“Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
‘In him we live and move and have our being,’
as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we are indeed his offspring.’” [1]
“I don’t like those people. They are not like us!” Are you quite certain of that? It is distressingly normal that people will segregate into tribes; and usually the tribes are composed of people that share some physical similarities such as melanin content. The influx of illegal immigrants flooding the United States are forced into tent cities in New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. They segregate into tribes defined by melanin or language, and the tribes have proved hostile toward one another. [2]
Modern western society increasingly segregates into tribes. Modern social tribes frequently do not necessarily have a racial aspect, but the greater distinction is in the worldview held. Our political expression blinds us and divides us so that we are unable to recognise the similarities we share. We tend to adhere to our own tribes, categorising those who belong to another tribe as somewhat less human than our own people.
The United States fought a war over this issue—brother fighting against brother, families torn apart as fathers chose one side and daughters chose the other, and as mothers chose one side and sons chose the other. The nation invested another one hundred years before coming to the place that such discrimination based on race, place of origin, or religion would be outlawed. In the past few years that nation, indeed almost all western nations, have once again moved toward rigid segregation. This time, however, the separation into tribes is pushed by people who wish to be called POC—People of Colour. And these who are choosing such segregation appear to be having considerable success as they drive others who have not grown up with such prejudice in their hearts.
The justly celebrated historian, Victor Davis Hanson, provides disturbing insight into a modern phenomenon that is driving societal changes in contemporary society, changes that must conclude in disaster for the nations of the west. He writes, in an editorial published this past year, “Few Romans in the late decades of their 5th-century A.D. empire celebrated their newfound ‘diversity’ of marauding Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Huns, and Vandals. These tribes en masse had crossed the unsecured Rhine and Danube borders to harvest Roman bounty without a care about what had created it. Their agendas were focused on destroying the civilization they overran rather than peacefully integrating into and perpetuating the Empire.
“Ironically, Rome's prior greatness had been due to the extension of citizenship to diverse people throughout Europe, North Africa, and Asia. Millions had been assimilated, integrated, and intermarried and often superseded the original Italians of the early Roman Republic. Such fractious diversity had led to unity around the idea of Rome. New citizens learned to enjoy the advantages of habeas corpus, sophisticated roads, aqueducts, and public architecture, and the security offered by the legions. The unity of these diverse peoples fused into a single culture that empowered Rome. In contrast, the later disunity of hundreds of thousands of tribal people flooding into and dividing Rome doomed it. To meet the challenge of a multiracial society, the only viable pathway to a stable civilization of racially and ethnically different people is a single, shared culture.” [3] And this is a lesson that political and cultural leaders of the modern western world seems to have forgotten, if they ever knew it.
It is a tragedy of colossal proportions when such segregation such as is increasingly promoted and tolerated within a society. It is more tragic still when segregation such as we now witness characterises any society. When an attitude of divisiveness, an attitude that originates in the world such as attitudes that now appear ascendant throughout contemporary society, is brought into the congregation of the Lord, the presence of such an attitude serves as a sign of terminal illness for that congregation, just as the promotion of segregation—on any basis—constitutes a terminal condition for any society. When I make the observation that such segregation is found among the churches of this day, I don’t mean to imply that the Faith is susceptible to disappearing from the earth, but I do mean that the practise of the Faith among the churches is being changed in ways that ensure that the Spirit of God is no longer working in power among too many churches that have been infiltrated by the spirit of this age.
You will have heard me say on multiple occasions that the world is divided into “saints” and “ain’ts.” Either people are saved, or they are lost; they are either redeemed, or they are condemned. People treat this present life as though this is all there is, or all that shall ever be. And yet, deep within the heart of every one of us is the gnawing certainty that there is so much more that lies beyond our limited experience. Even the most doctrinaire agnostic in the dark moments when she permits her mind to move freely understands that death does not end it all. She knows that something awaits her on the other side or this life; and that something disquiets her mind. In fact, when the agnostic or the atheist allows himself to think, there is the gnawing realisation that awaiting him is not a something, but a Someone. That Someone gives him his being.
A RELIGIOUS AGE — “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him” [ACTS 17:22-27a].
Paul met head-on the condition in which those to whom he spoke were enmeshed. The Apostle avoided giving deliberate offense, but he would need to identify the religious tenor of the society in which his listeners were immersed if he was to minister effectively. There is no remedy for error until there is a truthful diagnosis of the condition that must be corrected. And the people to whom the Apostle spoke in Athens were lost! There is no other word that would serve to identify them or the error that held them in spiritual thrall. Much like contemporary Canadians, the Athenians Paul encountered were religious, but they did not know the True and Living God. They were riding a rapidly moving conveyor that must end in eternal damnation.
As an aside, we who are redeemed must never hesitate to tell those in the world that they have no hope and they are thus without God in the world [see EPHESIANS 2:12]. Though the words may sting, seeming unduly harsh for those who hear us, we say this to those who are lost not because we imagine ourselves to be superior to them, rather we declare this because we once shared in the same damning condition in which they now grope in spiritual darkness. We are exhibiting compassion for those who are stumbling through darkened corridors filled with multiple snares as they move inexorably toward condemnation. We who are saved confess that our past is accurately described by the Apostle when he writes, “[We] were dead in the trespasses and sins in which [we] once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” [EPHESIANS 2:1-3].
Thanks be to our Saviour, we were not kept in that dismal condition. Rather, the intervention of God delivered us. Therefore, our testimony is, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace [we] have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” [EPHESIANS 2:4-7]. Amen! Amen, indeed!
The age in which the Faith of Christ the Lord was unveiled was a religious age. You might be inclined to think of the Greeks and the Romans as irreligious, but history reveals that these cultures were highly religious. Like almost all cultures in this day, even those cultures that claim to be agnostic and/or atheistic, religion has always defined how people conduct their lives. And the civic morality inevitably proves to be of greater importance than any other moral system operating within a given culture.
Canadians are a religious people. No, we are not a “churchgoing” people, nor are we anywhere near being reliably called a Christian people. Nevertheless, we are religious in the sense that we claim to be “spiritual,” whatever that term happens to mean. We hold to a series of beliefs in an afterlife, though we have no basis for what we believe. Let’s think about what we generally believe.
I’m not attempting to speak of the strange beliefs of various cults such as Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons—they are undoubtedly sincere in their beliefs concerning an afterlife, but these beliefs are sincerely weird. Honesty compels me to warn you that those holding to the beliefs of these cults are holding to the speculations of deceitful men, blinded by the god of this world. These teachings and those who hold to them are accurately described by the Apostle when he writes, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron” [1 TIMOTHY 4:1-2 NASB 95].
Neither am I speaking of the adherents of the “Religion of Peace.” Though growing in numbers within the nation, Muslims are still a distinct minority within Canada, constituting less than five percent of the population. [4] These benighted souls are darkened and often filled with rage and bitterness that leads the adherents to engage in violence and gross wickedness in the name of the desert demon they imagine to be a god.
To be sure, the fastest growing religious group in Canada are the “nones,” people claiming no religious affiliation. Over one-third of Canadians claim no religious affiliation. This does not mean they have no beliefs. Their beliefs concerning the afterlife is shared by most Canadians, I should suppose. The spiritual beliefs of Canadians are generally in line with the concept holding:
• There is a God, though He is distant from people’s lives;
• People are supposed to be good to one another;
• The universal purpose of life is being happy and feeling good about oneself;
• There are no absolute moral beliefs;
• God allows “good people” into Heaven;
• God makes limited demands on people.
This is essentially what was documented earlier in a study by Christian Smith and Melina Denton. [5] The tragic truth is that most Canadians have beliefs that are held in common, but these beliefs have no foundation in the revealed Word of God.
Most of us are uncertain of what Heaven is like or what those in Heaven do, but we have convinced ourselves that everyone goes to Heaven. And why shouldn’t society think this way. We who occupy the sacred desk have proclaimed a gospel that gives peace of mind rather than giving peace with God. We have become consumers rather than witnesses, and we now consider those who are lost and condemned as lacking direction, and grace is understood assistance rather than rescue. We have exalted the “self,” insisting that self-fulfilment is the goal of religion.
If Christians are traumatised by contemporary religious beliefs, we have no one to blame except ourselves. We who stand behind the sacred desk have ceased to declare a message that holds us accountable as sinners in need of redemption and thus having no particular need for a Saviour. And we who occupy the pews have ceased to hold those who speak to us accountable to the Word of the Living God. The seeds for this disastrous condition were sown years ago. You’ve heard me cite the words of a Baptist divine from generations past in other sermons. B. H. Carroll wrote many years ago, “It is greatly to be feared that much of the preaching of modem times has lost its depth and power. The plough does not run deep enough. There is no deep conviction of sin. There is no mourning for sin such as we find set forth in Zechariah 13. We find our way to a modern profession of religion, dry-eyed. There is no weeping in it. And hence, feeling ourselves to be but little sinners, we need only a little Saviour.” [6] Tragically, what that old preacher saw years ago has come to full flower in this day.
William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, purportedly said in an earlier era, “I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.” [7] Guided by the Holy Spirit, the old warrior was prescient, seeing the day that has now come upon us. There is little to distinguish many contemporary churches from Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or a multitude of modern religions save for the name over the door.
Modern church goers are prone to choose their church based on whether they are entertained rather than whether the Spirit of Christ works among those attending the services. Is the music lively? Or does the message of the Word scintillate with their spirit? Do the adherents clap and dance? Or do those in attendance bow their heads in awe? Do those sharing in the service feel good about themselves? Or is there genuine repentance when the message has been delivered?
The people of Israel put their faith in the Temple, receiving the LORD’s rebuke of misplaced faith. God, through His prophet, warned the people, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD” [JEREMIAH 7:3-4]. Too many professing Christians in contemporary churches have put their faith in their church, in their denominational affiliation, and even in the Bible they claim to believe though seldom reading the Book. Faith in any institution, if that faith excludes looking to the Son of God, will condemn the one who imagines he or she is pleasing God.
Israel was denoted as trusting in the rituals that had been given by God, and the very rituals served only to condemn them as they came to imagine that merely performing a rite would satisfy God and purify the soul. It is essential that we understand that the rites of the Faith are meant to bring us near to the Lord, they are meant to lead us to worship as we meet the Risen Lord of Glory. Merely performing rites and rituals will never purify the heart of sinful man. Through the rude prophet from Tekoa, God mocked those benighted souls who imagined they were worshipping because of the rituals.
“‘Come to Bethel, and transgress;
to Gilgal, and multiply transgression;
bring your sacrifices every morning,
your tithes every three days;
offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened,
and proclaim freewill offerings, publish them;
for so you love to do, O people of Israel!’
declares the Lord GOD.”
[AMOS 4:4-5]
In another instance, the prophet who experienced such grief in his home life was compelled by the Spirit of God to confront the people of God for their useless efforts.
“Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning,
they have become to him altars for sinning.
Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands,
they would be regarded as a strange thing.
As for my sacrificial offerings,
they sacrifice meat and eat it,
but the LORD does not accept them.
Now he will remember their iniquity
and punish their sins;
they shall return to Egypt.”
[HOSEA 8:11-13]
Among the professed people of God in this day are many—far too many—who trust in the rites of the Faith rather than putting faith in the Risen Lord of Glory. I cannot stress enough the foolishness of anyone imagining that performing a rite will suffice to coerce the True and Living God to accept them as pure.
Despite His multiplied promises to bless those who seek Him and honour Him, God’s holy people continued to perform the rituals that had ceased to have meaning with the result that the Lord disowned them. Through the Psalmist, God lamented,
“My people did not listen to my voice;
Israel would not submit to me.
So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
to follow their own counsels.”
[PSALM 81:11-12]
His people would not seek Him, teaching instead that the mere performance of the rites and rituals prescribed under the Law would suffice to compel God to bless them. In this, they were not unlike many among the contemporary churches. Let me be very clear so that no one mistake what is being said: participating in the ordinances of the Faith will condemn you if you have no faith in the Son of God. Merely going through the motions of participating in the rituals of the Faith will condemn you if you are not twice born.
SEARCHING FOR … “WE KNOW NOT WHAT” — “[God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being,’
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”
[ACTS 17:26-28]
We must not permit ourselves to go to seed on this knowledge, but it is nevertheless true that there is a spark of divinity in every person. I don’t mean that each person is a demigod, or even that each person reveals divine characteristics. We are fallen creatures, and we spend our days labouring under the curse of sin knowing that sin is a reality that leads to death. However, it is God Who gives us our being. Thus, each person bears the image of God. That image is marred as result of the sin of our first parents, and we only add to that sinful stain as we grope through our days in this life.
In his apologia before these learned members of the Athenian ruling class, the Apostle didn’t hesitate to reach back through the dim mists of time to the very beginning of mankind. I realise that we have been challenged to look back to the beginning of mankind is recent messages, [8] but since the text presents Paul’s defence of God’s interaction with mankind, it will be necessary to examine mankind’s origin once again.
This necessitates a return to the opening chapters of the Word of God. In the first chapter of Genesis, we see how the Lord GOD called into existence all that exists. When all had been created and made ready for the apex of His creation, God made a man. Whereas God had spoken everything into existence up to that point, He was intimately invested in man. The passage we are provided in the first chapter of Genesis provides an overview, reading: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” [GENESIS 1:26-28]. The man and the woman were the crowning glory of the Creation Week.
The chapter concludes with God’s instructions to the man He made. Thus, we read, “God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day” [GENESIS 1:29-31].
Man was charged to exercise oversight of the whole of creation. The dominion given the first couple, and thus given to mankind, would not allow despoiling the creation, but it would rather require oversight that would entail using what was made for man’s benefit without destroying the creation. There is comfort neither for wanton destruction of the earth nor for worship of the earth. Rather, the world and all that is in it was created for the benefit of mankind, and man is responsible to use what God wisely and judiciously has provided for the good of all mankind and for the glory of God.
Well, that is a broad overview of man’s origin, but as is common in Hebrew literature, the Word immediately provides a more detailed view of the origin of man. “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
These are the generations
of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” [GENESIS 2:1-7].
Allow me to wax somewhat poetic. On the basis of what is revealed in the Word, God dirtied His great hands with man. God invested Himself in giving man His being. Not only did the LORD God invest Himself in man by fashioning the man with His own divine hands, but the LORD bent down and kissed the man, giving Him the breath of life. God Himself breathed into man’s nostrils to ensure that the man whom God had formed would have life. We don’t nonchalantly take the life of any individual, for God alone is able to give life, and He gives to each one the life they enjoy.
The patriarch Job knew that God had given him his form and his being. Job said,
“Your hands fashioned and made me,
and now you have destroyed me altogether.
Remember that you have made me like clay;
and will you return me to the dust?”
[JOB 10:8-9]
In speaking as he did, Job was but anticipating the words that would be penned later by the Psalmist when he wrote,
“You formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.”
[PSALM 139:13-16]
Don’t overlook the fact that God gives life to each of us. We Christians are not prolife simply because we oppose the pro-abortion concept, we hold that life is sacred because God Himself gives life. No man can give life to that which is otherwise inanimate. Since God has given us our being, we should consider what this means in a practical sense. Since God gives us our being, what does it mean about our relationship to the Lord God Himself? And what does it mean, when we realise that God has given us our being, about our relationship to one another? Let’s answer the latter question first. Since God gives us our being, what should be our relationship to our fellow man?
Each person bears the image of God, just as God said when He created man. You will recall how we read, “God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
[GENESIS 1:26-27]
Man, both male and female, bears the image of God. All peoples, regardless of how we attempt to classify them, bear the image of God. Since it is the Triune God speaking in this instance, man bears a triune image. That is, man is a tripartite being—we have a body, we possess a spirit, and we are living souls. We reflect our Creator in this.
Since this is the case, there may be superior cultures, but there is no superior race. God gives each one his being, and we all share a common ancestry. As the Apostle notes, “[God] himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” [ACTS 17:25-26]. It matters not what country I was born in; I am a person created in the image of God!
A truth that is too often ignored in this day is that not all cultures are equal. Those cultures founded on the knowledge of the True and Living God and the revelation He has provided through the Bible which He has given are always superior to those cultures that don’t know God, or those cultures that ignore Him as God, or those cultures that exalt their own self-aggrandizing imaginations over the revelation that He has given. Let me be pointed in stating that Israeli culture is superior to Gazan culture. While it may not be popular to state this fact today, it nevertheless holds true. North American culture is superior to Iranian culture, or to Iraqi culture or to Indonesian culture. And the reason for the distinction in such cultures will be found in the adherence to God and the interaction with others that flows from that attitude of reverence for and worship of God.
If God gives to all mankind life and breath and everything, and if He determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling places, then we must acknowledge the dignity of mankind. We must no longer discriminate on the basis of race or sex, for we are alike given all things by God. The tragedy is that we won’t know this unless we acknowledge that we have a common origin, and that is by the hand of the Living God. We must not imagine that we are superior simply because we differ in sex or in race. We may have advantages conferred by culture, but it is not the contemporary culture that makes us superior to others; it is the culture of the Faith of Christ the Lord. And that shared Faith teaches us that before the Saviour, “In one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” [1 CORINTHIANS 12:13]. Indeed, as stated in the Letter to the Churches of Galatia, “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” [GALATIANS 3:26-28].
The arms of our Creator have reached out to embrace all who come to the Son through faith in Him. Jesus Himself has offered to all who will receive the promise, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” [MATTHEW 11:28-29]. Amen.
THE PROXIMATE GOD — “[God] is actually not far from each one of us” [ACTS 17:27b]. Among the ignorant and the lost within this world, the perception of God, if they think of God at all, is that of a distant god unconcerned, if not unaware, of what is going on in the world. Throughout the Word of God we can witness the tension between the common conception of God and the reality that is. We who know God, or rather who are known by God, know that He is very much involved in the affairs of man.
We may have heard someone use the phrase, “Man proposes, God disposes.” [9] Yet, it is the Living God Who oversees all that goes on in life, as noted among the proverbs,
“Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.”
[PROVERBS 19:21]
And He is intimately involved in the affairs of this world. The Wise Man has testified,
“The eyes of the LORD are in every place,
keeping watch on the evil and the good.”
[PROVERBS 15:3]
Elsewhere, we witness a prophet named Hanani who cautioned a king, “The eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him” [2 CHRONICLES 16:9]. And though his words enraged that king, he spoke the truth, truth that we do well to remember.
As Jewish pilgrims would make the trek to Jerusalem while observing the prescribed holy days, they would recite the Psalms of ascent. Those Psalms are included among the psalms that are in our Bible, and one of those Psalms makes this beautiful testimony of confidence in God and in His goodness.
“I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.”
[PSALM 121:1-8]
Assuredly God does watch over His beloved people, even as the Psalmist has testified. And we who have faith in the Risen Son of God know that He is ever with us—He is always near. Has not our Lord testified to us, as He charged us with our responsibility to serve Him. Recall how Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” [MATTHEW 28:18-20].
As he wrapped up what is required for all who would please the Lord, one writer has instructed us, “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say,
‘The Lord is my helper;
I will not fear;
what can man do to me?’”
[HEBREWS 13:1-6]
We accept such instructions not because we imagine we can coerce the Risen Lord of Glory to accept us, but we embrace them because we are confident that He has already accepted us just as He promised. We know quite well, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us” [1 JOHN 4:18-19].
This is nothing less than a logical conclusion drawn from the justly famous verse that speaks to all mankind: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” [JOHN 3:16]. If God created us, and if He gives us our being—life and breath and everything, than it should logically follow that He loves us. We are not toys scattered on the table as a child might do; rather, the God Who created us loves us and longs for us to know Him.
God is never far from us. If there seems to be a distance, it is because we have pushed God away, attempting to run from Him because we foolishly believe we are in control of our life. And that leads me to urge all who hear me this day to ensure that they have received the gift of life which is offered in Christ Jesus the Risen Son of God. The Living God has promised, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” [ROMANS 10:13]. He is near you, and calling you, extending His grace to you. Amen.
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ? 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] See Kevin Sheehan, Joe Marino and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, “Fatal NYC migrant stabbing was over woman – in tent city filled with armed rivals, split ‘camps,’ sources say,” New York Post, Jan 7, 2024, https://nypost.com/2024/01/07/metro/fatal-migrant-stabbing-on-randalls-island-was-over-woman-sources/, accessed 2024/01/08
[3] Victor Davis Hanson, “Premodern Diversity Vs. Civilizational Unity,” Townhall, Oct 27, 2023, https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2023/10/27/premodern-diversity-vs-civilizational-unity-n2630454, accessed 10 April 2024
[4] Religion Statistics in Canada for 2024 | Made in CA, accessed 7 May 2024; The Daily — The Canadian census: A rich portrait of the country's religious and ethnocultural diversity (statcan.gc.ca) 7 May 2024
[5] Christian Smith and Melina Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, New York 2009)
[6] B. H. Carroll, An Interpretation of the English Bible: James, Thessalonians, Corinthians, Volume 13 (Ages Software, © 2002) 42
[7] William Booth, cited in The Homiletical Review: July–December 1902, vol. 44 (Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1902) 382
[8] See Michael Stark, “A River Runs Through It,” sermon, 5 May 2024, https://sermoncentral.com/sermons/a-river-runs-through-it-michael-stark-sermon-on-salvation-281399, accessed 10 May 2024
[9] Translation of the Latin phrase, “Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit,” from Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (Logos Research Systems, Oak Harbor, WA 1996) 34
