Salvation Through The Ages - Part 4 — Acts 17

0:00 I'd like to read a little bit with you, please, in Acts chapter 17. I want to think a little bit with you further about gospel testimony in the Old Testament, and we're going to read in a little bit, beginning in verse, well, you know the story, he's had to hot foot it out of Berea because the Jews from Thessalonica came to start a riot, And so Paul was sent on his way to take the heat away from the new believers there in Berea. He ended up in Athens, and while he was there, verse 16 says, His spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. And so he begins to talk with people about these issues and in verse 18, certain Epicureans and stoic philosophers encountered him and some said, What does this babbler want to say? You'll notice the marginal reading.

1:16 They called him a seed picker. What does this seed picker want to say? In other words, we don't expect much from him. You know, little dribs and drabs. He's somebody who's just able to pick up the fringes. They

1:31 They had no idea what they were dealing with. And they accused him of being a proclaimer of foreign gods because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. So they take him up to Mars Hill and verse 22 says, Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious. For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: To the unknown God. Therefore the one whom you worship without knowing, him I proclaim to you.

2:20 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, all things. And he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell in all the face of the earth and has determined their pre appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, for we are also 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 devising. Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained.

3:41 He has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, We will hear you again on this matter. So Paul departed from among them. However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them. So we want to think a little bit about how God communicated with the human race apart from the New Testament gospel that we are familiar with.

4:24 And he did it through his governance of three spheres: the material world, the relational world, and the spiritual world, or creation, providence and redemption. If you can imagine mission control in heaven, just understand how many levers God has to pull. How many different ways he can go about getting our attention. And he uses them all. Not all of them with one particular person, but with all different situations.

5:10 And we want to think a little bit about that. This same pattern we noticed in Romans chapter one, didn't we? That in Romans chapter one, the Gospel is proclaimed, but also in the circumstances of life God reveals Himself and in creation. So God is at work. If he sends the flood, he's speaking. If

5:36 If he sends Christians to move into an area, either by persecution or for some other reason, his intention is to communicate the truth of God to them. If he sends a famine or locusts, whatever God wants to use to get man's attention. And in doing this, he causes people to seek the Lord. So this is, of course, is the theme of the one hundred and seventh Psalm, right? And you'll notice these words. Let

6:11 Let me just go over and read that little section to you. Psalm 107, Oh, give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. And who are these redeemed people that he has said so? Let his redeemed say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the enemy and gathered out of the lands from the East and from the West, from the North and from the South.

6:47 So this is a missionary psalm. The redeemed of the Lord all joined together singing and they don't all come from the same town or the same country. They're gathered from all over the globe and they have this in common that they have all been redeemed. Having said that, he then goes on to speak about how people ignore the Lord and they end up doing things that cause trouble. And when they get into trouble, God sends them more trouble.

7:27 And he measures how much trouble it will take to finally get them to the end of themselves. And finally, when they're at wit's end, they cry out to him and he's standing by. And that's the pattern. We have the first group of people who are in the wilderness. They're lost in the wilderness and they're hungry and thirsty.

7:55 And the Lord comes and meets their need. He fills the hungry soul with goodness, satisfies the longing soul. And then we have a second group, and a third group, and a fourth group. And then he concludes this description by saying, Whoever is wise will observe these things and they will understand the loving kindness of the Lord. Now, we read in the second half after he describes these four groups that he's the one who turns rivers into a wilderness.

8:42 They're lost in the wilderness and they're starving. Well he turned the river into the wilderness. He actually made the wilderness. Right? And it goes through and describes this thing.

8:55 He makes the hungry dwell that they may establish a city for a dwelling place. Right? When they're diminished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow, he pours contempt on them, causes them to wander in the wilderness. The fact is, multitudes of people will thank God that they ever got cancer or ever ended up in prison or heard their loved ones say, I don't love you, I'm leaving. Because that's the kind of paddles that were used to break through their insensibility and bring before them their desperate need of God.

9:45 The worst thing for a person to face is to have everything just tickity boo, everything's great, everything's fine, and I don't really need God. And so God says, Well, I have a way to fix that. And he has all different schemes that he can use in order to bring people to the desperate point when they actually cry out to God. Now, just on the surface, it seems a bit discouraging to read that, right? In other words, is God such a distasteful person that we have to be driven to the end of ourselves before we'll turn to him?

10:28 God is the most wonderful person in the universe. If you pay attention, he says, you'll learn the loving kindness of the Lord. He's the most loving, the most kind, the most patient, the most powerful, the most wise, the most everything. And yet it seems that people will turn to every other source to find help before they turn to God. And so God says, well, I can do it then.

11:28 But as I'm walking through I noticed one of these altars and on it we had the unknown god, agnostic. And he said, By a happy circumstance I happen to know him. So I'd like to introduce you to him. And he does a very clever thing here. He quotes one of their poets.

11:59 Verse 28, In him we live and move and have our being. Now the poet who wrote that was a seer from Crete. His name was Epimenides. And Epimenides was called on by the Athenians because their city had a pestilence and people were dying and they tried every other altar, every other god. They tried them all and none of them worked.

12:35 So they checked in with Epimenides to find out if maybe there was one they were missing. And he brought some sheep up to Mars Hill and let them go and let them wander around and if eventually one of the sheep would lie down, he'd say, Alright, you need to build an altar here. And so they built altars wherever these sheep lay down thinking to themselves that the sheep must be obviously more intelligent than the people and they might know more than the people do. And so they built this to the unknown god. And Epimenides had made this statement about God, in him we live and move and have our being.

13:30 Now the word that is used for God in the Bible here is Theos. And Theos was a replacement for the Old Testament Elohim. So Jehovah is a name of God. But Elohim is a description of the person of God, that he is the God. And in the days in which the Apostle Paul visited Athens, the supreme god in Athens was Zeus.

14:07 And Zeus was also another name simply for God. It was the God, Zeus. He was considered the God of the Gods. The Zeus. And those who were translating the Bible had to decide whether Elohim would be translated as Zeus or Theos.

14:36 And this is a challenge because the denotation of Zeus is simply God. But the connotation, the meaning that came to people's minds, it had some baggage, right? They had developed mythology about Zeus. Now, a similar way, when people go into the Muslim world and they're trying to translate the Bible into Arabic and they come to the word God, what are we going to call him? Are we going to call him Allah?

15:12 Allah is God. But it's not just God, is it? It has some baggage. The Muslims have made of God someone who is a fatalist, who demands ultimate submission from people and a fatalistic approach to life, as for example. And there are many other things about Allah that are not true of the true God.

15:44 And so to use that name, it's a challenging thing, they say we have to find a name to use. And if we use that name, we'll say, Well, no, it just means God, that's all. But they say, No, it means a particular God, doesn't it? Now there are times when in a culture there are words that the culture uses that are appropriate to transfer into Christian thinking. Now you have, for example, the logos, the word.

16:15 Right? This was a concept, an idea, that was very popular in those days. The Christians added content to the word, but they decided to use that word logos to speak about the Lord Jesus. We have an interesting example back in the Old Testament. If you go back to Genesis, rather, Genesis 14.

17:16 Abraham is coming back from the battle with the kings that had taken Lot and the people of Sodom away. He had traveled a great distance from Hebron all the way north of Damascus. That's a lot of up and downs on a donkey. They had arrived at dawn just in time to engage the enemy. They had defeated these four kings. They

17:40 They had taken all the goods and all the people back and they were now making their way back south and they were skirting the city of Jerusalem. And the king of Sodom was about to try and make a deal with Abraham. And if Abraham had made the deal with the king of Sodom, it could have jeopardized Abraham's opportunity to glorify God by his life. The king of Sodom was going to say, I'll take the people, you take the goods. Well now Abraham had every right to keep all of it because the king of Sodom hadn't lifted his little finger to go and help.

18:21 Abraham had jeopardized his life and his whole, the whole group of his fellow workers to rescue these people. So, if Abraham had made a deal with him and said, Okay, you take the people, I'll take the stuff, later on seeing him in the market, the king of Sodom could have said, You see that Abraham fella? I made a deal with him when he was younger and that's why he's so rich. And Abram wanted God to get all the glory from his life. But Abram wasn't ready for this temptation. He

18:58 He didn't know it was coming. Thankfully, the king of Salem steps in between. And the king of Salem actually puts the words into Abram's mouth that he will use to turn away this temptation. And so we read that the king Melchizedek said to him, Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. And then again we read that when the king of Sodom came out to meet Abram, in verse 22, Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have raised my hand to the Lord, God Most High, the possessor of heaven and earth. Okay?

19:56 Okay? So this is the name El Elyon. And this is the first time it's used. Melchizedek is the first one to introduce this title of God. And you'll notice that he is listed in verse 18 as the priest of God Most High. The

20:17 The priest of El Elyon. So this is how he knew God, the most high God, which could smack a little of a hierarchy of gods, you know. But this is how he understood God as the supreme being in the universe and he was known as the priest of God Most High and as far as we know, he was probably the only one in the area that did worship the God Most High. But he uses this title and Abraham finds it truly an appropriate description of the God he worships. And so he embraces this title. He

21:06 He adopts this title for God as well and he calls him God Most High. Now where Melchizedek got his information about God, we're left in the dark. We really don't know. But we do know that he was a true child of God. He was a true instrument of God's purposes.

21:27 And he blessed Abram. And in this beautiful symbolism he brings bread and wine out to Abram as he returns from battle. So it's a wonderful story, but it's important to notice this. And missionaries face this all the time, translators of the Bible. There are words that are used in a certain language and they have a denotation which would allow them to be used, but sometimes their connotation is not healthy. It's

21:56 It's not something that would disqualify it from being used for that purpose. We need to pray for Bible translators, people who are working on this. It's a challenging work. And yet we notice here that when we are communicating with people, there's a certain level at which we need to understand how they think and how they express things so that we make contact, right? There's no use talking past each other and not making contact.

22:30 And we see this quite clearly in some of the books of the Bible when you read Ecclesiastes or you read a lot of Job's miserable comforters, like what's all that doing there? It's human wisdom. It's wisdom beneath the sun, right? It's there to help us understand how our unbelieving neighbors think. So that we can engage with them and connect so that we understand how it is they think about these things.

23:06 So they're very helpful in diagnosing the flawed thinking of the world so that we can provide biblical answers to what they say. So we have this story about Agnostos Theos and we notice there that this man not only provided this altar to the unknown god, but he made this statement, In him we live and move and have our being. Now these are quite dramatic statements, aren't they? The idea that this God, this supreme God, is the one who actually is the life force of his creatures, which the Bible teaches, right? And here was something out of this pagan writer who agreed with that. And

24:18 And we come to realize that ultimately all truth is God's truth, isn't it? If an unbeliever quotes it and it's true, it's God's truth. And so this opportunity that the apostle took was to link himself with something that they were familiar with, but something that drew them to God. So in every culture there are things that are contradictory to the Gospel and you have to leave those alone. And there are some things that are neutral that you can springboard off and you can use for the Gospel. And

25:02 And there are some things that are positive that we can immediately incorporate into our endeavors to communicate the truth of God. So when we're introduced to the Lord Jesus as the locus, you get the idea, right? A word is the embodiment of a thought. And we have this amazing ability. I can say to you, banana.

25:29 You had no idea that you were going to think about a banana just now. And I invaded your brain and I put an object in there that you, maybe you don't like bananas, but there it is and you can't get it out. God wanted to communicate concepts to people. And in order for a word to be valid, it must first of all be the right word. It has to be accurate.

26:01 If I intended for you to think about a durian or a pineapple and I said, banana, it's not your fault if you got the wrong image in your head. I have to give you the right word so that you understand what I'm thinking. And so the word was God. The only one who was able to communicate the concept of God was someone who was God. The problem was that we were so far from God, we couldn't understand.

26:38 And so the word became flesh. Jesus is God translated into our language. You may have accurate words, but if they're not in the person's language, they don't understand what you're saying. And so in order for us to understand, God simply did not communicate concepts directly, but the Lord Jesus was translated into human terms. So you don't have to guess what God would do at a funeral. He'd

27:18 He'd interrupt it. He'd raise people from the dead, right? You don't know, you don't have to guess what he'd do if a prostitute walked into the room. You don't have to guess what God would do in those situations because Jesus, being God, lived a human life and showed us how godliness looks in human dress. Right? It's

27:46 It's amazing. So he is God translated into humanity. Here we read that God made the world and everything in it. And obviously, says Paul, if that is true, if he's the Lord of heaven and earth, no little box is going to contain him. Sorry folks, I know the pantheon, I know these beautiful buildings that you have here, they're quite lovely, but they're all way too small.

28:25 He's the God who inhabits heaven and earth. And on top of that, obviously this God doesn't need anything from us. Since he's the one who gives us our breakfast, he's the one who provides for our daily life, obviously he never runs short of groceries. There's nothing we can give him to meet his needs. So all this bit about bringing food and putting it in front of the idols, you probably noticed the idols don't have much of an appetite.

29:34 The correct answer is human. The human race. There's only one race. That's what he tells us here. There are many nations.

29:45 If they want to ask you what nation you're from, that's another story. But as far as the race is concerned, he says he is made of all people one blood. I can take blood out of one person from one part of the world and put it in somewhere else and it works. We are all going back eventually to Noah and his family, back to Adam and his family. We all come from the same line.

30:15 And he says, In spite of the fact that God began with one man and one woman and they had a few children, you see the dramatic differences in the world. And you can see that, for example, there are people who live in countries that are right in the nexus, right in the crossroads of the world. And they have all this cross pollination going on. You know, people coming from all over the world. And congregate there.

30:47 You have all of these ideas and cultural changes of things that happen. There are other nations that are very isolated. Not too many people go to Iceland. Maybe it's the name. Maybe they can improve on the name.

31:02 Very few people go there. And if you go to Iceland, it really does look like Iceland. And everybody there sounds like they're from Iceland and they act like they're from Iceland. You just don't see too much cultures from other places because they're isolated and they rarely get a visit, right? Or to go into the mountains of Mexico, right? And

31:23 And you see people there and you say, These people have very little cross pollination with the rest of the world. There are nations that if you tickle the ground you get a crop. And there are other nations that are just really hard to cultivate. There are nations that don't have any natural rivers. You know, if you look at Africa, apart from the Nile, there are hardly any natural rivers.

31:52 And this means, of course, the rivers provided access so that people could come inland. In Africa, they are isolated because they don't have these natural rivers. There are countries that are locked in ice and snow for most of the year. And others that are tropical, right? You see all the different kinds of landforms.

32:18 Some are mountainous. Some are fertile plains. Some are the steps or the foothills. And so this affects how people think and how they act and what they keep busy with. There are some who spend all their time out in the sea gathering in the harvest of the sea and others that do mining in the mountains and some that work with vegetation in the valleys. And

32:45 And so every country has a whole different set of parameters that produce a different kind of people. They have different ways of thinking about things. They have different ways of responding. You go to China and they greet one another, their question is, instead of saying hello, how are you? They say, have you had your rice today?

33:09 Right? You go to a group in Central Africa, the question is how are your cows? It doesn't matter whether you have cows or not, that's not the point. It's just a way of greeting a person because that's what they do. And so God was able, even though starting with one family and just a few kids and then they kept growing, he was able to provide this massive variety of environments that produced some warlike tribes and some pacifistic tribes and some wealthy nations and some poor nations.

33:53 And the whole objective, the psalmist says, the reason God does this, he lifts up nations and puts down nations that they might seek him. And I see this in America. If America would not seek God in prosperity, then maybe he could try us with adversity for a while, right? Maybe then we will seek the Lord. And we see this throughout history that nations rise and fall.

34:24 And during those processes, there are times when in the rise they respond to the goodness of God. And there are other times when the nation rises, they become selfish and materialistic and they ignore God. There are other times when a nation goes down, they become vengeful and angry and bitter. And there are other times they become humble and they respond. And God knows when he pushes this button, he knows these people and he knows how they're going to respond.

34:58 As we read the history of the world and we see all the changes and shifting going on, this is not accidental. And so says Paul that God has determined their pre appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings. God has set parameters. He has calculated the maximum way to effect the lives of these people so that they might seek after him. And that's exactly what he says in the next verse, verse 27.

35:37 The reason why it's like that is so they should seek the Lord. Now, those of us who have multiple children have seen this in action. There are some children, and if you give them a cross look, they start to cry and whimper and go off in the corner. And there are some children if you, I don't do it, but whip them with an inch of their life they'd never shed it here. Just took out their little jaw and, you know.

36:08 There are some children and you try to be kind to them thinking that they'll respond to kindness and they take advantage of it. And there are other children and you give them, show them kindness and they respond in love. So we have to learn to deal with our children. In order to be fair, we can't treat them equally. We have to treat them distinctively according to their nature.

36:36 There are some things we do together as a family, but when we're dealing with our children, we find out real quickly. You have the first one and you struggle with the first one. Poor first child, they're always an experiment. And then after the first, think, Okay, I think we got it. And the second one comes along and none of the principles that you learned the hard way with your first child seem to work with the second child.

37:01 And then a third one, then a fourth one, and I can speak up to seven, but it seems that every time the Lord is saying, You gotta depend on me here. You're not gonna find any formula that's working. All you have to do is turn to me. Right? And the same is true with these nations.

37:54 If we could use that term, right? You know, God doesn't want people to be forced into belief. He wants them to make a choice. And so we do not have overwhelming evidence for God. We have sufficient evidence.

38:13 But it's the kind of evidence that people need to be serious about. I love the story that Charles Spurgeon used to tell about a farmer had an apple orchard and he saw a friend of his and said, You know, the apples are just all ready. I've picked some. I've got them in a basket for you. Just want to pop around by the farm and pick up that basket of nice apples.

38:43 And the fellow demurred and didn't seem to want to do it. The farmer said, Look, they're all picked. They're ready to go. They're right there. I don't want you to pay for them. I

38:52 I just want you to take them. And he still was very reticent. And finally the farmer said, Excuse me, what is the problem? Well he said, It's kind of embarrassing. But I was driving past your orchard on a trip and I thought you wouldn't mind if I just jumped over the fence and picked a few apples for my trip.

39:20 And quite frankly, they were the sourest apples I ever tasted in my life. I couldn't even finish them. And the farmer laughed and he said, You know, I went 60 miles to find those apple trees. I put two rows of those apple trees all around my orchard so anybody sneaking in would never come back. And Christianity is like that, you know. There's

39:42 There's hard sayings around the outside, so to speak. But go in deeper, you'll find lots of sweet stuff there, right? And so God wants people to be serious. He wants them to seek after him. Now here's his promise, you will find me if you seek for me with your whole heart.

40:06 He doesn't, you know, the scourge of Christianity in America is half heartedness. Easy oasy Christianity. Take it easy. That's our favorite greeting to one another. Take it easy.

40:18 That's the last thing we need to do. No, take it seriously. Right? And so here, the Apostle is saying, He's within arm's reach of everybody. He's right there.

40:37 But you have to reach out for him. He's not gonna force himself on you. You're gonna have to reach out for him. But if you reach, if you're serious, you'll find him. He's right there.

40:53 Isn't that encouraging? I think it's so encouraging. And when I think of people all around the world, and I've met people, and you would think, how did this person ever get saved? And that's how they got saved. They believed that God is, right?

41:09 The writer to the Hebrews, He that comes to God must believe that He is. They believed there was a supreme being and they believed that he could be approached and they reached out for him and they found him. Just after September 11, I was down in Augusta, Georgia, and there was a man there from the Middle East. He was in the heart of Turkey and he'd never heard the gospel. And his sister had come to America.

41:49 And he was so frustrated with his native religion that he'd grown up with. He saw the hurt and the hatred and the horrible conditions in the families and how the women were treated so badly and he hated it. But he didn't know what the alternative was. But he cried out one night, God, if you're there, if you're a real God, a true God, I want to know you. And that week his sister called him and she said, You know, I just bumped into some people here in New York and they say they worship the true God and he's loving.

42:32 His name is Love. He says, that's the God I'm looking for. And she said, well, they say the answer is in the book. They have this book they read. They say the answer is in the book.

42:49 Well, she said, You need to come to America and meet these people. That night he had a dream. And in the dream he said, I was sitting at a table, a long table, and half the room was in blackness and I was in that half. I was sitting in the darkness. And at the other end, half the room was brilliant light and there was a person sitting and I couldn't really see their face but they were sitting and they were all white.

43:18 And they reached out and they said to me, The answer is in the book. And he said, At that moment, I realized whoever that was had heard what my sister said on the phone from New York and used exactly the same words. So I would connect that bible study. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know it was about a bible. But

43:49 But that I would connect the people in New York who had found the answer in the book. And so he came illegally into The United States and the first night he said, We sat there and they opened that up and every word, it just shone with light. I was like, This is a book from God. No man would ever say these things. And before the night was out, he had put his trust in Christ.

44:16 Then September 11 occurred. He had death threats. He was working at a gas station down right near the towers and the Christians hustled them out of there and sent them down to live with some Christians in Augusta. And that's how I got to meet him. And you know, we know these stories are happening all the time.

44:39 But what is the key element? God doesn't just impose himself on people. He's saying, I'll prove to you I'm there, but you've got to reach out for me. If you'll reach out for me, you'll find that I'm right there. He is not far from every one of us.

45:03 There were three reactions, of course, that day. There were some who mocked. And there were some who said, We will hear you again about this. Nevertheless, there were some who cleaved, some who embraced the truth. You know, some of my brethren have objected to what Paul did here and said, no, there wasn't enough real gospel in there, you know. He

45:30 He should have had five P's or seven S's or something. And he didn't really get enough goods into this message. And there was no assembly started in Athens as far as we know. Let me tell you something. If I went to Oxford or Cambridge and the first time I preached, I saw one of the professors saved and one of the leading society women in the town and some other people, I might have sent out a prayer letter letting you know about It was wonderful, the response.

46:09 The gospel had reached into the hearts of these people. So when we think about how God has worked, Paul is not just talking about the last ten years here. He's spanning all of history. And he's saying this is right from the beginning, the way God arranged the various locations of lands and the peoples, the people groups, he had this idea in mind. I mentioned how when the Russians came into Afghanistan, pushed the mujahideen into the arms of waiting missionaries.

46:48 There's a well known book, a missionary biography. It's called Send Me to a Hard Place. It was a missionary. She had a strong constitution and she said, Lord, send me to a hard place. So she ended up running a clinic, a health clinic, right on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and she evangelized the Mujahideen. They're

47:12 They're now called the Taliban, by the way, same people. But she did gospel work there and she said, The only reason they came to my clinic was because the Russians pushed them into my arms. And this has happened over and over and over again in history. People have been displaced, right? So I grant you, when I look at America and I see the situation here and say, can we keep doing this? Can

48:05 On the other hand, as a child of God, I say, wait a minute, We didn't go to the mission field, so God brought it to us. There are people I have in my own town and I could never walk up to them and share the gospel with them in their hometown. If I was in, you know, Abu Dhabi or someplace like that, I'd only last a few minutes there. But God has brought these people right to us. And from anywhere in the world, you don't have to go very far until you find somebody from that country.

48:43 There's a group of Christians, they also were Hutterites, saved out of the Hutterite colonies in Southern Alberta. And one of the brothers there, he was one of the first ones to get saved and he led many of them to the Lord. And the Hutterite leaders called him the Antichrist because of his wonderful way of leading people to the Lord. And that little assembly, got an old derelict building downtown and they fixed up some apartments above it. And as they walk through the town, they have their ears tuned and they hear a language and they say, Where are you from?

49:23 We're from Uzbekistan. Ah, Uzbekistan. Well, welcome to Canada. Do you have any other Uzbek friends in town? Yes, yes, we have eight families. Oh,

49:35 Oh, excellent. You know, we have a building here with a kitchen and we would love to be friends with you. And we'll buy the groceries, whatever you ask for, we'll buy them. And you cook up an Uzbek meal and you bring your friends and we'll bring our friends and let's be friends. And when you get there, if anybody is having a hard time getting a driver's license or getting kids in school or whatever, we'll help you. We

50:01 We want to be your friends. Okay? And so that's what they do. And this brother, you know, I thought to myself, here's somebody coming out of this cloistered environment. A colony of highly homogenized people.

50:20 They look and sound and act and talk and think just like everybody else. And they're thrust out of that into the world. And as I went around town with that brother, like he knew everybody from the beggar on the street to the mayor. They actually said to when they found that the mayor and the town council, they got water for everybody to drink in town meetings, they said, We'll provide the water. And pretty soon, what do you know, they asked him to open in prayer.

50:50 And then they went to the local school and said, Wouldn't it be great if once a week the kids all had a home cooked meal? We will come and cook a good old fashioned Hutturite meal for all the kids and we'll tell them a bible story. And as I watched this brother and how he worked, like he had these little antenna going all the time. He was always he had his hooks baited, you know? He was always looking for another opportunity.

51:18 And I was just overjoyed as I watched him work. And they knew all these different communities, all these people from all over the world. And sometimes they'd given them apartment to use for a while till they got on their feet and they'd have bible studies with them. And I thought, wow, if we're going to have the heart of God, it's got to be as big as the whole world, doesn't it? And yes, I can take a position as a Christian and say, I really think the government should stop this careless inflow of who knows all that's coming into our country.

51:53 On the other hand, when I see it there, I say, you know what? This is a perfect opportunity to share the gospel with people that I otherwise would never meet anywhere else. So I can have both of those ideas at the same time. They don't contradict. It's just that as a citizen I have certain responsibilities to recognize those in authority and to recognize that we live in a land of laws.

52:17 On the other hand, as a child of God, I just look for every opportunity to share Christ and there are endless possibilities, aren't there? Endless possibilities. Well, I want to spend just a couple of minutes. How are we doing for time here brother? Are we all done?

53:11 Probably not. Would Rahab ever sought the God of Israel if she didn't realize there was an army coming ready to wipe them out? An army that had already wiped out Sihon and Og and Pharaoh and a few others along the way, the Amorites? Would she have given up her successful business in Jericho if all of a sudden she came face to face with her own mortality? The men on Jonah's ship, would they have sought after God if any of their gods had answered? They

53:51 They tried all their gods and they found out real quickly that none of their gods ran the weather department. And so they said, Well, man, it's sure nice to have you on board, Jonah. I think we need your god too. Let's try your god. And they found out that, bingo, that's the real one.

54:15 That's the one that works. Right? But they wouldn't have sought him if they weren't in the midst of a violent storm. And on and on the list goes. Do you think Nebuchadnezzar would have sought the Lord if he didn't end up getting hobbled in his royal garden eating grass like an ox?

54:34 God had to really use some extreme tactics with Nebuchadnezzar because he was an extremely proud man. You wonder why the final holocaust, the time of Jacob's trouble, the great tribulation. You wonder why it's so great? There will not be one blow more than is necessary to bring those Jews to their knees at the feet of Jesus Christ. That's how tough they are.

55:12 They're tough. Oh, they're tough. But God is tougher. And he's going to bring them to the point when they will say, We esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions. But it's like the story of the guy who sold a donkey and the fellow said, Well, how obedient? Oh,

55:37 Oh, it's great. You know, speak a word and it does exactly what to say. Came back a few days later and said, I sure don't find a donkey that way? Look at him. I tell him to and whatever they tell you to stop and he doesn't do it. And

55:52 And the farmer said, Well, here watch this. And he took a two by four and whacked the thing over the head and said, Now go. And sure enough he went. And he said, Well, you didn't tell me about the 2x4. He said, No, well you have to get his attention first.

56:05 Well, God has to get our attention. And sometimes he has to give us a good whack to do that, doesn't he? Time and time again, this is what we see. The wise men. Why did they come seeking the king?

56:24 Like this was the alignment of hundreds of years of history. Because it was no one less than Balaam, who was one of their leading men among the stargazers in Babylon, who had gone on this amazing paid visit to try and curse the Israelites and had prophesied concerning a king, a scepter, and a star. And then what do you know? After hundreds of years of that being on the books, as they looked into their incantations and read about their history and the kinds of things that these wise men did. And along comes another man from the same land, from the land of Israel, where they said they worshipped the true God.

57:22 And this man, he doesn't talk about a star and a scepter, but he explains that this one who has been given the kingdom is going to show up. And when is he going to show up? Well, you can figure it out for yourself. Four eighty three years from the rebuilding of Jerusalem. There it is, boom, there's the time.

57:48 And here were these men searching, looking. And then all of a sudden it all came together. Look at this. He tells us, Let's check our calendars. This is it. This

57:59 This is the time that this person is going to be coming and well, there's the star. The star and the scepter and the coming king. Let's go look for the king. They never would have done it otherwise. Or think about Ruth, Ruth the Moabite.

58:27 If there hadn't been a terrible famine in Bethlehem, she never went and met her husband. And then if they hadn't gone and died on her, her husband and her brother-in-law and her father-in-law, and then the crops came back to Bethlehem and Naomi said, I'm heading home. And it caused both Ruth and Orpah to have a crisis in their lives and they had to decide. And Orpah went back to her gods, back to her Moabite upbringing, and Ruth made a decision to go with her mother-in-law and treat me not to leave you. I'm going on with you. I

59:10 I want your god to be my god. I mentioned that the book of Ruth is the Old Testament illustration of redemption. Boaz is the wealthy kinsman. And when it comes for the redemption story at the end of the book, we read that Boaz decided to buy all that was Elimelech's, that's Naomi's husband, and all that was Malen's and all that was Kailion's The fact that Orpah didn't come home didn't for a moment, change the generosity of the kinsman redeemer's heart and he went ahead and bought it all. And the fact that people will not come to Christ doesn't, for a moment, change the heart of God.

60:23 Come for all things are now ready. There's room in the Father's house for you. Everyone is welcome. The provision has all been made. There is no limited atonement in the story of Ruth.

61:02 The only one who was healed was Naaman and he was a leper. And so this little girl did not know that God healed leprosy. She just knew God. And she said, You've got to go back and see. You know, he made this mistake of going to see the king and eventually he ends up at the house.

61:19 You know how the story went. And Naaman had a little shaky start there, right? He was like, excuse me? What am I, chopped liver? The prophet didn't even come out to greet me.

61:31 He said his servant. And seven times in that dirty river, right? And then the servant standing by speaks a little sense into him and says, look, if you were asked to do a real tough thing, you'd give it a try, wouldn't you? I know you. You'd rise to the challenge.

61:48 Well, it's a simple thing. Why not go ahead and try it? And so they went down to the river and Naaman went in, one, came back up a leper, two, came back up a leper, Three, four, five, six, and seventh time, up he comes and his skin is like a baby. Wow. And then we read this interesting bit.

62:11 Already the spirit of God is working in the man. He comes back. He wants, first of all, to compensate the servant of God for this wonderful miracle. And the servant says, No, we're not in business here. This is a gift from God.

62:28 You can't buy God's blessings. And then he says, Well, would it be okay if I took some dirt back? A truckload of dirt back? Because I don't even want to worship on Syrian soil. I want my life to be a little outpost of Israel.

62:50 And I want to worship the God, the true God, on Israeli soil. You know, brothers and sisters, that's our story, isn't it? We're strangers and pilgrims in this earth. Our lives, we are little outposts of heaven. Surrounded by a pagan world, we have this little sanctuary.

63:12 Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. And then he says this, I've been thinking, you know. In my job as chief of security, the king, you know, I have to take him. He goes into the temple of his god, Rimmon. And I'm just thinking ahead here.

63:42 I'm going to be taking him in and we're going to come up to the altar and the king's going to bend over. And I think I'm going to have to bend over with him a bit. Isn't that amazing? Here's a guy, he hasn't been a believer for hardly half a day. And already he has a sensitivity to what is pleasing to God.

64:15 It's great, isn't it? You know, remember the young gal who said to the preacher, I'd like to get saved, I'm not sure I could give up the world. He said, Look, if you get saved and stand for Christ, the world will give you up. You don't have to give up the world, they'll give you up. Right?

64:32 If you stand for Christ, the world doesn't want Christ. They'll give you up. But he was thinking about that incident. Now it's also interesting to see the prophet's response to him. Here's what he says, Go and the Lord be with you.

64:51 Like the Lord's got you, man. You're his. He'll be riding with you in the chariot. The dirt, yeah, that's fine, I get that. But you're not just taking the dirt back, you're taking God with you.

65:04 The Lord is with you and he'll sort things out for you. The very next time we read about the Syrian army, Naaman is no longer the captain of the guard. So as we read these stories and we see the interaction, the interplay between people who didn't have the advantages we have, didn't have the clarity, didn't have the fullness of revelation that we have. They still had enough. Look at, here's in Exodus 18.

66:05 But here it just says that he was the priest of Midian in chapter 18 and verse one. But we read that he heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel, his people, that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt. Look down at verse nine. Then Jethro rejoiced for all the good which the Lord... Now that's not God.

66:31 It starts off where he's talking about God. All that God had done. But here he's using the name of Jehovah. He saw all that the Lord had done for Israel whom he had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians and Jethro said, blessed be the Lord who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh and who has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods, for in the very thing in which they behaved proudly, he was above them.

67:12 He's talking there about the gods of Egypt. Advertising, promoting all these gods, he says, There was nothing to them. God is God. And that's the story of Jethro. When I was thinking about the story, and I'll just finish with this, the story of Rahab and the Gibeonites, probably one of the questions that we most often hear from people who are skeptics is, Yeah, but like what about God ordering the slaughter of all the Canaanites?

67:50 Right? That's kind of a standard position. And I like to ask them now, have you read the story since you were an adult or are you still working on the little childish notions you had from long ago? Or like have you seriously studied this story? Do you know how a story starts?

68:14 Oh yeah, there's a wicked woman in a wicked city in a wicked profession and she asks God for mercy and he gives it to her. And he doesn't just give it to her, the offer is made. Why don't you get your family with you? Anybody who'll come into your house, I'll save the whole lot of you. And as if that's not big enough, it's not but a couple of pages and we find out that there's a whole group of cities, not just the city of Gibeon, but the towns all around it.

68:44 They all come and they seek the mercy of God and guess what? God gave them mercy too. You know the end of the story, right? It wasn't just that God saved Rahab, but that Rahab ended up marrying the most eligible bachelor in Israel, the Prince of Judah, and was placed not only in the royal family, but in the line of the savior of the world. And if I'd been writing Matthew chapter one, I might have put the story of Rahab in a footnote.

69:28 But God says, no, put it on page one. This is who I am. This is the kind of God I am. I love to save people. And I'll save you too if you'll come to me honestly and receive my salvation.

69:47 Right? And as we read through the story, we keep bumping into people. Like who's this Uriah the Hittite? Right? Or you read about the Philistines, you think, the Philistines, they're all bad guys. Well,

69:59 Well, if you find the term Gittite, those are Philistines. Gittite was the name of somebody from Goliath's hometown Gath. And there was a whole division of David's army who were Gittites. They all came over to the Lord's side. We have Caleb.

70:23 Do you know who got first pick of the land in Israel? It wasn't an Israelite. It was a Kenizzite. And in the days of Abraham, God says, here are the list of all the boys, all these Canaanites that we're going to have to get rid of, and there are the Canaanites. And Caleb is a Canaanite.

70:48 But he links himself up with God, he trusts the Lord, he wholly follows the Lord, and he ends up getting first pick in all the land. These Gibeonites, what about them? Well, Joshua, on the fly, had said, well, best I can think for you will spare your life, but you'll be hewers of wood and drawers of water all your life. Do you know where they hewed wood and drew water? For the temple.

71:17 They provided all the resources for the sacrifices. When Solomon offered a thousand oxen at his grand entry as king, he did it at Gibeon and it was the men of Gibeon that drew the water and chopped the wood and provided these sacrifices that led to God giving Solomon anything he wanted. So I know this is precious because it happened to me. I was a sinner of the Gentiles. And God not only saved me, he put me in the royal family.

71:54 And my Lord Jesus is not ashamed to call me his brother. And I say, wow. It's a theological term. We could use it more often. Wow.

72:07 What a God. What a God. So as we see little glimpses here and there, bits and pieces, the various Canaanites that show up throughout the scripture, we realize God wanted people to take him seriously. Every offering they made to their false gods, they were mocking God. They knew better.

72:34 They had turned the truth into a lie. And they were suppressing the truth. And if they would repent of it, God would show them mercy. He tells us that over and over and over again. And that's all he wants.

72:53 Take me seriously. Listen to what I say. Agree with me that you need me and I'm the only one who can save you. And the people do. Even with the smallest amount of faith.

73:11 You know what they'll find out? They'll find out that what God said is really true after all. Right? There are some people who come to God and they barely have enough faith to choke a flea. But they put it in God and God saves them.

73:30 I'm so happy to serve a God like that. To know that as I go out with the gospel, I don't have to be concerned that I might be talking to someone that God doesn't love. Because I believe he loves everybody. And that I don't have to be afraid that if I offer them salvation when actually he never intended for them to go to heaven, that I'm a false witness. I don't have to be afraid of that.

73:58 Whosoever will may come. And I am so happy that God has made the gospel so accessible that a fool need not therein. I've met a few. And they can get saved too. Because God has put it as low down as he can.

74:24 Are you hungry? Take a bite. Are you thirsty? Take a drink. You know how that works, right?

74:28 Okay. Well, that's all I'm asking you to do. Look and live. Right? Believe and live. Come,

74:36 Come, trust. All these words that we grow up with, a little baby that hardly knows anything yet, you just say come. They know what to do. And that's what God says, come. Just come. Come

74:48 Come as is. Come the best way you know how. And whoever, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Father, once more, we have opened your word and we have seen how gracious you are, how wise you are, how rich in mercy you are. To think that you'd save those rude sailors on that stormy sea.

75:18 Save the Ninevites. Save Gibeonites. Save people like Nebuchadnezzar. Oh, to think of it. To bring him to his knees in his garden, and to think that he would then declare to the whole world the truth of the one true God.

75:41 So, Father, we give thanks, and we are thankful for the day in our lives when by simple faith we found out that what God said was really true. We believed and we live in Christ. And we just commit your word to you for your use now to encourage your people, to equip us, and to cause us to rise in worship to the one true God and to your only son, to whom we owe everything. And it's in his precious name that we pray. Amen.