Hello, I’m Mack Lyon. The program’s In Search of the Lord's Way. Christianity is the business of helping people know God so they may live with Him in the here and now, and in heaven forever. Oh say! We’re glad you have joined us for our Bible study. We pray we’ll both be blessed.
Greetings to you, my friend! We feel sincerely blessed to have you in our Bible study today In Search of the Lord’s Way of salvation and His way to live. It’s our sincerest purpose and desire to speak the truth of God in the spirit of love. Man’s greatest need is to know God and to love Him and obey Him, and to be loved by Him.
We’re presented here by some Christians in some churches of Christ in the area served by this station. They would be so pleased to have you attend their Bible study in the local church and worship with them, too. Oh, I hope you’ll do that today; if you still have time do it today, will you? If you need our assistance in locating one of these churches, let us help you; what do you say. Our toll free telephone number is 1-800-321-8633.
Our brother in the Lord, Phil Sanders will present the lesson today. He has titled it, “Come Over And Help Us” based on the Scripture text, Acts chapter 16, verses 6 through 10. If you think you would like a free printed copy, an audio cassette tape of it, or a CD, use that number, that telephone number (1-800-321-8633). Make your request that way. No, we won’t add your name to a mailing list to ask you to send us money. We have no such list as that; and we don’t do that. Everything here is free. If you prefer to write us, our address is In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083. Our e-mail address is searchtv@searchtv.org. This program, along with many others, is streamed at www.searchtv.org. Ken Helterbrand’s going to lead us in a hymn now; then Phil Sanders will be here to read the text– Acts chapter 16, verses 6 through 10.
Thank you, brother Mack; and it is so wonderful to be with you today. Our reading is from Acts 16, verses 6 through 10. “Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them.” This reading comes from the New King James Version. Let’s pray together. O Lord, we are thankful that You know all of our needs and that You help us through the difficult times; that You give us strength, and love, and grace, and peace. And, Father, we are so thankful that we have come to know You and to love You. Help us always to love you, Father. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen!
Christianity is in the business of helping people to come to know God, and to live joyful lives pleasing to God so that they may live with God forever. The greatest need of man is to know and to love God, and be loved by God. The gospel is the good news which tells us of God’s goodness toward man, and to give him an abundant life here and hereafter. When I get into the pulpit in front of a group, or behind this television camera, I’m always sensitive to the people to whom I am preaching. I know that they are in church or at home that day; and they are wanting to find spiritual help. I don’t always know who has what need; but, you know there are some needs present in the lives of people wherever I am, wherever I preach; and I know that there are several who are grieving for a lost loved one. Some are broken-hearted over disease, either their own illness or perhaps a loved one. Many people there are suffering financially from a job loss or from overwhelming debt. There will be parents grieving over the choices of their children, and children there wounded by their parents. There will be husbands and wives whose marriages are falling apart; and others are still suffering from a past divorce.
There will be people with hidden problems who desperately want to overcome them. One person might be struggling with a drinking problem, while another is struggling with an addiction to pornography. A woman might be there who has aborted a baby. Or a man and a woman might be there who are confused about their sexual orientation or maybe they are struggling with sexual problems. Oh yes, they will likely be there! And people come to church and they watch this program and they pray to God and they want to find real answers to the struggles of their life. My task in talking with you and preaching the gospel is to help people to see God; to see his goodness, his grace, his comfort, his forgiveness, his desire to bless them, and his will for their lives.
Many people, especially young adults, have been led to believe that if preachers preach out against sin, that they are mean-spirited and even unchristian; but, my friend, nothing could be farther from the truth. Preachers don’t preach against sin because they hate people; they preach against sin because they love people and want to help them. They don’t hate people; they hate the sin. Why? Because they know how sin destroys families and creates terrible problems. They know how deceptive sin is and how it hardens the heart, and separates friends, and enslaves people. Oh, our prisons and our cemeteries are full of people who let sin grab hold of their lives.
Preachers are in the saving business. We know that the message of God has the power to make a difference in the lives of hurting people. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 21, “Since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” The gospel is a message of salvation and of hope and life. The Lord Jesus said that, “The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy.” Jesus said, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly. That is from the Gospel of John chapter 10, verse 10. Now every faithful gospel preacher feels that same way. They know that nothing is more important in life than knowing the Lord and his way of life. The Lord Jesus cared so much for people. He didn’t become a preacher for personal gain or for prestige. In Matthew 9, verses 35 to 38 the Bible says: “And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’” Now, faithful Christians are those laborers who care for other people, and they want to help them to find hope and peace in Christ.
The Bible teaches Christians in Romans 12, verses 15 and 16, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.” Faithful Christians have compassionate and loving hearts. Because they love people, they hurt when other people hurt. Churches are in the saving and helping business. They realize the best way to help people is through caring for their immediate needs and through teaching them the Lord’s will for their lives. Now, Christians know for certain that lasting change can never take place until people know God’s will and commit to follow it because they love God.
The single greatest need of anybody today is a renewed knowledge of God. The inspired prophet Jeremiah wrote: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” That is Jeremiah 9, verses 23 and 4. My friend, only knowing God and knowing His will can bring salvation and peace to your soul. Only God’s love, grace and comfort can give you the help that you need. You can’t buy that; you can’t invent it; but you can find it in God’s message, His message to you in the Bible.
The prophet Hosea spoke about Israel in his day; and unfortunately they had rejected knowledge about God and His law and they did it to their own harm. And the prophet of God said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; (he said) because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children” (Hosea 4 and verse 6). Now when parents don’t know God, how will they teach their children? You know pushing God out of our lives hurts everybody. America today doesn’t want to listen to God, because God disagrees with their ideas and what they want to do. God is not mean-spirited; He tells us the truth because he loves us. But if we say to God that we don’t want to hear you, we are only hurting ourselves.
Many people who think they know God are simply relying on what other people tell them. People are spreading a lot of bad information about God these days, because they haven’t taken the time to search the Scriptures for themselves. Sometimes what religious people say about God, and then what is true about God are two different things. America is the religious melting pot of the world; we have more brands of religion in America than any country of the whole world. But, you know, having lots of religions doesn’t mean that we know God any better; and that we know the God of Heaven and Earth, the God of the Bible, who created us. People in America claim to be very religious, but you can be very religious and still not know the Lord. Jesus described some religious people, very religious people, who never had a relationship with Him. They thought they had a relationship with Him but they didn’t. You remember we talked about this a little bit last week. The Lord Jesus said in Matthew 7, verses 21 to 23: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness (that is workers of iniquity).’”
Now the Scriptures give us a decisive principle that tells us whether or not we know God. The Bible says in 1 John 2, verses 3 to 6, “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says ‘I know him’ (that is I have a relationship with him) but does not keep his commandments this person is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may be sure that we are in him: whoever says he abides in Jesus, in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” You really can’t know God unless you know and keep His Word, which is today found in the Bible. Many people rely on their feelings or maybe impressions, but the truth about God is found in His Word. And our greatest need today is God’s Word to teach us and guide us in the right way.
So, what could I wish most for our time? Well, you might say a better economy, and you know what, that would be good. You might say a better health system, and that too would be good. You might say an improved education system, and I’m all for education. You might say world peace, and how thankful we all would be for that. But these are not what I wish for most. You might suggest more Bibles, but you know Bibles are available almost everywhere. No, what I wish for most in our time is a hunger for God, a need and a desire for God. I wish people wanted God so badly they would set aside everything else to pursue a relationship with Him.
The man in Paul’s vision said, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” I wish we had that kind of hunger so as to say to God, “Come and help us.” We are no different from that Macedonian. We have the same needs and weaknesses of people in other lands and other times. We are facing many of the same struggles that they face. We need to know our purpose in life. We need to know where we came from. We need to know who we are. We need to know what will happen to us after life is over. We too need God. We need His guidance, His help, His love, and His grace. More than we ever have we need God today. We need to follow the example of the Macedonians who lived in the city of Berea. When Paul preached in the synagogue of Berea, the Bible says in Acts 17, verse 11, “Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” They wanted to hear the message of God; they wanted to know the truth; and when they heard Paul speak, they were not content just to accept what he said. Oh, no! They checked him out from the Scriptures. They wanted to be sure that what they were hearing followed what the Scriptures say.
My friend, it breaks my heart that our society today seems to shut the Lord out. Some simply just don’t want to hear what God has to say about anything and about how we ought to live our lives or what the Truth is. They have rejected the Bible as true and would rather believe popular modern ideas. The Bible predicts that the day would come when people would turn their ears away from the truth. The Bible says in 2 Timothy 4, verses 3 and 4, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” Many young people today know more about vampires and witchcraft than they do about the apostles.
And we are paying a terrible price for shutting out God. We are a spiritually weakened nation. We have forgotten God laws and told our youth that there are no absolute truths or morals. So they live confused and uncertain lives, not knowing God and not knowing right from wrong. Many children conceived in the womb will never see life outside; they die there because Mom and Dad put them to death. Forty percent of infants who do and are allowed to live are now born out of wedlock. The fastest growing religious group in America is the group that identifies itself as having “no religion.”
Oh, my friend, if we are to find hope in this world, it is not going any kind of change that leaves out God. What we most need is a return to God. The Lord God promised Solomon something that we need to hear today. And there is hope for us. God said in 2 Chronicles 7, verse 14 that if “My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” We need that forgiveness and healing, but we will never find it if we shut God out. We desperately need to humble ourselves and pray; we need to seek God’s face and favor; and we have got to turn from our sins. We ought to hunger for God and for His way.
Hungering for God ought to lead us to become and to live as Christians. God loves you and me and wants to be in our lives every day. Oh, become a Christian, believe in the Lord Jesus, confess Him, repent of your sins, and out of love be baptized; then when you do that God washes away your sins. That would be a wonderful way to begin this day. Won’t you do that? Let’s pray together. O Lord, we pray that You will help us every day to live our lives for You, to seek You and to hunger for your will in our lives. Bless us and be with us always, Father, and help us through the struggles of each day. In Jesus’ name, Amen!
Thank you brother Phil for an excellent lesson about helping people in the times of their need. And, the greatest need of humanity everywhere is “a right relationship with God.” Oh say! You did it well. We commend the message. My friend, if you’d like a free printed copy, a CD or an audio cassette tape of this message, please write us: In Search of the Lord's Way, P.O. Box 371, Edmond, OK 73083 or by e-mail it’s searchtv@searchtv.org. Our toll-free telephone number is 1-800-321-8633. The message is streamed at www.searchtv.org. Visit that website for a daily devotional and, well, lots of other good things there, too.
If you’re not a Christian, but you need, and you would like for someone to come by your home to study the Scriptures about it, let us hear from you, will you? We’d like to send somebody by your house, but we won’t do it without that invitation from you because we regard your privacy as something that is sacred to you and we want to keep it that way. If you would like to enroll in a correspondence course, a Bible, free Bible correspondence course we would be glad to do that with you, too. May God bless you now. We love you.
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