Good morning. Let's open this morning's service
with hymn number 37 in your hardback timbrel, number 37. Let's all
stand together. O Lord my God, when I in awesome
wonder Consider all the works Thy hands have made, I see the
stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe
displayed Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee How great
Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art! When through the woods and forest
glades I wander And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees
When I look down from lofty mountains grander ? And hear the brook
and feel the gentle breeze ? Then sings my soul, my Savior God
to Thee ? How great Thou art, how great Thou art Then sings
my soul, my Savior God, to Thee, How great Thou art! How great Thou art! And when I think that God, His
Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. ? That on the cross my burden
gladly bearing ? He bled and died to take away my sin ? Then
sings my soul my Savior God to thee ? How great thou art ? How
great Thou art ? Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee ?
How great Thou art ? How great Thou art When Christ shall come
with shout of acclamation and take me home, what joy shall
fill my heart. Then I shall bow in humble adoration
and there proclaim, my God, how great thou art. ? Then sings my soul, my Savior
God, to Thee ? How great Thou art, how great Thou art ? Then
sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Please be seated. Good morning. And when I think that God, His
Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in. I so hope the Lord will enable
us this morning to think on him and for him to make it so that
we can scarce take it in. That's worship and that's always
our hope when we when we come together. The first passage of scripture
we're going to look at this morning will be in Acts 17. If you'd like to open your Bibles
to Acts chapter 17. With all the activities of this week, we've
decided that we'll forego having our regular midweek service on
Wednesday night, so we'll not meet this Wednesday night, okay? I've titled this message, God Is, God Is, The question is, what do I believe
about God? More importantly, who is the
God that I believe in? How can I know that the God that
I believe is the true God? I can't afford to be wrong. I can't trust my feelings. or
my experiences and I can't rely on the opinions of others. I
must know. This idea that we have in the
world that everybody has their own God doesn't work for me. How do I know that the God that
I believe in is not just a figment of my imagination. How do I know
that he's not an idol that I've fashioned in my own mind? If that be the case, then the
God that I trust is no different from the mythological gods of
ancient Greece. In Acts chapter 17, we find the
Apostle Paul preaching the gospel to some Greek philosophers. I want us to begin here, but
then we're going to be looking at some places in God's Word
where he tells us who he is in his essence, he tells us who
he is in his nature, and he tells us who he is in his character. God is spirit in his essence. God is light in his nature. And God is love in his character. Often in the scriptures we read
of what God has done. or of what he will do. And oftentimes the Lord compares
himself to something that we can relate to. And so we find
many places in the scriptures where the Lord tells us that
he is like a certain thing. Of course, when the Lord does
that, He's condescending to our level in order to give us some
understanding of who he is in light of what we experience in
this world. But in these three places, the
Lord tells us what he is. And When our Lord is offering to
his heavenly Father that high priestly prayer on behalf of
his church in John chapter 17, he says, this is life eternal,
that they might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ
whom thou hast sent. If we are to know him, he must reveal himself to us. Nothing has changed. Solomon
said there's nothing new under the sun. And 21st century America
is no different from 1st century Greece. Men are still coming
together, calling themselves philosophers. The word philosophy
means a lover of wisdom. And these men promoted themselves
as ones who were able to discern wisdom. They were able to come
to conclusions about that which was true. And they had some understanding. Truth is that the Lord Jesus
Christ is our wisdom. God has made him to be our wisdom, all of our wisdom, all of our
righteousness, all of our sanctification and all of our redemption. Outside
of him, there is no wisdom. And men can massage their egos
all they want and pretend to believe that they understand
something, but outside of Christ, we have no understanding. And
so when God reveals himself, he reveals himself in the person
of his son. We're often reminded of that
revelation that the Lord makes of himself to his disciples. And in John chapter 14, and Philip
listening says, he doesn't really understand what the Lord's saying.
And he says, Lord, show us the father and it sufficeth us. And
what does our Lord say, oh, Philip? Philip, have I been with you
so long that you don't know that if you've seen me, you've seen
the Father, for I and the Father are one. The Lord Jesus had just
said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man can come
to the Father but by me. And Philip didn't know that the
fullness of the Godhead was standing before him bodily. These philosophers in Athens
in Acts chapter 17 are trying to discover the meaning of life,
they're trying to discover truth, they're trying to investigate what it is that man exists for
and And if you notice in verse 18,
then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics
encountered him. And some said, what will this
babbler say? These proud philosophers put
themselves on the level, looked down at the apostle Paul and
said that he's just a babbler. He's just one coming from a far
country telling stories about his experiences. And it's not a mistake that,
well, I don't even know why I said it that way. The Lord has given
us in his Word the two categories of all philosophy, Epicureanism
and Stoicism. Epicureanism is trying to find
the meaning of life outside of oneself in possessions or in
pleasure or in people, that's Epicureanism. Our country was
founded on the philosophy of Epicureanism, our founding fathers
were Epicureans. Life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness, that's Epicureanism. Men trying to accumulate as much
as they can in order to get some sense of purpose. Stoics, on
the other hand, are those that are trying to find meaning of
life from within. I'll just I'll just become more
reflective and more introspective and somehow I'll discover the
meaning of all things in myself. And the truth is that most men
vacillate between one philosophy and the other. And apart from God's grace pointing
us to the Lord Jesus who is the only wisdom you and I will vacillate
between trying to find happiness in possessions, pleasure, and
people. And then when that doesn't fulfill,
we'll turn within and look within ourselves for something. And
when we find nothing there, we'll go back to the other philosophy
and people vacillate back and forth all their lives between
Epicureanism and Stoicism trying to find what can only be found
in Christ. And so these philosophers said,
what will this babbler say in verse 18? He seemed it to be
setting forth "'a setter forth of strange gods, "'because he
preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. "'And they
took him and brought him unto Areopagus, "'saying.'" Now, that
was the place where they gathered together and pooled their ignorance,
one with the other, and debated one another over what the meaning
of life was. These high-minded philosophers. looking down their nose at the
Apostle Paul and saying, well, he's just a babbler who's come
with strange, strange gods. And so they ask him, may we know
what this new doctrine wherefore thou speaketh is? For thou bringest certain strange
things to our ears And we would know therefore what these things
mean. And verse 21 is so important and so reflective of the world
in which you and I live. Nothing's changed. The world
is made up of Epicureans and Stoics. And as I said, most people
are both. In verse 21, for all the Athenians,
and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else
but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Man in his pursuit for wisdom
and truth is always looking for something new. When God reveals
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ We just want to hear the
old, old story over and over again. And we've learned that
if it's new, it's not true. It's not true. And Paul, in response to their
question, stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, ye men
of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld
your devotions, all of your statues, I found an altar with this inscription
to the unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you. You've set yourself up, I can
see all these statues of their Greek mythological gods and then
there would be a pedestal with no statue on it, just a pedestal
with a big inscription on the bottom of the pedestal, the unknown
god. We better worship him too because we don't know who he
is or what he looks like but that's the god I'm going to preach
to you. The one you don't know, the one you can't know. Apart from God's divine revelation
and apart from the message of the gospel that I'm about to
preach to you, you can't know it. I need to know that the God I believe is the
God who is. That I've not become superstitious. Now, we know that Revelation is progressive. The Lord reveals himself to us
little by little. And so we We cry with the Apostle Paul,
I've not yet apprehended that which has apprehended me. This one thing I do, one thing,
press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling in
Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, that I might know him, that I
might know him, I wanna know him. The power of his resurrection. What was the power of his resurrection? And the fellowship of his suffering.
What was the fellowship of his suffering? Paul had suffered greatly as
a result of the gospel. He wasn't looking for more of
that. He was looking for more understanding as to what was
accomplished at the cross. He was looking for more comfort
in what was proven by the resurrection. That's the power of the resurrection
and the fellowship of the suffering of Christ. That I might know
what that means because in that is the revelation of God. Now, Unless someone might think that
we're talking about some high-minded, ethereal experience
of knowledge, that's not what it means to know God. To know
God means to believe God. It just means to believe. To
believe the revelation that he has made of himself and to rest
the hope of your salvation on him and what he's revealed about
himself. The world is worshiping the unknown
God. They ignorantly worship him. Now, not only is Revelation progressive
and not only is knowing God, believing God, but we can only
believe that which he reveals of himself. Turn to Romans, Romans
chapter 11. Look at verse 33. Romans 11 verse
33, oh, the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge
of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past
finding out. A God that can be understood
is no God at all, a God that can be Comprehended and packaged
up and all. He's unsearchable. He's revealed glimpses of himself
and by his grace we believe the revelation that he's made of
himself. But the fullness of his glory is infinite. beyond our ability. Look at verse 34. For who hath
known the mind of the Lord or who hath been his counselor?
Who hath first given to him that it shall be recompensed unto
him again? Who's gonna instruct God? Who's gonna tell God what to
do? For of him, He is our creator and through
Him, He is our sustainer and to Him, all to His glory are all things. To Him be glory
forever and ever. Moses put it like this in Deuteronomy
chapter 29. He said, the secret things belong
to the Lord our God. The secret things, the things
that have not been revealed, they belong to God. But those
things that have been revealed belong to us and to our children. And I like what one preacher
said years ago. He said, the word of God is so
perfect. that if God was to have revealed
more of himself than he did, it would be to our destruction. So, where the scripture is silent,
we must be silent. We cannot delve into, into things that we might think
were true. And we have a tendency to do
that. We're just like these Athenians.
We spend our whole life wanting something new. And if I think
I know something that somebody else doesn't know, then I, oh,
what a boost to my ego that is. We're always looking to get an
advantage, aren't we? Let us be careful to limit the
things that we believe about God to the things that he has
revealed about himself and not try to go any farther than that. And three things that God has
told us about himself. He has told us that he is spirit
in essence. He is light. in nature, and he
is love in character. And if the Lord has revealed
himself in those three things in which he is, we'll know. The summary of the gospel is
that God came into a dark world in the full power of the Spirit
in order to be light for his children because of his love
for them. God came into the world in the full power of the Spirit
of God, the Anointed One, the Lord Jesus, the Christ. He came into a dark world to
be light. These Athenian philosophers,
like all men outside of Christ, are groping in darkness trying
to discover something new. The Lord Jesus Christ came as
the light of the world. That's his nature. And he did it for one reason.
Love, love, that's his character. His essence is spirit. You remember what the Lord told
the woman at the well in John chapter four when she wanted
to debate, as we do, where a man ought to worship. Well, your
fathers say that we should worship in Jerusalem, but our fathers
say on this mountain is where God is pleased to meet with his
people. What do you say? And what'd the
Lord Jesus say? God is spirit. God is spirit. And they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth. It's not where you worship,
it's who you worship. And because he is spirit, he's
not confined to a place. You still have your Bibles open
to John 17, look what the first thing that Paul says to these
Athenian philosophers. Verse 24, 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 worship
with man's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth
to all life and breath and all things. And he hath made of one blood
all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.
and have determined the times before appointed and the bounds
of their habitation that they may seek the Lord." Seek him. Much of what is being promoted as worship is
nothing more than outward performance for the purpose of impressing
men. People are not entertained when
God is worshipped. And when God is worshipped, men
are not entertained. Fleshly entertainment and spiritual
worship have nothing to do with one another. They are opposed
to one another. People have asked me over the
years, what do you have for our children? We want youth groups
and we want all these things to entertain our kids. And they
come and they hear what we're doing. I had a man ask me recently,
What exactly do you all do in your worship service? And I said,
well, the best thing to do is either come or watch one of our
services because if you watch one, you'll know what we do every
time we come together. We don't do anything else. We're
not here to entertain. We're here to worship God. We
worship him by joining our hearts together in spiritual praise
and psalms. Hymns that glorify Christ. Hymns
that are true. Most of which in our hymnal we
can't sing. Most of the hymns in this book
we can't sing. Because they're not true. Altars and temples and sacrifices
and rituals and... Religious trinkets have no place
in worship. Our God is spirit and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. according to the revelation that
he has made of himself in his word and only by the power of
the Holy Spirit. Now, you say, well, how do I
know if I know God? When you come together for worship,
when you come before the throne of grace in prayer, in private
worship to find help in your time of need, do you believe
that you have a complete dependence upon the Holy Spirit to do that? Do you believe that you have
something of value that you can present to God to obligate him
to meet with you? No, we don't. That's what Paul was talking
about in Philippians chapter three when he said, we are the
true circumcision. Now the circumcision of the heart
is when the spirit of God cuts from your heart. any hope of
salvation in anything fleshly. You can't produce or present
anything to God in the power of your flesh, whether it be
your will or your works or your wisdom, you can't produce anything
in order to be able to worship God. You don't believe in a God
who needs you. That's what Paul said. Neither
is worship with men's hands as though he needed anything. Here's how I know I believe in
a God who is spirit. He don't need me. I need him. He's not depending upon me to
do anything. I'm depending upon him to do
everything. That's the God I believe in.
That's the God who is, in his essence, spirit. He's not flesh. He's spirit. And we need the Holy Spirit to
enable us to worship. And men who do all sorts of foolish
things in public worship in order to impress each other that they've
got the Holy Spirit. They speak in tongues or they
become flamboyant or they... You've seen it, you know what
I'm talking about. That's just a cover-up for a
person who doesn't have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the
one who speaks peace and comfort and hope and truth to your heart
right now, right where you are, without doing anything, without
saying anything, without walking an aisle, without shedding a
tear, without... It's the Spirit of God that shows
us that we're sinners, that we have nothing to offer
God but our sin. It's the spirit of God that shows
us that we have no righteousness, that our righteousness is in
heaven, that it's in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, that
he is our righteousness before God. It is the spirit of God
that convinces us that the work of salvation was accomplished
on Calvary's cross. When the Lord Jesus bowed his
head and said, it's finished, Satan and his work was defeated
and God's people were saved. When the Spirit of God comes,
the Comforter, He will convict the world of sin because they
believe not on me, of righteousness because they go to my Father,
and of judgment because the Prince of this world has been judged.
And if you being evil know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? Lord, I need your spirit. I can't worship you. Lord, you're
spirit and I'm flesh. And how can a fleshly man enter
into worship with a spiritual God unless he gives me his spirit
and gives me a new spirit and enables me to worship him from
the heart? God is spirit. And they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth. And to finish that verse in Philippians
chapter three, we are the true circumcision, which worship God
in the spirit. And the evidence of that, that
we worship him in the spirit, is that we rejoice in Christ
Jesus and we have no confidence in the flesh. That's spiritual
worship. We're rejoicing Christ and we
can't find any confidence in any fleshly thing. God is. Do I believe that God
is spirit? That the essence of who he is
is spirit? And that he can only be worshiped
in spirit? Turn with me to 1 John 1. The Lord is not telling us here what he's done or what he's gonna
do or what he's like, he's telling us what he is. And in essence,
he's spirit. In nature, he's light. His very nature is light. Look
at three times in God's word, we find this phrase, God is.
God is spirit. God is light. God is love. 1
John 1, verse five. This then is the message which
we have heard of him and declare unto you that God is light and
in him is no darkness at all. You and I come into this world
spiritually dead and spiritually blind. We can't know God. We can't know ourselves. We can
join the philosophers of this world on Mars Hill and debate
until our last breath what we think wisdom is. But if God doesn't shed the light
of the gospel in our hearts in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ,
we'll die in darkness. We'll die the same way we were
born. We're just like the creation
of the earth, aren't we? When we go to Genesis chapter
one, verse one, the earth was without form and void. There was no order to it and
it was empty. And darkness was upon the face
of the deep. And God had to say, let there
be light. And it wasn't until God said,
let there be light, that the light of truth pierced that darkness. And now the earth is going to
begin to take form. And for the next five days after
that, God begins to bring that empty
world to life. John chapter one, the scripture says of the Lord
Jesus, in him was life and the life was the light of the world. Outside of Christ, there's no
light. There's no way to understand Outside of Christ. Why? Because in him is life. You see,
he has to give us life. In him is life and the life was
the light of the world. The light is understanding, the
light is wisdom, the life is the new birth. Regeneration and faith happen
simultaneously in time. When God births us by his Spirit,
he gives us faith and we become alive and we look and we live. But in a logical order, regeneration
must precede faith. God has to just unilaterally
invade our life with life. Invade our, I should say, our
dead souls with life. He has to take the gospel. He has to birth us. That's what
he said to Nicodemus. Nicodemus, unless you're born
from above, you cannot see the kingdom of God. The new birth,
is a sovereign work of God's grace performed completely by
him not looking for anything in us or for our approval or
for our whatever and that's what John chapter
1 verse 4 in him in Christ was life and the life was the light
of the world And then in John chapter eight, the Lord Jesus
pronounces himself, I am the light of the world. His nature
is light and in him is no darkness. That means that in God, there's
no confusion. How confused are we about things?
How confused are we about the world? How confused are we about
ourselves? How limited is our knowledge of God? You see, this revelation is just
little, it's just little glimmers of light, isn't it? But in him,
there's no darkness. He's nothing but pure light.
That's why the scripture says, in heaven, there will be no sun
to cast light and shadows, for he will be the light thereof.
and there's not going to be a single shadow in heaven. Light's going to be coming from
every direction because he is the light of heaven. In him is life and the life is
the light of men. And in him there is no darkness,
at all. When we sinned in the garden,
and yes, we sinned in the garden, we were there. You say, well, I wasn't there.
The only way you can be at Calvary in the person of your substitute,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and enjoy the benefits of his accomplished
work is if you find yourself in your father Adam. And when we were in the garden,
God gave us one simple law. And Galatians 3.21 says that
if, God says, if a law could be given that would give life,
then righteousness would come by the law. Now what's God saying? If I could give you one law that
you could keep, then you could achieve your righteousness by
your law keeping. Why was the law that was given
to us in the garden such a simple one? The garden was full of trees
and a variety of fruit. And we had the freedom to enjoy
everything that God gave us in the garden. We walked with Him
in the cool of the day. All the blessings of the garden
were at our disposal. One simple law, don't eat that
one tree. We couldn't keep it. We couldn't keep it. Is that not proof? Is that not
sufficient evidence? If we couldn't keep that simple
law, that the keeping of the law cannot produce life, Christ is the end of it. When
we ate in the day in which you eat of the fruit of that tree,
you shall surely die. Now when a man dies, lights are
turned out. We came into this world after
our father, Adam, spiritually dead. So how do I know if I believe
that God is light? I believe everything I just said. I believe in him that there's
no darkness and I believe in me there's nothing but darkness
and I believe... If we walk in the light as he
is in the light, we have fellowship one with the other and the blood
of Jesus Christ cleanses us of all sin. Only by the power of the spirit
of God can I walk in faith, looking to Christ, looking to the Lord
Jesus Christ as all my light and I lose sight of him and everything
gets real foggy and real blurry and real dark, real quick. He's
the only light I have. I can't see myself apart from
looking to him. I can't see God apart from looking
to him. I can't see how God would save
me apart from looking to him. I must walk by faith. God is spirit in essence. God is light in nature. and you
still have your Bibles open to 1 John, look over in chapter
four. Chapter four, verse seven. Beloved, let us
love one another for love is of God. Everyone that loveth
is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not
God. Why? Because God is love. That's his character. His character
is a character of love. Look at verse 16 in that same
chapter. And we have known and believed the love that God hath
to us. God is love. And he that dwelleth in love
dwelleth in God and God in him. Now, I have to be careful not
to find the assurance of my salvation in the depth and sincerity of my love for
herein is love not that we love God but that he loved us and
gave his Son to be the propitiation of our sins." The hope of my
salvation is that I believe that God is pure love, he is perfect
love. The love that I have so filled
with self Love for myself. The world says, well, you know,
you need to love yourself before you can love anybody else. You
know that's not true. If you know that God is love,
you know that your biggest problem is that you love yourself too
much. That's your biggest problem.
That's the root cause of all of your problems, that you love
yourself, you choose to serve yourself. You wake up in the morning, you
open your eyes, and you find yourself at the center of your
own little universe. And everything in your day revolves
around you. Isn't that true? That's the way I live my life. We're so full of ourselves. We
evaluate everything by how it affects us. We judge everything
by what we think. God is love. God is love. And the hope of my salvation
is that He doesn't change. He's loved us with an everlasting
love. He's always seen us in Christ. He's loved us eternally. He's loved us particularly. Jacob I've loved, Esau I've hated.
He loves righteousness, he hates iniquity. And he's loved effectually. He causes us to love, we do love his people,
we love his Word and we love him. We do, but be careful because
your love is, you know, the closer we look at our own motives, the
more we find out that they're far from pure in everything we
do and think. But in our new man, we love,
we love with all of our hearts, a gospel that saves without any
contribution from us. I love that. I love a gospel
that doesn't depend upon me for anything. I don't want a gospel
that has to, that's the only gospel I can have any love for. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. I told you all last Sunday I saw
a placard on the wall. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God, and they had a period. They left the rest
of it out, didn't they? Hey, Erotica. He left the rest
of the witches in Christ Jesus. There's no love for God outside
of Christ. But in him, his character is
love. The essence of God is spirit. The nature of God is light. The character of God is love. Is that the God that I believe
in? Amen. Amen. I don't want any other
kind of God. He is the God who is, is. All right, let's take
a break.