The Unknown God - Part 2

Acts 17:24-31 “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 human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

Pastor Rick explains that affirming the things that we can agree on serves as a point of connection; with the main point being that we agree on is that there is an unknown God that they do not know, so let’s tell them all about Him. It’s easy to look at the “idols”, as Psalm 115:4-6 says, “Idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell”, idols that had to be served and sacrificed to, but do we have our own little idols in life; others gods?  Anything takes or time and talents, our hearts and minds, our focus and attention, mind, will, emotion, spirit, or actions off of the one true Almighty Creator Father God is an idol because “‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”  Nothing supplants God and the Lord shares the stage or His throne with nobody. We cannot serve two Gods.

Church is like family; it’s for us. The church, body of Christ, with the fellowship of Believers, corporate worship and praise of the living God, tithes and offerings, Study and teaching, internal and external ministry outreach, evangelism and missions, service and sanctuary are for you and I; not God. We need the church. God can accomplish his work with or without us, but we are called to be God’s workers in this world towards His purposes and advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ. As Ephesians 2:10 tells us, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” The church equips and prepares the saints (meaning “those who have been sanctified”) with the guidance and fruit of the Holy Spirit. Be obedient to what God calls us to do. We must invest our day with the grounded foundation of His work in the work and point our energy in pointing to Christ the Savior and His gospel in everything that we do; not just bringing the message, but being the message lived out relationally in the public marketplace of ideas daily, on mission for Him.

Nailing our sins to the cross of Jesus Christ, trust God with the new life results. The Lord is mighty and powerful to save and transform hearts and lives. He is going to do a Masterpiece work that we cannot do in our lives, a godly work that satisfies our soul. Let us be about knowing Christ and making the unknown God known.

In Christ, Brian