Men Would Seek the Lord

Q: What does the Bible say about seeking the Lord?

The Bible encourages us to seek the Lord, emphasizing the importance of knowing Him as the source of true happiness. Acts 17:27 states that men ought to seek the Lord, for the greatest happiness anyone can experience is to find Him. The longing to know God is fundamental to human existence, as represented in David's declaration that his soul thirsts for the living God. This pursuit of God surpasses the satisfaction found in idols or material wealth, directing our hearts towards a genuine relationship with our Creator. True worship is rooted in seeking God with our entire beings, acknowledging Him as the center of our lives.

Q: Why is knowing God important for Christians?

Knowing God is essential for Christians as it leads to true life and fulfillment in Christ. To know God is to experience the essence of eternal life; Jesus said in John 17:3 that eternal life is knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. This intimate knowledge transforms us, directing our lives according to His will and purpose. In Paul's sermon at Mars Hill, he emphasizes that God created everyone from one man, calling us all to seek Him. The knowledge of God shapes our identity and our understanding of His sovereignty, mercy, and grace, allowing us to walk in faithful obedience.

Q: How do we know God reveals Himself?

God reveals Himself through creation, His word, and ultimately through Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches that God has made Himself known in various ways, foremost through creation, as stated in Romans 1:20, where His invisible attributes are clearly seen. Furthermore, God has spoken through ancient prophets but ultimately revealed His nature through Jesus Christ, who said, 'He who has seen me has seen the Father' (John 14:9). This revelation is accessible to all who seek Him with sincerity and humility. True knowing comes through a relationship empowered by the Holy Spirit, who leads us into all truth and understanding of God's character and will.

Q: What does it mean for God to be sovereign?

God's sovereignty means that He is the supreme authority, governing all things according to His perfect will. Sovereignty is a central tenet of Reformed theology, asserting that God is in control of everything—events in history, our lives, and salvation. Acts 17:26 highlights that God has determined the times and boundaries for all nations, demonstrating His dominion over creation. This sovereignty not only assures believers of His power and provision but also calls us to trust in His plans, even when outcomes seem uncertain. Acknowledging God's sovereignty shapes our understanding of grace, as we recognize that salvation is a work of God alone, and not dependent on human effort.

Q: Why should Christians depend on God alone?

Christians should depend on God alone as He provides everything we need for life and godliness. Dependence on God stems from the understanding that He is our Creator and sustainer, as depicted in Acts 17:25, where Paul argues that God is not served by human hands as if He needed anything. Rather, He gives life, breath, and provides for our every need. This dependence leads us away from relying on ourselves or other entities, redirecting our focus to God who is faithful and capable of fulfilling His promises. By placing our trust in Him, we are empowered to engage in genuine worship that is not based on works or rituals but flows from true transformation of the heart.

Now the title of my message this
morning is, Me and Should Seek the Lord. Me and Should Seek the Lord. We have just returned, Darcy
and I, from a very interesting and profitable trip to Mexico. I believe this was one of my
best visits. They are always enjoyable, the
fellowship with the missionaries, the encouragement I receive and
I hope they receive. But as far as the preaching and
the services were concerned, this was one of the best trips
that I have made. Now, Brother Walter Groover has
been ministering the gospel in the Yucatan for twenty-eight
years now. I've watched Brother Walter during
those twenty-one years that we've known him and helped support
his ministry go from a flat top to a gray hair. My missionary friends are getting
old. But my, how the Lord has blessed
his ministry there in the Yucatan. We went out to a village called
Calcato. There's a young pastor there
named Gilberto. He's been pastor there a long
time. He's been taught by Brother Groover in the preacher school.
But we didn't meet in the little church building. They secured
the The village park, the Pueblo has a park, most of
them, those Pueblos will have anywhere from 500 people to 30,000. Most of them have a park and
there's a basketball court, concrete basketball court right in the
middle of the park where the boys and girls play. had a service on that basketball
court under the lights that night. They'd gotten all the chairs
from the government buildings, and we had over a hundred people
there, the people standing, had a loudspeaker, and people sitting
around the walls and standing in the doors of their houses.
And Milton and I both preached, Milton in Spanish and I preached
in English with Milton translating. got a good hearing and then the
next night we went to Tikal, that's another Pueblo where there's
a church pastored by Jose. We visited there way back in
1970. You remember Stan, 1970 we visited. Jose was just a young man, had
a little baby named Wacho, little boy. Wacho's now twenty some
odd years old. 20 years old, and the church
there has been there for 20 years or better, 21 years. And they
had an outdoor service. They brought seven churches together. They rented chairs. They met
out in the field next to the church. We had over 250 people
there that night. They got rented a bus, trucks,
open bed trucks, they came from everywhere, seven churches, and
their pastors, and the pastors' wives, and their little singing
groups, and they had special music, three or four churches
furnished special music. The pastors, some of the native
pastors read and prayed, and Milton preached, and I preached,
and we just had a An amazing thing, the day before, it rained
unbelievably hard, settled all the dust. That day, not a drop. That night, a cool breeze blowing
out there as we sat under the stars preaching. Next day, poured
down rain again. But the Lord enabled us to have
that service, and when I give these numbers, You know me well
enough to know I don't exaggerate numbers. I cut her down. But
we had at least 250 people there, maybe more. Almost as many as
here this morning. And then I preached on what is
it to confess Christ. And then we went to Seye and
had a wedding. I'd never been in a Mexican wedding.
But let me tell you something. The groom's parents foot the
bill. The bride's parents don't pay a dime, not a dime. The groom's parents even buy
the girl's wedding dress. And the bridesmaids pay the whole
thing, the reception, everything. It's paid by the groom. See,
they're glad to get that little girl. After all, the bride's
parents have to pay to get her husband, you know. But we had Walter preached. I
didn't have anything to do with that. Y'all know how I love weddings. Walter Priest had married a couple,
and that night we went to Issa Mall, and Walter's pastor there,
this is a new church, and they've already got a building, but they're
building an addition onto it to get off the main street. On the main street is where all
the motorcycles go by. Some of you fellas been there
remember the noise in Issa Mall, but they're building a new building.
full house, I preached that night. And then we went to the preacher
school in Calcutta. There are three preacher schools
now, one in Yobain, one in DeKalb, and one in Calcutta. And we went
to the preacher school where we had seventeen, eighteen native
pastors to sit and listen to Milton Knife for a couple of
hours. And we had some good, had good service there. And then
we went to Yobain where Retilio has pastored for twenty-two years.
And many of those people, I've been going down there for all
these years now, since 1970. And I've got some good friends
there. They're faithful. They've been there. Leonardo
and his wife, Melba, and Jobain, and Retilio, and those men and
women have been together for over 20 years. And they've added
new people. They've got a lovely building
that they've built by God's grace themselves. I preached on sovereign
mercy that night. Well, we weren't in Chiapas very
long, just three or four days, but we had three unusual services. In Chiapas, where Brother Howard
has been for twenty-five years now, there's a church that's
been meeting for fourteen or fifteen years at Houllion. They
have a nice brick building, and Brother Howard preaches there
every Sunday. But there's a family in that
church, the young man, he's studying to be an orthodontist, he's in
his last year, a mondo. He conducts the services when
Milton's gone, leads the singing, so forth. Well, his family owns
a chicken ranch down the road from the church. And they have
several of these chicken houses, they're 30 by 50, 30 by 60. There are four or five of them
full of chickens. Well, they've emptied one, and we're having
services in that chicken house. It's open. Oh, it has a roof
over it, and it's open. And they get these chairs from
everywhere and furniture out of the house and boxes, everything
to sit on. And this family invites all their
neighbors and friends and relatives and church members and everybody
there, and we were there on a Thursday night. And I preached to a large,
a place completely full, just completely full. And I got through
preaching, the old man, his name's Jose too, he's 92. He sits over
here and he listens. He's the first convert in that
village 14 years ago. And he was the town drunk. I
mean, he was the town terror. That's the way Milton describes
him, the terror of the town. But the Lord saved him under
Brother Milton's ministry, and he helped build that church.
It's on his property next door to his little farm. And he loves
the gospel. And when I got through preaching,
he wanted to say a few words. I believe he said something when
you preached that night, when Don and I, one of us preached.
Well, Hosea got up again, and he said, This is like in the
days of Noah. He said, These men, they didn't
come from They didn't come from Medina. They came from far, far
away. They translated this to me. I
didn't know what he was saying. And he said, They've come to
tell us about the Lord. Now, you're going to be just
like those people another day. You're not going to hear them
either. And he just got real upset with those folks, you know,
really. Bawled him out. And told them about these people
coming to preach to them. They wouldn't listen to them.
But it was a good meeting. Then on Sunday morning we met.
at the ranch up in the mountains on the coffee ranch about 30
miles from Guatemala. We know that's where we always
go. And they had a church building there on the church ranch property
just full, just people standing in the door that morning. And I had so much liberty to
preach the gospel. I just never had any more liberty
to preach than I did That Sunday morning, one of the best services
I've ever had in Mexico. So much liberty and they just
listened so well and heard the word. So grateful to God. But the service I want to tell
you about occurred on a Saturday night. Now the ranch sits here
on top of the mountain. Some of you may have been there
and remember on about 4,000 feet elevation they grow coffee. on
this ranch. It's a distribution point for
the villages round about there. Well, you follow two creeks and
you go down a road and you turn off the road and you start up
another mountain. And there's a village up there.
A year and a half ago, Walt Milton, during the dry season, took me
up there. It's a place where he preached
five years ago. He hasn't preached since, but
he has been back. They're taking food to the people,
and they took some dentists up there to have some dental clinics. But this is a tribe of people. They grow coffee. Their little
village is twelve miles up that mountain. It takes an hour and
a half to two hours to get there. Twelve miles. That's from here
to Worthington, something like that, or Wortland. And it takes
an hour and a half to two hours. In most places it's no wider
than this pulpit up here. It's impossible for five months
out of the year, rainy season. You don't go up there except
on a horse. But it's way up there and these
people, there's several hundred people live there and they grow
coffee. That's all they grow is coffee. They have a little
corn. But they get hungry when the coffee season's not in right
now. And the men drink it up. They're
not poor or pitiful. They're mean. I mean, they're
mean. And men drink it up and gamble
it up and everything else, you know. And the children and wives
starve during the off-season. And these churches, the one I
told you about at Hooyan, where the old man is a member, and
the church at the ranch and the church at Tuxla send food up
there. They get a truck. And they drive
up there and take food. They've done that several times.
Rice and beans, just something for those people to eat. Well,
when we were up there just looking it over, Milton and I talked
about having a service up there. So he said, when you come back,
we'll go up there. Well, Saturday night we went up there. And we
took a truckload of food. The man that owns the ranch took
his flatbed truck with the wooden sides and all. boxes of groceries. Those churches, we, these churches
furnish that. They help one another. This is
great. And we took 50 packages of groceries
in the back of that truck. We drove the four-wheel Suburban.
And we went up to that village. I didn't know what to expect.
Milton said, we'll have a pushing service. We're going to show
a film and have a preaching service and distribute the groceries
and the school teacher. Now down in Mexico, this orthodontist,
this young man that's going to be the dentist, orthodontist,
I said, what are you going to do now when you finish this year?
He said, I have to serve in a Pueblo for a year. I said, will you
be with another dentist? He said, no, Solomento. Solomentor. Is that the way, John? Solomentor.
Alone. He says, I have to go in a village.
and practice dentistry for a year, give my services, and then I
can go somewhere else. Every schoolteacher has to go
out in one of these pagan villages and live and teach for a year.
And after they serve their year, then they can go somewhere else.
So the schoolteacher up there had the list of who's the neediest
families for us to give groceries to. But we went up there, and
I thought, now what do you preach? They have no pastor, no church,
no gospel, coffee growers, very poor, isolated, pagans, probably
never heard the gospel in their lives, many of them. Milton put
it there five years ago. Most everyone in the village
will probably be there. Over a hundred children were
there. There was well over 200 people there, 250 in that little
building. They don't know Genesis from
Revelation. They don't know Moses from Paul.
What do you preach? Well, turn in your Bibles to
Acts 17. I thought, as I was trying to
get something from the Lord preached to them that night, I thought
about Paul when he went to the city of Athens. Same difference,
you know. You may have plenty of poverty,
but you're ignorant if you don't know God. And Athens was as pagan
as this village. And in Acts 17, 16, Now while Paul waited for them
at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly
given to idolatry. Paul was standing in the midst
of a place like where we were, idolatry. Their grandparents and forefathers
worshipped snakes down there, and four-footed beasts. And now
Catholicism is rampant down there, and they're worshipping idols
and rosaries and everything else, idolatry. And therefore, verse
17, disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, with the devout
persons, and the market daily with them that met with him.
And then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and the Stoics
encountered him, Paul, and said, What's this Bibler going to say?
Others some, he seemeth to be a seller forth of strange gods. That's what I was at Milton,
a set-aforth of a God they didn't know, a gospel they never heard. We were babblers. Because he
preached unto them Jesus Christ, substitution, atonement, redemption,
forgiveness of sins in Christ, the resurrection from the dead,
eternal life. They said, what's this? We never
heard this before. And they took him and brought
him to Areopagus. Saying, and Areopagus, that was
Mars Hill, that was the highest court in Athens, that's where
the philosophers met and argued all these different intellectual
things. Areopagus saying, now may we
know this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest in it. What is
this new doctrine you're teaching? We want to hear all about it.
This is a good place for me to start, isn't it? I thought it
was a good place. You know, I had the same thing
up there. Let's hear what you've got to say, babbler. See what
this new thing is. We haven't heard this. Verse
20, Thou bringest certain strange things to our ears. We're sinners. God's sovereign. God's holy.
Man's depraved. Christ died for sinners. Christ
died on the cross to redeem lost men and women. The Holy Spirit
quickens, calms, regenerates, brings men to faith. Faith saves,
brings us into living union with Christ. God forgives our sins,
we die, we're buried, we rise again, seated with Christ in
the heavenlies. We would know, therefore, what
these things mean. For all opinions and strangers
which were there spent their time in nothing else but either
to tell or to hear some new thing. There's always arguing some new
thing. We need to hear the old gospel, don't we? We don't need
to be sitting there arguing about these new things. All right,
then Paul stood in the midst of Morris Hill, and that night
up there on top of that mountain, I stood in the midst of people.
There they were. They listened well. Milton was
here to interpret, and I stood here, and there were people. I mean that place was packed.
Children sitting on the floor on beaches, men and women standing
looking in the See, they don't use screens. Richard, you'd go
broke down there. They don't have a window. They
don't have any screens. I always stand looking in the
window, you know, and all these people, and here I stood. And
you know they had to be thinking, what's he going to say? What's
he going to talk about? And I wondered too, you know.
I didn't know exactly how to. It's difficult, Tom. Now, I can
get up here and preach until next week and never stop. Because
you've got a foundation. I said, turn to Acts, and you
knew where it was. There wasn't a Bible in that
place. And so Paul stood there. There
wasn't any Bible where he was either. And he stood in the midst
of Mars Hill, and he said, ye men of Athens, I perceive that
in all things ye are too superstitious. Now the word is religious, but
a better word is superstitious. True religion is of God. True religion has Christ as its
cornerstone. True religion is saving faith. Any other religion is superstition. You might as well cut a rabbit's
foot. Isn't that right? The right word is here. The King
James has the right word. Superstitious. You might as well
carry a four-leaf clover. To believe a God who's not sovereign,
and a Christ whose atonement's not effectual, and a redemption
that doesn't redeem, a redemption that's left up to your works,
you might as well carry a four-leaf clover, or a rabbit's foot. A fellow pulled out a rabbit's
foot one time, and the fellow said, what's that for? He said,
that's good luck. Well, he said it didn't help the rabbit, and
he had four of them. Superstitious. And they were,
these people, they had their idols. They had their little
shrines. Verse 23, As I passed by and beheld your devotions,
the gods you worship, the shrines, I found an author with this inscription,
To the unknown God. To the unknown God. These people
were so superstitious and they were so fearful of offending
some deity or some god. They had all these different
gods. But they were so afraid that they might offend a god
that they just erected a monument and a shrine to an unknown god.
And Paul said, that's the one I'm going to preach to you. That's
the one. That's the living god. That's
the true living god. You see, men know all about their
gods. They're like themselves. A man
with a false God knows his God because he made him. He concocted
him. He designed him. He lets him
do what he'll do. That man knows that God. A lot
of these false, fundamentalist preachers, they know their God
real well because their God's just like them. They made them. But the living God, the God of
heaven and earth, no man knows. No man knoweth the Father save
the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him. No man hath
seen God at any time. The only begotten hath declared
him." Paul said this unknown God, that's the one I'm going
to preach to you. The unknown God, the God that is only revealed
by himself. That's exactly right. The living
God reveals himself. And no man knows him till he
reveals himself. Christ said, No man can come
to me except my Father draw him. And they shall all be taught
of God. He that hath heard and learned
of the Father cometh to me. And God will remain unknown until
God is pleased to reveal himself to a man. That's just so. And
whom you therefore, whom therefore you ignorantly worship, declare
I unto you. Now listen, God that made the
world. Who made the world? God made
the world. God created all things. They
were created for him, by him, and for his glory. God made the
world. And all things therein. And seeing
that he is Lord, absolute, indisputable, immutable, infinite, sovereign
Lord, God of heaven and earth, He dwells not in temples made
with human hands. Now make all the shrines you
want to. Make all, build all the cathedrals
and call them God's house, and all the church buildings, call
them God's house, and all the old relics you want to, made
with human hands, and God will say, where is the house you build
me? Heaven is my throne, and the
earth is my footstool. God doesn't dwell in temples
made with hands. And I just left a country where
in every pueblo there's one of these ugly, huge, mystic, mysterious,
damp, mossy, dungeon-like, thick walls, cathedrals reaching up
to the heavens, built three and four hundred years ago. And those
are not houses of God. God doesn't dwell in those places. My friends, this is not a church. There's the church. This is a
building, and that's all it is. And the more simple it can be
and plain it can be, where people can meet and worship and praise
God, it'd be better if we met out under a brush arbor to get
away from all this sentimental, superstitious, eerie religious
atmosphere. atmosphere fully. That's all
it created is a, is a, is a, make it difficult for a man to
really know God. That's exactly right. So God
doesn't dwell in those places. God doesn't dwell in those places.
Don't try to shut the living God up to some mossy old building
It's your forefather's bill. Verse 25, God's not worshipped
with men's hands. God's not worshipped with men's
hands, with candles and rosaries and pictures and altars and shrines. God's not worshipped with men's
hands or the things men make. I know we get around in a circle
and hold hands and burn candles, people do it, all these different
things. God's not worshipped that way. God worshipped from
the heart. The Lord told that woman at the
well, she said, our fathers worshipped in this mountain and you Jews
worshipped in Jerusalem. He said, you don't know what
you worship. God is spirit. And they would
worship God, worship God in spirit and in truth. God seeketh such
to worship Him. And I say really, the less visual
aids you can have, the less mechanics, the less crosses you can have
hanging off your Bible, and crocheted crosses, and crosses in your
lapel, and all the different soft music playing behind the
preacher, the less that stuff you can have, the more likely
you are to worship God. That's just so. Philippians 3 says this, we are
the circumcision who worship God in spirit and rejoice in
Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. You see, God does
not worship, verse 25, with men's hands as though He needed anything. See, He gives us life, He gives
us breath, He gives us clothes. He gave us this place to worship. He gave us our food. What are
we going to put together and bring to God and say, here is
an object of worship? He said, I made that. If I was
hungry, I wouldn't ask you. Rather than bringing something
to God, you do better by taking some food to us folks on the
mountain. You know, God doesn't need anything. That's what he
said. God doesn't need anything. He
made everything. He's not... God is Spirit. He gives to us all we need. If you had someone that you really
desired, a right relationship, what would you want from them?
They could buy you a new car and not really love you. They could buy you a new house
and really not love you. They could bring you all kind
of things. But that person, without bringing anything, gives you
his heart and says, I love you. Then you have all that he has.
And that's what God says, my son, give me your heart. Give
me your heart. Give me your heart. That's the
key. That's how we worship God. We've got a higher steeple than
you have. We love God more. We've got a
bigger building. We've got more buses. We've got
more of this, that, and the other. We've got a bigger choir. We've
got our choir dressed in gold and blue instead of red and orange
and all. God's not worshiped that way. And I don't know what our prosperity
has robbed us of fellowship with God in this day. Maybe we need
to be back out yonder on the creek bank where God found Lydia.
That's right. Devoid of all these things. Verse
26, listen, he's made of one blood, one blood, all nations
of men to dwell on the face of the earth. I told those men,
I said, we're different color. Different colors, there's dark
black and brown and light orange. And all these different colors,
and here we come along, pale faces, you know, we're all different
colors, we're all different customs, traditions, backgrounds, but
God made us all of one father, Adam. Every human being goes
back to Adam. One blood, that's what that means,
one man. By one man's sin entered this
world, we stood in Adam, we fell in Adam, we sinned in Adam, we
died in Adam, and we may be different in color and different in custom
and different in nationality, but we got one blood flowing
through our veins, the blood of Adam. And that's corrupted
blood and sinful blood and wicked blood and enemy of God. One blood. God, over here, it
says, God has determined the times before appointed, God has
determined where they live, the bounds of their habitation, how
long they live, all that's determined by God. Those people I preached to a
couple of weeks ago on top of that mountain, God put them right
there on top of that mountain. Put me down here. He's determined
the bounds. You're where you are by the will
of God. That's right. Now, verse 27, that they should
seek the Lord. Men ought to seek the Lord. They
ought to seek the living God. We should not be satisfied with
idols. We ought not be satisfied with
customs of religion. We ought not be satisfied to
walk in the same old rut our forefathers walked in. We ought
to seek the Lord. The living God, the true God,
the God who created all things, if happily they might feel up
to Him and find Him, the greatest happiness a man can enjoy is
not prosperity in the flesh, not prosperity in material things,
it's to know God. This is eternal life, that we
might know the living God, not an idol, the living God. David
said, as the dirt patches for the water bill, so my soul patches
for the living God. The greatest happiness a man
can ever enjoy is to find God. Now think about our neighbors
and friends who are satisfied with their legalism, and satisfied
with their ceremonialism, and satisfied with their ritualism,
and satisfied with their tradition, and walking in the same blind
way handed down from generation to generation, actually not improved
on but Every generation deteriorates
that old false gospel a little more. Instead of seeking the
living God, old Joshua stood out there and said, I don't know
about the rest of you, but me and my house, we're going to
serve the Lord. I'm going to find out where he is and who
he is and all about it. I'm going to seek the Lord. Men
ought to seek the Lord. Because the greatest happiness
they can experience is to find him. And the greatest mystery
they can experience is not to know Him. Verse 28, listen. Well,
verse 27 said, He ain't far away. You don't have to go to Ashton
to find God. Ethiopian youth went to Jerusalem,
didn't find Him. And wound up out there on a desert
and met God. So God is where He is, and He's
where you are. That's what he's saying. He's
not far from all of us. But verse 28, in him we live.
In him we live and we move. And
we have our being. We breathe. Certainly your poets,
Paul said to those pagans, said the same thing. We're God's offspring.
Now this is interesting. We're God's offspring. What do
you mean offspring? Well, as such, by coffin is offspring
next to him, Luke. That's an offspring. And we're
the offspring of God. God made man. He created man
in his own image. Now, we've taken an awful turn,
and we don't bear a whole lot of the image of God that Adam
bore in his first crib, but we still are God's offspring. We still have God's offspring.
Now verse 29, I'll help you. You got that now, the offspring.
God made us. He made us in his image. We departed
and fell, but God, we're his offspring. Now then, for as much
then as we're the offspring of God, that's what I told those
people, we ought not to think that God is like gold, or silver,
or stone, or snakes. or pictures, arts, and devices. I took one of the men standing
there and his son, and I take this one as Bob, he's his offspring. Well, Bob's not a cow. How does Luke know he's not a
cow? Well Luke's not a cow. I mean
over in England they worship cows, that's stupid. If I'm the
offspring of God, I ought to know God's not a statue. When
I was in Japan, some of you men have been to Japan, Kamakura,
seen that big Buddha? They worship that thing. That's
where he sits. I mean, he's huge, Buddha. He's been sitting there for a
thousand years. They knocked him down two or
three times. The tidal wave got him once, the Allied bombers
got him once, and something else. But that's where he sits. That's
their God. I wonder why they call that God.
They're not stone buddhas or gold buddhas. See what he's saying? We're God's offspring. So why would you worship a picture?
Why would you hang a picture up that says Jesus? You're not
a picture. You're not a statue. You're not
a string of beads. Why would you sit and count a
string of beads? Is your God a string of beads? Is your God
a cow? Is your God a snake? I said, we're persons. We have
a will, we have a heart, we have thoughts. God is a person, infinitely
more powerful, infinitely more glorious, infinitely more great. See what I'm saying? But he's
still a person with a will. I'm gonna have my will, and God's
gonna have his. You see, I'm saying that. Generally,
most of you want your will too, don't you? After the service this morning,
the wife's going to say to the husband, we're having roast beef
for dinner, that's my will. You see, well God has a will.
God has a will. See what I'm saying? He's a person.
And the husband turns to his wife and says, I'm thankful for
you, I love you. God has a people he loves too. And he loves them. See what I'm talking about? We
here, it's all spreading. Our thoughts and will and mind
and love and capacities are infinitely beneath his, but they're similar. Understand? That's what Paul
said. So if you're going to look for God, you won't find him as
a creed, or as a systematic theology, or a stone, or a stature, a building. You find him a person. And I
tell you, greater than you can imagine. More glorious. More
infinitely merciful. Person. That's right. Now, verse
30. In the times of this ignorance,
God winked at, God overlooked. God overlooked this ignorance.
He allowed the world to continue worshiping their beasts, four-footed
beasts and snakes and all these things. He's put up with it.
He's put up with it. He's let your forefathers, and
down there in Mexico, there they've got their pyramids and their
snakes and their false gods, and he's put up with it for all
these years. God's overlooked it. God's put up with it. God's suffered it to be so. But
now, verse 20, 30. What's this now? God spake to
our fathers with the prophets, but now He's spoken to His Son.
God has come to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. But now
God commands all men everywhere of the same blood, different
color, skin, nationality, custom, tradition. Wrap it all up and
throw it in the river. God commands you do one thing,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. God commands you to bow to his
son. God commands you to love Christ.
God commands you to learn of Christ. God has come to this
earth in the person of Jesus Christ. God has revealed himself. God has made known, he said,
he that has seen me has seen the Father. I am the Father of
one. I have come that there might have life. I am the way, the
truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but
by me, Christ said. I am the way. I am the door.
I am the good shepherd. I'm the bread of life, I'm the
water of life, I am. If you don't believe that I am,
you'll die in your sins. Now God commands all men, everywhere. Mexicans, Mayans, Spaniards,
Russians, Americans, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Jews,
all the rest. They say we got Catholics, Protestants,
and Jews. Nothing. We got Adamic descendants. We got just people, we got folks
with one blood, who are enemies of God Almighty, and God's commanded
them to change their minds about God, about themselves, about
their backgrounds, about their form of worship and everything
else, and look to Christ, and bow to Christ. That's just the
size of it, that's the sum of it, and that's the way it is.
Bow to Christ. Because, verse 31, he's a part of the day. He's
gonna wrap this thing up. He's appointed there a judgment
called the day of the Lord, in which he's going to judge us
well, not according to the denomination or tradition of doing the best
he can or the worst. He's going to judge us well in
righteousness, pure, straight, unbending righteousness, justice
by that man. The whole basis of judgment is
not going to be what you did or didn't do. It's what he did
and your relationship with him. your union with him. That's just
it. He's going to judge the world in righteousness and justice
by that name. Whom he hath obeyed, while he
hath given assurance, he's given proof unto all men, in that he
raised him from the dead. I tell you, God came to this earth in the
person of Christ walked in righteousness and holiness, went to that cross
and died for our sins, bore our iniquities. And he was taken
down from that cross and put in a tomb. And Will said we're
through with him. He lay in that tomb for three
days and three nights. And God raised him from the dead,
and when he raised him from the dead, Almighty God said, all
is fulfilled that he came to fulfill, all is accomplished,
he came to accomplish, the way into the holiest is open, men's
sins are pardoned, it's all in Christ, and I'll judge them by
that name. When he raised him from the dead, he gave peace
to the whole world. You say, I'm just, somebody says,
well, I'm just going to ignore Jesus Christ. No, no you're not. Every knee's going to bow, and
every tongue's going to confess that he's Lord. And he's the
one with whom we have to do it. We have to do it either now or
at the judgment. But we have to do it with Christ. And that's the issue. That's
the issue in Iceland. That's the issue in Mexico. That's
the issue down here in the valley. That's the issue up on the mountain.
What think ye of Christ, whose son is he? That's it.

Men Would Seek the Lord

What does the Bible say about seeking the Lord?

Why is knowing God important for Christians?

How do we know God reveals Himself?

What does it mean for God to be sovereign?

Why should Christians depend on God alone?

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Men Would Seek the Lord

What does the Bible say about seeking the Lord?

Why is knowing God important for Christians?

How do we know God reveals Himself?

What does it mean for God to be sovereign?

Why should Christians depend on God alone?

Sermon Transcript

About Henry Mahan

Comments

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