Greetings to you, my friend! It gives me joy to welcome you to our Bible study program In Search of the Lord's Way to become a Christian and to live the Christian life. We believe His way to be saved and His way to live are the very best! Stay tuned and you’ll see why.
Oh say! Friend, it’s a real joy to have you join our Bible study program In Search of the Lord's Way. We are sponsored here by some friends of yours maybe even your next-door-neighbors-- members of some churches of Christ in the area served by this radio or television station. As is written in Psalm 118 it is true of us, “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.”
God is a marvelous God! Someone (I don’t know who it was; I would give him or her credit if I knew) anyway, someone wrote a little poem and titled it, “Who Hath Seen Our God?” He or she said, “Who hath seen the wind? Neither you nor I; But when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by. Who hath seen our God? Neither you nor I; But when strong men bow down their heads, Then God is passing by.” And that’s our study today. It’s about God; the almighty God; the one God; the holy God-- the God who, according to Exodus chapter 20 and verse 3, said “You shall have no other gods before Me.” And, only two verses later, He said, “I, the Lord your God am a jealous God.”
Well if you think you might want a free printed copy or a CD or an audio cassette tape of this message, you may have it free by mailing your request for it to In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083 or by e-mail to searchtv@searchtv.org. Or you may call us on our toll-free telephone number and we will pay the bill. That number is 1-800-321-8633; or you may access it at www.searchtv.org. We’re sponsored on this station by some members of churches of Christ in the area. We won’t share your name and address with them or anyone else, without your permission. So, you can write us with that assurance. Ken Helterbrand is in charge of our music and he will lead us now as we sing.
We are reading today from the book of Jeremiah chapter 10. We are going to be reading three verses 11, 12, and 13. However, I would suggest that you read the whole chapter when we go off the air. And we begin reading at verse 11: “Thus you shall say to them: The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens. He has made the earth by His power, He has established the world by His wisdom, and has stretched out the heavens at His discretion. When He utters His voice, There is a multitude of waters in the heavens: And He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, He brings the wind out of His treasuries.” Now let us go to Him in prayer. Holy Father and the God who arst in heaven, we are so grateful to You for the revelation of Yourself which is in the word. And we see the demonstration of Your person and Your presence in the world in so many of the activities that are going on in the world around us everyday that is impossible for us to disbelieve in You and we put our trust in You. And we pray our prayers to You in Jesus’ name. Amen!
I wouldn’t say, “I learned everything I ever needed to know on the farm.” But it helped. When I was barely a teenager, at breakfast one summer morning my dad told me to saddle up my pony and move our cattle out of the “bottom land” pasture; move them up to the pasture on the hillside. Now there were small pecan trees some of which were growing only a few feet apart. And often there would be spiders and their webs in between those bushes. And resting right in the center of those webs sometimes there would be a big brown and yellow spider as big as my hand was then. When one of those “yearlings” would break away from the herd and try to get away, my pony would “go get him.” I mean he would not be stopped! And he would run between those bushes and that spider-web; and the spider, too, if there was one spider in that bush it would hit me squarely in the face. Well, I don’t have to tell you, do I? I’d leave the saddle-- whether I saw the spider or not. I knew that only spiders built spider webs and there must be a spider there somewhere. And, despite the fact that my dad assured me as he would say “time and again” that that kind of spider was harmless, I wasn’t even about to give it an opportunity to be otherwise! Friend, I’m afraid of spiders of any kind to this very day.
My mother left my Bible open by the kerosene lamp in the hallway for me to read every night before I went to bed. She was kind of funny about that. She believed a Christian should read God’s word every day. Well, that night I read in my old dime-store King James Bible Hebrews chapter 3, verse 4 that says, “Every house is built by some man, but He who built all things is God.” I’m convinced! Oh yes, I’m convinced to this day: birds don’t build spider webs. Spiders don’t build bird’s nests. Men build houses! You never saw a house in all your life that wasn’t built by some man-- or some men. And I’ve believed from that day, that incident that “He who built all things is God!” Yes, I believe in God because the intricacies of this world around me demand intelligence for their design and their continued function in the way and for the purpose for which they were designed and created.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” If you are the least bit familiar with your Bible, you recognize that as the Bible’s very first sentence. What comes to your mind-- I mean, the very first thought that pops into your mind-- when you hear or read-- as in that verse the word “God”? “In the beginning God...” I had to ask myself that question a few days ago when I read an article in the newspaper. “Do I believe in God (with a capital G) or do I believe in a god (with a small g)?” The truth of the matter is that many, many religious people don’t know how to answer that. And I would venture to say that there may be someone hearing me now that may be asking, “What difference does it make whether you spell “God” with a capital “G” or a small “g?” Well, the newspaper story was about “Christianity’s” acceptance of other gods than the one God you read about in the Bible. What on earth are we talking about here? No, no, no, it could not be “Christianity” that has accepted other gods or idols, could it? Not Christianity! Has modern American style religion departed that far from biblical teaching?
Well, in view of that thought, perhaps my question should more appropriately have been: “What comes to your mind immediately when you hear or you read the word idol? Or idolatry?” Is it a graven image of silver or gold that you have-- or you saw on someone’s mantle? Perhaps it’s a much larger image of stone or wood like the one that welcomed me in the entrance hall of a home I once visited? It seems that any of the gods of Buddhism or Islam-- or any other god of my needs, the god of my liking, the god of my pleasure, the god of my prosperity, the god of my health-- the god of my own making whatever we may choose to call it, is now acceptable with post-modern American style “Christianity.” But, please, let’s not spell it with a “capital G.” And, please let’s not call it “Christianity.”
Israel was “God’s chosen people” in the Old Testament times (Deuteronomy 14:2). It was to them that He gave the Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy chapter 5, verses 1 to 22). Like Adam in Genesis 3, they disobeyed Him. They broke all those commandments, even the first that said: “You shall have no other gods before me.” God had just delivered them from Egyptian slavery. How could they have so quickly forgotten their miraculous passage through the Red Sea on dry ground and witnessed the drowning of the Egyptian army-- then so soon “corrupted themselves” as God said in Exodus chapter 32, verse 7? Well, God said to Moses, “They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt! And the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you (Moses) a great nation” (Exodus 32 and 7). And He did. But Israel repeatedly turned to the worship of idols. My friend, we Christians simply must not go that way.
The 115th Psalm describes the extreme foolishness of idolatry and the trustworthiness of God. It begins saying, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, But to Your name give glory, because of Your mercy, because of Your truth. Why should the Gentiles (or “the nations”) say, So where is their God? Our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the works of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes, but they do not see; They have ears, but they do not hear; Noses have they, but they do not smell; They have hands, but they do not handle; Feet have they, but they do not walk; Nor do they muter through their throat. Those who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.” That is verses 1 to 8.
Jeremiah is also called “the weeping prophet” of Israel. He lived several generations later. He wept over Israel when he saw them forsaking God and turning to idols. Of their turn to idolatry he said, “Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord, Do not learn the way of the nations, and do not be terrified by them; for the customs (or the culture) of the peoples are delusion; because it is wood cut from the forest, the works of the hands of craftsman with a cutting tool. They decorate it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers so that it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they, and they cannot speak; they must be carried, because they cannot walk! Do not fear them, for they can do no harm, nor can they do any good.” That is Jeremiah chapter 10, verses 1 to 5. There is another thing I learned on the farm: that crows don’t eat cucumbers, therefore a scarecrow is totally useless in a cucumber patch. It’s as Jeremiah said; it can’t do any harm, neither can it do any good. The prophet continues in that chapter to show the dynamic power of the Almighty God.
In chapter 44 of this prophecy, Isaiah also addresses the folly of man-made gods. Well, both Jeremiah and Isaiah do this in other passages, too, but here Isaiah says, “Who would form a god or mold an image that profits him nothing? Surely all his companions would be ashamed; and the workmen, well they are mere men. Let them be gathered together. Let them stand up; yet they shall fear, they shall be ashamed together.....Then it shall be for a man to burn, for he will take some of it and warm himself; Yes, he kindles it and bakes bread; indeed he makes a god and worships it; He makes it a carved image, and falls down to it. He burns half of it in the fire; with this half he eats meat; he roasts a roast, and is satisfied. He even warms himself and says, Ah! I am warm, I have seen the fire. And the rest of it he makes into a god, his carved image. He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, Deliver me, for you are my god!” That is Isaiah chapter 44. Oh there’s much more there. Read the whole chapter, after we have finished. Let us pray. Holy God, Father in heaven, we are so thankful for Your Being and we put our trust in You. We offer our prayers to You and our worship and our service. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
Suppose we consider some of the characteristics of the one true God of the Bible. What do you say?
First: Christianity’s real God is spirit. Jesus said to the woman at Jacob’s well in John 4:24, “God is Spirit.” Therefore, my friend, He is eternal; “The eternal God is our refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27). Being spirit, His existence reaches beyond the physical reach of time. He was before creation, and He will be after it is burned up as in 2 Peter chapter 3, verses 10 through 13.
2. God is the Father of our spirits (Hebrews 12 and 7). Jesus taught us to pray to, “Our Father in Heaven” (Matthew 6 and 9). “…For we are His offspring. Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devise” (Acts 17, verses 28 and 29). “He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell upon the face of the earth.”
3. God is Creator of “the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). “God, who made the world and everything in it” (Acts 17:24).
4. God is Ruler of heaven and earth,” and He “does not dwell in temples made with hands” (Acts 17:24). “He does whatever He pleases” (Psalm 115 and 3). You see, friend, men create gods who do as men please. Then the Christian does as God pleases.
5. “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Light is a figure of speech used here to indicate God’s character, that being the fullness or completeness, the perfection of character. Darkness is also a figure of speech, then that is noting ignorance and superstition and sin, none of which exists in God’s nature. Therefore, “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ keeps on cleansing us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
6. “God is love, and “he who does not love, does not know God” (1 John 4 and 8). However, the idea that prevails in our culture today that “God just loves you so much” that you can live like the very devil himself, and go to heaven is a gross misrepresentation of God. Yes, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). And that word “believes” in that verse is not merely a nod of the head in Christ’s direction. It means a person must believe in Him as God’s only begotten, crucified, and risen Son. We must be willing to make a statement of such faith before men and we can renounce our worldly, sinful lifestyle for Jesus and be baptized into Christ according to Galatians 3:27, and for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38).
7. God is just. “I proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock! His work is perfect. For all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice...” That is Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses 3 and 4.
8. God is holy. “Holy and reverend (or awesome according to New King James Version) is His name” (Psalm 111 and 9). “...as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15-16). Oh! This is so important. I promise you, friend, I’m going to do an entire program about this very soon; just as soon as possible.
9. God is all-knowing. “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my down sitting; You know my rising up; You know my understanding afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, Behold, You, O Lord, know it altogether...”
10. God is unchangeable. He says in Malachi chapter 3, verse 6, “I am the Lord, I do not change.”
Well, we are glad that you were here with us today. We hope you will be back with us again next Sunday, or next week whenever this program is on the air in your area. We pray your blessings, God’s blessings upon you. We love you.
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