The Book of Acts, chapter 17. We haven't preached in the Book
of Acts much as we've been gathered as Grace Truth Church. By the Lord's grace, we'll do
some this next year. The word idle brings to mind
for most of us something. Hopefully all of us, as words
produce pictures in the mind, thoughts, feelings. And so when
you hear idol, what is it that you see? What do you see? Do you see the American Idol? Non-singing, singing competition,
whatever. Is that still even on? I don't know. Do you see an actor,
an actress? Do you see, I don't know, a politician? Or do you envision, maybe through
historical eyes, a graven image, a statue, a god, something that's
hanged on the wall or hung on the wall or sat on a table? Do you picture a Buddha? Do you
picture paganism? When you think of idol, what
is that image in your mind? I can't say for certainty, but
I can promise you that most of us have some foreign object,
something that we would establish, especially as what I would call
Christianized Americans, that we would think as an idol would
be something that is worshipped, some icon, some image, some statue,
some fault maybe. But the furthest thing from our
minds is the things that we hold dear. Very few of us would probably
see our children as idols. Few of us would see our homes
as idols. Few of us would see our jobs
or our affluence as idols or health. Few of us would see our
nation and even our church as an idol. Even fewer would picture
doctrine or certain principles or abstracts, if you will, of
theological study. Some of us, very few of us rather,
would ever consider that our faith even might be an idol. But I'll promise you that it
is and can be if we're not careful. In the Greek culture, as we'll
get to today in Acts chapter 17, idols were a way of life. worshiping gods of all sorts,
gods of many sorts, gods of the air, gods of the soil, gods of
water, god of fire, god of this, god of that, god of the eyeball,
god of the toenail, god of whatever it might be. There is some way
to find a god for something. It's like some of the people
that we had the privilege of meeting and getting to know when
we lived in the Bay who were Hindus. Hinduism, it's a multifaceted
continue factory of idolatry in that if there is a God that
you would like to have that's not yet there, then just name
it. It is yours. It is a God that
you have now brought to light. You have given it for all others
to now see and possibly even share in the worship of. Friends,
though this is true, as it is in Paul's circumstances here
in Acts chapter 17, there are people still to this day that
worship images, that worship false gods, that worship religious
divinities that are absolutely not even real. But I want us to see that for
what it is and then see how Paul would represent the true God
to these people And then also see exactly how it is that he
does so and for what purpose. And yes, there are a lot of things
in the media today, there's a lot of Christians standing for a
lot of things, I don't want to talk about those things, but
I want you to maybe maybe it's a doctrinal debate. Some of us
are preppy to some of those things that are. And what's so what's
so crazy about it is we think it's the end of the world and
it's all encompassing and every grain of sand in the universe
has been engaged in this debate. But we go to our neighbor and
they've never heard of it. They've never even heard of the people
who are talking. So that which is famous in our own minds is
usually absolutely invisible to most people around us. So
no matter how large our circle might be, it's still a small
thing. So there may be doctrinal debates.
There may be issues plaguing the church, such as methodology
or or cults. The cults are very active, especially
in this part of the world, and they like to cause waves, especially
in the time of Christmas. Maybe that's what's been going
on with you. Maybe you are enamored by the Duck Dynasty saga and
the comments of Phil Robertson and GQ magazine. Maybe you're
frustrated by the fact that there are people arguing about biblical
translation. And why don't we use the King
James? Why don't we have someone ask
me just a few weeks ago why I did not use the Geneva Bible? And
I politely said, because I don't understand what it says. It's
very hard to grasp. But had the Geneva Bible been
the first one I probably grasped, I'd probably be preaching out
of it right now and you all would be going, where's the interpreter?
We need some help. Whatever your argument might
be. Friends, I am of the opinion
and by the Lord's grace, I will show you that I believe it is
biblical. That most of the time we find ourselves in these aggravated
pursuits, when these aggravated offenses and these aggravated
issues, we indeed have made idols. Calling them godly, calling them
biblical, calling these things that which they are not. And
so let's look at the text today in Acts chapter 17, starting
in verse twenty four. Well, let's just start in verse
twenty two, I'm not going to talk about these first twenty two,
so Paul, standing in the midst of the area of Areopagus, said,
Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. Do not forget that he said that
church. For as I passed along and observed
the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this
inscription, to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as
unknown, this I proclaim to you." And that's sort of the precursor
of this dialogue. Paul has walked into this place
The Areopagus, and he has seen all of the idols, all of the
gods ornately displayed and marked. And then they see then he sees
an altar, and I would argue it's not the first time he's seen
it. He sees an altar there. It says to the unknown God. And so what Paul decides to do
is he begins to say. In verse 24, I mean, verse 23, What
therefore you worship as unknown. This I proclaim to you. There's
a lot I could say there philosophically. These Greeks, these Gnostics,
these people were enamored by this, they were overwhelmed by
the fact that Paul was about to give them something, give
them something that they desperately desired. He was not rebuking
them and saying, you bunch of fools, you're ignorant, though
he said you are ignorant. Because they claim to be ignorant.
We're ignorant of any other God that we might have overlooked.
We want to put a place for him here. And not only do we want
to put a place for him here, they desire knowledge in such
a way that when Paul came to this place and said, I'm going
to tell you this one that you don't know, they're like, wow,
you ever. I don't know if everyone here
has ever collected anything, but collecting is a disease of
the soul. It's something that if we're
not careful, we've got to have every shape, color, fashion,
sound, scent, taste of everything that we love. If you collect
sports memorabilia, you want it authentic. You want it all.
You want every jersey of every year of your favorite player.
You want them to sign it. You want pictures of them signing
it. You want their face print on it. You want their sweat towel.
I mean, you see it all of a sudden looks sort of like an idol. But
collection is no good if it's incomplete. I have a collection
of these things. And you open up a collection
of what? I don't know. People collect coins, people
collect stamps, people collect ideas. Us in the ministry, we
have a really large altar that we look and bow to often, which
is our library. And that does not make us, but
we look at it. Oh, look at this book. No, don't touch it. I can't.
You can't read it. It's too valuable. Why'd you buy it? I don't know.
It just it's the second edition of Pilgrim's Progress. But the one thing is true, no
matter what you collect, every collector wants it complete.
He doesn't want one, two and seven in the volume series, he
wants one through seven. He doesn't want to have a thousand
of the complete set and miss one. You don't want to put a
puzzle together and then pluck out three pieces and flush in
the toilet and frame and say, look at that. And people look
at those holes. They don't care that there's
50,000 pieces in the puzzle, they see the three holes in the
puzzle. There's no difference here with these Greeks. They,
in some sense, collected knowledge, they collected ideas, they collected
philosophical thought. They wanted to know everything
there was to know about everything. And when Paul came to them and
says this, that you say that you do not know, I know all men
focused in on him. Friends, I believe that every
human being in the world. Has a desire to know that which
is unknown. It is given us by our Creator when we are conceived
in the womb, when he knitted the first man together out of
the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life.
And it is from that desire to know the unknown and to answer
the unanswered that all religion comes. It is that innate orchestrated
God-like quest for knowing that pushes us into all of these wild
and crazy philosophies, all these wild and crazy thoughts. And
friends, it is now necessary, and always has been necessary,
for there to be a standard foundation of knowing, and a standard foundation
of truth, and a standard foundation of faith, and a standard foundation
of answering the unanswered. And Paul now is not going to
give his thoughts or his theories. Paul is about to proclaim the
foundation that was here before there was anything to be here. And he's doing so in an attempt
to tear down their idols. Friends, however, this sermon
may apply to you, may God be glorified through the gospel
of his son. And no matter how this plays out for you, applicably,
It will be an opportunity for you to see idols. Verse 24. Now, Paul begins to
say, I'm proclaiming this to you, the God who made the world
and everything in it being Lord of heaven and earth does not
live in temples made by man. Nor is he served by human hands,
as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all
mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every
nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having
determined allotted periods. and determine the boundaries
of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps
feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually
not far from each one of us, for, quote, in him we live and
move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said,
for we are indeed his offspring. Being then God's offspring, we
ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver
or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked,
but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because
he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness
by a man whom he has appointed. And of this he has given assurance
to all by raising him from the dead. Now, when they heard the
resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, we will
hear you again about this. So Paul went out from their midst,
but some men joined him and believed among whom also were Dionysus
and the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with
them. It's frustrating for me to be
slapped down in the middle of a vax and have to just pop in
here. It's aggravating because I have
all the stuff that I want to babble on about. And I want you
to get it. But the point of this text is
that God would show you the reality of idolatry and that God would
show you the remedy of idolatry. So let's look several ways that
I've sort of seen how this text dissects. First, starting verse
24 down to 32 and verse 24, we now see that God is being proclaimed. So the truth of God is now being
told. God is now being displayed and
preached. And so here now we see the theology,
the study of God, the doctrine of who he is. God is now, Paul
says, the creator of the cosmos. And the cosmos, or cosmos, or
however you want to pronounce it, he said not just the cosmos,
but all that is within the cosmos. So in the cosmos, it's loosely
translated, the whole order. The whole order. So all that
was made in an order. That's the idea of the universe.
It is ordered. It is organized. It is displayed. And we know according to Genesis
and according to John and according to Colossians and Hebrews and
according to the rest of Scripture that this display is an organized
effort of God through the speaking of His Word. And He spoke and
it came to be. And so now Paul in this man-made
temple with these man-made gods is saying there is a God and
he is the creator of all this. And not just all this, but everything
in this. God is the creator of the cosmos,
the whole order of the universe and everything in it. So Paul
is now saying, listen to me. This isn't some God you have
discovered. This is a God who created you.
This is a God who created all the mysteries of the world that
you want to find the answers to. And he has created the large
vastness of it. And then Paul speaks very directly
to their pantheism when he says, and he deals with the intricacies
of it and everything in it. Because there were some who believed
that there was a creator and then he just left it to be. But
the Bible teaches us that God orchestrates the holding together
by the power of his word, the microscopic things that are unseen,
that the very order of the atomic elements and the order of the
universe is held together by the sovereignty of God. And Paul
has proclaimed this. He is the creator of everything,
the universe and the microscopic. He also says that he's the ruler
of heaven and earth, the Lord, the master. The one who reigns
supreme over all things that he has made. assume it all. He's the ruler
of all. He's the ruler of you. He rules
over your thoughts. He rules over your minds. He
rules over your bodies. He rules over your philosophy.
He rules over your world. He rules over this temple. He
rules over these gods. He is the God of all gods, the
King of all kings and the Lord of all lords of everything. Therefore,
because he's the Lord over heaven and earth, he is subject to nothing.
He is not subject to your ideals. He's not subject to your philosophies.
He's not subject to your interpretation. He's not subject to your creativity.
He is not subject to anything, for He is the God of everything.
And because of that, He has not been made by man. He cannot be
served by man. He cannot be contained by man.
He cannot be known by man through the means of man. So He is in
need of nothing. Friends, when he began to say
this, what does it mean for someone who'd never heard it? How about
you? Have you heard that? Obviously, you've probably heard
it. Have you heard it, though? Have you truly heard it in the
depths of your soul that there is a God who created it all and
he's ruler of all and he's subject to none, but all things are subject
to him. He is indeed need of nothing. Friends, there are people
within our own area of life here who have preached in my presence
with 500 others who have said these words, that God is desperately
in need of men and women to do His will. And it was all that
I could do not to stand up and just say, blasphemy, blasphemy,
heresy, garbage. God is not in need of you. God
is not in need of me. If my mouth were to close shut
and my face were to deny Him in rebellion, some other man
would proclaim the gospel. I like to very kindly and politically
correctly remind our men as we do our elder training, as one
of the first things that I teach them, in that God can use the
ass of Balaam, He can use you. As a matter of fact, we probably
should reverse that. Because that donkey actually is not depraved. He is subject to the depravity
and the simple of humanity. He did exactly what he was created
to do and glorify God with every plot that he drops along the
path. We do not glorify God in our very being that we exist
on the earth, except we be saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone.
We're a part in the holy scheme of creation. He is in need of
no man. He does not need man to defend
him in order for him to be made much of. As a matter of fact,
if we look at history of Israel, we see that Israel, time after
time after time, all they ever did was just defame the name
of God. One season after another, they
had the oracles of God. They came to themselves. They
inbred into the philosophies and the religions of the worlds
in which they were slave, enslaved. Look at the Samaritans, the Egyptians,
the Romans. And you look at it, even for
the time of Christ, Herod, the king of Jews, did not even know
the fullness of the prophecy of Messiah. Had to go seek it
out, we see in Luke chapter 2. They defamed his name, but as
Ezekiel the prophet proclaims, thus saith the Lord, I will restore
you, Israel, not because of you, but because of my name, which
you have defamed among the nations. I will make you a people of my
own possession. I will restore a heart that loves
me and walks on my statutes. I will do this for my sake, not
for you. Not because of you, but because
and we know what Paul teaches in Ephesians two, because of
the mercy that he has and the great love that God has for his
own, he saves them. God is the life giver. Look at
this, nor is he served by human hands. as though he needed anything,
since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. It's like Paul just went, everything.
I had a list and I'm just going to quit with it. I'm going to
just stay here for 30 days and just give a list. You know what?
Life and breath and everything. Everything you have, God gave
it to you. You see the idolatry of taking
credit for that which we've done? for climbing the mountain and
saying, look what I've achieved, for saying the will of me is
the way for me and I will do that which I've come to do. Friends,
if that doesn't ring an echo in the history of the text of
Scripture, please read the book of Job. Read the fall of Satan. Read the text of Scripture that
teaches us that that is Satanism to the core when we think that
we can affect that which we desire to be great in on our own. And
thus we turn our eyes from God and we say, I can. It is idolatrous
because God is the life giver. He is a life sustainer. He is
the providential Father who maintains all that there is to see. Any
man that is alive today is alive by the majestic grace of God.
So he gets through with talking about who God is, and then he
says in verse 26, he made man. And he made from one man, you
might think we got it, do you? The idolatry of our race. The
idolatry of our place in society, the idolatry of our nation. You
know how wicked and antichrist it is to be affectionately toward
America to such place that you have disdain toward other countries?
When America and Russia and all these other countries and the
continents in which they reside are all going to be gone. There's
no godly government. It's a government of God whom
God will destroy for he is the king of kings. I'm not saying don't be patriotic,
I'm saying don't be an idolater. Don't look down on other nations
and say that we are so glad to be American. You don't need to
come here. We came here. We robbed this land, stole people,
murdered and raped them and shoved them into the ocean. We got rid
of them so we could take what they had. And God allowed us
to do it. Why? I don't know. I don't know. Man is subject to God. because
he made from one man every nation. No matter what creed or nationality
or race or ethnicity you claim to have, you are every bit the
same seed as every human being in the world. You are akin to
them in one Father who is Adam. And in your blood and in your
DNA is the same substance. And I will promise you this.
Jesus did not come to the well, he did not come to the righteous,
he did not come to the wealthy, and he did not come to those
who did not need to be saved. He came to seek and save the
lost. We're all lost, but if we don't
know it, what does Jesus say to the Pharisees? Are we blind? Since you say you see, your guilt
remains. Do you see? Do you see that which you need
to see? Do you see the idolatry of our
souls? And friends, do you see the glory
of the gospel that God has saved us in spite of these things?
And that even as we grow as the children of God, completely justified,
completely redeemed, it is finished, Jesus said. He didn't say, I'm
working on it. It is done. We are saved fully. Yet we have not received the
fullness of that sanctification, the fullness of that glorification,
but it is so done, as Paul says in Romans 8, that he uses past
tense, very effectively past tense. Has justified, has sanctified,
has glorified. It is yes and amen in Christ.
But look what Paul has said now about man. Every man comes from
another. Friends, these Greeks had pride
in their knowledge, had pride in their civility, had pride
in their wealth, and had pride in their color. They had pride
in the fact that they had wealth and ownership of things. And
they looked down upon those who could not afford that which they
had and thought, if you just worked harder, if you just did
a little more, what's that going to do for you? Sound familiar? Public events of culture and
politics? Friends, the Bible answers them. Look at the narrative of the
Scripture. Look at the narrative of the early church and see that
the themes of politics and the themes of culture and the individual
issues that plagued the people of that day are the same ones
that plague us today. There is no new sin. There is
no new movement. There's no new disease. There's
no new nothing. It's all the same. And every human being, because
they are made from one man, are equal in the eyes of God. And
he justly and righteously deserves to punish forever every human
being. But because of his mercy, because
of his love toward us, he has made us alive together in Christ. So what does it mean? We're created and subject to
God, it means we're owned by God. If we make something, it's
ours. If we create something, unless
we put a lien on it, it's ours. God created all human beings. They belong to Him. No man, woman,
or child has a right to say, God, I don't deserve to obey
You. No one can stand and say, why
did You make me? No one can stand to the potter
and say, why did You do this to me? Everyone is owned by God and
they have been set in the earth by the desire of God. That means
individuals, each one of us, every one of us, every nation,
every place, every role, every authority has been orchestrated
and ordained by God. He has not only that, but he
said that he put them in the earth and determined the allotted
periods in which they would live and the boundaries of their dwelling.
Why did he do that? Why did God put us here? To wander
around in darkness? Paul says it. In verse 27, he
says, "...that they..." What does that mean? That means God
made you and put you here and gave you what you have so that
in all of this, you would seek after Him. So what are you doing? That they should seek God? Listen
to these words and perhaps feel their way toward him and find
him. What does it mean? I think Paul
is very clearly given an image that if it were left to man,
we wouldn't find him. We would feel around like a blind
man in the forest trying to find the tree that were marked by
our seeing brothers the day before. Feeling the bark to see if there
were chalk on here. How ridiculously impossible that
would be. But as Jesus tells his disciples
after the rich man. Leaves dejected, and Jesus says
out of his own mouth. It is easier for the camel to
go to the eye of a sewing needle than it is for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven, and they say, then who can be saved?
Jesus answers. That which is impossible for
man is possible with God. Man's purpose is to search after
God, is to see Him and behold Him and worship Him. They should
seek after God. Friends, do you hear Romans 1
in your ear? Do you hear those words as Paul
opens this text to those beloved Christians in Rome? He says,
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress,
push down, keep out the truth. For what can be known about God
is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his
invisible attributes, namely eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world
and the things that have been made. So they, mankind, are without
excuse. For although they knew God, they
did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became
worthless in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools. And they exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man
and birds and animals and creeping things. We have not sought Him. The Old
Testament teaches we have not sought Him. Paul, in Romans 3,
alludes to that same text that no one seeks after God. No one
is righteous. All have turned aside together.
They become worthless. No one does good. So God created
us to seek after him. And now we don't. We can't. Why?
Because our father sinned and therefore and our mother sinned
and all human beings are of equal standing before God as sinners
before they ever commit the first sin. And so this is a vain search,
because we see Him and we go, there's God. Don't want it. I want this. And it's so hard
for us to apply that today when we see and they became darkened,
they became fools, they exchanged the glory of the immortal God
for the glory of the images of man and birds and creeping things.
And we say, who's making a statue of man and worshiping it? That's
not the point. What did those statues represent?
What do icons, idols, statues that were worshipped in that
day represent? They represent the humanistic ideal that mankind
is wise enough to find out who God is and name Him. That's what
it represents. And so when we say, well, we're
different today, we live in a different time, the Bible doesn't apply,
we are blind. And you can hire a critic yourself,
write out the pages of maps and it doesn't matter because what's
right is right, what's wrong is wrong. And the truth is this,
that God says you're accountable because you see him and you do
not love him and you do not worship him and you do not thank him
for the life he gave you and you do not seek after him that
you might be saved and you do not love him, but you love yourself
who is owned by him. That's what the Bible is teaching
us here, Romans. That's what Paul is very politically correctly
not stating to these Greeks. These poets that Paul talks about,
he says in him, look at the end of verse 27, yet he is actually
not far from each one of us. We're seeking and we're stumbling
around, but he's not far. He's not far. And then he quotes.
He says, In him we live and move and have our being, as some of
your own poets have said. And then he continues, For we
are indeed his offspring. Now, friends, what he's talking
about there is several different, several different poets. Epiminid, Epiminid. Let me get
that right. Epiminid and Aratus, Aratus. You got to say it again. Epiminid,
Epitalarid. If a Taliban, whatever, if amenities
and a racist, they they wrote, I don't think that I'm wise in
that. I'll look that up. They wrote poems about Zeus. They wrote the words there, as
Paul alluded to those very words that these Greeks had in their
own mind about their main god, that we are the offspring of
Zeus. And in Zeus, do we live and have our being? And now Paul
is saying, not him, him. The one true God that I'm proclaiming
to you is in whom you live and move, and you are his offspring. And look at verse 29. Paul uses
their own thoughts about their gods as revelation and uses Christian
language to give them the truth about the one true God. Look
at verse 29. Being then God's offspring. We ought not. He gives a negative there. We
ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver
or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. And so he's saying you are you're
wrong. So now Paul is giving man's thoughts
on God's on God, and now he's given a command from God, we
ought not think about God this way, this God cannot be made. This God cannot be discovered.
This God cannot be made to change into the culture in which we
live, for he has established these boundaries and has sufficiently
given himself visible gospel through Christ in the Word. He's
saying that these people, cannot stay the way they are. You cannot
continue to think the way you do about God. You cannot stay
in this mindset. You cannot continue to let your
flesh run wild and do the things that it wants to do and sin in
the way it wants to sin, because sin is idolatry. Idolatry is
lawlessness. Lawlessness is sin. Sin is lawlessness. And no lawless person enters
the Kingdom of Heaven. And one of the greatest sins
is unbelief. which includes having a fake God that we call Yahweh
and having a fake Jesus, a fake Savior, because we just think
that that's the way He is. We know Jesus. You don't know
how many times I hear that when I'm talking with people. I say,
well, I know what the Bible says, but I know my God. Operative
word being yours. Not this one. If you don't know
the God of the Bible, you are not His. Paul says you can't stay like
you are. God is not what we think He is. He is what He reveals
Himself to be. God doesn't like what we like. He's holy. God isn't beholding
to our cultures. God isn't one who does what we
think needs to change in Him. He planted us here to honor Him,
to search after Him, to be holy as He is holy. God doesn't need
our boldness. God doesn't need our boasting.
God doesn't need us to take His back. He orchestrates the weak
things in the world to overcome the strong. He orchestrates the
fools of the world to bring to foolishness the wise of the world.
He takes the things that are nothing and brings to nothing
the things that are. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. He doesn't need our scholarship.
He doesn't need our eloquence. He doesn't need our preaching.
He doesn't need anything. He will affect all things for
His glory. And if you feel that God is calling
you and you turn away, that's your fault. If you know what it means to
not sin and you sin, that's your fault. If you know the things
that God has commanded you to do in the positive and you don't
do them, that's your fault. Not God's fault. God is not a created being, and
you say, well, no, duh. How would anybody ever think
they've created God when we do it every day? See, this is the
thing. We've got to really see what the application is for us.
I don't think any of us have, although angelology is a little
bit scary for me. People put angels in their houses
because they think it helps protect them. If you like angels, just
put them in your house because you think they're cool looking.
Don't think that angels come with the little pen. I put the
pen on, the angel comes with it. Because that is a direct
relation to the paganism of the Old Testament. We take the main
idol, we make a tiny idol, we touch the coal from the mouth
of the main idol, we put it to the mouth of the new idol, and
we sell it on the shelf, and then you have the voice of that
God there. And if you don't understand that,
then go read Isaiah 6, you'll see it. Touch your calls in my
mouth. Send me. Who shall go? I'll go. How do we create God? I believe
we create God when the word is no longer sufficient for us and
how we define him. We come up with our own ideals.
He may have the right name. He may be from the right place,
but so is every cult that's known in Christendom. We create a new God when we think
the scripture is no longer relative to us. Well, that's then this
is now we we need to. What is the application? What
is the transcendent theological principle? What is the truth
of the gospel and how it relates to your life? We create our own God when we
interpret scripture based on culturistic ideals and philosophies.
We create our own God when we consider ourselves wise about
him. And we don't want to hear any more about who he is. We
don't want to learn. We know who God is. We know the
gospel. No, we don't. If we know the gospel, we got
it, we move on. What is that? And Solomon writes there to Lemuel,
he says that the wise man listens to sound instructions. Paraphrase
here. The fool does not. And I paraphrase a whole portion,
almost a third of Proverbs this way, the fool says, I know. We create our own God, we fail to
remember that in all things he is good, as we'll see. He owns
us, we belong to him, and that is good, and he commands us,
and that is good, and he does as he pleases, and that is good. The problem then comes is that
we want our flesh to be satisfied. If we're not in Christ and made
righteous, friends, you can keep your flesh, you'll have it. And
you'll have the torment of it forever. And so if we look at this text
in our last few minutes together, ask yourself this question. Are you creating a God that's
not the God of the Bible? Do you worship a God that exists
in graphic art and funny Bibles and cool videos and neat t-shirts
and bracelets and bumper stickers? Do you worship a God that exists
in what I call a plateaued moralistic ideal? What's that mean? That means that we're not doing
anything out of the ordinary that the rest of the good people of
this world are doing. And we're just sort of maintaining this
status quo of not getting into trouble, not rocking the boat,
and not falling into sin, and we're fine with it. This is good.
We're living the godly life. That's not true. The only example
of that in Jesus' ministry is the publican in the Pharisee.
The Pharisee lived the model life. He lived the status quo.
He tithed. He didn't sin. He didn't drink.
He wasn't proud. He thanked God for all that which
was affected in his life. He says, I thank you, God. I
give worship to you. I praise you, God, that you have
cleansed me and I'm no longer a sinner like this guy. The publican beats his chest,
tears his clothes, bows his head and goes far off. And he prays
without looking to the sky for he's humbled and humiliated that
he's a sinner. And he says, oh, God, have mercy
on me, a sinner. And Jesus said this man went
home justified today. The other man is condemned. What must we do? Peter. Preach the gospel. about this
God who came to earth and rules all things and created all things
and he came like the creation and he died for the sins of all
who believe and he was raised from the dead and he promised
to raise us to glory. What must we do to be saved?
Repent of your sin. Repent of your selfishness. Repent
of your philosophies, of your ideals, of your man-made God.
Repent of your laziness. Repent of your spiritual depravity.
Repent of your absolute hatred. Repent of your blind bigotry.
Repent! Repent! Turn from those things
and turn to Christ, who is the Giver of life, and that's the
believing of the Gospel. And trust solely in Christ forever,
for every second of your being, when the sin that is always before
you, stands at your feet and tightens the trawl line to trip
you on your face. You say, oh, Christ, here it
comes. You are my only hope. And he will pick you up over
that and carry you into righteousness. We're starting in times of ignorance,
God overlooked, but now he commands, you see this. everywhere, all
people to repent. Who is who is God? The commandment,
we've already established that, see? He can. You don't have to like it. You're
going to bow down before him either way. Salvation isn't coming. Well,
at least I'll get on the right side of this shipping tournament,
fishing tournament. I'll get on the right side of
this boat at least. That's not salvation. Salvation is saying,
I need to be on the right side of this boat. Oh, how beautiful
the Savior. I don't want this life anymore.
I don't want this sin anymore. That's the effect of salvation.
I don't want this flesh anymore. I hate this sin. I want to be
right. I need Christ to make me right.
I need the Word of God. I need the people of God to walk
with me in this journey. I need the gospel every second
of my life. I need to hear the good news that Jesus is my Savior
and my power and my grace and my hope. That he is the one who
created me, and then he came like me and took my sin as a
sinless one, that I might be the righteousness of God. This
is what I need. He commands you to repent. Repent of false religion, repent
of unbelief, repent of disrespect, repent of disobedience to parents,
repent of sexual lust, repent of defiling marriage. Repent of a man-centered salvation.
Repent of morality. Man's excuses. We just overlook
him. We just say he's not there. Then
we have a good conscience. Your conscience is seared. You
know what that means? You ever got something underneath
your heart and it's there and you just can't get over it? Only
you know it's there. Only you know you've done it.
Only you know you've thought it. And it eats at you, and it
eats at you, and it comes up. And in the middle of great fellowship,
even with the church, and all of a sudden it taps you and says,
hey, hey, hey, remember me? And you turn and you look at
it and you go, I hate this. The Bible says to confess your
sins. In Christ, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins.
1 John 1. But the way the world does it
is they hear that and they know that they're wrong. And they
go and they find something else to look at. They look at those
who do what they do. And that's why the old adage,
birds of a feather flock together. Friends, why do sinners stay
so close to people like them? Because then their consciousness
has drowned out. Why do people hate the church
so much? And I mean the church. I'm not
talking about church stuff and church groups and church programs.
I thought about why do people hate Christians? Because Christians
who love them dearly and would give their life for them, when
they see them, they hate that they're not like them because
they love the darkness. John says, why did Cain kill
his brother Abel? Because his brother's works were
righteous and his were evil. Jesus in John three, talking
in Nicodemus, this is the judgment. Light has come into the world,
but people love the darkness rather than the light because
their works are evil. They love the darkness because
in the darkness they hide their evil works and they do not come
to the light lest they be exposed. But all who do come to the light. Do so so that it may be clearly
seen that their works have been carried out in God, that is the
summation of John three sixteen, if you ever want to know, look
at it. The light is coming to the world.
This is it. And God is right. He will judge righteously. He
will judge honorably, he will judge truthfully. Because, verse
31, he has fixed the day on which he will judge the world in righteousness. He's judging in righteousness.
That means every judgment he makes, you're guilty, guilty,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. I point in empty chairs so I
don't make anybody feel guilty. But you know, guilty. And nobody
will say, you're wrong, because you know he's right. Of all the millions who are incarcerated
in our penal systems in the world today, Very few guilty men sit
there in their own minds. They've lied to themselves so
much, they've talked themselves into believing that they didn't
do that, which they're incarcerated for. Now, there are innocent
men there. And friends, there's some guilty sinners in prison
who are now freer than we are in Christ. As free as we are. Not freer than that. But God will rightly judge the
world. All that He does is right. All
that He does is good. So if he commands us to be holy,
that is good for us. It is for our utmost joy. As
a matter of fact, the title of this message, as I was thinking
about it, is how to have the highest happiness. I started
to add a tagline to that in the face of an idolatrous world.
It really is how to have the highest happiness is to see that
God is righteous and all that he does and all that he commands
and all that he is and all that he affects in our lives. And
so that we will truly have the ultimate joy and get the guarantee
of our absolute hope and satisfaction when we obey God. What is it that we must be doing,
John 6, to be doing the works of God? And Jesus says, this
is the work of God, that you believe on the Son whom he has
sent. Believe in Christ. How will he judge? How dare God
say that I don't stand up? I'm better than everybody else
I know. Really? He says he will judge righteously. Because he is fixed today, will
judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this, he has given assurance
to all by raising him from the dead. Friends, who is the man?
That will be remember back in the day for those of us who were
in school and you fill out the bubbles. And the teacher put
put the key over the test. And she could see if it was filled
in. The holes in her paper matched up with the bubbles that were
supposed to be filled in. And the teacher put it on there.
And you stood there at her desk and you looked and you go, oh
no, I didn't fill that bubble in. And she took the red marker and
drew over it. There's a red line over it. And you took it back.
And every one that didn't match, you got it wrong. Well, if we
don't match in one way to the key of Jesus, the absolute perfect
man. Wait a minute, He was God. He
was God and He was man. Fully man. Christ created Mary
and the womb inside of her and then put himself in there. And he was born a human being,
fully God, fully man. And as a human being, he perfectly
fulfilled the holy requirements of the Father. And so God is
going to say, there is a man that I've appointed and he was
killed. He suffered for you. He suffered for the sins of all
who believe. And I will hold him up because he's perfectly
satisfied. All that I require. And if you
are like him, you are innocent because he's taken your guilt. That's justification. That is
the centrality of salvation. That's what it means to be saved,
that you're justified. Nothing you've done to make yourself
like Jesus. Jesus has finished it all for you. It is finished.
This is the God whom Paul has taught these Gnostics, these
pagans, these pantheists. This is the God that he teaches
to you, who is Jesus Christ, the righteous. Judgment will come through Christ.
as the living God-man to whom God will hold us up to see. If
we are in Christ, the righteousness of Jesus has been given to us.
It's been imputed. Our account, which was bankrupt
with an eternal debt of judgment, has been filled, overflowing.
John 4. If you knew the gift of God and
who it was asking you for a drink, You would ask him for a drink
and he would give you living water that would well up unto
eternal life. Jesus is the standard. And Jesus
will also be by whom God judges the world, and that as we see
in the apocalypse, at the end of days, at the great judgment,
Jesus will cast the guilty into the lake of fire. Because he
alone is worthy. Who is worthy to take the scroll
to fulfill the work of God? See that image to that picture,
Jesus, the righteous. Do you believe this? Why should I believe it? Because
he was killed and he was raised from the dead. Verse 32, last
thing we say. Now, when they heard the resurrection
of the dead, some mocked. But others said, we will hear
you again about this. And then they left, some men
joined them and believed. So what's the answer, Church?
There's two. You have to be very careful. Either you market this, or you
move into Christ. You're mocking toward God or
you're moving toward God. You've been created and placed
in the earth so they might seek after God. Are you seeking after
God in all of His fullness? In Christ, are you mocking Him
by... These people went, that's stupid.
That's ridiculous. I don't want to hear that. Get
out of my face. But friends, so many of us mock God today
because we say, I don't need to hear this. I'm fine. I know. I'm good. I got it. Don't be there. Thank you, God, for the gospel,
for the good news of Jesus Christ, that you sent him into the world
to give us life. Repent and believe the gospel
of Jesus Christ. Keep yourselves from idols, even
the idols of your own salvation. Worship Christ. Let's pray. Dear Father, it's warm. It's physically warm. We're ever-minded of the reality of
this life that we live in and it's physical and just the smallest,
smallest discomfort affects the flesh. When it's warm, we get
tired, we doze, we perspire. When it's cold, we hurt, ache,
complain. Lord, you saved us from all of
that. We can make an idol out of everything. For as great theologians have
said, one particular has said, Lord, you know that the heart
of man is a perpetual factory of idols. Lord, it's just one
after the other. And if it weren't for your son,
Christ, taking our sin dead against you, we could not even worship.
We could not be made alive. We thank you for making us alive
in Christ. But I pray that as this new year approaches, we
would not resolve to do earthly things of ill import, but father,
we would do that which you've commanded us to do, which is
pursue holiness. This is the will of God for you. To pursue holiness, father, we
take that fully. And one day we will stand before
you perfect without sin, temptation or frustration. We praise you
for all that you are. And your love and mercy for us,
in spite of us, that you've affected such great things for your namesake. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.