions we've made in our life come as a result of you and I being deceived. How do you know when you're being deceived? How do your children know when they're being deceived? This one skill that we need when life's on the line, this one skill that we need when the pressure is on us, anxiety is building, it will help you, it'll help me see through the deception. It helped the wise men. You'll see in just a moment. Verse number nine, after this, they heard the king. They went on their way and the star that they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over a place where the child was. And when they saw the star, they were overjoyed. And then coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. We've been doing that this morning in song. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and incense and myrrh. Some of your Bible say frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned and a dreamed not to go back to Herod because Herod had very bad intentions, they returned to their country by another route.

The one skill that we need more than any other skill, the one skill that your sons and your daughters more than a great education. An education is really good. A high SAT and a high ACT score is really important. Having a degree is really important in life, but it's not the ultimate skill that's needed when life is on the line. Being in good physical shape, having a healthy HRV rate, a healthy heart rate, having your cholesterol low, all the right metrics, that's important in life, but it's not the ultimate skill that's needed when the pressure's on in life. Having a good loving family is really important. It's such a blessing to have a loving family, but when the pressure is really on, I'm talking about between life at its best or life at its worst, this skill, unlike any other skill, when you're tempted to throw away a marriage, throw away your family and to step out into an extramarital affair, this is the skill, unlike any other skill, this is the skill that after you've done dumb, stupid, you say, what was I thinking? It's because this skill wasn't in play. And the one skill that Christmas light shines on all of us this morning is the skill of wisdom. I don't think it's random that God used this story,

that God brought these characters. Why the wise men? Why not some other group of people? Why the magi, the wise men? Why did he focus on them? Because the light gives us wisdom. An entire book in the Bible, the book of Proverbs, says this, buy wisdom and sell it not. that wisdom is most important. Knowledge is good, but wisdom understands the proper application of knowledge. Knowledge tells you what is good. Wisdom gives you the courage and the tenacity to do what is good. So what I wanna do is give you a few things that wisdom does. You can write them down, apply them. This is good in the market space. You can teach this to your team. This is good inside of our family space. And then I'm gonna give us two action steps of how to apply wisdom in our life. Because in life, there are multiple ways to learn things. One way is you can see the choices and decisions of others. You've watched the news this week, or maybe even in your own life, you've seen somebody do something and you're like, oh my goodness, how could they have done something like that? Wisdom pauses and says, what can I learn so that I don't do dumb too? Because know this, all of us are a millisecond away

from doing stupid, but by the grace of God, there go I. So please do not wake up and think somehow, oh, I would never do something like that. So wisdom says I can learn from other people. And I would much rather learn my lessons from seeing what maybe someone else has done rather than the things that I've done in my own life and the pain that it's caused me. So here's a few things that wisdom illuminates in our life. Number one, write this down. Wisdom reveals secret agendas. It's the discernment piece. It's the piece that you want your sons and daughters to understand that when the pressure's on and somebody's wanting them to go in a directions that less than best, we want them to be able to see that secret agenda. Matthew chapter two, Herod said secretly, secretly, kind of quietly, hey, you know, tell me where Jesus is so that I can go and worship him too. He had a secret agenda. He had no intention at all to go and worship Jesus. On the contrary, just a few verses down in verse 16, we see what he really wanted to do. Look what it says. When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the wise men, he was furious and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity in whom two years are old and under

in accordance with the time that he learned from the wise men, the Magi. He had a hidden agenda. The Bible says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principal powers of wickedness in unseen places. Moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas, we need to become aware that there is a secret agenda that wants to destroy our children, destroy our families. We've got to wake up. That's what wisdom done. Wisdom reveals secret agendas. Luke chapter eight and verse 17. A warning for all of us this morning. For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all. But just put that on your phone. One day, all the secret things. Somewhere around 2004, three, I had a mentor. I was living in South Florida. I remember I was walking with him on the, if you've been to Hollywood Beach, there's a big walking and jogging path and we are walking on that beach. We were walking on that path one day and he said this to me. I think I was 40, 38, 40 years old then. He said, Mark, live your life in such a way that whatever decisions you make,

you would not be ashamed if they were published on the front page of the newspaper the next day. I've never forgotten that. Have you ever been doom scrolling through social media? I know you all don't do that. Probably just something that I do, but you're doom scrolling through it and you find these videos of people who are waking up after like they have been knocked out for a tooth extraction or some kind of procedure and they're saying all kinds of crazy things or they're flirting with the nurse and they're just saying the craziest things in the world, right? What was secret because is no longer secret. That's exactly what God's saying. Here's the second thing that wisdom, the Christmas lights does. It guides the willing. Matthew chapter two and verse nine. And they went on their way. The star went ahead of them. Did you notice that? It went before them. They were willing to follow. Wisdom doesn't make you follow it. Wisdom doesn't wake up and shout at you and say, do as I say. That's why the proverb writer says, when you buy wisdom, do not sell it.

Keep it, it is important. But you have to have a willingness. The star didn't appear after they arrived. The star appeared as they walked. That's an important principle. A lot of us want all the details, all unpacked for us rather than just understanding, I'm gonna follow God along the way. See, here's the deal. You don't need a map when you've got a personal relationship with your maker. When you've got an intimate, vibrant relationship with your maker and he's got you day by day, I call that the GPS, the ultimate GPS, God's positioning system. Right, I don't know if I, you know, my phone or my car, I can plug in the address that I'm going to and it's like awesome. I mean, tell me when to turn, everything. Even when I know where I'm going, I'll plug it in because I wanna see different routes because if you notice in Ocala, we got a few drivers on the roads these days. And I don't know about you, but I ain't looking to sit in that red traffic. I just wanna get there already. So if there's a different route, even if it takes me like eight extra minutes, but there's no red, I'm dry. I would rather be moving than sitting.

It's just how I'm wired, right? So I plug in the address to the GPS so it guides me. But when's the last time you plugged in the God's positioning system and let him guide you? Think about it. We trust the technology in a phone, in a car more often than we trust in God. Waking up every day and plugging in to him. Wisdom guides the willing. Matthew chapter two and verse 12. Notice, and having been warmed in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. They were plugged into God. The whole story, their whole life, their whole trajectory would have been altogether different if they had not allowed wisdom to guide them. Here's the third thing, if you're writing them down is that Christmas lights, wisdom always leads to Jesus. Verse nine, the star stopped over the place where the child was. It didn't lead to the palace. It led to a person. That's what wisdom does. It didn't land them in a place of comfort. It guided them to the presence of Christ. So many of us are missing out on all that we want in life is because we think somehow it's a place and it's not a person. It's a vibrant, personal relationship with Jesus.

It says in verse 10 that when they saw the star they were overjoyed. That's what wisdom does. When wisdom is free to work in your life, it brings joy rather than walking down the path of, oh my, how could I? I wish I wouldn't have. The news this week is filled of people who are making millions of dollars and made choices and decisions and now their life has been ruined. They were incarcerated, their marriage, the trajectory of their future is gone all because of a lack of wisdom. We know what is right. We do not have an absence of what is right in our life. As Charlie Brown said, it's not what I don't know that gets me in trouble, it's what I do know and I don't do that gets me in trouble. Wisdom always leads to Jesus. They found joy because they found Jesus. Matthew 2 and 11, they entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. If your journey doesn't end in worship, maybe you're following the wrong star. I think that's just true in a lot of us. A lot of people, how's that person so excited for Jesus? Or how does Corbin stand up here and he's on the guitar and he's kind of singing this and he's saying,

you know, and we kind of sometimes just don't have the same energy. And here's the danger. You think for a moment that that's his job. That's one of the discrepancies. It's one of the casualties of the way we do church in the West is because we do church in the West somehow thinking that we can outsource it to a professional person. I can tell you this. Now you have to decide whether or not I'm telling you the truth, but I will tell you this. I would never put somebody to lead us in worship that I didn't already know wasn't worshiping privately before they led publicly. I'm just saying out loud, if your journey doesn't lead you to worship, maybe the. This morning, you should come to the conclusion I'm following the wrong star. And the good news in just a moment, you can pivot and change course. Here's the fourth thing, and I'll give us some application steps. The fourth thing is this, wisdom always produces generosity. In a world that is marked by scarcity, what wisdom does, because you make the wise choice, there's margin in your life. Margin allows you to be generous,

generous in every aspect of our life. Go back, look at verse 11. Then they opened, after they saw Jesus, it's hard to be generous until you see Jesus. Then they opened their treasure chest and gave him gold, gifts of gold, frankincense, or incense, and myrrh. Gold in those days was for kings, frankincense was for God, and myrrh was for a savior. And notice, generosity, it's not forced. It flows when you find Jesus. You're having a hard time being generous with your life, with your time, with your cash, with your skills. It's not because you don't have enough. Maybe it's because you really haven't found Jesus. Jesus changed, Jesus, everybody in the Christmas story, Jesus changed them, changed how they thought, changed how they act, changed how they responded. So how do we take this? How do we take wisdom, this one incredible skill, and how do we reproduce it in our lives, in our children's lives? How do we take wisdom and apply it into our business? That's what we want, right? We want our team members, we want our employers, or we want our boss to make wise choices. When someone makes an unwise choices, the company suffers, the family suffers, right? So we want to apply wisdom. It's one thing to know that wisdom leads to Jesus,

okay, that's a good thing, I'm glad that that happens. It's good that he reveals secret things, okay, I'm good. But hey, Mark, how do I apply this? How do I take wisdom and apply it in my life? I'm glad you asked. Just two things I want you to work on this week that we can work on together. Number one is this, is wisdom starts with living authentically. And I'm just telling you, nobody in culture at times lives more unauthentically than those of us who claim the title of Christian. Because we can live one way, right? When we gather like this, and then when we gather in other spaces and places, we live all together different. We gotta live authentically. The Bible says a double-minded man is unstable in all their ways. Listen, coaches and athletes can say all they want after they win the game about they thank Jesus and they got the little cross around their neck and they kinda look cool. I wanna see, wisdom shows up when no one else is watching. And do you do the right thing? Because wisdom is flowing through you. That's living authentically. The Bible says in Luke chapter 12, verse two, there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark.

Let me, can I just pause for a second? Got a question. Anybody here ever hear of John 3, 16 before? Just, I mean, like straight up, show me your hands. Wave them up in the air like you really do care, right? Come on, right, right, right, right. Okay, again, I'm sort of setting you up, but just humor me for a minute. How many of you would say, I believe John 3, 16? Like, I really believe. Like, for God so loved the world, he gave his one and only Christ. I believe it, I really believe it. So if you believe John 3, 16, do you have to come to the same conclusion that I'm gonna believe all of God's word? Or can you cherry pick? We're actually doing a whole series in 2026 about how we have a tendency to cherry pick the parts of God's word that we like and the parts that we don't like, right? So if we believe John chapter three, we've got to also believe Luke chapter 12. Let's go back. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed. So what you looked at online this week, one day will be revealed. Men, I know you think you're getting away with it, but you're not. Women, I know you think you're getting away with it,

but you're not. Students, business owners, I know you think, pastors, I know you think you're... See, the one reason heaven will be such a wonderful place filled with glory and grace, gonna see my savior's face, heaven is a wonderful place, right? The reason it is, the reason it is, is because before... Before we all get into heaven, and it's such a wonderful place, all the secrets of the world are going to be revealed, redeemed, and judged. Because we step into heaven with no hidden secret agendas. Herod had a hidden secret agenda, and it was filled with pain. Because later, he didn't worship Jesus. Later, he went and every boy around age two, around age three, was slaughtered, murdered. That's what hidden and secret things, that's what it means when we live unauthentically. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight and what you have whispered in the ear, in the inner rooms, will be proclaimed to the roost. I was thinking about asking this question, but I realized most people don't even use checkbooks anymore. But remember back in the day, there was a thing called the checkbook, and you had to balance your checkbook, remember that?

I mean, there are a lot of people still maybe have a checkbook they don't balance, or you've got your money online, you don't balance it, whatever, that's a topic for another day. But balancing, reconciling the books is wise. If you don't know how much is in there, you might overspend, have an overdraft, right? The same thing is true emotionally in our life. Same thing is true mentally and spiritually. How am I, how are we balancing what we're saying privately and how we're living publicly? Here's the second thing I want you to practice. So one, just live authentically. Wisdom would let you live publicly the same way that you live privately, because you're not ashamed. What you say privately, you can say publicly. Here's the second thing is this, is follow the light that you do have. I think most of us get tripped up because we wanna follow the light when we have all the details. The wise men didn't have all the details. Wisdom makes the right choice even before it has all of the information. Not after the conditions are just right. We obey God where we are today. That's what Abraham did. That's why Abraham was so blessed. He was chapter 11, verse eight.

He went out not knowing where he was going. God said, I will guide him. I will direct him. That's what set Abraham apart from anybody else in Exodus chapter four. When God was calling on Moses to lead the people, the children of Israel out of Egypt, he said to them, he said to God, God, what if they don't believe me or listen to me? God, what if my coworkers think that I'm dumb? My neighbors, my kids, my teammates, what if they don't believe me or listen to me? The Lord did not appear before you. Then the Lord said to him, what is that in your hand? A staff, Moses replied. And God used that staff. In other words, what God, the principle is this, that just look what you have in your hand. Look where you are. God will use what you have and where you are to be wise. Second Corinthians five and seven. We walk by faith, not by sight. Wisdom follows God without all the details. Foolishness. You think about it. Who you follow without all the details. Have you ever been, again, on social media or marketing or whatever and they introduce some new supplement. If you take this supplement, you will lose all your weight. And you actually order it.

You don't know them from anybody. They're not your doctor or you Google, you don't feel something, you got some symptom and you Google it and you're like, oh my goodness, I've got this disease. It's amazing. All of the different places that we receive information and we don't have all the details, but we believe them. We follow after them. We, but then when it comes to God, we're often like, well, yeah, I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure. I mean, God will never ask for what you don't have. He'll always ask for what you do have. So here's a few areas that I think we can give generously. Now the Magi, they didn't give what was a leftover. They didn't give out of convenience. They gave their best. And all this goes back to your personal relationship with God. When they came to the place where Jesus was, the Bible says they were overjoyed. And the next thing that says is then they were generous. It wasn't easy. But the closer you get to Jesus, the more generous you are. That's why God says he loves a generous giver. Not because he wants more of our stuff, he knows our human hearts. When I get close to Jesus, that sense of scarcity fades and generosity comes to the forefront of my mind. Numbers, I would say one, we can give our time.

Second, we can give our skills. Third, we can give our money. And fourth, we can share our story. Those four things all of us can do. All of us have 168 hours this week. Everybody has 86,400 seconds today. And we can give some of that. We can be generous with our time with other people, letting them know that they matter, that they're valuable. There's a group of people today in our community, my friend Dan Clark, and they're putting on an outreach, a fundraiser, so that people who are fighting cancer can have a little bit of extra money because it's really expensive, the drugs, and how they gotta stay in an Airbnb while their children are going through a procedure. It's super, super, super expensive. So what's happening? Today, Dan and a group of guys are giving their time to raise money so that people who are hurting, this is wisdom. Then our skills. You all, all of us have skills. How are you taking those skills, whatever your skill might be, from construction to the marketplace of administration or financial planning, how do you take that? And you become generous with it, with our money. We've talked about our Jesus at the top offering. We want men and women, boys and girls here in Ocala

and around the world to experience Jesus. We wanna build a bridge. I also understand that a lot of us, because of choices, because we haven't applied wisdom, we got our own personal finances in a mess, we don't have access. I mean, we are living paycheck to paycheck. Interesting, I saw in the news this morning that more people making $100,000 or more. Now, depending on where in your life, that's just a number. Some would say that's a whole lot of money. Some would say that's not a lot of money. But we have more men and women ever in the history who are making $100,000 or more a year, living from paycheck to paycheck. Because it's never been about making more money, because it's always been about wisdom. That's why FPU, we're gonna have Financial Peace University class starting again, beginning in January. And we want you to win in the financial area. And God wants you to win in the financial area. I want you to sign up, I want you to register. The QR code, there is no better way. I mean, the best way to start 2026 is a personal relationship with Jesus. Maybe the second best way is having wisdom in your finances because when we are healthy financially, everything else in our lives are healthy. Yeah, that's true.

And then the last thing I'll tell you, just take a picture of it. I've taught this to you before, I won't teach it this morning, about sharing your story. This is just a one verse plan. When someone asks you, what do you mean you believe about Jesus? Or what do you mean coming to this Christmas at the farm thing? Or what do you mean coming, what does all that mean? You can use this one verse evangelism to share how your life was before Jesus, the steps that you made, the cross, all the Bible verses right there to Jesus, and then how your life has been like after Jesus. I'm telling you, wisdom. Wisdom is a lot like the word consistency. Consistency, it's not a sexy word. There's not a lot of swag. There's not a lot of T-shirts, not a lot of people running around talking about being consistent. But I promise you, any place in life that you see real success, wisdom was in play. When the pressure was on and a shortcut could have been taken, wisdom said, no, we're gonna take the long way. When a shortcut to satisfy my own pleasures, what I want, how I feel, what I think I deserve, wisdom would say, no, listen,

you pause and you do the right thing. Wisdom. The wisest thing you could do this morning is make a decision to follow Jesus. If you've never made a decision to follow Jesus, I would say on this Sunday in December, choose Jesus. Corbin and the team are coming. We're gonna sing this song called, Who Else? It's a declaration of wisdom. Who else is worthy? No one else but Jesus Christ is worthy of all of our praise. You've been sitting. Thank you. Being together in this space today is really good. If you've never. gun a relationship with Jesus, I'd like to invite you today to start following Jesus. It's not about your behavior. It's not about your church attendance. It's about the reality that Jesus is for you. God's not mad at you. He's madly in love with you. Would you right now pray this prayer with me? Hey God, it's me. I've sinned and I know it and I can't fix me. But today I receive you, Jesus, as my Savior. I believe that you died on that cross for me and that you were buried for three days and then you became alive again. And I invite you into my life to guide me and direct me all the rest of the days of my life. And with that prayer, my friend, welcome to God's family. I'd like to continue our friendship. If you would email me, pastor at hopeinocala.com.

I'll follow up with you and together we'll celebrate Jesus in your life. Peace.