◑The second indictment: An ignorance of God.
At times I am asked, “Brother Paul, please come and do a week long series on the attributes of God.”
And many times I will say this. “I am... Well, brother, have you thought this through?”
He said, “What do you mean have I thought this through?”
“Well, it is quite controversial, the subject that you are putting... you are giving to go teach in your church.”
They say, “What do you mean it is controversial? I mean it is God. We are Christians. This is a church. What do mean it is controversial?”
I said, “Dear pastor, you listen to me. When I begin instructing your people on the justice of God, the sovereignty of God, the wrath of God, the supremacy of God, the glory of God, you are going to have some of your finest and oldest church members stand up and say something like this. ‘That is not my God. I could never love a God like that,’ because they have a god they have made with their own mind and they love what they have made.”
Jeremiah 9:23-24:
Thus says the LORD, "Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me.6
Psalms 50. “You thought,” God speaking:
You thought that I was just like you; I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes. Now consider this, you who forget God, Or I will tear you in pieces, and there will be none to deliver.7
Now, what is the problem here? There is a lack of the knowledge of God. Many of you, possibly think, “Oh, talking about the attributes of God and theology, it is all high, ivory tower stuff that has no practical application.”
Listen to yourself speak saying the knowledge of God has no practical [?]. Do you know why all your Christian bookstores are filled up with self help books and five ways to do that and six ways to be godly and 10 ways not to fall? Because people don’t know God. And so they have to be given all sorts of trivial little devices of the flesh to keep them walking as sheep ought to walk.
1 Corinthians 15:34. “Become sober-minded as you ought, and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.”8
Why the rampant sinning even among God’s people? A lack of the knowledge of the God, of God.
Now let me ask you a question. When was the last time you attended a conference on the attributes of God? When was the last time, as a pastor, you taught for a solid year on who God is? How much of all the teaching that goes on in America all week has anything to do with who God is?
And then we wonder. Isn’t it so easy to go with the flow, to just follow everybody else and then one day you hear something like this and all of the sudden you go, “I can’t even remember when anybody taught on the attributes of God”?
No wonder we are a people as we are.
To know him, that is what everything is about. That is eternal life. And eternal life doesn’t begin when you pass through the gates of glory. Eternal life begins with conversion. Eternal life is to know him. Do you honestly think you are going to be thrilled about swinging on gates of pearl and walking down streets of gold for an eternity? The reason why you won’t lose your mind in eternity is because of this. There is one there who is infinite in glory and you will spend an eternity of eternities tracking him down and you will never get your arms even around the foothill of his mountain.
Start now. So many different things you want to know and do and all the books. Get out a book on God, this one, and study it to know him, to know him.
Sunday morning, because of all of this, I would submit to you that it would be better not even to have a Sunday morning. Sunday morning is the greatest hour of idolatry in the entire week of America because people are not worshipping the one true God—the great mass at least—but are worshipping a god formed out of their own hearts by their own flesh, satanic devices and worldly intelligence. They have made a god just like themselves and he looks more like Santa Claus than he does Yahweh.
There can be no fear of the Lord among us because there is no knowledge of the Lord among us.
The third indictment: A failure to address man’s malady.
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