For a scripture reading, turn
with me to Acts chapter 17. We'll begin reading with verse
23. For as I passed by and beheld
your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription to the
unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly worship. Him declare
I unto you. God that made the world and all
things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth,
dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Neither is worshipped
with men's hands as though he needed anything. seeing he giveth
to all life, and breath, and all things. And is made of one
blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the
earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the
bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord, if
happily they might feel after him, and find him, though he
be not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move
and have our being, as certain of your own poets have said,
for we are also his offspring. For as much then as you are the
offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is
like unto gold or silver or stone, graven by the art of man's device. In the times of this ignorance,
God winked at, But now commandeth all men everywhere to repent,
because he hath appointed a day in which he'll judge the world
in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. Whereof
he hath given assurance to all men, in that he hath raised him
from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection
of the dead, they mocked, and others said, We will hear thee
again of this matter. So Paul departed from among them,
Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed, among the
which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Amoris, and
others with them. If you will turn back with me
to Acts chapter 17, a message that captured my thoughts
and moved me to study this text is
concerning the God you thought you knew. There wasn't a man
in Athens who did not think he knew something about the deity. Some thought he was, that deity
was shown in multiple things. And so they honored anything
and everything that they thought symbolized God. Now the Apostle
Paul had been preaching in Thessalonica to a small group of people, reasoning
with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging. That is,
he picked up his book and opened it to a certain passage and alleged Let me find my place here again. He opened and alleged that Christ
must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead and
that this Jesus, this Jesus of Nazareth, he was a man that was a great controversy
in this day. Some said he was the Christ.
Others said he was a fraud. And Paul walked into a synagogue
that mostly believed that Christ was a fraud and began to read
from the Scriptures, reason with them out of the Scriptures. That's
the best I can do. I can't go beyond that today. I can open this Bible and allege
that this Jesus was the Christ and that he must needs have come
into this world as a man a representative man and suffer for our sins. There's no other way to save
men than to take their place as a substitute. And this is
what Paul was doing. This is what every minister does. He must need to have suffered
and then risen again from the dead. How would we know if God
accepted what Jesus Christ claimed to do? There's no other way to
know except God raised him from the dead. There's no other reason
to die than for sin. If our sins are gone, then God's
going to raise him from the dead. The real issue in the ministry
is the Christ. Who is he? Who is this man, Jesus
of Nazareth? That's the issue. Why did he
come? What was his reasoning from leaving
the throne in glory and coming down here to the bottom of the
bucket and becoming a man, a servant unto God. Why did he come? What
did he do? He appeared. What did he do?
He just make an effort to save and then go back into glory and
now he's pacing back and forth over the banister looking down
at men hoping that his work won't be for nothing. What's he doing? what he did and where he is.
Where is this Jesus of Nazareth today? God raised him from the
dead, so where is he? God escorted him by the holy
angels into glory where a grand coronation took place and Christ
was made King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Power over all flesh
is given unto him to save as many as the Father has given
unto him. So how's he doing it? through
the ministry, through his church and through the ministry. The Jews saw the death of Jesus
as the end of another cult. This is just another cult, another
man rising up, claiming to be the Christ. Another imposter
taken out of the way. And his victory and his suffering
and death never entered into their thinking. Even his own
disciples, before he rose from the dead and began to show them the victory that
his death warranted. They didn't know, far be it from
thee to go up to Jerusalem and die. Peter didn't want to hear
that. Why? Because it never entered
into his thinking that Christ must suffer. He must die. That's why he came. And so they hired some thugs.
Now, this book is the Acts. This is what the apostles did.
This is a record of what they did. They went into synagogues
or wherever men would hear them and they preached the gospel.
They opened this book and alleged that these things that I'm preaching
unto you are so. But they didn't have Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. They didn't have the Acts of
the Apostles, or Romans, or 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and so on.
All they had was the Old Testament Scriptures. And from then, they
were opening and alleging that Jesus Christ must appear. He
must suffer. He must die. This is how God
saves men. This is what redemption is all
about. But the Jews didn't know that and they were angry at what
he was doing and people were listening to what they were saying. And so they hired some thugs
to go down where Paul was preaching and made a big uproar. And the
brethren at Thessalonica who believed, escorted Paul away
from there And he went to Berea. And again, he entered into the
synagogue. And those people were more noble
than the people in Thessalonica. And here's why he said that,
Acts 17, 11. In that they received the Word
with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily
whether those things were so. Now there's two words here we
need to focus our attention on. First of all, the word they received. That's not talking about the
Bible. That's talking about the message
that Paul preached. The word of the truth of the
gospel. You can read about it in Titus chapter 1. This is the message of the Bible. The message of scripture. And this is talking about the
preaching of the gospel, the faithful witness of God that
He's given to us eternal life and that this life is in His
Son. And the second word is Scripture. Holy Scriptures. The Bible's
the only source of knowledge, saving knowledge, concerning
God, God's purpose in things, God's holy character, what eternal
life is, how it comes to pass and to know God and His Son is
eternal life. That's what it is. You say, do
I have eternal life? I don't know. Do you know the
Father and the Son? That's what I'm trying to preach
to you this morning. Who is this man? They listened
to Paul preach and then they searched the scriptures to see
if he was preaching something in harmony with the Word of God.
It doesn't much matter what I stand up. I could stand up here this
morning and start talking about speaking in tongues and evidences
of the Spirit and all kinds of things, and you wouldn't know
if what I'm preaching is so or not. But I rarely say anything
to you that I don't give you a reference in the Bible, so
you can look at it and know that what I'm saying is so. These were more noble than the
ones in Thessalonica. They sat in judgment whichever
way they went without searching the scriptures. They just took
what they already knew and sat there and listened to him preach.
If Paul gave some reference to Jeremiah or whatever, they didn't
turn over there. They just... A minister of God is a man whose
enabled of God through study and prayer to rightly divide
the word of truth, the doctrines of Christ, the gospel of the
grace of God. And the Jews, mostly the hierarchy
of the Jews, the high council, the priesthood, the scribes and
Pharisees, despised the gospel and despised the very idea that
Jesus Christ whom they rejected was the Christ and that his work
and his death, they looked at his death as a failure. They looked at his death as God's
stamp saying that this is an imposter. That's how they looked
at his death. But his death to be looked at
as a victory. We don't feel sorry for God.
Christ had to die. We ought to rejoice in his death,
not stand around and go, One preacher, I've seen a false prophet
on TV one time, he was crying, he was really into what he was
saying. And he said, if I'd have been there, I'd have stopped
them. You couldn't stop them. Pilate couldn't stop them. Nobody
could stop them. His death is ordained of God
and we need to rejoice in it. But they despised it. And the
whole idea that God raised him from the dead escorted him into glory where
he'd made king of kings and lord of lords. All power. That's what
he told them on the mountain before he stepped on the cloud.
He said, all power in heaven and earth given unto me. Now
you go preach. Well, I just don't see how preaching
is going to do anything. Then you don't see Christ who
has all power because he's the one who told us to go preach.
It's not dependent on me and my memory and my Wisdom is dependent
on His power, Russell. He can take the simplest things
and reveal them to us. Or the deep things of God and
reveal them unto us and we can say them in the simplest terms.
But for me to know it and for you to hear it requires the Spirit
of the Living God. Paul was escorted by the brethren
to Athens from Berea, and Timothy and Silas stayed there, and Paul,
when he got to Berea, charged Timothy and Silas to be brought
unto him. He didn't want them to be imprisoned
or suffer death in his stead. See, here's the thing. Faith
in the sovereign Christ does not receive persecution as a
defeat. It's simply the finger of God
moving you from one place to another. That's what it's doing. And it's proven to you that the
gospel that he talks about is the gospel you're preaching.
I used to wonder when I was just a young man and I was in false
religion, why nobody hated me. Every believer throughout the
Book of Acts was hated and despised by religion. They didn't hate
and despise me, they'd have me over to play my guitar and sing.
They'd throw their arm around me, they'd try to encourage me any way they could.
I wondered, I was trying to set myself in the light of these
believers that the Bible talked about. And it just didn't fit
my situation at all. They didn't hate me. They didn't
despise me until I learned the gospel and started preaching
it. Boy, then I understood what it was. Get out of here. Oh, you say people wouldn't say
that to you? If you ever get an opportunity to preach in one
of their churches, stand up there and preach what I'm preaching
to you and see what happens. Cousin invited me up to preach
at his little church. It was just a little community
chapel. And I said, OK. But I said, now your people are
going to get angry when I come up there and preach. He said,
if you'll stay within them two covers, my people won't get angry.
I said, OK. I preached on Ephesians chapter
1. Went home. I was going to hold
a three-day meeting. And before daylight, I heard
somebody walking outside the little mobile home where we lived.
I looked out there, and it was my cousin. I invited him in and
picked some coffee. I said, what's the problem? And
he said, well, to make a long story short, they told me if
you come back, I couldn't. They were going to fire him as
their pastor. And I said, so what do you want
me to do? He said, I guess it would be
best if you don't come back. They despised the gospel. And
that's what's going on here in the book of Acts. Paul's opening
and alleging the truth to them. And he's showing them from the
Word of God that these things that they had no basis for were
wrong. And they were upset. And they
were being persecuted. But persecution is not accepted
as defeat by a preacher. It's just simply the providence
of God moving them to the place where he intends to call out
some more of his elect. Paul said his imprisonment was
an open door that he could go in and preach to the royalty,
preach to the kings and servants, people that he could never have
access to any other way. What he's saying, I'm saying
that God's purpose of grace to save a people in Christ is what
moves his providence. That's how his providence is
arranged, according to that. And so Paul began his work again,
disputing with the Jews in the synagogue. And some, moved by
the Spirit of God and the truth of God, began to meet with him
in the marketplace. Paul, I've read this many times,
and the first couple of times I read it, I pictured Paul just
going up to the marketplace. And it's real busy people in
there buying stuff and going down to the mall and just finding
a big open space there and start preaching. That's not what Paul
did. Paul went into synagogues. He
went into their place of worship because he was a Jew. And some of these people that
he preached to, God was pleased to reveal the truth to and they
wanted to meet with him and hear more. And so they went down there
and rented, or somebody granted them permission to go in to an
empty place there in the marketplace, and he preached to them. I remember
years ago, going down to South Louisiana to a little town called
Ameet, and we met in an empty storeroom downtown. That's what
Paul was doing here. They began to meet with him.
You can read it for yourself there. Meet with him in the marketplace. And then God's hand moved again.
And some of the philosophers there got wind of Paul's preaching. Somebody probably passed through
the marketplace and heard him in there preaching. And they
invited him to speak to them. They listened to him preaching.
This guy seems to be a setter forth of strange gods. These
are gods we've never heard of. And so they invited him to speak
to them. Now, remember back in verse 16
it said that Paul's spirit was stirred in him when he saw the
city wholly given to idolatry. Idolatry is the worship and promotion
of anything other than the true and living God. Why would anyone,
especially Jews, practice idolatry? Well, staying in the confines
of my text, I see four reasons. Ignorance, pride, tradition,
and intimidation. That's why. It's been my personal
experience and my experience in the ministry that these four
things are always involved in practicing idolatry. Always. When the time come to address
these philosophers, God's apostle was ready to preach. You know,
years before, Paul said God revealed His Son in him that he might
preach the gospel. What does it take to make a man
sufficient to go out and preach God revealing His Son in him?
That's what it takes. That's what salvation is. That's
what men need to hear. Now you may or may not agree
with me, but the scriptures will bear witness of it. Texarkana
is a city, like most cities in our country, which is wholly
given to idolatry. Is that being too hard a judgment?
I don't think so. Nearly every church I've seen
and heard, or heard men talk about, preached the free will
of man. That's what Paul defines in Colossians
3 as will worship. Will worship. Ceremonialism,
the keeping of days and years and Sabbaths. Well, he says in
Colossians 2, 17, are a shadow of good things to come, but the
body that yields the shadow is Christ. And he said, let no man
beguile you of your reward. faith in Christ. Don't let them
beguile you of that in a voluntary humility, a put-on as in what
he's talking about, a made-up humility, worshipping of angels
and intruding into those things which he's not seen, vainly puffed
up by his fleshly mind and holding the head from which all the body
and joints and bands having nourishment ministered are knit together
and they increase with the increase of God. Wherefore, if you be
dead with Christ from the rudiments, the basic principles of the world,
why, as living in the world, are you subject to ordinances,
touch not, taste not, handle not, which all are to perish with
the using after the commandments and doctrines of men. When I talk about will worship,
I'm talking about most of the churches up and down in our land.
They preach a free will. Man has a free will. Man don't
have a free will. Which things have indeed a show
of wisdom in will worship and humility and rejoicing of the
body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh. Oh,
how men rejoice in their free will. If your will was completely free,
you can't even get rid of a common cold. Try to will away a common
cold. You can't do it. You don't have
a free will. Your will is always biased to
sin because you're a fallen sinner. And then the next part of practicing
idolatry in our land And in Athens was this, that God, the God of
glory will change. In some way He's going to change.
He don't change. Listen to me in prayer. They
always pray for God to change. God don't change. The Father
of lights, from whom all good and perfect gifts come, has no
variableness, neither shadow of turning. Nothing's going to
turn Him. Calling on Him to change is almost
all-inclusive in men's prayers, especially in the ways and means
of salvation. And James 1.17 declares that
He never changes, not even a shadow attorney. Everything that God says, gives,
and does is perfectly consistent with His character and leaves
no reason for change. Would you want God to change?
It's God who saves sinners. If He changed, He might not save
sinners. He might just curse them all.
He don't change. His purpose is to save sinners
for the glory of His name. And seeing He is God and sovereign
even over the hearts of men. You can read about that in Proverbs
16.1. The heart of the king is in the
hands of the Lord. He turneth it withersoever He
will. God is sovereign. He's all-powerful. Even if He could change, who's
going to make Him? You see what I'm saying? There's
no reason for us to think God's going to change. If there's any
change done, it needs to be in us. He's all wise, he makes no mistakes,
yet questioning his character, men devise all sorts of means
and ways, and this is idolatry. They're preaching another God.
I've had people respond to my gospel this way. My God wouldn't
do like that. Your God might not, but the God
of the Bible will. And I preach to follow men who
are wholly given to idolatry. And the first and most practiced
of these idolaters, all of them, is ignorance. They're ignorant
of God. I say, you know, the Bible says
this. Where? Where? You mean you don't know? You
come here to worship God and you don't have any knowledge
at all of the Word of God? And then secondly, they're motivated
to practice idolatry out of pride. These were philosophers. These
were wise men. Nobody questioned their wisdom.
They held high positions. They had doctorates given to
them by high councils of men. They had it nailed to the wall
just like a doctor or anybody else. Somebody said one time, What seminary did he graduate
from? School of Hard Knocks. I don't
have any papers. I don't need any papers. Beware, Paul writes in Colossians
2.8, lest any man spoil you through philosophy. Start listening to
their arguments and you'll start preaching a flat earth or some
other crazy doctrine. You beware of philosophers. They're
wise in words and history and stuff and they can take them
and tangle you up so deep you can't get out of it. And here's
another reason why men are wholly given to idolatry. Tradition. My family went back generations
in the Nazarene religion. my great-grandfather, my grandfather,
and my dad. And in loving respect to their
fathers and loved ones, they take up the incident of idolatry,
and they continue to lead others down into the pit. That's exactly
what happens. The philosophy and deceit is
after Paul says in Colossians 2, after the tradition of men.
That's where it comes from. In Stephen's address to his persecutors
over in Acts chapter 7 verse 51, he says this, You stiff-necked
and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the
Holy Ghost. Now watch this. As your fathers
did, so do you. Which one of the prophets have
not your fathers persecuted? Tradition. It has to be right. My sister told me, she said,
all these churches out here, you all think you're the only
ones who know God. Well, I said, listen to this.
Here's what the Apostle John said. Let me just read it to
you. Turn with me over to 1 John chapter
5. Look down at verse 19, 1 John
chapter 5 verse 19. And we know that we are of God
and the whole world lieth in wickedness. That's what the apostles
said. God's people know that because
they're persecuted everywhere they go. People who love God don't persecute
people who believe. I'll never forget how angry my
dad reacted to the gospel when I
first came home and told him about it, rejoicing over the
gospel. I told him. And he got so angry, he thought I'd just joined the
cult. Might as well have been a heretic. However, God saw fit, through
the preaching of the gospel, to bring him to a knowledge of
Christ, and to my knowledge, he left this world believing
in the true and living God, after being in the Nazarene religion
for 70 some years. How did Paul come to the realization
that Athens was wholly given to idolatry, or for that matter,
What causes me to say that about Texarkana or anywhere else in
this world? How did he know that? He said,
I beheld your devotions, verse 23 of Acts 17. I beheld your
devotions. What are your devotions? It's how they expressed their
love and loyalty to their deity. It's how they talked about Him.
It's their ways, what they practiced everyday living. He saw their
monuments and their temples, and he read what was printed
on them, and he listened to their orators and their priests and
their rabbis. And there was only one thing
that he looked at in that whole city that he agreed with. There was a monument there to
the unknown God. And that's what he tells And
what we preach is always directed to those who worship an unknown
God. I have to assume when I get up
here that you don't know God. And so I'm going to have to tell
you who He is. And there's only one God, and
He's revealed in the gospel of His Son. You can talk about the
love of God all you want to, but you can't preach the love
of God apart from the cross. Does God love? There it is. That's His Son dying on that
cross. Is God sovereign? His Son is
nailed to that cross. Do you remember what Pilate said
to Him? He said, don't you know that
I have power to release you or power to hang you on that cross?
Christ said, if you have no power, I'll set my Father in heaven
guilty. He's hanging on that cross by the will of God. That's
why he's there. You can read about it over in
Acts chapter 4. Pilate, the Gentiles, all of
Israel, they all joined together to do what God's hand and God's
counsel determined before to be done. I'm talking about the
living God. I'm not... Our crazy ideas that
we gather from friends and churches and all this kind of stuff, And
we start forming opinions. What you're doing is practicing
idolatry. That's what that is. God's not ignorant of the ways
and means of men. And be sure your sins will find
you out. But what else? Well, here's what he says about
the living God. He made of one blood all nations
of men. Verse 26. ported well on all
the face of the earth, and had determined the times before appointed."
What times? The time of their birth, the
time of their salvation, or their rejection. Peter said, Christ was a stone
of stumbling to some, even to them which stumble at the word,
being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. This
is what he's talking about. He appointed the times. Times
of rejection. There's a time. You read about
it over in Isaiah, I think it's chapter, is it Isaiah? Proverbs chapter 1. Anyway, he
said, I spread my hands to you. I called you and you wouldn't
come. I told you the truth and you wouldn't listen. And now, he said, you're going
to call on me early now, but I'm not going to hear you. There's
a time of rejection. That's enough. I've said enough. But there's a time of... I'll
give you a perfect example. You remember our last lesson
about Jericho over in Joshua. Almost everybody in Jericho was
there under the curse of God, except one, Rahab. Why was she
in Jericho? To receive salvation. And so
it is, He appoints, He sets the bounds of our habitation. And the bounds of their habitation,
where they live and why, and the Sovereign God, you have
to remember this always, the Sovereign God does as He pleases,
with whom He pleases, and by the ways and means He ordains. He's Creator. That's what Paul's
telling them. God is Creator. And we're all
answerable to Him. Why did He create, ordain these
things and times and all these things that Paul's telling them
about? Why did He do all that? Verse 27, that they should seek
the Lord. Creation is about salvation. It's about the glory of God in
the salvation of chosen sinners through the personal work of
his Son. That's the reason behind creation. All of these things
is that they should seek the Lord. And creation is about the
Lord, his glory, his name being manifested in the salvation of
chosen sinners. Creation is not about evolution
and self-will and philosophical gain. Creation is about the wonder
of God who shows mercy and grace to vile sinners. He shows them through the accomplished
redemption of Christ. And it's about God doing for
fallen men what fallen men can't do for themselves. And he does
it for the glory of his name. And he's to be sought by men,
not remembered by some token monument He's to be made known
to men by men, sent of God, and by the Holy Scriptures, not by
philosophers and such. They're seeking to hear or to
tell some new thing. That about sums up religion,
don't it? Creation's about salvation manifested
in Christ by the suffering and death of Christ on the cross,
and by way of the ministry ordained by God, and even now being actively
manifested by his church. Now listen to what Paul tells
us. God's not manifested in silver and gold, though he chose to
use such things in typical worship back in the Old Testament, the
tabernacle and the temple symbolically to show how precious these things
is. He took that ark and overlaid
it with gold. that table that held that shewbread,
it was overlaid with gold. But God's not manifested in these
things except typically as they were illustrated through those
things in the Old Testament. Verse 29 and 30. And these times
of ignorance God winked at. He overlooked. Why? Because they
had a higher purpose. Their purpose was going to be
manifested in Christ. And these typical things, they
were just used to illustrate it. And so God winked at it.
He overlooked it. He knew how foolish it was. But now commandeth all men everywhere
to repent. He's not talking about repentance
in the general aspect of repentance. He's talking about repentance
from idolatry, repentance from the way you worship and the way
you think. You know, you go down the road. We went to Washington,
D.C., and we weren't too far from it, so we went to look at
the National Cathedral, big old Catholic church. You had to back
up two blocks to get a picture of it. Well, they think God's
in this. Why? Well, you come up there
and look at it, and you just stand there in awe at the architecture
of it. And you go inside, and all this
stained glass that people did piece by piece in there and lettered
it in, it's gorgeous. It's overwhelming. And they think
that's what, you know, in a little town I grew up in, they took
a whole class of us children over to this church. They had
a pipe organ, covered one whole end of the church. And this lady
would sit down and play, and everybody was oohing and aahing. That's not worship. And he said, and he talked about
that. It's not in silver and gold and
these type of things. And he commands all men everywhere
to repent. Why? Because he has appointed
a day. Now listen to this. Judge this
world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, that
is Christ, by that man. Now I know that the Bible sits
forth a day, or seems to to me, sits forth a day A great white
throne judgment when all men, believing and unbelieving, are
going to be gathered together. And He's going to judge them
according to their works. You can read about it over in
Revelation. I think it's chapter 20. You can read about it. A
great white throne. Everybody's going to be, and
all of them are going to be judged by their works. Well, Pastor,
where does grace enter in? We're judged by works imputed
to us that Christ did. We couldn't do them and no other
man can. But by grace, or you say through
faith, and that faith, oh, that's how God imputes this righteousness
to us. We believe like Abraham did.
Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness.
And it wasn't written for his sake alone that it was imputed
to him, but for us also who believe in him that raised Christ from
the dead. We're going to be judged by our works, but our works are
perfect in Christ. You see what I'm saying? You
don't have any righteousness. And all this practicing idolatry,
it's all based on works, every bit of it. It's all works. You
do this, God bless you. If he don't bless you, you won't
do anything. You wander around here and continue practicing
idolatry. In Titus 1.1 Paul said he was
a servant by God and an apostle of Christ
according to the faith of God's elect or in consideration of
it and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness. It's in harmony with the character
of God. In hope of eternal life which
God that cannot lie promised before the world began. If eternal
life was promised before the world began, then it must be
of God and not of man because he wasn't present when the promise
was given. But he continues on in verse
3, but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching which
is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Savior. Acts 17, 31. Because God hath appointed a
day in which he'll judge this world in righteousness by that
man whom he hath ordained. Now the Holy Scriptures indicate
a day, that great white throne judgment that I mentioned to
you, in which you'll be judged according to their works. Every
soul shall live or die according to his works. But our works was
established in Christ. Listen to this, in Romans chapter
4 verse 25, He said Jesus Christ was delivered for our offenses,
stood before a holy God, bearing our sin in his own body on the
tree, and then he was raised from the dead for our justification,
declaring all for whom he died just and righteousness, and the
same concerning the judge himself. He's just in his justification
of believers and righteous in his remission of sin. Again,
you can read about that in Romans chapter 3, verses 24 through
26. So that there is a day of judgment
every time the gospel is preached to men. Your works are either
going to be manifested in Christ or they're going to be your own. Whereof, now watch this, he give
an assurance to all men in that he raised Christ from the dead.
What kind of assurance is he talking about? Both kinds. He's
assuring those who are listening to him that there will be a judgment
and that judgment will be by the righteousness of that one
who died on the cross. He's the judge. If your righteousness doesn't
come up to his, you're cursed. And we can't produce that kind
of righteousness. And it's also an assurance to
the believer. I'm assured that I stand in this
judgment justified before God because God raised his son from
the dead. And he's my representative. He's
my substitute, if you believe on him. To believe on him is
not just to believe that he was here, It's to believe in what
He did and what He accomplished and what that has to do with
God. Now I'm sorry if I bored you this morning. I didn't mean
to bore you. It's a long message, I understand. And I pray that
the God of glory can say about us what He said about those at
the end of this message. Some of them were upset. They
were angry. And then some said, well, we're
going to hear it again. We'll come back and hear it again
on this mass. But some of them claimed to them. They held on
to them. Wherever Paul went, they went.
Going to meet downtown at the storefront, we'll go down there.
We don't have to be out here on Mars Hill with a blaster. Oh, may it be said of us what
was said of them. Some of them claimed to them.
loved and some of them understood that God was using this man to
give them eternal life. Well, I don't see how that can be.
That's why you need to be here every week so you can learn how
those things can be. All right, thank you for your
time.