Sticking With The Source

Sticking With The Source

How to Stay Connected to the Unlimited Supply

9/22/04

I. Introduction

Drama

II. Casting Down Idols

Tonight we’re talking about “Sticking with the Source: How to Stay Connected to the Unlimited Supply”

I don’t know if you noticed the symbolism in the sketch tonight, but the “Snappy Cap” is basically an idol. Something magnified above god. Chuck Waller would have you believe that the “snappy cap” can meet your every need and that you should look to it as your source.

While you may not have a “snappy cap,” you definitely look to something or someone as your source- the place from which you get everything you want or need. What are you looking to as your source? Is it your parents? Is it your boyfriend/girlfriend? Is it the latest reality show that’s going to meet your need? Is it a prized possession that you can’t live without?

Exodus 20 3 "You shall have no other gods before me. NIV

One of the Ten Commandments plainly points out that we’re to have no other source than God Himself, that we should look to Him, and stick with Him.

Acts 17 16While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean." 21(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

22Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:|sc TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

24"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28’For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ’We are his offspring.’ NIV

Even in the New Testament, people were looking to things other than God as their source. But Paul, as he’s walking around, notices an inscription to “an unknown God” and he begins to tell the Athenians about this “unknown God.” And he explains to them that this unknown God is the one and only God, the source of life and breath that wants men to have a relationship with him. And from this context comes the verse, “in him we live and move and have our being” meaning that He’s our source and we’re nothing without Him.

III. Look to the Source

Psalm 121 1I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where will my help come from? 2My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth. NIV

George Muller was a man of great faith in our God as a provider for the children in his orphanage in England. One day things looked bleak for the children in his orphanage at Ashley Downs. It was time for breakfast, and there was no food. A small girl whose father was a close friend of Muller was visiting in the home. Muller took her hand and said, "Come and see what our Father will do." In the dining room, long tables were set with empty plates and empty mugs. Not only was there no food in the kitchen, but there was no money in the home’s account. Muller prayed, "Dear Father, we thank Thee for what Thou art going to give us to eat." Immediately, they heard a knock at the door. When they opened it, there stood the local baker. "Mr. Muller," he said, "I couldn’t sleep last night. Somehow I felt you had no bread for breakfast, so I got up at two o’clock and baked fresh bread. Here it is." Muller thanked him and gave praise to God. Soon, a second knock was heard. It was the milkman. His cart had broken down in the front of the orphanage. He said he would like to give the children the milk so he could empty the cart and repair it.