The Sermon on Mars Hill

All right, let's open our Bibles
again to Acts 17. Now, nearly all of you here have
heard of the sermon on Mars Hill, Paul's sermon on Mars Hill. And
I'm sure that you've read this portion of scripture several
times. When I read it, it was familiar to you. And you may
have heard a sermon on this portion of scripture, because I brought
one here. and one on television on this
passage of scripture in 1978, but I want to look at it again. And I suppose the reason that
I chose this sermon on Mars Hill, this passage of scripture, is
because of what has taken place in the last few days regarding
this interview, this inquiry, this article. And this sermon
seems to fit any city in America right now. This sermon is as
new as yesterday or this morning. It just fits any city in America
in 1988. It fits this city right here. And when we study and preach,
and this is one of the things that I've tried to do, I'm trying
to do now, and I've tried to do, and I urge our other preachers
to do it. When we preach, when we study
and preach, it is so much more important when we can take the
word and apply it to our own present situation, instead of
just talking about something that happened to somebody else.
Those things happen for our example. Those things happen in order
that we might be taught by those things. And Paul preaching here
at Mars Hill is not just a sermon to those people in Mars Hill,
it's a sermon to these people right here in this city in which
we live right now. It fits our situation so perfectly. So let's look at it. Let me bring
you up to this point. We won't read the whole chapter,
but Paul had been preaching the gospel in Thessalonica. You'll find that in the first
three verses. He had been preaching Christ. Paul preached the gospel
of Christ. He preached the grace of God,
the glory of God. He preached the substitutionary
work of Christ. He preached God's election, God's
covenant of grace. He preached the gospel of Christ.
He preached it in Thessalonica. And the Jews, the religious leaders,
the preachers, the religious leaders, stirred up the people
against him. furious on the Apostle Paul because
he preached Christ, he preached the gospel. So he fled to Berea,
and he preached down there. He preached this message of the
grace of God, of the glory of God, of the work of Christ in
Berea, and these men followed him to Berea. I told my class
this morning, there's no one as militant and aggressive and
zealous as people who hate the grace of God. They hate it, they
want to put it out of business, and they want to put everybody
who preaches it out of business. The most remarkable thing to
me that I realized in 37 years of preaching, 37 years of preaching,
I find this to be true. You can preach about any way
out thing you want to and people won't get angry. speculate on the return of Christ
like these folks did recently, he'll be here September 11th,
12th, or 13th, he didn't come, well, everybody's just, everybody's
now saying, well, those fellas are false prophets. No, they
just made a mistake. They'll try again. They'll try
again. And you can preach about anything.
You can believe about anything. You can go about anywhere. You
can affiliate with most any denomination. But if you preach God on the
throne, man in the dust, Christ the only substitute, the effectual
Redeemer, and God's elective grace, you've got a royal fight
on your hands. And they're militant, and they're
aggressive, and they're zealous, and if they can, they'll shut
you down and put you out of business, because they hate the gospel
of God's grace. And that's the way these Jews
worked. They got after Paul in Thessalonica, so he went down
to Berea and preached. And they showed up down there.
They showed up down there and stirred up the people there against
Paul. So the brethren sent Paul by God's providence, and let
me tell you this, the wrath of man doesn't work the righteousness
of God, but it will fulfill the purpose of God. That's right. Paul, that's what Joseph said
to his brothers, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for
good. God wanted Paul in Athens anyway. That's where God wanted
Paul, was in Athens. And so these fellows drove him
out of Thessalonica and they drove him out of Berea, and he
went down to Athens and he was down there waiting on Silas and
Timothy. That's where he was waiting.
And now that we take up at verse 16. Now while Paul waited, while
he was down there in Athens waiting on Silas and Timothy, His spirit
was stirred in him, his soul was stirred in him, when he saw
the city wholly given to idolatry, full of idols. Paul waited in
Athens, and while he waited, his spirit was stirred, because
he saw that the city was greatly religious, so religious, and
so full of idols, so full of false religion, his soul was
stirred in him. Aren't you stirred when you see
what's going on in this city? Doesn't it stir your soul? Doesn't
it cause you to be upset and troubled by what people are doing
in the name of God? Doesn't that trouble you? Well,
it troubled Paul. So verse 17, he went down to
the synagogue. He went down there where people
are supposed to be worshiping God. He went down to the synagogue
and he disputed with the Jews and disputed with devout people.
He went to the Jewish synagogue and preached the Messiah. He
preached Christ. And he preached in the marketplace,
he said, and in the market dealing with anyone that listened to
him, Paul wanted to tell them the truth about God, the truth
about Christ, the truth about the Messiah, the truth about
redemption. He wanted people to know the
truth. So verse 18, in verse 18, now Athens was full of philosophers
and intellectuals. Athens was full of religious
people, so-called wise men, teachers. And among them were these Epicureans
and Stoics. Now, you won't remember this. I didn't remember it either.
I had to look it up again. The Epicureans and the Stoics
were religious people. They had all sorts of cults and
sects and denominations in Athens, just like they do in Ashland,
like they do in America. The woods were full of them.
Somebody said one time there were 30,000 statues in Athens
alone, not counting those in the homes of the people. 30,000
statues. We've got almost that many churches
around here, steeples and churches. But these Epicureans, you're
not going to remember this, but this is anyway, they followed
a man called Epicurus, who lived 300 years before Christ. And they believed there was a
God, but they did not believe that he created the world, and
they did not believe he governed the world. They thought the world
being governed by God was too much beneath his dignity. And
they believed that the chief happiness of man was in pleasure,
especially the pleasure of the mind, the pleasure of the intellect. arising from moral virtue." Now,
that's what they believed. You won't remember that, but
you say, that's ridiculous. Well, you ought to hear what
folks around here believe, if you think that's ridiculous.
And the Stoics, now this is what they believed. They were followers
of Zeno. They believed that God made the
world. Now, they disagreed with the Epicureans. But the amazing
thing, they got along all right. It's just when Paul came along
that they jumped on him, all of them together. All of them
together. And I tell you, a thousand eras
can walk together, but they will not permit truth to walk among
them. That's exactly right. And out there where you work,
you can have Nazarenes and Baptists and Methodists and Catholics
and Camelites and whatever you want to, and they'll get along
fine. They'll meet together on Thanksgiving for a combined worship
service. They'll meet together on Christmas,
they'll draw straws and draw names and exchange presents,
and they'll all meet at the football stadium. Easter Sunday service,
sunrise service, they'll all get together, they can believe
the most ridiculous things, they can disagree with one another,
but let a fellow come along, I'm telling you, and preach who
God is, really who God is, and what happened in the garden and
what happened on the cross, and they'll, everyone, gang up against
him. And these fellows, here one of them believed God didn't
even create the world, the other believed he did. And yet they
were together. See what I'm pointing out to
you? And the Stoics believed that God did create the world,
but the world was governed by fate. And they didn't believe
that happiness lay in pleasure. The Epicureans believed that
happiness was in pleasure, but these fellows believed happiness
was in virtue. Opposite. And virtue has its
own reward. And they believe that a good
man is always happy in pain or pleasure, but these fellows got
along famously. So when Paul came along preaching
the gospel, now listen to it, and these Epicureans and the
Stoics encountered Paul and they said, what is this base fellow
talking about? What is this babbler saying? Others said, well, he seems to
be center for a strange God. Yes, strange to them. A man who
preaches who God is will preach a strange God to this generation,
too. A fellow, Brother Barnard, was
having dinner at a man's home one time. He hated what Barnard
was preaching, but his wife liked it. And Barnard went to the house
for dinner, and it was awful He said, quiet in there, there
wasn't much discussion, they were sitting around the table
eating, and he said, the fellow looked over at him and he said,
Preacher? He said, my God won't do what
you say. And Barnard said, I didn't answer
him, I wanted to get a little more chicken before I got throwed
out. And he said, I just kept eating. And he looked over at
me again and he said, did you hear me, Preacher? Barnard looked up at him and
said, I heard you. But he said, I said, my God won't do what
you say. And Barnard replied, I expect
you're right. I expect you're right. Your God
won't. But the God of the Bible will.
Strange God. That's what he sets forth, a
strange God. Strange God. Why? Because he
preached unto them Jesus and the power of the resurrection.
Jesus Christ the Messiah and the power of the resurrection.
And verse 20, verse 19, so they took him and brought him to Areopagus,
that is to Mars Hill, saying, Now may we know what this new
doctrine is. You know what? Listen to me.
I'm preaching today on television and here at this church and other
places I go and other men are too. We're preaching, we're preaching
the doctrine of the Garden of Eden, when God said, The seed
of woman will breeze the serpent's head. We are preaching the doctrine
of the Passover in Egypt 4,000 years ago. We are preaching the
doctrine of John the Baptist. We are preaching the doctrine
of the Lord Jesus Christ, who said, All that my Father giveth
me will come to me. other sheep I have, them also
I must bring." We're preaching the doctrine of the Apostle Paul
and the Apostles, all the other Apostles. We're preaching the
doctrine of the Reformation of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Hirst,
Knox, Spurgeon, Gill, Whitfield, whatever. Anybody, we're preaching
the doctrine of the Westminster Confession, the Anglican Confession,
the London Confession, and the Old Dutch Confession. And if
anybody's got any wisdom and understanding he'll know this
is no new doctrine except to people who've never heard it.
It's the old message. And these fellows, Paul was preaching
God's word, he was preaching the truth, and they said this
is a strange God and a new doctrine. A strange God and a new doctrine. And he said in verse 20, you
bring certain strange things to our ears and we would know
therefore what these things mean. For all the Athenians and strangers
which were there spent their time in nothing else but either
to tell or hear some new thing. And that's what I'm seeing on
television now. You notice on these programs they don't have
the word of God. They're not reading the word
of God and preaching the word of God. They've got a bunch of
silly women sitting around discussing how they feel. and what they've
experienced, and what the Lord said to them, some new thing,
everybody wants some new thing, some new revelation, some new
discovery, some new doctrine. And that's what these fellows,
you see, that's just like our day, just exactly like our day. Something new. All right, verse
22, here we go. The similarity between that day
in Athens and this day in Ashland is amazing, absolutely amazing. You see if it's not. Then Paul,
what did he say to these people? Now remember, please remember,
they're all very religious. They're virtuous, moral, high
principle. They're people who built shrines
and altars, temples, cathedrals. They had a synagogue in that
time. But every blessed one of them disagreed with this one
man. Every blessed one of them disagreed. What he was preaching
was strange, it was a strange God, it was a strange message,
it was a new doctrine. They had never heard it. Things
had drifted so badly they had never actually heard what Paul
was talking about. And you know what Paul preached?
He said, I'm determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and
him crucified. That's what he preached. He preached
Christ, he preached the Old Testament scriptures, he preached Christ,
the fulfillment of all that was written, said he died for our
sins according to the scriptures, he was born and rose again according
to the scriptures, he preached the writings, how Christ was
the fulfillment of all that Moses wrote. So Paul stood in the midst
of this highest court in Athens, Mars Hill, Areopagus, surrounded
by these very religious people. All of them had their ideas,
all of them had their religion, all of them had their virtues
and pleasures and principles and morality and all these things.
And they all got their eyes fastened on him to see what he's got to
say. And he said to them, you men of Athens, you men and women
of Ashland, I perceive that in all things you are very, very
religious. Now, that's obvious. That's obvious. Should I perceive that you're
religious? They're religious. Paul, he said in verse 23, I
walked the streets of your town, and I saw all the steeples and
the shrines and the statues. I saw all of these devotions,
and I found one, I found one that you had erected with this
inscription, verse 23, to the unknown God. Now, all their gods
were known by name. But evidently, in their clamor
to live and let live and to get along with everybody and to be
in agreement and in harmony, they felt that they might have
missed the God. So they erected an altar and
wrote on it, To the Unknown God. And Paul said then, verse 23,
"...whom therefore ye ignorantly acknowledge." Oh, yes, there's
a God you don't know. You have all these shrines and
altars and temples and cathedrals and buildings and all these steeples
pointing to the heavens and all these statues, but you have one
down there to the unknown God, that's the God, listen, that
I'm going to declare unto you, that God you don't know. This
is the God that nobody's mad at. This is the God that nobody
knows. This is the God, the scripture
says, no man has seen God at any time. No man knoweth the
Father save the Son. He dwells in a life to which
no man can come, only known by revelation. Turn to 1 Corinthians
2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Listen to this. 1 Corinthians
chapter 2. Verse 7, 1 Corinthians 2, But we speak the
wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained
before the world under our glory, which none of the princes of
this world knew. For had they known it, they would
not have crucified the Lord of glory. It is written, I have
not seen, ear hath not heard, neither have it entered the heart
of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love him,
but God hath revealed them to us by his Spirit." This knowledge
of God is only ours by revelation. And Paul said here in verse 23
to this mob of religious people, I'm preaching to you a God you
do not know. And then he identifies him. Let's
look at verse 24. Now listen. He identifies him. He says this. This God made the
world and all things therein. He's the God of creation. Secondly,
he is the Lord of heaven and earth. This God is the Lord of
heaven and earth. Since he made all things, he
owns all things. Since he made all things, he
makes them all work. Since he made all things, he
can dispose of all things according to his will. He said, can I not
do with my own what I will? He's sovereign. He's sovereign. It's God. I'm telling this city,
as Paul was telling Athens, the God of the Bible, the living
God, the God we preach to my generation is unknown. And this
God created all things. And this God rules and reigns
in heaven and earth. He's sovereign in creation, providence,
and he's sovereign in salvation. Now, watch this. And he says
to them, he dwells not in temples made with hands. You may build
a temple or a cathedral or a church or a house and call it God's
house and house your God, but the living God does not dwell
in houses. I want you to turn to 2 Chronicles
2. And I watch all this elaborate church building and cathedrals
and all of these monuments, and they're monuments to men. God
doesn't dwell in these places. You know how awesome that temple
was that Solomon built. Have you ever read the description
of that thing, the temple Solomon built, how awesome it was? Now,
I want you to listen to what he says about it in 2 Chronicles
2. And the house which I build is
great. for great is our God above all
gods. But who is able to build him a house? Seeing the heaven,
and heaven of heavens cannot contain him, who am I then that
I should build him a house? Except for one purpose, to offer
sacrifices in that house before him. That's the purpose of it,
to preach his word, for his people to assemble or offer sacrifice,
but he doesn't dwell here. He doesn't dwell here. You know,
we make it so religious and so impressive and all this, but
God doesn't dwell in these things. He dwells not in houses made
with hands. And then listen to this, verse
25. He's not worshipped with men's hands. He's not worshipped with men's
hands, as though he needed anything. How can you worship God by wearing
certain apparel? You can't house God in a building.
And then why do we robe our choirs in these special robes? I saw
a preacher on television this morning, he looked rather encumbered
in that big old robe, you know, that big old thing with crosses
on it. You don't worship God with these things. Wouldn't it be more impressive
in here if we had candles burning and you had an open Bible on
the pulpit there with maybe some certain velvet dropped down here
and God doesn't dwell in temples made with hands, and he's not
worshiped with men's hands. Somebody says, let's worship
God with our tithes and offerings. You don't give God anything. Somebody says, give God your
tithe, give God your talent. God stands in need of nothing
that we have. God gives to us. That's what
he says here. He says he's not worshiped with
men's hands as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to
all life and breath and all things. The giver is God, the receiver
is us. We don't give anything to God. We help one another in the name
of God, we assist one another in the name of God, but we don't
contribute a thing to God. I wish I could get this across.
Philippians 3, Paul said this, We are true Israel who worship
God in spirit. The woman at the well said, Our
fathers worshiped in this mountain. Your fathers worshiped in Jerusalem.
Christ said you don't know what you worship. God is spirit. And
they that worship him, worship him in spirit, in heart, in soul,
in truth, not in material things. material things. Turn to Psalm
50. Listen to this. Let's start reading with verse
7. Here, O my people, and I'll speak. O Israel, I'll testify against
thee, I'm God, even thy God. I will not reprove thee for thy
sacrifices or thy burnt offerings to have been continually before
me. I will take no bullock out of your house, nor he goats out
of your foals. For every beast of the forest
is mine, the cattle upon a thousand hills is mine. I know the fowls
of the mountains, the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were
hungry, I wouldn't tell you. The world is mine, the fullness
thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving. Pay thou vows unto the Most High.
Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver thee, and thou
shalt glorify me." This business of worship is not in material
things, with the hands, candles, and fleshly demonstrations. God is spirit. Men who worship
God worship him from the heart in spirit. All right, notice
the next thing, point number three. And here in this message,
verse 26, and he tells about us, he tells about our God. Then
he says, he hath made from one blood all nations of men, Jews
and Gentiles, black and white, all nations of men, to dwell
upon the face of the earth. You talk about roots, our roots
go to Adam. Every human being in all the
world can trace his roots back to Adam. That's where we came
from. Came from Adam. We have no cause to strive against
one another. We have no cause to boast against
one another. We have no cause to seek preeminence
over one another. Adam is the father of all men,
and in Adam we died. We're corrupt. He hath made from
one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the
earth. He hath determined the times appointed and the bounds
of their habitation." Now, here you have the great God, the great
God, the living God, who rules in heaven and earth, who owns
all things, who created all things, who is sovereign, who made all
men from one blood. And in that one man that died.
Now, he said in verse 27, men ought to seek the Lord. They
ought to seek the Lord, not created gods, gods of gold and silver,
false gods. Men ought to seek the living
God. They ought to seek God. Instead of all these idols and
shrines you've built, he said, you ought to seek God. You ought to seek God. If happily
we might feel after him and know him and find him, eternal life
is to know God. It's not just to be religious,
it's not just to have a God, it's not just to have moral principles,
it's to know God. And he said in verse 27, he's
not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and
have our being, as one of your prophets said, or poets said,
we're his offspring. Now watch this. And as much as
we're the offspring of God, this is so, watch this, very careful,
it's so important. We ought not to think that God
likened to gold and silver and stone and graven by art and men's
devices. What are we? We have a soul,
we have a spirit, we have a will, we have a mind. I'm not a statue. Then if I'm the offspring of
God, why is my God a statue? I'm a people. You see, I'm a
person. I'm the offspring of God. That's
what Paul is saying to them. And if we're the offspring of
God, if we've been created by God in God's image, and we're
spirit, and we're soul, then why do you worship God in buildings
and statues and crosses? You see what he's saying? You
see how important this is? What do you want? You want love?
What do you want? Affection? What do you want? What do you want? The heart?
Don't come and bring a cross to me or gold or silver or some... I'm a human being. These clothes
I wear are only to keep me from the cold. Or to have a modest
attire. And food I don't eat, it only
sustains me. You see, my need is spiritual. See what I'm trying to say? And
that's what Paul is saying to these people. I see your mechanics
of religion, I see your idolatry, I see your signs and shrines
and steeples and all these things. But God created all things. God's in the heavens. He doesn't
dwell in temples. He's not worshiped with men's
hands and symbols and visual aids. And we, his offspring,
ought to seek the living God, not these things. We, his offspring,
and being his offspring, we ought to know he's not in these things. The time of this ignorance, in
other words, this ignorance went on for a long time, this ignorance
of four-footed beasts and creeping things and idols and gold and
silver and temples and all kinds of things, this went on for a
long time. And God suffered it. It says God winked at it, but
it's a bad translation. God overlooked it, God suffered
it, God put up with it. And in the meantime, he spoke
to our fathers by the prophets. But I want to tell you this,
he hath in these last days spoken to us by summons. And now God
commandeth all men in the name of Christ to repent. The game
is up. The game is up. Look at verse
31 now, because, because he, the living God, not the God of
our imagination, but the God Paul described right here, the
God of sovereignty, the God of truth, the God of holiness, the
God who rules the heaven and earth. Forget your idols, but
the living God, He, because He, He at the point of the day, He
at the point of the day in which He's going to judge this world.
Now let me tell you something, one way or the other, this life
is going to wind up and come down to one thing, you and God,
you and God, you and this God. And we can go along with the
mob and the multitude and compromise and all this sort of thing, conform,
play the religious game. But Paul said it's going to come
down to this, he, the one true and living God, that God nobody
knows, he hath appointed a day in which he's going to judge
the world. Every man shall give an account of himself to God.
We shall all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. We're
going to meet this God, this God. All right, read on. And
he's going to judge this world in righteousness, in righteousness. This judgment is going to be
a righteous judgment. It's going to be righteous. It
will proceed according to the strict rules of justice and equity. God is going to judge this world
in righteousness. in pure righteousness. Can you
imagine our standing before that God in our righteousness, our
filthy rags? Can you imagine that meeting?
Can you imagine the confrontation? Here we stand in our filthy rags,
calling it righteousness before him. Here we stand with our crosses
and our candles and our idols and all these different things
and our religious robes and with all of our documents, and here
we stand before him who is spirit, him who is holiness, God who
doesn't dwell. And here we bring our wonderful
works. We built buildings in your name, and we did all these
marvelous things, and they're nothing but just crumbling sand. God is spirit. God is holiness. God is truth. We stand with these
things, clutching all of our things that we worked for and
strived and labored with and met in the houses and built these
shrines and temples and these great choirs and all. Here, O
God! The basis of that judgment, now
watch it, here's the righteousness because he hath appointed in
which he's going to judge this world in righteousness by that
man, by that man, that man, Christ Jesus, that man, whom he hath
ordained. You see, God in his God spirit,
God holy, God in his righteousness, God who created and owned all
things, God who reigns and rules. He said, I don't need anything
from you. He's not worshiped with men's hands and he doesn't
need anything. He gives breath and life and
all these things to people. But that God in his holiness,
now listen to me, we're sinners, and God must act to effect a
reconciliation. We can't effect a reconciliation. What can we do? What can we bring
to God? What can we do to change ourselves,
our nature? But he has chosen to effect a
reconciliation. And he sent this man, Jesus Christ,
the God-man, he sent his Son into this world who was made
in the likeness of sinful flesh. No angel could accomplish this
reconciliation, no man could accomplish this reconciliation,
because this reconciliation must be accomplished according to
the character of God. Satisfying to the law of God,
honoring to the justice of God, and Christ is the only one who
could effect it. And he did it by his perfect
righteousness and his sacrificial death. And God's going to judge
all men in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, by
that man. Mr. Gill said this, the basis
of judgment will be the righteousness of Christ, and men will be with
it or without it, according to faith. That's the basis of judgment. And how do we know that? Well,
look at the last line. Paul said, well, God hath given
assurance unto all men in that he hath raised Jesus Christ from
the dead. He died, he was buried, and God
raised him from the dead and took him to glory. And my friends,
this is the message Paul preached to his day. This is the message
I'm preaching today. This is the message that men
are calling strange, and they're calling new, and they're calling
different. And I'm saying the same thing
the Apostle Paul said. I'm looking out over my city,
and my soul is stirred. I'm listening to the preachers,
and my soul is troubled. And I say they're very religious,
and some of them are moral, and that some of them are high principle.
But they don't know God. For the God of the living God,
the God of the Bible, dwells in heaven. He doesn't dwell in
these temples. They say, we're going down to God's house. And
people come in here and they take their hat off, you know,
and they walk softly and act like they're in some mystical,
strange, sacred place. God doesn't dwell here. And you can build the most impressive
thing. That's God's house. We built
that in honor to God. Don't waste your money or your
time. Just build something convenient where you can meet and keep from
freezing or burning up. And comfortably worship God.
I'm telling the truth. God is everywhere. God is holy.
He reigns. He's sovereign in heaven and
earth. He gives it to all, life and breath. He's not worshipped
with men's hands and trinkets and gimmicks and visual aids
and all these little things they're wearing, they're repelled around
their neck. This is not appealing to God in any shape, form or
fashion. God is spirit. He says men ought to seek that
God. If happily they might be found
of him and feel after him, because he said he's appointed
a day in which we'll deal with him. If we don't deal with him
today, we're going to deal with him at the judgment. Now, that
God, the fellow said to Brother Barnard one time, your God's
a monster. He said, all right, you get ready to deal with a
monster then, because you're going to deal with him. You're
going to deal with him. You're going to deal with him
as he is, not as you think he is, not as your preacher says
he is, not as you suppose he is. You're going to deal with
the God of the Bible who has appointed a day in which he's
going to judge this world. And he's going to judge it in
equity and justice and righteousness by Jesus Christ. And he proved
that to us when he raised him from the dead. Now, we've got
a critical message, a critical message, and we dare not compromise
it. We dare not get mean. I try not to. I fight it. You
dare not get mean. The weapons are not carnal. They're
the tearing down of the strongholds of Satan. God has to open eyes.
But I'll tell you, the only way God will open eyes is for those
eyes to hear and see the truth. It'll open. All right, let's
turn to 127. 127. Man of sorrows. What a name, what a name for
that Son of God who came, ruined sinners to reclaim. Hallelujah,
we have a wonderful Savior, don't we? A wonderful Savior. I tell you, I thank God he didn't
leave us alone. I thank God I'm not out there
playing the game this morning. I tell you this, I know this,
the only reason I'm not playing the game, and Luther, it's what
you said when you talked to me on the phone years ago, he said,
you don't play games down there, do you? He said, I think I'll
come hear you, you don't play games, do you? Only by His grace
we don't play games. It's by His grace, because we
would if we could. That's right. It's only by His
grace. Thank God, at least in heart,
we're seeking to know the living God.

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