2015-09-26 OA Fools Become Friends

This is Psalm chapter 14. The fool says in his heart there is no God. The psalmist right away is talking about atheists, people that say there is no God. God declares the person who says that to be a fool. God says they are corrupt, they do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. the Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand who seek after God they have all turned aside together they have become corrupt there is none who does good not even one have they no knowledge all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the Lord there they are in great terror for God is with the generation of the righteous.

You would shame the plans of the poor but Yahweh is his refuge. Oh that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion when Yahweh restores the fortunes of his people. Let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad. Now here we are in the Old Testament King David, one of God's great writers of the Old Testament scripture talking about people who deny God and calling them fools.

He's not saying that they're unintelligent. He's not saying people are stupid if they deny God. He's saying it's foolish to deny God. Let me read to you why. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul writes, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.

For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Paul is expanding on what David wrote in the Old Testament. David said that all people that claim there is no God are atheists, that they're fools, that it's foolishness.

Paul is expanding on that to explain why. He's saying that people deny God because of their unrighteousness. They suppress the truth that they already know about God, that they are without excuse for knowing, because God has revealed Himself perfectly to man, In such a way that everybody is accountable to God for their unrighteousness. Everybody who is walking around here today is accountable to God to know that you have done evil in the sight of God, that you have sinned in God's eyes.

So let's listen to what happens to people who are without excuse but suppress the truth that says, for although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. When you think about our world today and how we have gone from a world that exalts a creator, that acknowledges a good creator that made man and made the whole earth and all the things that are on earth.

And now we've gotten to a point where we worship animals, we've exalted the value of animals above the value of people. We saw earlier a truck driving by with an image of an embryo that had been aborted. That's murder. If you've been a part of an abortion, if you are pro-choice, choice if you've helped fund an abortion or you've had one. You're a murderer in God's eyes and you've murdered the most helpless human beings that have ever lived.

Babies. The result of worshipping the creation rather than the creator is that God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not be done they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness evil, covetousness, malice they are full of envy, murder, strife deceit, maliciousness they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil disobedient to parents foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless somewhere in that list of the different types of sinners that exist every one of us falls into that list every one of us in some way has rebelled against God or is rebelling against God right now maybe you don't do all those things but you don't mind that other people do listen though they know God righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them So now we have established the fact that those who deny that there is a God are fools. It is foolishness in God's eyes to deny what He has made evident.

We've now established why people do that. People do that because of a love for their own unrighteousness. Because everyone has the innate understanding that there is a God and that He's holy and righteous and that you are accountable to Him and you will be judged. Because of that fact, instead of acknowledging that, people suppress that truth in their unrighteousness.

And so you say there is no God because it makes you feel a little more comfortable about your sin against that God. Now listen. Psalm 14, we read that there is no one who does good and no one who seeks after God and no one who understands. Listen to the Apostle Paul expand on that in Romans 3, and then he goes into the solution for our problem. No one is righteous, no not one.

No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. How often every day do you use your tongue to deceive?

The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and mercy, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law although the law and the prophets bear witness to it the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe for there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood.

That means that Jesus Christ was able to satisfy the wrath of an angry, holy, righteous God for the sins of the world, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. this was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins it was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus then what becomes of our boasting it is excluded look we establish the fact that nobody seeks after God that no one is good, no one does righteous. Nobody understands the reason why you sin, the reason why you act the way you do is because you love sin in your heart. You were born to love sin because of our forefather Adam who sinned in the Garden of Eden.

And we have inherited that original stain of sin at our conception. And because of your love for sin and because of your innate knowledge of a God who will judge sin. You deny that God. You deny Him through your actions. You deny Him by blaspheming His name so that you can continue in sin. Some of you have gone so far as to say He doesn't exist.

Many of you simply worship a different God, a God that is happy with you, a God that is pleased with you just the way you are. But God the Father in Heaven sent the Son, Jesus Christ, to be the propitiation of sins. He sent His Son to be the Savior of the world so that Jesus Christ, the only man who ever lived, who was completely sinless, could suffer the death that a criminal deserves.

Criminals like you and like me. Jesus Christ, the righteous one, died on the cross. And when He died, He showed that He had become sin. That He had truly taken on the sin of His people. Because he was perfect, he should not have died. But he took on sin and he suffered the penalty of sin, the wrath of God on himself, and he suffered death.

And he laid in the grave for three days. And as predicted by the Holy Scriptures, he rose again by the power of the Holy Spirit. He was raised from the dead and he came back to pronounce and announce his victory over death and sin and evil. and days later he ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father where he continues to make intercession for his people if you are in Christ today he is at the right hand of the Father interceding on your behalf if you are not in Christ you stand condemned for your sin before a holy God we are here to tell you that it is by faith and faith alone in Jesus Christ that you could be forgiven of your sins.

That Jesus Christ, the righteous, was wholly sufficient to forgive all of your sins. And what we're here to tell you to do today, according to the Scripture, is to repent and believe the Gospel. To turn from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, from the works of the law, from the dead works of your religion, and to turn to the one God, Jesus Christ, Amen.

The one God, Jesus Christ, who's able to pay the debt for sinners. He is worthy of our praise and of our honor Your faith and hope must be fully in Jesus Christ and nothing else if you want forgiveness of sins and if you don want forgiveness of sins If you would rather self-righteously stand before God and just pay the due penalty of your sin, I will warn you that it is an eternal torment in hell. It will be a place where the fire will never go out and you will be given a new body that will not burn up and be consumed.

And you will eternally be cast from the presence of the Lord and His grace. And instead you will be under His wrath forever. You may say, eternal hell, that sure is a long time for 70 years or 50 years worth of sins committed. But when you consider the severity of your sins, in light of whom the sins were committed against, that is how you get an understanding of eternal hellfire.

God is eternal. God is infinite. So every single time you've sinned against Him, it has been worthy of an eternal punishment. And you can't pay it. I don't want you to spend eternity paying for your sins. I want you to know the grace of Jesus Christ, which has appeared to all men.

I want you to be forgiven of your sins because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has shed his blood because God demands a blood sacrifice for sin. God demands that blood is shed for the forgiveness of sin. This sounds a little strange in 2015 because we live in such a technology world, we live in such a sanitized world. But what it is, is to show you God's amazing holiness.

The idea that somebody has to die to pay for sins. The idea that someone must die to pay for sins is a very harsh thing for us to think about, but it shows you how perfect God is. That God is not a God who can be bribed with a few good works. You can't just put a little extra money in a plate at a church. You can't do a few more religious works or a couple of Hail Marys or a few extra feeding of the homeless one month to make up for your pornography use, for your adultery, for your blasphemy, for your pro-choice attitude and your negligence of trying to help the weakest of our world.

A couple of good works doesn't make up for that. Even if all you've done is lie, even if you haven't done some of these other more heinous sins, God is not a liar and God has said you shall not bear false witness when we lie we deny the character of God we deny that we've been made in his image and we disobey his law and we show that we don't trust him we show that we think that we know better than God and we deny his sovereignty we deny his lordship and his kingship and it is worthy of eternal punishment just for lying. God is King whether you want Him to be or not.

God is Lord whether you want Him to be or not. I'm not here to tell you to make Jesus Christ your Lord. I'm here to tell you Jesus Christ is your Lord. Bow to Him today. Repent of your sin and trust in His death, burial, and resurrection, His perfect life for the forgiveness of sins. And turn to Him today.

Come empty-handed like a beggar with nothing, begging for food. we're here today to minister to you the gospel of Jesus Christ that was brought to us we're here to tell you that we too need Jesus Christ there is no one who is righteous, not one no one who seeks after God this is the theme today I want to read to you from the first psalm this is a glorious psalm that exalts God's word gives us a picture of what God thinks of his own word and the attitude we should have toward it blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of Yahweh. Yahweh is God.

And on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does he prospers, The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. I don't want you to perish with the wicked. I want you to be found righteous. but the only way to be found righteous is to be forgiven by Jesus Christ and by His righteousness being given to you. It's a technical legal term called imputation. That is when Jesus Christ gives you His righteousness and in exchange you give Him your sin to be punished on that cross 2,000 years ago.

And that happens at the moment that you have faith in Christ. The Bible says all those who believe on Him shall be saved. all those who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you would repent and believe the gospel, you shall be saved. The Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. The Bible says if you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and that God has raised Him from the dead you shall be saved There is no mention of works There is only the mention of Christ righteousness being imputed given to sinners who don deserve it so that you can be seen by God as righteous, so that you can be seen by God as if you'd never sinned.

That is the promise of the Bible. That is the promise of a relationship with Jesus Christ. In John chapter 10, Jesus said, I told you and you do not believe me. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me. But you do not believe me because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one. This is Jesus Christ declaring a couple of great truths. One, if you are one of his followers, if you are one of his sheep, the good shepherd's sheep, nobody can take you out of his hand, not even yourself.

You are completely safe and secure once you know Jesus Christ. The second great truth here is that many don't believe because they're not His sheep. We're here today to call you to believe. We're here today to tell you you have no excuse for your denial of God, for your fist shaking towards God, for your ignorance of God. Even your ignorance of God is considered a sin in God's eyes.

You are expected to look for God, to search the Bible in Hebrews. God says that He rewards those who seek Him diligently we're here today to tell you the information you need to know to repent of your sin and to trust Jesus Christ as your Savior you cannot do it on your own He is the way, He is the truth He is the life and nobody can go to the Father but through Him nobody's going to make it to heaven except through Jesus Christ If you stand before God on Judgment Day without Jesus Christ, you will be cast into an eternal fire. A fire that will not burn you up, a fire that will not consume you, but will torment you forever, and we don't want that for you.

We want you to be forgiven of your sins by grace, through faith in the risen Savior, Jesus Christ. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the bright and morning star. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He's the resurrection and the life. Jesus Christ is the light of the world.

He's the good shepherd. He's the door of the sheepfold. That means He's the only way in. Anyone who tries to sneak into heaven any other way will be caught and will be cast away. You must go the way God says to go. And God has said that Jesus Christ is His one way. if you spend your life trying to please God by the works of the very hands He gave you, as if somehow He owes you something because you've done what you were expected to do anyway with your hands, a terrible, insufferable fate faces you.

We do not want that for you. we want you to be forgiven of your sins we want you to know that Jesus Christ alone is righteous and we want you to know that he offers that righteousness to each and every one of you that he has a global call to all men to repent to all women even children repent of your sins and trust Jesus Christ as Savior trust that Jesus Christ when he was on the cross that he was thinking about your sin and that He was paying for it by suffering the wrath of His Father. I just read that Jesus and His Father are one. They're inseparable.

But He suffered the wrath of God for sinners like you and like me. And I'm here to tell you that He is worthy of your praise, that you should bow down to Him, and you should tell Him that you love Him, and you should ask Him to forgive you of your sins because of His righteousness and not your own. Rock on. We want you to know that Jesus Christ is full of grace.

And that becoming a Christian is not necessarily easy. That there is a cost involved. It isn't as simple as saying, hey, I want my sins forgiven and then moving on with your life. You are to repent of your sins. There needs to be a conscious turning away from the life you were leading. And a turning toward Jesus Christ.

There needs to be a hunger for God's word. that you should have a desire to read the Scripture and to know it. And as my brother read earlier, all those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. That's 2 Timothy chapter 3. We are living in a world where there's an increasing intolerance for Christian beliefs, for Christian viewpoints, for Christian morality. think about the way you feel about me standing here right now ask yourself if you're full of tolerance for my beliefs if you think it's a wonderful thing that this guy's out here sharing what he believes is true the beauty though is that I'm actually preaching what is true not all truth claims are equal some of them are false, some are true investigate the things I have said by opening God's word yourself and letting it speak for itself.

God's Word is powerful. It's able to accomplish all that it's intended to accomplish. The word is able to open up your heart and do a form of heart surgery on you. It can circumcise the hardness of the outside of your heart and give you a heart like flesh. So that you will believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that Jesus Christ paid for your sins on the cross, if you will believe.

God's word has that power to do that. I ask you if you hear me today, do not reject what you're hearing. If you're hearing the preaching of God's Word, do not harden your hearts as in the days of the rebellion of Israel. But submit yourselves to Jesus Christ. Submit yourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is worthy of all praise and all honor, all glory.

He earned it. The only perfect man who ever lived, he also came back from the dead, wrote a book about it. It's called the Bible. He inspired 40 different writers to write 60 different books over a course of 1,600 years, all with a single theme. The Messiahship, the anointingship of Jesus Christ, the coming Savior. From the beginning of Genesis, it talks about the seed of the woman that would crush the head of a serpent.

The theme of the Old Testament, all the way up until the time Jesus comes, is that a Messiah will come to save His people from their sins. Then God picked out a special people, Israel, in the early part of the Old Testament, and then He worked with them the whole time as an example for us of how we will fail to meet God's standard all the time. As an example to us of our need for faith in a Savior.

Our need for a high priest to go between us and God and to be a mediator between us and God. But then the New Testament comes out right and says, there is only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. He is the high priest that came finally once and for all to give one sacrifice for sin. And Jesus Christ today commands you to repent of your sin and to trust in Him.

Don't go to an earthly priest. Don't go to some man and ask that man to try to make you right with God. that Jesus Christ is a man who can make people right with God because He's also God. I read about that earlier. God says those who say that are fools. We want you to know that Jesus Christ is able to forgive all your sins. We want you to know that He's righteous and that He's good.

And that there is no sin that is beyond His grace. But if you will not turn from your sin, if you will not repent and trust Jesus Christ as Savior, if you do not believe that He lived a perfect life, that He suffered on the cross, that He died, was buried, and came again, three days later rose from the grave, you cannot be saved. You must believe these facts about Jesus.

You must put your trust in the Jesus Christ of the Bible, the one that has commanded us to turn from our dead works of the law, to turn from evil ways this is the joy we have though the joy we have to be turned from our sin and given the power of the Holy Spirit to help us in this life to be able to overcome sin to be able to have victory over sin in this life not permanent victory not complete victory all the time but we have growth we have hope in this life of our future glorification, because of the evidence of our sanctification, because of our faith in Christ Jesus, who can make you holy. Listen to this psalm, Psalm 149. Praise Yahweh, sing to Yahweh a new song.

His praise in the assembly of the godly. Let Israel be glad in His maker. let the children of Zion rejoice in their king let them praise his name with dancing making melody to him with tambourine and lyre for Yahweh takes pleasure in his people he adorns the humble with salvation let the godly exult in glory let them sing for joy on their beds let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands to execute vengeance on the nations and punishments on the peoples, to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written. This is honor for all His godly ones.

Praise Yahweh. God is a God of vengeance. He is a God of jealousy. and God hates wickedness. God hates sin. He hates evil. Because God hates sin and evil, you walk around somewhat comfortably knowing that bad things may not happen to you because God restrains wickedness so much.

If God did not restrain wickedness, think of all the things that would be going on right now. Think about if we did not have police officers and judges and lawmakers restraining wickedness. All those things are provided by God to make our existence here possible. but as we think about a God of vengeance a God of great hatred for sin a God who will have vengeance upon his enemies we think about that same God the same God who hates sin so much that he will cast people into hell for eternity The same God who wants to execute His wrath against all of His enemies also sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to reconcile His enemies to Himself.

God sent His only Son in order to make His enemies His friends. That love To show you how extremely evil our sin is Just think about the fact that God had to die Jesus Christ is fully God And He had to die and suffer the wrath of His Father in order to forgive sin. That's because sin is so heinous and sin is so terrible, but it's so natural for us, it's almost hard for us to believe that it would send us to hell. sin comes so normally to us even a little child knows and it comes so naturally we don't want to believe that we're inherently evil but that is exactly what the Bible says the soul that sins shall surely die we are here today so that you may have eternal life so that you can know the one true God who offers eternal life to all men Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, came into the world so that all those who believe in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life.

What is important to understand is that Jesus Christ lived a completely sinless life. He never once broke God's law. He never lied. He never stole. He never fornicated or even looked upon a woman with lustful intent. Jesus Christ never murdered.

He never murdered anyone. Did you know that abortion was also a first century issue in early Rome? It was actually a very common thing. And the very early church came to the same conclusion that we do now, that abortion in all forms is murder. And many of you walk around and you enjoy the fun of fornication. and then you allow abortion to be the solution to the consequence of your evil, of your wicked heart.

Or maybe you just don't care if somebody else has one but you don't want to have one. If you have had an abortion, there is forgiveness in Jesus Christ only. But there also needs to be acknowledgement that you have sinned against a holy God. It is vital that we understand what sin is if we're going to be able to know that there needs to be a solution.

You must know that every time you open your mouth, those words that you use are heard by God, they are remembered by God, and that He will judge you for every idle word that you shall speak. He also knows the thoughts and intentions of your heart. Now many of you have been able to clean up the outside, You're not worried about somebody judging the things you say or even most of the things you do.

And you're probably, some of you probably live a pretty decent outward life. But if you knew you were going to be judged on even the thoughts of your heart, on the intentions that you have sometimes behind the outward good deeds, the selfish motives that you have. The Bible says that anything that is not done from faith is sin. if you do not have faith in Jesus Christ, in one sense or the other, every action that you take is sin to God.

All of our righteousness is as a filthy rag to God There is nothing that any of us can do to be pleasing to God apart from Jesus Christ. But that's why we're here today, to tell you how to get to Jesus Christ. And many people want to make getting to Jesus Christ very hard. You can take the Roman Catholic Church, or you can take the Mormon cult, or you can take Jehovah's Witnesses.

There are people trying to make it very hard for you to find Jesus Christ. They are obscuring who He really is and they are hiding Him behind religiosity, behind religious works, behind religious things that you do. And we're here to tell you that Jesus Christ is omnipresent. He's here right now and He's available to you at any moment. Jesus Christ is ready for you to call upon Him at any moment to be forgiven of your sins.

You do not need to do anything special. You don't need to be in a certain position. You don't need a particular man or some kind of priest to help you. Jesus Christ is present right now and available to you. Jesus Christ can hear your prayer right now if you pray repentance and faith toward Him. If you repent of your sin and turn to Jesus Christ and beg Him for mercy because of your sin and beg Him to give you His righteousness, He is available immediately. there is no other way to get to God but through Jesus Christ, and there's no way to get through Jesus Christ but for you to have that encounter with Him through His Word, which I'm giving you today.

There is no excuse for anyone here on Judgment Day now either. You will be held accountable for the fact that you knew about Jesus Christ. You will be held accountable for knowing that Jesus Christ suffered, died, and was buried for sinners and that He rose again for the justification of men. We want you to enjoy the football game. We want you to have a safe time, a fun time.

I'd like everyone here to go home safely and happy and nobody lose their stuff. We're not telling you you can't watch football. We're not telling you you can't root for your favorite team or dress up. We just want you to know that you need to be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ when you stand before God. Because you're going to stand before God blind, poor, and naked someday.

And you're going to have nothing but your own sin and your empty hands with no righteousness of your own. Or you're going to have Jesus Christ completely covering you and you're going to have His blood that had already satisfied a holy God. And you're going to go into heaven justified by faith in His blood. So today is the day of salvation. Do not harden your heart.

Come to Jesus Christ today. It is our desire to see you come to Jesus Christ, to see you interested, to see you even want to just take a card or exchange your number so we can talk about it further. That is our desire for you, that you would know the one true living God, Jesus Christ. Amen. I need paper!