Finding Your Way Back To God (Part 1) Series

Please note that there are other sermons in this series. If God uses this in your life, why not leave a rating? Study guides for this series are available. Just contact me.

Finding Your Way Back to God

Calvary Baptist Church

9/20/2009

Jeremiah 29:13

Portions from Secrets of Christian Living, F.B. Meyer, Chapter 1.

Jeremiah 29:10-15 For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. 11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. 12 Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. 13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. 14 And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.

OPENING:

• America is in a desperate situation today, economically, militarily, politically, morally.

• Sometimes it seems as if God is not interested.

• But the issue is not with God!

• He is as powerful as He ever was, for God does not change.

• The problem is with His people.

• The church is anemic, weak, and powerless.

• The church is weak because our families are weak.

• Families are weak because individual believers are weak!

• Any observant Christian who has been around for any amount of time ought to be alarmed.

ILLUS: The rebuilt Temple of Zerubbabel. The young men rejoiced, the old men wept. We are living in the day of the old men weeping and the young men rejoicing.

ILLUS: Big Ben clock look alikes. You can tell by the weight, but you would have to have an old one to compare.

ILLUS: The frog in the kettle. The water warms a little at a time, the frog does not notice until it is too late!

• We have accepted 2nd rate Christianity as the norm.

• If we are honest, we will admit that we are not reading our Bibles, praying, inviting others as we once did.

• Just the name of the Lord used to bring a tear.

• We wept over souls.

• We studied and marked our Bibles.

• We have family prayer and private prayer.

• Is it any wonder that our churches have become so dead, dry, cold and formal?

• We are in sad shape.

• But all is not hopeless.

• If you will listen, if you will act, you can find your way back to God.

INTRODUCTION (Deut. 4:29-31; 1 Kings 8:47-50)

• The title of today’s sermon may seem unusual or even heretical to some.

• But as we look into the Word of God, we will find that this truth is solidly biblical.

• Would you, in your mind’s eye, travel with me to a group of people that seem to have lost everything.

• They lost their land, their place of worship, their freedom … all that was precious to them.

• What would you do in such a time?

• These people, in captivity, go back to the promises of God that had been written some 800 years earlier.

Dt 4:29-31 — But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. 30 When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the LORD thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; 31 (For the LORD thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them. (Cf., 30:1-20)

• Perhaps many recalled the words of Solomon as he had dedicated the Temple some 400 years earlier.

1Ki 8:47-50 — Yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives, and repent, and make supplication unto thee in the land of them that carried them captives, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness; 48 And so return unto thee with all their heart, and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, which led them away captive, and pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name: 49 Then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause, 50 And forgive thy people that have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee, and give them compassion before them who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them: