Sermon for Sunday April 17, 2022 The Unknown God

And if you would stand to honor the reading of God's Holy Word, Acts 17, verses 16 -34.

These are the words of the living God. Now while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was provoked in him as he saw that the city was fully given to idolatry.

So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him, and some said,

What does this babbler wish to say? Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching

Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and they brought him to the

Oropagus saying, Maybe know what this new thing is, this new teaching is that you are presenting, for you bring some strange things to our ears.

We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing some new thing.

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Oropagus said, 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 is 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.

But then, being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine, that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone or an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

The times of this ignorance God overlooked, God winked at, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent because he has fixed the day, he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has appointed.

And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Now, when they had heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, we will hear you again about this.

So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom were also

Dionysius the Arapagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

Thus far is the reading of God's holy word. Lord, add your blessings to your word as only you can, for it's in Jesus' name

I pray. Amen. So in this passage, in this text, we have the historical account of Paul going to this place called the

Aeropagus, Mars Hill, this high place in the city of Athens. And we'll be giving you some information and some context about that.

But as we consider this, let's consider several things. There was a book written called

Therefore Stand, written in 1945 by a man named Wilbur Smith. And in a chapter of this book, he gives some commentary on Paul's speech at the

Aeropagus. And along the way, he comments on the similarity between ancient Athens and modern

America. Really, we can say the world at large. Really, this similarity is not unique to America.

It's not unique to Africa. It's unique to the entire world because the world, as the

Old Testament prophets put it, they have all gone a -whoring after other gods.

But there is but one true and living God. So Wilbur Smith writes in his book and he says this, for all the obvious differences in culture and language, there is a similar approach to the problems of life.

And there are three evidences of this similarity that seem even more true a half a century later.

Remember, this book was written in 1945. He notes that the men of Athens worshipped the human intellect.

They also loved newness and they loved endless discussion of new ideas.

Finally, they valued tolerance and diversity as seen by their ever -expanding pantheon of gods.

Now, the more things change, the more they stay the same. People assume that the world just keeps getting worse and worse and worse.

But my friend, things have continued from the beginning as they will until Christ wraps everything up.

Sin is still deadly. Men and women are still dying today and they're dying because of sin.

We are born in sin. We are shaped in iniquity. Therefore, our hearts and our minds are hell -bent on our own ways.

And we seek gods, but not the God of the Bible. So, Wilbur Smith said this, they value tolerance, they value diversity as seen by their ever -expanding pantheon of gods.

The same is true today. We, too, worship the human mind. We, too, love new ideas.

We, too, exalt tolerance as our highest virtue in the land in which we live today.

When you worship intellect, you get educated arrogance. When you worship intellect, you get educated arrogance.

When you worship newness, you get dissatisfaction. When all you want is something new, you're never satisfied.

But my friends, brothers and sisters in Christ today know this. Christ is able to satisfy your soul.

He is the bread of life if you are hungry. He is the water of life if you are thirsty.

Always seeking something new will lead you to dissatisfaction.

Wilbur Smith went on to say, when you exalt tolerance, what you get is constant uncertainty.

When the goalpost is always moving, when the boundary markers are always shifted and set to this side or to the other side, you have no certainty in life.

But our friends, again, let me point you to the scriptures. The writer of Hebrews said it this way in Hebrews chapter 9, verse 27.

It is appointed unto man once to die and after this, the judgment. There is certainty in life.

There is a heaven and there is a hell. There is sin and there is death. There is eternal life and there is

Jesus Christ who arose from the grave. Wilbur Smith goes on to say this.

The more you travel around the world, the more common humanity seems to be. Now, this place in Athens where Paul was, they knew everything seemingly that was knowable, except the most important thing.

They did not know God. Do you know God today? Do you know Jesus Christ, God's only son?

Good morning. Have you a relationship with the Lord that made the heavens and the earth?

Do you know him today? Now, they did not know

God. They did not know what to do about their sins. They did not know where to find peace. They did not know how to discover the hope of heaven, which leads me to this following crucial point.

It is possible to be highly educated and to be deeply religious and still to be totally ignorant about God.

It is possible. They're called educated idiots. And my friend, again, as Steve Lawson said,

I said it a couple of weeks ago, I think sin will make you stupid. You can be educated, have all the knowledge in this world.

You can have the best of jobs in this life. But my friend, what will it profit you if you gain the whole world and yet you lose your own soul?

What must we do? Look unto Christ today and be saved for Christ is the risen savior today.

So who are you worshiping today? What I am proposing this morning, what I am saying, let me be plain, let me be clear, let me be blunt.

What I am saying today is that there are many who call themselves Christians who do not worship the

God of the Bible. You are not a Christian because you go to church. You are not a

Christian because you've been baptized. You are not a Christian because you've walked an aisle or prayed a prayer.

If you are a Christian, it is because the God of glory has regenerated your stony heart and has given you a heart of flesh, has given you eyes to see him, has given you ears to hear him, has given you grace to come unto him so that you can be saved.

And my friend, a Christian can be certain of eternal life. A Christian can most certainly have absolute confidence in the fact that when you do die, and we will, save Christ comes first, when you do die, that you have hope of eternal life.

And even beyond that, that when Christ does come back, if you're already dead, if you've already fallen asleep, if so be it in the faith, it'll be all right, because you're going to be the first one to come out of the grave when

Jesus comes back again. This is good news. Now, many have been raised in church.

You've heard the message each week, yet you go away with no sense of awe. You go away with no sense of wonder.

You go away with no sense of the fact that the Lord is the righteous judge of all men.

And it seems as though that God means nothing more to some people, nothing more than some new thing that they fancy for a period of time.

You like it for a week, you like it for a month, you like it for a year. Sometimes you like it for five years.

But that new thing always loses its glow. Its shine always fades.

But friends today, I want you to know that the God of all glory never loses his shine.

He never fades. He never waxes and he never wanes. He remains steadfastly the same forevermore.

So here in Acts chapter 17, we read about the apostle Paul traveling to Athens.

This is where we're getting to in the text. All the people, the Bible says, spent their time and nothing else but either to hear or to tell some new thing.

Much of the so -called Christian world today is doing the same exact thing. There is so much religious activity, but so little focus on the giver of life.

So little focus on the great and the awesome God of the Bible. Who is he?

The little ones in the church and you adults can answer that question. What is God? God is a spirit and he has not a body like men.

Amen. Is there more than one God, church? No, there is but one

God. In how many persons does this one God exist? Three persons.

Who are they? The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Praise be unto

God. Who is he? What does God love? What does he hate? How do we know these things?

We hear it in the word of the living God. How can it be that this

God who is professed to be known by so many is so far removed from what the

Bible describes him as? It is as though that God is proclaimed to be only as big as the newest fad or the newest feeling of the day.

People will say, well, I want to go to a church where I hear something new every week. Friends, you need not hear anything new to be enamored by the glory and the goodness and the mercy and the grace and the love of God.

You need not hear anything new to understand that we have a solemn responsibility to recognize the holiness of God, to understand the wrath of Almighty God.

My friend, when you consider God, you will never run out of consideration. God is bigger than a fad, he's bigger than a feeling.

In Genesis 1 -2, remember, know this, he is the creator. In the beginning,

God created the heavens and the earth and everything that's in it. God, if you go to John chapter 4, verses 21 through 24, you'll see

Jesus' discussion with the woman at the well, and he reminds her.

She said, we worship God. Jesus said, you know not what you worship, but there will come a day when all who worship

God will worship him in spirit and in truth. God is a spirit.

1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 15 and 16. We find God is bigger than a fad,

God is bigger than a feeling because the apostle Paul writes these words that he is the blessed, the most holy and the most potent sovereignty of all, that he is the king of the kings of the earth, that he is the

Lord of the lords of the earth, that every knee in another place, that every knee and that every tongue will bow and confess that Jesus Christ alone is the

Lord. So, historical context at this time, that this takes place here in Acts chapter 17, verse 16 through 34.

The historical context, Athens, the city itself. Athens was in a period of decline, especially politically, although it was recognized still yet as a center of culture and education.

It may have been deteriorating politically, it may have been deteriorating physically, but it was still held in high esteem as a place of culture and education.

They prided themselves on their education. While the glory of politics and commerce of Athens had faded, the city still remained a university and numerous beautiful buildings, but it lacked the influence that it once had.

Athens was a city populated by, quote, unquote, this commentary said, by, quote, unquote, cultured pagans.

And look around us today, church. This is what you see when you look at the world. We see very refined folks.

We see very nice looking folks, very cultured folks. But my friends, if they have not the faith of Jesus Christ, they are pagans and they are idolaters worshiping the

God of their own minds. And as the Apostle Paul preached to Athens, that is what we preach to you today.

Do not worship a God of your imagination or a God of your mind, worship the God of the scriptures.

In the MacArthur Study Bible, he said concerning Athens in its zenith,

Athens was the home to the most renowned philosophers in history, including names we all will recognize,

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, who was likely probably the most influential philosopher of all.

Two other significant philosophers of that day were Epicurus, the founder of the

Epicureans, which is what we're reading about here, and Zeno, the founder of Stoicism.

These were the two dominant philosophies of the day. So now let's look at the text, verse 16 through 20.

We're going to see several things here. Let's read that text again. Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, he was waiting for them at Athens.

The scripture says his spirit was, the King James says, stirred within him. The ESV says provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

And it had been said, R .C. Sproul said in his commentary on the book of Acts on this particular chapter, he said it had been sarcastically spoken that it was easier to find an idol in Athens than it was to find a man.

Idols were so plenteous. So we see here his spirit stirred within him.

And this, I believe, speaks volumes to us as God's people. Church, we do not need to turn a blind eye to the things of this world.

Sticking your head in the sand and pretending like things are normal does not help anything.

We must be aware that there is one hope for this world. There is one hope for the cultured pagans.

There is one hope for the idolater. There is one hope for the adulterer. There is one hope for the homosexual.

There is one hope for the hard -hearted, rebellious sinner.

And that, my friend, is the hope of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins, that he was buried and that he arose again on the third day.

So notice what Paul did in verse 17. He reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons.

So he made a point to go to the synagogue and to reason with those in the synagogue, those Jewish people in the synagogue.

And notice what the scripture says, and in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be there.

We need to have gospel conversations with folks in the world. You do not have to stand behind a pulpit to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We must be proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ when we're at Home Depot, Chris, when you've got

Cooter pushing him down the aisle and he's barking and every eyes turned on him, take advantage of that.

Somebody might ask, why is he barking? You can say, well, I'm glad that you asked. And boom, there's your gospel opportunity.

We need to be having gospel conversations. And this is what Paul did. He was having gospel conversations.

Verse 18, some of the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophers also conversed with him.

And some said, what does this babbler wish to say? Others said he seems to be a preacher, a set of forth of foreign divinities because he was preaching what?

Jesus and the resurrection. Now, how strange. In our day, it's probably hard for us for truly to imagine this because it seems like versions of the gospel are going all around the world today.

Gosh, we hear versions of the gospel, my friend. But what we need to proclaim is the biblical gospel that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried and that he arose again on the third day.

Paul told the Galatian church, if I or an angel come unto you preaching any other gospel, let him be a curse.

There is no other gospel for there is no other name that has been given among men by which you must be saved today.

So what what happens here? Paul is speaking to them. They call him a babbler. That word in the

Greek means a seed picker. They call him a crazy man that was just picking out little things here and there.

But who's the crazy man? When we put this in proper perspective, right? Who's the crazy man? Who are the crazy men?

Those who are worshiping the God of their own mind are those who are sound in their mind by worshiping the

God of the scriptures. There is a very defined line that is drawn here.

And the Bible says in verse 19, they took him and brought him to the Arapagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting.

For you bring certain strange things to our ears. And we want to know what these things mean.

You know what just happened here? What we just read was we got to see in words.

God opened a divine door of opportunity for Paul. He didn't open the single white door.

He opened the two door. He I mean, he gave it to him where he could do nothing but walk through it.

They asked him, look, we're interested in what you're saying. And we're curious about what you're going on about.

And we're going to bring you to the Arapagus. Now, what was the Arapagus? The Arapagus was like the high court, if you would have it, of Athens.

It was where they folks were brought in to discuss the God of their minds, to discuss their ideology and to determine to be determined by the court.

Would they be able to put out yet one more statue? Give the people one more

God to worship. Was this God worthy of worship? Oh, my friend, they had no idea what they were getting into right here.

Matthew Henry commented about Paul's approach to his gospel presentation. And he said this, the testimony that he bore against their idolatry and his endeavors to bring them to the knowledge of truth.

He did not, as Herman Vincius observes, he did not do this in the heat of his zeal, break into the temples.

He did not pull down their images. He did not demolish their altars or he didn't fly in the face of their priests, nor did he run about the streets crying, you are all bond slaves of the devil.

Matthew Henry said, though, it was true. But what he did is he observed decorum and he kept himself within due bounds, doing that only which became a prudent man.

These people weren't going to hear a wild eyed crazy man talk. They wanted reason.

They wanted logic. There is nothing more reasonable than the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is nothing more logical than the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You have it one, one, one, one, one laid out plain before our eyes.

So who were the Epicureans and who were the Stoics? Because notice what the Scripture says.

The Scripture says all the Athenians and foreigners who were there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing some new thing.

So Paul stood in their midst, in the midst of the Orophagos. And he said, men of Athens, I perceive that in everything you are too superstitious, that you are very religious.

For as I passed by and I observed, I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown

God. It's almost as if and it is as if in our day and in our time that God is the last resort for many.

There are folks who will deny Christ till problems come into their life. They'll deny the existence of the true and the living

God until they fall upon hard times. And what do they do? They come. They come to men and women of faith and they say, will you pray for me?

Oh, the good news today is this. You don't need me to pray for you. You need to pray for yourself.

You need to seek the face of the living God. You need to turn from your sin and look unto

Christ and be saved. So the Epicureans and the

Stoics, who were they? It was inevitable that Paul would face and encounter these philosophers.

The two philosophies that Paul faced here were Epicureanism and Stoicism.

Epicureanism and Stoicism. These were the two philosophies of that day. Now, the followers of Epicurus were basically both of these ideas started around 300 years before Christ.

And the Epicurean philosophy denied, they denied that the world was created by God.

This is very important. This context is very important because what we're going to see here in just a second is that Paul didn't start where they started and he didn't end where they ended, he started at the most important spot with the true and the living

God. He didn't argue with the world from the world's view. He argued and he reasoned with the world from the biblical view.

Which is what we must do. So the Epicureans denied that the world was created by God.

And they denied that God exercised any care or providence over human affairs.

The Epicureans were atheistic materialists who denied the immortality of the soul and of the body.

Again, we see here as we continue to go through the text, we see the importance of our catechism.

Amen. Amen. What did God give Adam and Eve besides the body? He gave them a soul that can never die.

Have you a soul? Yes, I have a soul that can never die. How do you know that you have a soul?

Glad you asked. That's right. The Bible tells me so. Amen. So one distinguishing doctrine of the

Epicureans was that pleasure was the chief good and that virtue was to be practiced only as it contributed to pleasure.

For Epicureans, life consisted only of the here and the now, and therefore they figured that you need to get the most out of life.

This philosophy, however, deteriorated so as to be to greatly feed the base desires of man's flesh.

And the ultimate goal of life in the Epicurean philosophy was to pursue pleasure and it was to pursue happiness.

It was the summum bonum of existence. They took their motto as eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.

These Epicureans would not be what we would be what we call modern day existentialists and they would be called new moralists who teach this.

If it feels good, do it. That's right, right? And if it feels good and you do it, then it must be good.

That's a bad philosophy because the scripture says there's a way that seems right unto man, but the end thereof is the way of death.

The Epicureans and the forerunners of modern day naturalistic evolutionists who blatantly speak of the world coming into existence by chance, by a big bang in which certain atoms happened accidentally to combine to make the explosion so as to form the universe and the world.

For an Epicurean, there was no life beyond the grave. Death ended it all. So it was a form of nihilism.

So there is nothing to fear ultimately and nothing to hope for ultimately. And a

Stoic, on the other hand, the Stoics were followers of the philosopher Zeno, who lived again about 300 years before Christ.

And the doctrine of this group was that the world was created by God. But God was not

God. God was just a force, an impersonal force, and that all things were fixed by fate.

So they were fatalists. Everything was left to chance in their ideology.

This philosophy of Stoicism led to fatalism and is the forerunner of modern day determinism.

The Stoic taught that all fates were to be submitted to and that the passions and the affections were to be restrained and suppressed in their idea and their estimation.

In their view, happiness comes in overcoming pain. The Stoics attitude towards life was one of resignation.

They prided themselves in taking whatever fate brought their way. Their attitude was this, grin and bear it.

This philosophy is often expressed in our culture by saying, if a bullet has your name on it, don't worry about it.

There's nothing you can do. A Stoic was also a pantheist.

Now, this is important. Again, a pantheist. What he believed, what the pantheist believes is that matter is eternal.

That the matter that makes up this pulpit, they believe that is eternal. They believe matter is eternal and they believe that God is in everything and everything is in God.

The folks who worship nature, right? The folks who say we worship nature because God is in nature.

But my friends, pantheism, pantheism denies the fact that God stands outside of his created world.

God made the heavens and the earth. He is not the heavens and the earth.

He made the heavens and the earth and he stands outside of his creation totally other than creation itself.

And so philosophy really hasn't changed. It hasn't changed much in 3000 years.

And modern day non -Christians really haven't improved their philosophies so much as they assumed that they had.

Someone has said the difference between an Epicurean, a materialist and a Stoic, which is a pantheist, is that the materialist puts

God so far outside his creation that he can't get in. And the pantheist puts

God so far into his creation that he can't get out to help us as human beings.

But remember, God stands outside of his creation. Very, very important.

Verse 21, moving forward there, we see the commentary on the city. Everyone spent their time there to hear, to hear or to tell some new thing.

And then in verse 22, really the heart and the meat of the text today is

Paul's gospel proclamation that he makes here at the Oropagus. The message that he proclaims, he begins by saying,

I perceive that in all things you are very, very religious, you are very, very superstitious.

Now, this word is used in two ways. In a good sense, it means that you're pious, that you're religious, that you are devoted to a thing.

In the bad sense, superstitious means that you do it so that you hope to get the best results out of it at the end of the day.

So he said, you are very religious, you are very superstitious. And then what does

Paul do here? Paul takes a deep breath and he gives those at the

Oropagus that day, as simple as I know how to say it, the whole bale of hay.

How can we understand that? What do you mean by that? Well, you heard the story about the preacher that goes to the little bitty church, there's only two or three people there one

Sunday. But he rears back and he preaches with everything. He's God. He preaches everything from Genesis to Revelation.

And the people are in awe and they're in wonder and they're amazed after he's done. They come up to him and they say,

Pastor, how is it that you preach with such passion and such fervor when there be so few of us here?

And he reminded them, well, it is the pastor's responsibility to feed the flock of God, is it not?

And the one looked at him and they said, yes, it is certainly your responsibility to feed the flock of God.

But we did not expect with so few of us here that you'd give us the whole bale of hay.

Friends, we need the whole bale of hay. We need it all from beginning to end.

Gospel truth. And so quickly, let's move through this. Paul begins and he says,

I'm going to preach about this unknown God, this God that you do not know. And he begins with creation.

Verse twenty four. This is the God who made the world and everything in it. Creation. That's where he begins with creation.

He is the creator. Next, notice what he says. This God who made the world and everything in it, being

Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man's hands. This God that I'm proclaiming to you,

Paul says, is bigger than you can imagine. He is not going to be contained in a piece of stinking carved wood.

He is not going to be contained in a three acre building.

God is bigger than that. He goes on to say this, nor is he served by human hands.

The ideology, the philosophy, the approach of many churches in our day is come to Jesus because he needs you.

He is just longing for you to come. He needs you so that you can be a witness and a servant for him and his kingdom.

God does not need you and God does not need me. The wonder and the beauty of the grace of God is this, that he calls us unto himself, though he needs us not.

Amen. He is all sufficient. This is God that he is proclaiming to them.

Verse twenty six. And he made from one man every nation on mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.

Here he preaches the sovereign God. He proclaims the sovereignty of God and how

God made from one man, Adam, that he created in the garden every ethnicity that spanned the globe at that time and that spanned the globe in our time, that he himself, the apostle

Paul writes, gives life and breath to all. He is the preserver of life.

It's as though Paul was reminding these pagans, reminding them that they do not preserve their own life.

They are not kept by their own power or by their own strength, but that they are kept by the sovereign hand of an almighty

God who is sovereign over life and who is sovereign over death.

He goes on that they should seek God, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.

Right. Though he be not far from every one of us. That's what Paul said. For in him we live and in him we move and in him we have our being.

He goes on, being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, not like an image formed by the art and the imagination of man.

But the at times of this ignorance, Paul puts it this way, God, we that.

Not that God overlooked, but he did not overlook it. He did not overlook it because he couldn't do anything about it.

But it is his mercy and his grace that he winked at that. It is his

God's mercy and it is God's grace that we have another breath to draw in our bodies.

It is God's mercy and it is God's grace that you are here in this place today.

It is God's mercy. He is the governor of all history.

And the scripture goes on to say this, the scripture goes on to say the times of this ignorance,

God winked at. But now he commands all men everywhere to repent, to turn from their sin.

Because why should we repent? Why should you repent today? Because he has appointed and fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man who he has appointed.

Who is that man? This is Jesus Christ. This is Jesus Christ that Paul is proclaiming to them.

And he says of this, of this, we have assurance that he is appointed to Jesus Christ to be the judge of all mankind.

We have been given this assurance in that God raised him from the dead.

And this isn't some might say this is an Easter message. Yes, every gospel message is a resurrection message because the story did not end when

Christ died on the cross. It did not end when he hung between the heavens and the earth. It did not end when he cried, it is finished.

For when he was taken down from that cross, having borne the wrath of God, he went into the holy of holies, presented the holy blood that would be the propitiation for our sins.

So what was their response in closing when they heard this? When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, verse 32, some mocked children, brothers and sisters in Christ, do not think that you will get by unscathed in this world if you are willing to stand to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For they mocked our Lord. They most certainly will mock you. But Jesus said, blessed are you when you are persecuted and when you are reviled for the name and the cause of the sake of Jesus Christ.

Blessed are you. It's not a bad thing. It is a blessing. We ought to be proud to proclaim the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, Paul, the Bible says this, what they said, others said, we will hear you again about this. So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed.

Hallelujah. Some mocked, but some believed. We don't know how many other than these two that are listed that they believe, but we do know that Dionysius, Nehemiah, and Demaris, a woman named

Demaris, believed that day. They believed they were saved by the grace of God that day.

And what did they do? They followed Christ from that day forward. And that is what you must do today.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Follow, take up your cross and follow

Christ. Moment by moment, day by day, month by month and year by year.

The old Puritan Thomas Brooks put it this way concerning God. He said, will you consider a little what an excellent transcendent portion

God is? He said, number one, he is a present portion.

He is a very present help in times of need. Thomas Brooks said he is a present portion, number one.

Number two, God is an immense portion. Number three, God is an all sufficient portion.

Number four, God is a pure and an unmixed portion. He has nothing in him but goodness.

Number five, God is a glorious, a happy and a blessed portion. Number six,

God is a portion peculiar to his people. Number seven, God is a universal portion that includes all other proportions.

Number eight, God is a safe portion that none can rob a believer of.

Number nine, God is a suitable portion. Number 10, God is an incomprehensible portion.

Number 11, God is an inexhaustible portion. Number 12, God is a soul satisfying portion.

Number 13, God is a permanent portion, an everlasting portion. And 14, lastly,

Thomas Brooks says God is an incomparable portion. Nothing, nothing can make that man miserable that has

God for his portion, nor nothing can make that man happy that hath not

God for his portion. Are you trusting in the

Savior today? Are you trusting in the crucified, buried, resurrected

Lord Jesus Christ today? Believe on him today and be saved.

Stand with us, please, this morning. And at this time,