It's special for me to be with you tonight, especially being able to have opportunity to encounter a subject and a person, a topic like we will have. It was about ten years ago, fifteen years ago, some of our family. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe we were too involved in it. We were quite involved in sports when we were younger. We were in Los Angeles, a friend of mine and I at one time playing soccer. We pulled up at a gas station. There was a big, long, white stretch limousine that pulled up. And a gentleman got out, this other friend of mine is in, was Brigham Olson. He was forward, blasted. He loved people. He ran up, got an autograph. O.J. Simpson stepped out of the car. And he wrote down this on this piece of paper. He wrote down, Peace to you, O.J. This was years before many of the things that have since transpired. But the world today is crying, calling out for peace. There's a peace that's like no other peace in the world, in this universe. And it's called in Scripture the peace of God or peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. I'd like to take you to a passage in the book of Acts and chapter seventeen and mention some things in the first message today regarding native outlines or inherent outlines in Scripture that the Lord leaves for us. And I'll tell you very readily that sometimes when I sit down on a plane or wherever the Lord gives opportunity to share the gospel with another individual, you become tongue-tied pretty quickly. You're not exactly certain what to say and when to say it and how to somehow get to their heart. You confess, well, Lord, we just have to pray about it. It's ultimately your work. It's the conviction of your spirit. It's your word that doesn't return void. But thankfully there are certain passages in Scripture that are very straightforward and methodical in their description of the character of the Lord and the description of the salvation that He gives to us. Unfortunately, the preaching of the gospel, I'll just say this is a little bit of an aside, lately has become somewhat prosaic and we're almost looking for novel presentations of the words of the believers. Maybe you haven't seen that, thank the Lord, but in some cases it seems to be that. And I'm not too good at that. And I'd just like to take some time to read through this presentation by the great Apostle Paul in love for the people at Athens as he very simply and carefully goes along to describe things concerning the person of God and his character. We were at a camp three or four years ago down in Orlando, Florida. And there were a lot of inner city children there from Miami. Many of which did not have the one parent, some of which didn't have any. They had no realization that there was a God, let alone what his character might be like. And we were really trying in love for these younger people to decide how to very simply describe the gospel and the character of the Lord and his love for them. And one of the topics that we thought we would take up was the fatherhood of God. Maybe they didn't have a father. Many of them didn't. In fact, probably most of them didn't. But there was a Father in heaven that loved them that was always consistent in his discipline, in his care, in his provision. And we wanted to bring that before them, that they would get some idea of the Lord in glory that did love them. We talked about that for a couple of sessions. The next morning we got together with some of the counselors, and there was one of the counselors that was somewhat distraught. And this was her statement. She said there was a little girl last night. that came up afterwards because in our devotions we have continued with this and we turn to some passages in scripture regarding the Lord the Father his care for his own and this little girl with tears in her eyes came crying to this young lady and she said this she said please please don't tell me that God is a father and she went on to talk about how her father treated her and what he was like to her She said, just don't tell me that at least. I've always thought that God was good, but don't tell me that God is a Father. Can you imagine something like that? Such a misconception of the perfection and the beauty and the love of a God in heaven that longs for people. In the book of Romans, there is a picture that's left for us that says, all day long, I have held out my hands to a disobedient and a gainsaying people. What type of a position is that? If it's not a pleading and yearning in love to have the people that He loves come unto Him that they might find peace. Now we could say, well, if we could just go through a passage of Scripture like this and remove all the misconceptions that people have about God, because Paul tells us a lot about the character of the Lord in this passage, that certainly they would come to know the Lord as their own personal Savior. But unfortunately, that's not true. There are people that know much more, at least in their head, about the character of God and His love. And instead they refuse Him and they turn around and volitionally with their own will walk off into the darkness. And there you have the story of a man by the name of Judas, actually. He was a man that cast out spirits in the name of the Lord as far as we know, perhaps preached the gospel in some sense. lived with him day after day, saw the tenderness of the Lord in his care for people, and that he was willing to spend nights in prayer, rise up a great while before it was day, and go out and pray for his people, and the love that was perpetually in his eyes. And this man could kick up his heel against him, choose thirty pieces of silver instead, and walk out. And Scripture says very appropriately, and it was night. It comes down to that, that every person is responsible for their salvation. There are a few passages in Scripture that are very clear regarding why it is that there are some that in glory will be with the Lord forever and why there are some that refuse the God above. And I'd like to just turn with you to one of them before we start in Acts chapter seventeen and lay some simple things out on the line. John chapter three. We'll begin in verse seventeen. None of us really need to read verse sixteen. It's on our minds. Verse seventeen. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned. But he that believeth not is condemned already. And here's the statement. Because. Why we say, Lord. Because he hath not believed. in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hateeth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that dreweth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. It's really that simple. There isn't one of us in here, I don't believe, if we would think at all, that would in any way confess that we are not sinners. The Lord says we've missed the mark. Nobody can measure up to the perfection of the Lord Jesus Christ in the will of God. And thank the Lord for that. When I get home to heaven, we've done a whole lot of horrible things to this earth that the Lord provided for us, but we'll never touch that place. Sin will never touch that place. And we're going to a place that is inhabited by the perfections of the Lord Jesus Christ. and the Lord will see to it that he's going to take our sinful lives he's going to take the sin in our lives and he's going to make us conform us transform us it's his work it's the gospel to be like the Lord Jesus Christ and to be with him but very simply it says again in this chapter it says men love darkness rather than light it's not their sins ultimately in a sense that keep them out of heaven it is their out and out refusal to have it the Lord's way Now in Acts chapter seventeen, we read about the apostle Paul coming to one of the great cities of the ancient world. And we read in verse sixteen that while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him. And then certain of the philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him. And some say, what will this babbler say? Other some, he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him unto the Elopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? For thou bring us certain strange things to our ears. 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 to hear something new. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill, and he said, Amen of Athens. Did you know that this old world today in the twentieth century, soon to be the twenty-first, is not becoming less and less like the time in the Gospel of Acts when Paul was in Athens. It's becoming more and more like the time when Paul was at Athens. We look back and we say these people were so archaic. They had this small world view. They didn't have airlines like we have and internet and pictures. They didn't know what was going on out there. Maybe they only knew one religion. Maybe there was just one that they followed. Look at all the new ideas that we have. If they could have just broadened their scope a little bit, they would have had some idea that, you know, in fact, there are other fathers out there. And there are other gods out there. And ultimately they all drink from the same fountain and provide the same thing. They were very, very narrow-minded and very protected. And they didn't know about all these other religions. Now what Paul says, did you know that around the time that the Lord Jesus was on the earth and Paul was talking to the Athenians, that there were people that believed in evolution, Mr. Darwin, you came on the scene way too late. And they believed in atoms. That the human being was just, they didn't exactly know what an atom was and the intricacy that we knew it. We know it today. But that people were made up of atoms. They were just dust. And when they died, that was it. And you say you believe in the resurrection of the dead? That this gospel is somehow supernatural? That there's someone that has the power over death? Well, maybe those people back then believed it. I don't know. You know something? They didn't. Few of them maybe. Not even the most religious people in that day believed it. The New Testament is very clear who is inhabiting the higher positions of religion, at least in the Jewish religion, and they were the Sadducees. And you know what they believed. They didn't believe in the resurrection from the dead. Of course they didn't. And neither did the most of the rest of the world. They were smarter than that. You see, these people, for instance, in Athens, it was a smaller world then, by the way, in some ways. But they had seen every God. They had talked about every God and mentioned him over and over and worked him through in this system of philosophy. They had seen it all. They had Hinduism. They had reincarnation. Their problem wasn't that they didn't have enough religions and enough knowledge. Their problem was that they had too much and they hadn't found anything. And they finally had to say, there must be something else out there. Maybe we'll make up a little statue and call it the unknown God. There has to be something. that will answer all of our questions because we've seen, we've heard it all. He says the Athenians and the strangers, they spent their time in nothing else but to tell her to hear of something new. And Paul has the joyous privilege to stand up in their midst on Mars Hill and say, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too, and the word can be translated this way, you are too religious. You're too fearful of the gods. You're too reverence of too many deities. You're too superstitious. For as I pass by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship him, declare I unto you. Now Paul could reason with you a lot better than I could ever think about reasoning with you, because I don't know that much about many of the world's religions, to be very honest. I guess I studied them in college like maybe a lot of the rest of us have. And we hear about the polytheist and all of these things are gods. I mean, the tree is God and the cancer cell is God and the drunk murderer is God and down and down we go and it really does not make a lot of sense to us. And we move on to the greater God, the greater good, the pantheism that everything is God. My grandfather passed away into glory as a result of cancer. And I want to ask you this question. If a doctor gets down in his laboratory and decides and learns how to kill a cancer cell, is that good or is that evil? And if that cancer cell takes the life of my grandfather, whom I love, is that good or is that evil? And which is the greater evil? It makes no sense whatsoever. Some people say, well, society rules and whatever society decides is right. And you put yourself as a Jew in nineteen forty four and someone else is the third Reich and they pronounce you to walk into a room and it'll be the last door that you ever go through and you say society rules and that doesn't make a lot of sense. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Humanism was spoken about beforehand that in a sense man is God. And I guess there you have it. You had it with Judas. You had it with Though he wasn't man, he was the greatest created being that there ever was, the first rebellion that ever occurred. You have it with Satan himself, because you wanted to exalt himself above everything that was called God. And in John chapter seventeen, there are those that submissively respect the Lord and appreciate him and take the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and his death for you. And there are those that say, I will. And what I know and what I believe is infinitely better. than what the Lord could ever say. In fact, there is no such thing as the Lord. It's a big mansert that could set across humanism. It was said by Charles Manson. Some of you all have probably read it. If you're God and I'm God, then what's the trouble? Nice character to take your theology from. And that's humanism. There's this long word called monotheism, and I don't fully know all of its meanings, but it has something to do about one God. and a God that if this world was gone is still out there and still sufficient and he stands alone and true and perfect and righteous and holy but somehow in his love he decided that he wanted people to love people to respond to his love and he had someone that he couldn't help but share we spent a lot of time in our family traveling in the mountains of Colorado and Utah in Nevada in different places where you can see the vast expanse of the beauties of creation. And we have seen some sunsets. And we've seen some lonely, beautiful nights of rain. And we've seen some spectacular night shows. And probably my parents had that in mind that sometimes when you spend a little bit of time in the outdoors, you get a feeling that you're really not all that big. In fact, you're pretty small. And I can remember working, I mentioned to you this afternoon, down in the Caribbean, beautiful sunsets. all by myself, no one to share them with. It's really not all that fun, you know what? I mean, it's nice to take a picture of it and look at it in two dimensions, twenty-five years from now, but it's really not all that fun if you don't have someone to share it with. And there is a father in heaven that has a son who is beautiful, and he wants to share him with us. And he and his love and in his infinite wisdom thought that he would set up a stage on which to present him, a pedestal on which to present him as the revelation of the character of God. And we're those that get to sit back and enjoy the beauties of the character of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that such a privilege? Why are we given all these senses? Senses of hearing and of seeing and of touching and read through your Bible sometime and pay attention to those. And notice that when it talks about taste, ultimately it says, Oh, taste and see that He is good. that all of these things have been given to us that we might experience not food and not necessarily sunset but that we might experience God a God above that loves us and that was willing to send his son to die for us let's read on what Paul says about this person that he loved in the heavens said again in verse twenty three to the unknown God whom therefore ye ignorantly worship him declare I unto you God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worship with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveeth to all life and breath and all things. Let's just stop right there. Paul speaks to these people and he says, there is a God above that made the world. Do you believe that? I believe that. There is a God that made the world. He is the creator of all things. One of my heroes in high school and in college, because I love the sciences, was a man by the name of Sir Isaac Newton. And Isaac Newton, according to history, made vast, it's made vast, sometimes you just forget what you're going to say, and the words don't come. You're not like that, though. Advances. There you go, in science. You think of how far we've come today. And we have come a long ways, but most of us just built on the stair steps that people have taken precedent to us. But he was a man that really made some changes. But somehow in the middle of his life he got sidetracked and off he went into these religious things. And I don't fully know all that he understood and all that he believed. But at the end of his life he felt it more important to spend time learning about the God above than he did about the results of the handiwork of the God above. And history says he wasted his life, but you and I know better than that. He was sitting at his desk one day and someone had made for this man a beautiful picture. Actually, it wasn't a picture. It was three-dimensional. It was a model of the universe, the known universe at that time. And it had been beautifully made. Now, again, things have not changed. And most of the people that he worked with did not believe in God. They believed in some sort of a sense of evolution. And he was sitting at his desk one day. One of his fellow teachers comes in, fellow professors. And of course he knew this person to be not a believer in the Lord at all. Not a believer in the creator. Not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And this man came in and he looked at this model and he thought it was a beautiful thing and it was evidently a very beautiful thing. And he said, where did you get this? Because he wanted one just like that for his office. And Sir Isaac Newton with very good thought, he said, well, I'm not really sure where I got it. He took a little different view, this other gentleman, and he said, well, who made it? And this time he looked him straight in the eye and he said, nobody made it. And of course the colleague kind of looks at him and says, well, of course somebody made it. It's lovely. It's beautiful. It's well painted. It's very well proportioned. It's a nice thing to have in your office. I'd like to know who the artist was because I'd really like one for my office. And he just sat back in his chair and he said, this is a toy. This is a picture of what we know is the real thing. and how thinking minds and scientific minds can say that nobody made this piece of paint and wood and wire or say that somebody had to have made this, but can look out to the real thing and say nobody made it. How do you come up with such incongruous conclusions? He would refuse one thing, but he would refuse to believe that there was a God above that made all things. The human being is a matchless model of the creatorial power of God. You know that our minds, for the human being, don't ever think that an animal is like a human being. You can take all the animals across the world, every kind, pack all their brains together, and you don't even come up with what you've got in your own head. They're quite a good distance away. We look inside of a human individual, and they're being down to the minutest parts, and we cannot understand it. Darwin himself looked at the eye, and he was confused. He said, I have no answer for it. We go up and we get higher and higher and higher in the heavens and they just go further because the Lord is that big and he's bigger than that. The Lord is the maker of all. And we hide ourselves in these little rooms of our mind and think somehow that we know a lot more than he does. Jericho was like that. You remember them in the Old Testament. The gospel had been preached from Egypt for forty years all across the big desert. The Lord's people were coming. They had something good to share actually with the Jerichoites, if you want to call them that. But they thought that they were above all of those other ideas. And besides that, they had a nice big natural river out there that nobody could cross at this time of year. And you know beyond that, they had a wall that was so big that nobody could ever get in. So you just stay outside. That'll be fine with us. And we'll serve our pleasure like Rahab did. We'll serve our pleasure without responsibility and without loyalty. And we'll just push you out, lock the door, and remain all by ourselves. Thank you very much. But fortunately, the Lord's a little bit bigger than nature, and he's quite a bit larger than the little walls that mankind makes with stone. Think of the size of heaven. Have you ever compared the height of the wall of heaven with the height of the city of heaven? I don't know what it is, but it's something like thirty thousand times, somewhere about three hundred feet high or so, is the height of the walls that surround the city of heaven. You say, wow, that's up there. That is way up there. And then you back off a little bit. And you realize that above that three hundred feet is about fifteen hundred miles of city. The Lord is pretty good size. The things that he makes are very good size and lovely. The Lord is the creator of all. And there's no question about it. And Paul says that's something that you need to know that the Lord is the creator and the maker of all. Let's read on. He is not worshipped with man's hands as though he needed anything. seeing that he giveth to all life. This is the Lord after all. Back in verse twenty four, he says, seeing that he is the Lord of heaven and the birth. I like what Luke says in his gospel when he's speaking of the triumphal entry of this Lord Jesus Christ, he's going to present himself as king. And the Lord Jesus preparing to come into the city says in accord with scripture that he is going to ride upon a young donkey. And he says, now you go talk to the Lord. Actually is the word that he uses. He says, if the Lord requests why it is that you're just coming up and taking this young donkey, then you tell him this. You tell them this. The Lord hath need of him. The Lord hath need of him. We heard last night about the glorious position. that God has left for mankind, that he created this and it was good, and he created that and it was good. And finally, at the very capstone of all creation, he placed humanity. In fact, it's in John, he uses that argument from the Psalms. He says, is it not true that in the Psalms you are called gods? But in this specific passage, the Lord is going to differentiate. And he says, if these lords have any question, you give them the answer, the Lord. hath need of it. You know, in the Old Testament, there are questions that are oftentimes asked and statements that are made regarding the Lordship of God. At the beginning of the book of Ezra in chapter one, there is a phrase that says, He is the God. Almost as an aside. It's a parenthetical statement. Did you know that He is the God? And all through scripture, there is this presentation. of the Lord as being God and above every other person and above every other being in the world. And through Scripture we find out that yes, in fact, he is. At the very beginning there were two that were vying for the attention of Adam and Eve. And one says, hath God said, let me fill you in on something a little bit different. And who did they follow? They should have followed the mind of the Lord in heaven. And they didn't. We go on through our Old Testament and we come to a great and glorious nation like the nation of Egypt. And they couldn't get it straight either who the Lord was. And they had beetles and frogs and all these other things, rivers that were gods. And the Lord just took them successively, one by one, and knocked them down and showed them who it was that was Lord. One by one, he took care of all their gods. There weren't any left. Even the children of Israel, God's own chosen people at one point in time, came up to a mountain and maybe some of them, in fact, some of them were questioning. Whether Baal was God or whether Jehovah was God. He said, if Baal is God, you follow him. But if Jehovah be God, you follow him. And we know what the Lord did. He showed them just a little bit of his lordship. And out of heaven came fire. And it licked up the altar. It licked up everything that was there. The waters, the stones. If he be God, then follow him. It's been a question that has been on the mind of mankind. throughout the ages from the very beginning. Who is the Lord? And Paul answers it very clearly. He says it this way in the book of Philippians, Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Paul says he is the creator of all, and he is Lord of all. He goes on to say in verse twenty five that he is the source and the sustainer of all. He controls history and he controls destiny. Tell me something about the source of your life. You know, it's really not all that hard to live. Have you noticed that? It really isn't. For some reason, my body takes a breath and I've never really decided to do it. In fact, I've tried to decide not to do it. We have these long tunnels back home and we I don't know if you've ever heard about that or not, but you see how long you can hold your breath if you can make it all the way through the tunnel. Guess what happens? You pass out. You try and take that life breath out of your body and what happens again. Well, you might be gone, but your body starts breathing again and on you go. I've never had to necessarily tell myself that I needed to take this beautiful source of energy called broccoli and make it into something good and make it work out in my life so that I have energy. I've never had to do that before. It just doesn't. It just happens. And the Lord is the source of life and the sustainer of life. He's not worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything, seeing that he gives to all life and breath and all things. And I've never yet willed my heart to breathe. It's one of those non-volitional things that happens. It just happens. It's happened up to this point. It may not be happening tomorrow because my time is in the Lord's hands. And I'm thankful for that. He is the source. of life, says Paul. And he goes on to say, And hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation. He is the determiner and the controller of all. And he is determined to get to know you. That's what I like about his determination. He's determined to present himself to me as the God that he is. He's called in Scripture the stone of stumbling. It's one of the things. And the Lord is like that in our life. He just gets in the way sometimes. And we have no choice but to contemplate the things of the Lord. Haven't you found it that way? Sometimes they're hard things. Sometimes they're easy things. But the Lord just gets in the way. And you stumble right over them. And like good old Winston Churchill said, some people there are that stumble over the truth and they get up and brush themselves off like nothing ever happened. And they go right on along. And unfortunately, that's the way most of the world is. They stumble over the truth. The Lord is determined. Yes, He determines all things. Fortunately, He's determined to get to know you too and to fulfill your needs and to give you a wonderful salvation in the person of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is in verses twenty seven and twenty eight, the near or the one who is near to every one of us. Verse twenty seven, that they should seek the Lord if happily they might feel after Him. and finds him though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, for we also are of his offspring. I like Romans chapter ten. It's a wonderful doctrinal passage. And he's speaking of the own people that his own people that he loves. And he says, the Apostle Paul doesn't fully understand why these ones that are the Lord's people are not saved and many questions are asked. And one of the questions is, is it because they do not know you? And the answer in a sense is, no, it is not that. It's given in a question that expects the answer, no, of course not, that's not it. In fact, my word is nigh you, even in your heart and in your mouth. As Christians, sometimes we feel that the world is pressing in upon us. It's the closest thing to us, right? That good old world. We have to get away from it. We have to push it back. You know what the closest thing to us is? It's not a thing. It's a person. And it's the Lord who is omnipresent. He's always there. Read Psalm one thirty nine sometime. And David's conception of how near God is to us. There's nowhere that you can go. The Lord is always there. He is near to all. He is pleading with all. He loves all. There was a gentleman that was at a Bible study that I went to on one occasion. He had been saved out of really a gross background of sin, to be very honest, and of drugs. He'd been on well over one thousand trips of LSD. And they say that in the United States, even after one or two, you can be declared legally insane. Somehow the Lord had saved him out of all of this. He'd married a Christian young lady, had a nice family. Things began to turn around for the worse a little bit later. Another gentleman who was also at this same study happened to be in the town where he lived, and he thought that he would go visit him. He had left his family, and he was back somewhere to where he used to be, back basically in the gutters is where he was. He found him in a bar, and he went in and he talked to him, and there was music that was going on that was so loud you almost couldn't hear anything. And he said, how is it with you? How is it with the Lord in your life? How are things coming in your life? How is your family? And he spent a little bit of time talking to him. And you know, this other man said, with tears running down his face, no matter what I do, I can't get away from the Lord. And when I was sitting here this evening, before you came in, there was a passage from a hymn that kept going through my mind that the Lord had impressed on my mind. And he said over and over in the midst of this din, it was right there in my head, Lord Jesus, I love thee. I know thou art mine, my rock and my fortress, my surety divine." And he said, that hymn just keeps going over and over and over in my mind. And I just can't seem to get it out. And he said, I know the Lord loves me. Well, he still had a very heavy road after that time. But he seems to be doing relatively well. I haven't heard lately how he's doing. It's hard, you know, to be involved in the sins of the world. And we read in the book of Galatians that God has not mocked, that whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. It wasn't to the unbeliever he was speaking. It was to the saints of the Lord in Galatia. What we sow will reap. And what we have sowed, we will reap. And I'll tell you, it's a hard road. But the Lord Jesus is always there. He is near to us. And he loves us. And we just can't seem to get him off of our minds. You know, there's something that if you're an unbeliever here tonight, there is someone that you will not be able to get off your mind even through all of eternity. And probably that's one of the worst things about hell, if you think about it as memory. Having the memory of blessed faces of other believers in the Lord, the memory of scriptures that you've read in the past, the memory of opportunities, the memory of hymns that were sung, of opportunities by faith to accept the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus as the only way to salvation. It'll be a terrible thing, the memory, at that time. The Lord Jesus, the Lord, is near to all. In verse twenty-nine, Paul goes on to say, For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is likened to gold or silver or stone graven by art. He it is that is so different. From every other God and Lord that there's ever been, that there is no comparison. He is the only one and true and living God. There's a smorgasbord of religions out there. There always has been. But there's still one that stands true. Lord willing, we're going to tonight later on with the young people take a little bit of time in a verse John fourteen six. Many of you I know know this verse and you've shared it with other unbelievers and you love it. And it speaks about the Lord being the only way to the Father. Say, what exclusive dogmatism is that kind of a thing? What do you mean it's the only way? We're bigger than that in these days, right? It's impossible for him to be the only way. I'll tell you, you look around us. There are a lot of things of which there are only one. There are a lot of places you can go that there's only one way, too. There are a lot of answers to mathematics that there's only one right answer. Guess what? Every other answer is just as wrong. I've tried it, believe me, on my test. I've tried a lot of mathematical problems and many of them I got wrong and they were wrong or right. Not one of these F's for fine or C's for O, I don't know what C stands for, G's for good like they get on papers these days. It's kind of an unfortunate thing in a sense that there's no longer any good and bad and right and wrong. It's okay. You know, you did pretty well on your math. You got about thirty of the sixty points right. That's not too bad. We had a biology professor, one person in the class, had probably by far the best test. He carried the whole problem out. It was one problem. He carried the whole problem all the way to the conclusion. There was a simple subtraction at the end. And he messed up on the simple subtraction. Three digits from three digits. Everything else he'd done right. Guess what he got in his paper? Zero. Now, some of us didn't even get that far and some got better grades than that. But he wanted to make the point to this person that maybe you think you know and you do. You did a tremendous job on this. But if you're talking biology and you're talking life, you don't try and get all the hard things right and then mess up on something simple because one wrong answer can mean a life. And you don't fool around with the trivial because nothing is trivial. There is one. And only one way. I thank the Lord for that. Jesus saith, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. You know, he's so kind that he doesn't even create confusion. He doesn't create, if there were two ways, then it would be impossible for one of them to be the best. And the Lord only gives the best. I'm sorry, that's his character. And that's just the way it is. There is one Lord. And there is one way all the way to glory. In fact, I'm not sorry. I'm rather happy about it. But there is one way. What does he say next? In verse thirty. He says that he is merciful and forbearing. In the times of this ignorance, God passed over or he winked at. But now he commandeth all men everywhere to repent. Because he hath appointed a day. In the which you will judge the world in righteousness. By that man whom he hath ordained. whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, and that he hath raised him from the dead. I thank the Lord that my Savior is the conqueror of that last great enemy known to mankind in its death. My Savior rose from the dead, and Paul had the opportunity to share that with all of these people in Athens. Maybe they were looking for that unknown God, but yet some perhaps would refuse. We read about that in the end of this chapter, that some I mean, it was a nice thing to say. We'll hear you again of this matter, Paul. I mean, that's a nice thing to say, isn't it? I don't really believe you now. We'll put it off a little bit. We'll hear you some other time. Some mocked. They were just straight up and down. And some believed. And I thank the Lord for those that believed. We never know how long we're going to have. We never know in the last breath that this determiner, this source of life is going to give. Given a lot of us breathed as we've gone about betraying the Lord, putting the Lord off, not enjoying him, taking his name in vain, he still gives us another breath. It's nice your heart still beats because the Lord is pleading in his love that you might come to know him as Savior. I appreciate the Lord for that. He is long suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, but there's coming a day. when the length of the suffering of the Lord finally is going to be at a standstill. And we talk to people all the time every day, it seems like every day, that say, you know, if there was just a God in heaven, this wouldn't happen, and that wouldn't happen, and all the evil on this earth wouldn't happen. I'll tell you, the Lord is long suffering like we cannot imagine, and someday he's going to take care of it all, and when he takes care of it all, it's going to be fully and permanently and righteously. And there won't be another chance. Some of these people put it off. I know a lot of individuals that we have prayed for that never had another chance to receive the Lord Jesus as their Savior. Many that are still mocking, that are living in their sins, deciding that they know better than the Lord does. I can't imagine that. And thank the Lord. There are a lot of people in here that you can talk to if you've got a thousand years about the good things that the Lord's done in their life because they know the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. I think of that scripture again that says, Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we might be saved. There was a man in the Old Testament, we'll just state this in closing, who had half a heart for the Lord. It seemed like anyway, maybe not even that. He probably had no heart for the Lord, to be very honest. His name was Saul. And Saul was a man that was head and shoulders above every other person in the nation of Israel. But you found out how big he was when there was an enemy that came to fight against the nation of Israel. And guess what? This man was tall, too. We had him referred to a little bit earlier. He was probably nine feet and something. Who should have gone out to fight this man? I mean, there was one, after all, Israelite, who the word says that was head and shoulders above everybody else. But he was a coward inside. And we know who it was that went out. It was David, and David went out with nothing else in the name of Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts. But you know, this man, Saul, was loved by the Lord in spite of the many times that he blatantly disobeyed him. There was a man that he brought into his life. His name was David. And there was no question, not even in the songs of the nation of Israel, who the Savior of Israel was. It was David. It was a man after God's own hearts. And this man, Saul, you know, once you're king, it's awful hard to stop being king. I think that's the way it is in our own life. Once we're king of our own life and we kind of follow our own will for a while, it's awful hard to stop doing that, isn't it? It's hard to stop doing that. And Saul had that problem. Saul wanted to remain king. Well, it was in the Lord's will for a time. But this man, Saul, was so angered with David, perhaps the beauty of just his countenance, because he was a man that was in love and walking with the Lord. We don't know fully why, but he decided that he was going to track this man down because he was part of the beautiful songs of the women of Israel. He wanted to get rid of him. Probably couldn't really stand to be in his presence, perhaps because of the glow of the Lord. And he goes out chasing this man. He's with his army as this big man, Saul. And even sometimes people like that have to take a little relief and get into the shade. And he decides to go into a cave. He was a big man, you know. But sometimes you're a little bit weak in the knees and you have to go in and get some shade and some cool. And he goes into the back of this cave and David and another one of his friends are there. Of course, David's friend said, here's your chance. David is a man that's trying to take your life. You know you're the anointed of the Lord. But David would not touch another who was the anointed of the Lord. But you know, he took just a little bit of cloth, didn't he, from off of his garment. Well, maybe it was more than that. It's hard to say. Saul, rather, he walks outside into the glorious daylight with his army down there, and all of a sudden a big snicker goes through the crowd because he's missing something. And pretty soon they find out what it was. Maybe he was shamed that day. And they found out that there was a man by the name of David that could have taken his life, but he decided not to. Why did David do that? You say, well, just to shame him, to show him that he really could have done it, that he was bigger than Saul, to show him what kind of honesty and integrity that he had. Well, maybe that was it, but I'll tell you, there was probably a higher reason. The Lord would take a man like Saul and bring him down to his knees and show him that he held his soul and his life into balance, but he wanted to give him another chance to follow the Savior of Israel if he really wanted to. It wasn't much longer.