The 17th chapter of the book
of Acts. Acts chapter 17. The 16th verse gives us some insight to the
Apostle Paul and his great determination and purpose. He says, Now while
Paul waited for them at Athens, that's in Greece, his spirit
was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the
synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons, and in the
market daily with them that met with him. Certain philosophers
of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him, and some
said, What will this babbler say? Some, he seemed to be a setter
forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and
the resurrection. And they took him and brought
him to Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine
thereof thou speakest? And they bring us certain strange
things to our ears. We know, therefore, what these
things mean. We'd like to know, desire to
know. 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. Then Paul stood in the midst
of Mars Hill and said, I perceive that in all things ye are too
superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld
your devotions, your worship, I found an altar with this inscription,
To the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship. declare I unto you." Paul said,
I'm going to declare unto you this God that you don't know.
You worshiping God and gods, but not the true and living God.
So it's possible to be very devout and to be a worshiper, but not
worship the true and living God. A man cannot know or cannot worship
God unless he knows God. It's an impossibility. You cannot
worship God unless you know God. And there in John chapter 17
it says, Knowing God is eternal life. The knowledge of God is eternal
life. Paul said, you fellows worshiping
an unknown God here, a heathen God, a manufactured God, a God
that you made up in your own superstitious mind, a God that
cannot avail you anything except add to your woes and to your
condemnation. I want to tell you about the
true and the living God. And that's what I want to try
to tell you here this morning, a little bit about the true and
living God. We must know Him if we're to
have eternal life, if we're to have forgiveness of sin, if we're
to have justification, if we're to have a perfect righteousness,
if we're to be an heir of everlasting life joint heir with the Lord
Jesus Christ and all things. And if we're to enjoy what Bob
read to us there in the last chapter of the book of Revelation
about the sea crystal, clear rivers and so forth, the streets
and all of that, if we're to have any part of the unseen world,
we're going to have to know a God. That's all there are to it. I want to talk to you for a little
bit here in regard to God in government. God in government. Now, God in government displays
his awesome power in righteousness. That is, he punishes evil doers,
evil workers. He pours out his vengeance upon
his enemies. He overthrows empires. He turns over thrones. He destroys cities. He sweeps
away nations. He does away with tribes and
peoples. And we find God in government,
in the Old Testament, commanding His people to slay men, to kill
men, to kill women and little children with the edge of the
sword. and to set their houses on fire,
and to turn their cities into desolate heaps. The Bible gives
us the most minute details of God acting in government, and
in particular, one of the first of these great acts of God in
government, where his righteous and holy an incomparable power
is displayed is in the great flood in the days of Noah. The whole earth with all of its
inhabitants, just think of that for a little bit, the whole earth
with all of its inhabitants, save or except eight people,
was destroyed by an act of divine government, an act of God. That whole world, it wasn't destroyed
because someone got to tampering with the atoms. It was destroyed
by the direct hand of God Almighty who caused the rain to fall from
above and the rain and the water to come from beneath. It had
never rained upon the earth before, never had rained upon the face
of the earth. And God sent this great flood,
and it devoured all the people, all the inhabitants on the earth
at that particular time, except eight people. And it was, as
I say, by the direct hand of God in government. Men and women
and children and cattle and fowls and creeping things were all
swept away and buried beneath the heavy weight of God's righteous
judgment. Then in the days of loss, It
tells us about the cities of the plains. With all of its people,
with all of its men, with all of its women and all the children,
they were destroyed in just a matter of a few hours, consigned to
the destruction of God Almighty in government, overturned by
the Almighty hand of God. buried beneath the deep, dark
waters of the Dead Sea, forever buried. And all in just quickly, in the matter of
a few short hours, God destroyed all these cities in the planet. And then we have the guilty city
of Sodom and Gomorrah, who gave themselves over to fornication
and the entertaining of strange flesh. And God caused fire to
fall out from heaven, and to burn these wicked cities up,
and all the inhabitants, and the innocent along with the guilty
parents. This is God in government. Now, this cannot be disputed. No man will dispute with God
over this matter. I mean, this happened. It happened. Literally happened. God destroyed
a whole world of people, men, women, and children and boughs
in the air and creeping things. And then there was the seven
nations of Canaan that God told the children of Israel. He said,
I'm going to give you their land. Well, what are you going to do
with the inhabitants of these seven nations of Canaan? Are you going to make them slaves
for our household, God said, I'm going to kill them all. I'm
going to kill every inhabitant of those seven nations. I'm going
to give them over to the hands of the Israelites for an unsparing
judgment. Nothing that breathed was to
be left alive. They were to kill everything
that moved and everything that Now the question is this in regard
to the government of God. Are we competent to understand
the ways of God in government? Is it any part of our business
to set in judgment upon them? Are we capable of unraveling
the profound and awful mysteries of divine providence? Are we
called upon to account for the fact of helpless infant babies
hanging on their mother's breast, involved in the judgment of their
guilty parents? Can we deal with this? Well,
impious infidelity may laugh at these things. sentimentality, they stumble
over them. But the true, genuine believer
that has embraced the God of the Bible and has come to know
God, divine through the Lord Jesus Christ, meets them with
one safe, solid, simple question. And the question is this, shall
not the God of all the Earth do right. And that settles it,
doesn't it? That settles it. He'll do right.
He'll do right. If he kills 14,000 people with
the stroke of his sword, including the innocent babies, the imbeciles,
and the cripples, and the sick, and the young, and the old. That's God's business. And when
he does it, it's right. It's right. It's right. If man can take upon himself
to decide as to what is and what is not worthy of God to Then
we've lost the true sense of God altogether, and we haven't
got any God, and we're just like them Athenians. Can we comprehend
God? If we could, we'd be like God. We'd be God ourselves if we could
understand God in His completeness. We can understand just a portion
of God. Only as God has revealed Himself
can we understand Him. Someone says, Comprehend God? We comprehend him not. Yet earth
and heaven tell. God sits as a sovereign on the
throne and rules us all things well. If the potter, as our Lord talks about through the
Apostle Paul in the book of Romans, if the potter has power over
the lump of clay, which he holds in his hand. And that's a fact
which no man can dispute. If I'm the potter, and I have
a lump of clay in my hand, then I have power over that clay.
No man can dispute that. I have power over it. That clay
must give way to my force. I can make it anything I want
to. It has nothing to say about what
direction it's going in or what figure or image it will take. If the potter then has power
over the lump of clay which he holds in his hand, which is a
fact that cannot be disputed, how much more has the Creator
of all things power over the creatures of which his own hand
has formed. Many in our day would argue and
reason as to why God permitted sin to enter into this world. They say, Why did he not at once
kill Satan and this a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,
a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, The answer is one, though. The answer is one. This is the
answer found there in the 10th chapter of the book of Romans
that says, Who art thou, O man, that replyest against God? Poor, poor, gribbling, sniveling
worms of the dust attempting to set in judgment upon the unsearchable
judgment of the ways of the eternal God. And I said all that to say
this. Man must find out that he is
simply a fool. That's what he's got to find
out. In comparison to even the guardian government, he's nothing
but a fool. And when you find that out, then
you've got one step or one foot in the door of the kingdom when
you find out that you are a fool. Let me read something to you
here in the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. You will find out from these
verses that I am about to read that man will eventually sooner
or later find out who he is. Find out that he's a fool and
that all the wisdom of the world is foolishness. Now this is humbling
but a wholesome truth. Humbling because it puts man
in his rightful place and wholesome because it brings on the scene
the wisdom of God. Notice what it says up here in
the 17th verse of the 1st chapter. It says, for Christ sent me not
to baptize. That's not my primary purpose. That's not my primary mission
into this world, Paul said. That's not what God called me
primarily to do, to baptize. But to preach the gospel, that's
what I'm called to do, to preach the gospel. And he said, not
with the wisdom of words. lest the cross of Christ should
be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross
is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it
is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise, and I will bring to nothing the understanding
of the prudent." That's the smart aleck. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is
the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the
wisdom of this world? Listen to this next statement,
verse 21. And after that, in the wisdom
of God, the world by wisdom knew not God. The world by wisdom
knew not God. Not then, not now, and not ever
will the world ever know God by wisdom. Say, well, if I spent
so many years at a higher institute of learning, and I had this,
and I had that, and I went on and on, certainly I could comprehend
God. You could not. You could not. You can't even know God by your
wisdom. all of your accumulated wisdom
that comes from many hours and hours of steady, devout study
and sacrifice and discipline, you cannot know the God of the
Bible. You can't do it. You can't do
it. Listen. What did the philosophers and
the philosophy of Greece do for its disciples? It made them ignorant
worshippers of an unknown God. That's what it did for them.
And when Paul came there, he said, My heart was stirred within
me because of the idolatry in this city. And these people just
stood around on the street talking about their ancient philosophies,
their ancient teachings, how they thought things were and
why things That did happen. They had explanations for everything. All kinds of philosophies. And
where did it lead them to? Did it lead them to God? No,
sir. Paul said, you fellows are very
ignorant. Very ignorant, he said. Very
superstitious. You're worshiping a God out there,
and you've got the inscription over his head or under his feet,
to the unknown God. that you're worshiped by a god
that you don't know anything about. It's fictitious and you're
ignorant and your philosophy is no chance. May them ignorant
worshippers of an unknowing God. Well, let us go on. Said the
world by wisdom, knew not God. That is, These conflicting so-called
schools of ancient philosophy could only plunge a man or the
human mind of man into a deep, dismal, profound darkness and
disparity and confusion. They give no certainty. They give no good mooring for
the ship of the soul to anchor by and to find rest in these
philosophies. There's no safe anchorage or
there's no solid confidence on which a man's soul may rest upon. It's all barren, barren speculation. It's all torturing doubt. It's wild and baseless theory. That's all it is. human philosophy
and human philosophy in every age and every nation up to right
now is all the same. It has nothing to offer. Nothing! But brethren, let me read something
to you. There is hope! There is hope! Listen now, over here in the
book of John, chapter 1 of the book of John. Let me read this
to you. John chapter 1, verse 18 I believe. I said this philosophy and this
wisdom, nothing but darkness, that's all. Just darkness, dismal
darkness. Torturing doubts to a man's soul. That's all it produces, all it
can produce. There's no certainty about it.
We need to have something that has some stability and certainty
to it. Something that you can hang on
to. Something that'll give you rest for your soul. You can't
have any rest for your soul if you're just speculating. If it's
just a baseless theory and you're resting on that, you can't have
any rest. It won't hold up. When eternity reveals itself,
this baseless theory that a man has speculating on, will dissolve
and dissipate and will be of no help to us. He's got to have
something to shine, something to hold him up, something to
give him rest when he faces eternity and faces the God that made him.
Wisdom won't do it, learning, education, all that won't do
it. You can't know God that way.
Paul says the only way you can know God He said, I didn't come
to baptize people. You can't know God by baptizing
people. He said, I come to preach the
gospel. And that's the only way that
man will ever come to know God Almighty is in the gospel. I talked to you about God in
government. There's no salvation back there
in God in government. He displays His power. His incomparable holiness! But there's no salvation back
there. No salvation there. You've got to know God. What
is God like? Who is God? Listen to this verse. In John 1, verse 18, No man hath seen God at any time. Moses never seen Him. Now Moses
didn't see. He said, Show me thy glory. Moses
said to him, God said, I can't show myself to you. He said,
You can't see my face for no man shall see my face and live. He may have seen the second person
of the Trinity or the third person of the Trinity, but he never
seen God the Father and neither did anybody else who was born
into Adam's race ever see God the Father. Nobody. Moses didn't see Him. Abraham
didn't see Him. Elijah didn't see Him. Isaiah
didn't see Him. Jeremiah didn't see Him. Daniel
didn't see Him. Jonah didn't see Him. None of
them ever seen Him. Listen, no man has seen God at
any time. Well, how in the world can I
find out who God is and what God is like? The only begotten Son which is
in the bosom of the Father, which is in the heart of the Father,
he hath declared him. It says here that the Lord Jesus
Christ has declared him, and that means this. It means that he hath told him
out in reality. He hath revealed who God is. Look over here in the book of
Hebrews, I believe, the first chapter of the book of Hebrews. And you will see that this verse
teaches us who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what it means by
declaring It says in the 2nd verse, that
God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, the Lord
Jesus, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also
he made the world. Who? Referring back to the hymn
that God has appointed, the Son, who, being the brightness of
his glory, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the brightness
of the glory of God Almighty, the express image of his person. And it does not necessarily mean
that he is a carbon copy of God himself. But He is God Himself. That's what it means. He is God. So, he tells us, Philip came
to him one time, and our Lord said, Well, I must go to the
Father. And Philip said, What? Show us
the Father. And our Lord said, Philip, I'm
amazed, I'm surprised at you. Have you not been with me these
many days, months, and years, and you still say to me, show
us the Father? He said, Philip, he that see
me hath seen the Father. To know God is to know His Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and God cannot be known apart from His
Son, because His Son is the express image of the invisible God, the
brightness of His glory. Here's God! And the only God
you'll ever see will be the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the only
God you'll ever see when this world's on fire and you're delivered
from it and stand before God. It'll be the Lord Jesus Christ
who'll be on that throne. God. You look, if you will, if you
want to, read these Gospels and the letters of the Apostle Paul
in the New Testament here. And try, if you will, to trace
the path of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you'll find out some things.
Well, I wrote some of them down here, and this is just all I
can think of. It starts out by saying that
he went about doing good. And if that's all that was said,
that'd be enough, right? Say, he went about doing good!
How many of us can that be said about, we went about doing good? We go about doing good for ourselves! Promoting ourselves, what's in
it for me? What's in it for my family? You
say, well, I am helping my family. Your family's you. That's the
reason you love them so. They're bone of your bone, flesh
of your flesh, and blood of your blood, and whatever you do for
them, you're doing for yourself. He went about doing good. Good. We've never done a good thing
in our lives. He went about doing good. healing the sick, cleansing the leper, opening
blind eyes, unstopping deaf ears, making the lame to walk, making
the maimed whole, raising the dead, drying the widow's teeth,
feeding the hungry, Binding up broken hearts, hushing human
fears, doing all these things in such style, with such sweetness,
such grace, that He made each of those individuals to feel
in his own soul that what our Lord Jesus Christ did for He
did because of a deep-seated delight in doing it. He did it
because it gave him pleasure to do it. So if you want to know what God
is, just look to Him. That's how you find out who God
is. He done all this. He was revealing God to man. This man, this one man did all
this. His whole life was made up of
this, going about doing good. In a sick, maimed, wounded, dying,
in the audience, he corrected that situation. Just one man. And in so doing, revealing to
the human soul what God's like and who God is. This is what
God's like right here. This is what God's like. I say we're not competent to
set in on judgment of the God in government. We're not competent
to set in on the Lord Jesus Christ is God either, but He is God,
and we can't understand. We can't understand some things
in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, let me read something
else to you. I think it's in the fifth chapter. This is what he did. It says,
"...to wit that God was in Christ," this is 2 Corinthians chapter
5, "...reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing,"
that is, not charging, "...their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the
word of reconciliation." Now then we are ambassadors for
Christ. As though God did beseech you
by us, we pray ye in Christ's stead be reconciled to God, for
he hath made him to be sin for us. Our Lord Jesus Christ. in order for God to be just and
justifier. And if you want to know something
about the love of God, all you've got to do is stop by at the old
rugged cross and see our Lord Jesus Christ there, writhing
in agony and pain. See His toil, His blood, His
sweat, and His and the saliva that did roll down his face.
See his wounded head and his wounded side. See him there hanging
in his naked. You ought to know something about
the love of God. You see it there. You see it
there. He's there not to make God love
us. He's there because God did love
us. and gave Himself for us. Delivered! Delivered for our
offenses and raised again for our justification. He could have done something
about it. He said, Why, I've got thousands and thousands of
angels at my command. I could command them, and they'd
come. He wasn't a helpless, hopeless
martyr, a victim of misspent justice, a victim of an unruly
mob, unjust society. He was there that God might be
just, that God's justice might be satisfied. He was there bearing
the punishment that was due sin, and he bore it all. He bore all
the punishment that was due me as a rebel, and he bore all of
my sin, all of my punishment. That's the reason I'll never
be punished. Isn't that wonderful? I'll never be punished. God don't
ever jerk something out of some big book there that's got something
wrote down that I forgot about and others forgot about and brought
it, bring it to my attention, saying it did this! They're under
the blood! They've all been paid for! Every one of them! I don't know how to stand up
there and read the law and say, well, you didn't keep this, you
didn't keep that. The law was kept! by the law
keeper who kept it in my stead, place, and room, and rendered
satisfaction unto God in my stead, place, and room. Therefore, I
won't have to render satisfaction, my Savior did." Oh, you don't know who God is?
You see Him in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who
God is. And to know God is to know His
Son. To know His Son in the forgiveness of sin, in justification, in
righteousness, in sanctification, in redemption, in heirship, in
lordship. That's to know Him. That's to
know Him. And how do you find that out?
It's found out in His Son. It's recorded throughout the
Bible here, throughout the New Testament. Someone years ago
said that Well, that's just history. What it means is his story. His
story. History is his story. History
is not the story of Napoleon Bonaparte or George Washington
or Abraham Lincoln. History is his story. His is the only story that we're
talking about. George Washington couldn't redeem
himself, much less me. But this man, this man can redeem
my soul. Pay for it. Give me rest. Give me certainty. Give me solid
confidence. And give me rest for my poor
soul. But I know if I lay down and
my heart quits beating, I go to be with him who loved
me and gave himself for me. That is my only hope. He is the
brightness of his Father's glory. Another place he said, I and my Father are one. Another place it says in the
book of Colossians chapter 1, it says, In Him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
the reason Paul said to those folks over there, why you're
ignorant. You're worshiping something you
don't know about. That's right. If you don't believe
on me, You don't believe me, you die in your sins. That's
right. A man will die in his sins if
he doesn't know Him. And to know Him is eternal life. And the only way you can know
God is through His Son, the Lord Jesus. And this is life eternal,
that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom Thou sent. Know Him. Know Him. And I know
that you can know Him by human nature. I know that God's got
to reveal Him to you. But God revealed His pleas to
save man through the foolishness, not foolish preaching, but through
the foolishness of preaching. Nothing else apart from that,
the foolishness of preaching. And that's what I've been doing
this morning and Wednesday and last Sunday and the Sunday before
and on and on and on and on is preaching the gospel that man
might know the everlasting God. That they might know Him and
have some stability and be able to rest in Him and say, I know
Him. I know Him. Don't know all that
I would like to know, but I know Him. moving in the direction
of knowing better.