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Unknown God · Rick Manis Ministries Podcast

0:08
SPEAKER_00: As we get into this, we've got a title here called The Unknown God, but but if we're going to talk about the unknown God, we're then we're also going to be talking about the known God.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: And think about think about God for just a moment here.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: Think about what is it?
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Think about him and and do you love him?
0:31
SPEAKER_00: And if you do, why is that?
0:34
SPEAKER_00: Not why do you serve him or even necessarily worship him or believe in him, although those are powerful and important things.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: But if you if you love him, and and if you don't, that's that's that's actually okay.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: It's um the as we grow in uh the knowledge of him, we fall, we all fall more and more in love.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: If you feel like, you know, God, I don't know if I actually do or not.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: That's that's okay for now.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: You as we grow in the knowledge of God, we fall more and more in love.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Um but if you do, what is it about him that causes you to love him?
1:15
SPEAKER_00: What is it about God that sometimes just brings a tear of joy to your eye?
1:20
SPEAKER_00: What is it about God that that maybe it makes you smile at the mention of his name?
1:29
SPEAKER_00: Of course, God's not really his name, you know that.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: He's got he's got many things that he goes by, but God is a term, and we call him God because he's supreme, he's creator, he's he's uh eternal.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh the one true God.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: But what is it about him that makes him so good and sweet to you?
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Makes you really feel love for him.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Bible says that we love him because he first loved us.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: So that would be, if you know that, and if you're aware of that, that would be something there.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: Really, it'll come down to it comes down to uh because uh his goodness toward you, his love that he has for you.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: When you're when you're aware of that Am I gonna sing?
2:16
SPEAKER_00: When you're aw when you're aware of that, um you you you're you're really knowing the person of God.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: And to know him is to love him, and to know him is to enjoy him, and to know him, um it's it it puts you it puts you in the most beautiful situation that anyone could be in.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Because we're gonna look at God tonight.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh and and and Father, I pray for for real, real, real help from your Holy Spirit because I can only do I can I can do my best, but words just don't do this.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Our fondest imagination, our wildest imaginations don't do it.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: It's your revelation, your Holy Spirit revelation to us that we count on to cause us to see and be aware of an eternal reality that we live in and rejoice in and move in.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: So I thank you for that, Father.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: We're we're we're gonna look at the reality of God.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: And and by this tonight, I want us to, in the short time we have, I I I hope we can like push away some layers of maybe some clouds or some veils or some things and maybe some decoys and distractions, and just look at the beauty and the bigness of this person of God and get past a lot of the things about God.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: The issues, the debates, the questions, the even so even even well get to the center of the universe, I like to call it.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh I use that term sometimes.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: I feel like the more I'm I'm I'm growing into God, let me see if I can describe this.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: But it it seems like if you were to physically journey to the center of the universe, that as you got closer and closer, you would keep picking up speed and picking up speed, and that's what feels like happening to me.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: It's like I'm being sucked into this vortex of of God's heart and into and I and into his love.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And and and I find myself doing more and more of what I just mentioned, more and more just just just crying for joy, just out of out of just a thought of of God and his goodness.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: I find myself smiling a lot more, and and I'm and I'm realizing that that why are why why are my cheeks hurting here?
4:41
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, I've been smiling for the last few minutes, and just because of the thinking and being aware of the goodness of God.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: And and other people have wonderful uh ministries.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: There are many administrations of the things of God and things of his spirit.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I love what what I've seen in God and it's given me a focus.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: And as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing more amazing, nothing more awe-inspiring than the heart of God.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: When I talk about his love and his grace and his goodness, really I'm I'm talking about the heart of this person who created all things because he's love.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Created you and I simply because he's love, and love wants an object for its affection, a place to give, an outlet for his goodness, his abundance, and his love.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: So, do you guys you you know where that term the unknown God is found?
5:43
SPEAKER_00: I think you you're you're like all the churches that I go to.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: You you might even know the answer, but you don't want to say it.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're shy or come on, my soul, don't be so shy.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you think it's a trick question, and I don't blame you for thinking that sometimes.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: But it's found in Acts chapter 17.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: So I want us to read that and we'll go there and we'll we'll see why why Paul was talking about this thing called the unknown God.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Now we know he's talking to some Greeps, Greek.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: Greeks.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: A Greep is part Greek and part creep.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: But these were Greeks.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: And uh and uh and and so he was, you know, he'd been bouncing from one city to the next because everywhere he was going and preaching, he was preaching the simplicity of the gospel and telling people from the scriptures that look, the one that you've been waiting for, this is him.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: He had to suffer and die and be raised from the dead.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: And many people would believe him.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Prominent people in these cities would believe him, but some people get mad about it, so they'd cause trouble, and then he'd go to the next place.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: So they had they had shuffled him off to Athens.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: And uh um a couple of his friends were gonna meet him later.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: So while he was waiting there, he just made the most of it.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: He started going to the synagogues for about three weeks in a row, and he and he was reasoning with the the Jews and the Gentiles there, and he was there again, explaining to these people uh that uh the one they'd been looking for, the one they'd been waiting for, the one that the prophets and the law and the prophets were talking about was this Jesus who came and he did die and he rose from the dead.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: And they said, He's the one, and people were believing it.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: And so uh a lot of the the Gentiles or the Greeks were coming around, and some of them were of the Epicureans, and well, it mentions them here, and and the Stoics, and they were they were listening to Paul, and they are like they're getting interested.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: And so we pick it up here in Acts chapter 17, verse 19.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: And it says, and they took him, they took Paul, and they brought him to the Areopagus or to Mars Hill, which was a hill, a literal hill with a temple for Aries or Mars, saying, May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Because you're bringing some strange things to our ears.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we want to know what these things mean.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there, they spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new things.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe some of you know that, and we even see it in the Bible, that the the the Greeks, they were always, they were into intelligence, they were into information, they were into knowledge.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so they they loved this stuff.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: All the philosophers, you know, it seems so many of the philosophers came from that.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh I almost said Pluto, Plato, Socrates, so many others.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: Um then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill, and he said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you're very religious.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I found I even found an altar with the inscription to the unknown God.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the one whom you worship without knowing, him I proclaim to you.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: So he begins to preach to them about this God that they don't know.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: They've got statues of Mars and Diana and all these others.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: And look, I want to I want to point out a few things in what we just read.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: Number one, they said, they said, What is this new doctrine that you that that that that you speak?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: So these are a people that they're they're they're hungry for that.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: We see a lot of that in the church world.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: They're looking for this next thing.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: What's this new doctrine?
9:14
SPEAKER_00: We've heard you're talking about something that we haven't heard of.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: We've listened to all these philosophers.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh ourselves, the Epicureans said, we've landed here.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: This is what this is our our our philosophy here.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: The Stoics that came, they believed in this other thing, and and then the the the Plato people believed in something else, you know, the little bit something else, had a different school of thought.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: And they said, and we heard all these philosophies, says, but you're talking about something we haven't heard.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: We want to know, we want to hear this new doctrine.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: We've never heard that.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: Come on, tell us, tell us.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Our ears are wide open.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: And so, and it says, because those Athenians and even the foreigners that came, they spent their time there, they came to that place to do this, they spent their time to do nothing else but either to tell some new thing or to hear some new thing.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of times in church we're we're always pushing for uh uh to be edgy, some new revelation.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: If you've preached thousands and thousands of messages like I have, it can be very tempting to try to come up with a new doctrine, trying to push it a little further.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm thinking of one particular person I know, and he's not the only one, but one particular person that's in my mind.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: He was just, he was, he was, he was a master of one upmanship.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter what you if you talked about about the seven days around Jericho, he had found an eighth day in there somewhere.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: He was just, if you talked about Paul going to the third heaven, he would preach about a fourth heaven.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: It's even better than what you preached about.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, he it's it's it's it's it's it's always wanting to either tell, uh, tell or hear some some new thing.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times that's where some of this questionable stuff, you know, some of it's not even questionable, some of it's just goofy, but but gets out there because people just keep thinking too much.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: People just keep trying to come up with more and more and more and more.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: When the Paul, I love what he talked about, the simplicity of this gospel.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about not some complicated, mysterious thing.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about God, the person who came and gave his life because, simply because he loved us, wanted to be with us, wanted union with us.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: That's the heart of someone that we're talking about tonight.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Tonight we're not talking about seven steps for you to do something, to get something from God.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about the heart of somebody that created you, somebody that loves you, somebody that's all about you, someone that's all for you, someone that cares, knows everything about you, and the whole thing about it is God is love.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Now think about it.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: Push away all these other things and think about this all-supreme being whom the book of John defines as God is love.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Think about this supreme being that created all things because of his love.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: We were talking about this on the way up here, and I said, only a beautiful heart, a beautiful mind, a beautiful person, a beautiful being could have created what he did.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: I was looking at the white puffy clouds against the blue sky and thought, God had all that figured out.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: That the way that the moisture would work when the evaporation and all that stuff knew that it would look like this.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: A beautiful heart, a loving heart, a beautiful mind, not a dark mind, not a tricky mind.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: Not one that's into tripping us up so he can burn us up.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: A beautiful heart, a beautiful, someone who is love.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: Any, the when we talk about love, poems are written about love, songs are written about love, we've all fallen in love.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: Love, love, love, love, that is a drop of the ocean who we would call God, who is love.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: So he says, so they're looking for this new doctrine.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: They like to like to tell some new thing or hear some new thing.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you guys are very religious.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: So these are a people, these are a people that are not necessarily bad.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: They're seekers.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: What are they doing?
13:14
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to figure it out.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to come up with it.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: And if you're talking about God, they're not against that.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they're very religious.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: You got one God.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: We got many gods.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Come on, give us more.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: We even got the unknown God, the ones we don't know about.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: Kind of like how you did with your, you know, when you when you would pray that God would forgive all your sins, and you would say, even the unknown sins, you know.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: Let's get that covered too.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: He says, so this is the one, the one that you worship at that altar, just to get everything covered, the one that you don't know anything about.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: Mars is the god of war.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: This one's the god of this, that, the other, the one that you don't know.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: That's the one that I'm talking about here.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: The one who came, died for us, rose from the dead.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: All that.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: So what we're getting to, what we're looking at here is.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we can take just a little bit of a journey here past some past all the layers of what we often mistake for God.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: To get to the person of God, the heart of God, the core of God's being.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: Who he really is at his heart.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes you can there may have been instances where like where somebody misunderstood my motives in certain things, or maybe I misunderstood what I was doing.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: And Judy would say, Oh, you don't know his heart.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: He would never do that.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: See, when you know the heart, you don't get confused about the person.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: If you're not sure that the heart is toward good, if you're not sure that it's unselfish, you can get confused.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: Now think of a heart.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Think of a love.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Think of think of him.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: One, when you think of that, when we think of his love, think of how good it is to be in him tonight.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: For him to be in us and us to be in him, in that place, in him, living in God's heart, where this love is a love that we we can't fathom it because it's indescribable and it's unlimited, knows no boundaries, and really is without conditions at all.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant reveals that to us.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: The fact that Jesus took care of every condition shows us that God doesn't want to put any of those on any of us.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: That's a love that has no conditions.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: So what you do doesn't change the nature of who he is.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: That's what that scripture means when it says, even if you're not faithful, he abides faithful.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: He cannot deny himself.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
15:56
SPEAKER_00: He says he can't stop being God just because you were a bad boy or a bad girl.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: He's still going to be love.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: He's still going to be good.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: He's still going to be who he is.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: He's still going to be giving.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: What we're talking about is living in the source of life itself.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: From him emanates absolute life.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: So, what are the things that can get in the way of people knowing God?
16:24
SPEAKER_00: The Greeks here that we read about, they had lots of things.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: They didn't know God, but they had other things that they were pursuing really in an attempt to know God, and mankind has been doing it since the Garden of Eden.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: We certainly have had religion and philosophies and so many, so many other things, rituals of all kinds.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Ritual is one thing.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Ritual is something that many people can mistake for having a knowledge of God or having some kind of a semblance of a contact with God.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: A ritual is a series of actions that's regularly repeated in a precise manner.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Why do virtually all religions have this since time began?
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Because it's like it's it's it's basically the lowest form of having any sense of anything to do with God.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: For one thing, there is a lot of symbolism in it.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: Why is there symbolism?
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Because you don't know the real.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: So we make symbols that will speak to us about what we perceive to be the real.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: We have either symbols or we have actions that are never initiated by God.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: They're initiated by us.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: And those actions that we ritualistically perform are based, it's based upon us performing those things, and then maybe God will answer a prayer.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Maybe God will give us rain if we do these things.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: We pray a certain way, a ritualistic way.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: Jesus told his followers, he says, you know, don't do that.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: He says, Don't keep chanting, don't keep keep repeating something and thinking that you're going to be heard by doing this thing over and over.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: Your father hears you.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Your father knows what you need, even before you ever ask him.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: Your father's ready to give it.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: So rituals are very dependent upon us.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: If we don't do the ritual, nothing gets done.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: And people do it to have some sense of connecting with the divine in some way.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: But that's not knowing the person, that is an attempt to try to connect through physical means, somehow, through through physical, basically symbolism.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: The uh another thing that can be mistaken for knowing God, and honestly, I don't even think the those that are very heavily into ritual, I don't even think that they think that that is really knowing God.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: A lot of them don't even perceive that you can really know God.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: That's about as close as you can get, at least while you're on earth, is doing the ritual.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: They don't have a concept of knowing this person like you know the person sitting next to you.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: The next one would be reading or book learning.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: Now, we gotta say right off the bat, reading, learning is wonderful, especially the Bible and the things of the Bible.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: I honestly wish every single person knew the Bible better than they do, including me.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: I love finding out more about it, learning more about it.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: It makes it better for me.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: It actually clarifies things the more I do.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: So don't go out of here saying that, well, Rick says reading the Bible is not important.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely wonderful.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: And in but we miss but we use it wrongly a lot of times.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: We mistake, we mistake, or we, I when I say we, many people many of us at large in the body, we mistake knowing the book of the Lord for knowing the Lord of the book.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of a lot of us can know the book, uh, but not the Lord of the book, not the one that the book is about.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: Just like you can read us, I can read a book about you, but it doesn't mean I've even met you.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Right?
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of times what happens is we get an intellectual thing to where we think, we think because we know all this Bible, we know God.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: Because what we'll do in our mind is we'll take all these pieces that we see in the Bible and we'll construct a God out of it.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: And it seems kind of, and sometimes that construction is kind of grotesque.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, there's missing pieces, and where does this one go?
20:43
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it goes here, and that's why there's always conjecture and debate and all these different ideas about the same book.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: The same book.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Just say in Christianity, we use the same book.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: But how many ideas of God are there?
20:58
SPEAKER_00: Because we're because it's because we don't go past the mind of it, going to know the person who is spirit, and he's alive.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: And he speaks and he moves and he loves and he gives and he's he's all this real person.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: But he's spirit, he's eternal.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: He's a part of us, he lives in us.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: He's with us, loving us, and really speaking to us.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: But rather, rather than partaking more of that, they live more um dominated by mental information, and they think that they know God because they know about God from reading.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: What you see happens often because of this is that they have this mentality that the Bible is essentially a roadmap for us to follow and to l and and to live.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: It's a rule book, some of them will think, right?
22:03
SPEAKER_00: They take the many people take the Bible as a rule book.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: And that's not knowing a person, that's following a rule.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus didn't come to give us a rule.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: We already had rules.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Six hundred and something of them in the Bible.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: We had those rules before Jesus came.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: And what he came was not to give us rules or more rules.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: What he came to do was give us life.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: And he says, I am that life.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: He came to give us himself.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: It's better for you that I go, because the Holy Spirit will come to you.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: I will come to you.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: I stand at the door and knock.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: If you open up, we'll come in.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: Me and the Father, we'll eat with you, we'll drink with you, we will have fellowship with you.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: We will know each other.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: Now the Father already knows us, right?
22:52
SPEAKER_00: He knows every hair that's on our head.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: He knows everything about us.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: But 1 Corinthians 13 says, But when that perfect love is revealed, we shall know even as we're known.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the way he knows us, with that kind of detail, we will know him too.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're growing in.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: Knowing this person.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: And knowing the person.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: The more we know that person, the more we're knowing the most beautiful, beautiful, undescribable, beautiful existence there ever could be because we're dwelling in the bosom of the Father.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: The heart of God, right?
23:31
SPEAKER_00: So that's much better than just seeing this as a roadmap.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: It's much better than using this as a good luck charm.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And you know, God is big.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: He can do it so many ways.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there's been times people can turn a page and say, What am I supposed to do?
23:46
SPEAKER_00: And boom.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: And I know it can happen.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: But that's not relationship necessarily with a person who you can just say, Daddy, what about this?
23:57
SPEAKER_00: And he says, son, daughter, knowing the person.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: And he's the person who's absolutely perfect, isn't it?
24:07
SPEAKER_00: He is perfect love.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: We can get too caught up to where we mistake.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: Not just because you're reading a lot.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Read your Bible more, please.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Learn it more.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: You get what I'm saying here.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: But we don't want to mistake our head knowledge for this relationship with this beautiful, powerful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful person who loves us.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: We call him God.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: To many people, when we when we put knowledge of the book over knowledge of the one the book is about, many times, and maybe you've seen this, doctrine becomes more important than people, or more important than love.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: I've had relationships that are not there now, not because we neither one of us did anything bad to the other, but because we didn't agree.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: We didn't agree.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: Because they can't put their stamp of approval on that belief I have that differs from them.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: They can't fellowship with that.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: It's too important.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: I'll take them.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: I'll they would be compromising.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Doctrine is more important.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: Some have pushed me away because we disagreed on things the Bible said about God.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: And it was more important to them that they preserve the purity and dignity of their belief and stay with other people that believe exactly that way and have nothing to do with someone like me.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: And we didn't do anything to hurt each other.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: We didn't do anything other than that except disagree.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: But the reason that there was a push, there was a separation was because to the person, the doctrine was more important than I was.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: The doctrine was more important than we were as a friendship.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: The doctrine was more important than love thy neighbor.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: And that can happen.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: If we if we want to know the book of the Lord more than the Lord of the book.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: I said trying to live up to Jesus' example.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, before Jesus, it was trying to live up to law.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Trying to live up to a standard.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: We might say, well, you know, there's that WWJD, what would Jesus do?
27:35
SPEAKER_00: Now that can be a very, very positive thing, but really to get it right, we're not able to do what would Jesus do, probably, but we can live by what did Jesus do.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: I can handle that.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: And that I can do.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: I can rejoice in what Jesus did do.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: If I have to always do exactly what would Jesus do, I may or may not hit it right.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: And the thing about emulation, about thinking, what is the idea that Christianity or idea of godliness or walking with God is simply living up to that standard.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: Either Jesus' example or the Bible's idea of morality.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: And there again, people just take the book and they'll put their lines wherever they want it to go.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus was good because he was good.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: He was Jesus.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: But he took, he put it off him.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: He didn't want people to think that you had to live exactly like him in order to have goodness come to you.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: He said, it's because my father's good.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: It's not because of a person is earning it in here that you're watching.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: It's because the father is good to somebody.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say because the son is so, you know, because I do everything so good.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: That's why these.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: He said, the father loves the son.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, what I ask he does.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: Because he loves me.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that love is where the receiving comes from.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that love, I sat there in love.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: I've totally felt receiving for those prayer requests because love, he who is love, is in the house.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: He who loves these people, these families, these people that care, that are in these situations.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: The one who is perpetually giving, liberally, without finding any reason not to, is God.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: He's absolutely lovely, altogether lovely, perfectly beautiful.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: These other things of trying to live up to an emulation of some kind of a standard, it'll bring either, it'll always end up bringing some kind of legalism.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: And then it will result in one of two things.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: And neither one of them are good.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: It'll either result in a sense of pride where you think that you're doing better than some people, or it'll give you a sense of inferiority because you keep seeing yourself failing and falling short.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: It's two sides of the same coin of legalism.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: So that's not what this is about either, is it?
30:02
SPEAKER_00: It's not about trying to live a certain thing.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: It's not about trying to repeat some kind of good works or ritual.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: And much more than just intellectual knowledge of scriptural things.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: Another one would be emotionalism.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: See, and none of these things are bad things in themselves, I don't think.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't think if you have it if you have a ritual of getting up at six in the morning and spending half an hour in prayer before you have your coffee or something, I don't think that's a bad thing to make that time.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: It can be a ritual that you say, you know, a routine, maybe you call it.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: Um but it's not about the hours of prayer we put in either, is it?
30:50
SPEAKER_00: We're not getting points for it at all.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to get to heaven and find lots of stars by your name, you know.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: What you see is the one that you fell in love with while you were here, and who cared for you while you were here and walked with you while you were here.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: Emotionalism seeks an experience.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Now, there again, these experiences are good.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about touches, visitations, I'm talking about events of God.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: God does things.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, but but uh uh a lot of religion, they think that this whole thing about God, our whole our whole walk with God, is about trying to get a spiritual experience with God.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: And uh and it's emotionalism and it's based on emotions, and it's not an emotions are not a bad thing.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: It's great to feel God.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: It's great to feel God and be aware that he's in the place with you, he's right where you're at.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: It's great to feel that God cared, that God's with you.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: It's great to feel his approval in your life.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: It's great to feel those emotions.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: But rather than thinking that our Christianity is about trying to seek an emotion, knowing him keeps you in an emotion of joy all the time.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: Knowing him keeps you in an emotion, in an emotion that's peaceful, where you're not seeking uh what I'm I sometimes might call um spiritual spasms.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: Where we're in and we're out and we're up and we're down.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Because I know when I was when I was seeking uh the emotionalism, it was great when you could get it.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: But the highs were high and the lows were low.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: And so when when we think that, see, and and our our walk with God is so much more.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: He didn't come to give us that roller coaster of emotion.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: He says, guys, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: I'll never leave you.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: I will never turn away from you, I will be with you always.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to go to Lowe's for him to be there because some people think at Lowe's he's with you always.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: But what that is, is it it causes us to be dependent upon the feelings rather than the relationship that we can know we have.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're talking about.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're going for tonight.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Appendance of feelings is is here here's here's here's here's here's one of the fallacies of that.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Remember the story of Saul when he got depressed?
33:26
SPEAKER_00: A melancholy spirit.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: It says, he got depressed, so what'd he do?
33:29
SPEAKER_00: He says, go get that shepherd boy that plays really good.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: He's a really good worshiper.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: Man, if I can hear him singing about God, he says, it lifts my spirits every time I hear that guy.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: So they go and get him.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: Sure enough, David would come and lead worship, and and Saul would start feeling better.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: His spirits would lift and he'd feel better.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible says, but then when David went back home, he got sad again.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: So he called for David again.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: He needed David's song, he needed a spiritual experience to feel to feel something, and and that's not what God has for us.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: He he offered us himself.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: He offered us relationship, didn't he?
34:09
SPEAKER_00: And it's there.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: And not only did he offer it, but he gave it to us.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, we are with him now.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: And maybe what's something you can get from this if you don't know it already, is that he's in us now and we're in him, how that works somehow it does, but I don't I I can't explain it, but I understand it.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: You know, and and and and and we it means that he's in us, so in our heart we live in that place.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: We can't.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: And to live in that place is simply that you're putting your attention on the reality of that Holy Spirit, God, Creator Himself, who is living in us as part of us.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: Where's it at?
34:48
SPEAKER_00: Is it here, there, there?
34:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but it's a part of us.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's part of who we are.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: And and since that's a part of who we are, we always have access to the most beautiful place in the universe.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: So we're not just dependent on feelings.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to have a roller coaster religion where we're in and out and then up and then we're down.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: And when you push all those things away, or you say, the ritual.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: I used to do the ritual, but that's not really who he is.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: And I used to think it was just in gaining knowledge, but he was so much more than that.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: And I thought it was about the feelings and the emotions that you can get from this wonderful God.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: He, the person, was so much more than that.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: And you get to the heartbeat of God, and you can feel and see in this place what he sees when he looks at the planet, when he looks at the people.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: You can feel and see what he feels and sees when he looks at Dennis, when he looks at Kevin, when he when he looks at you you feel and see what he sees, what he feels when he looks at you.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: Because as we see him face to face, and that's what we're doing more and more, then we shall know, just like we are known.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: That's knowing him.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: He wanted us to know him because in him is that life.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: In the heart of God, you step through all these other outer places and you stand in the core of him.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: In the bosom of the Father.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: You're in the heartbeat of God, the magnificent rhythm of life, light, and love.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: You're in absolute life, and there's nothing less.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: Absolute light, there's not one iota of darkness at all, not one bit of death at all.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: Nothing but life is pulsating from him all the time.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: Nothing but life.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Nothing less than life, light, and love is emanating from the core of who he is.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: Who is he at his heart?
37:13
SPEAKER_00: What are your core values?
37:14
SPEAKER_00: Who are you at your very heart?
37:17
SPEAKER_00: Because I will tell you what whether it is.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: You may you may have done some stupid things, may have done some even some bad things, but at the core of who you are, there's goodness.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: And you're the pearl of great price, and the Father sees that, knows that.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: When he says he looks at us and loves us and looks past our faults and flaws, there's nothing wrong with his eyes.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: He's seeing the objects of his adoration, the objects of his affection and his love.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: You see, nobody saw this, nobody could see this until Jesus came and the Spirit could unveil something that we couldn't see through all the layers of all of our pain and all of our fears and all of our assumptions and all of our imaginations and all that.
38:05
SPEAKER_00: And no man had seen God at any time.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: That's 1 John chapter 1, verse 18.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: I love that verse.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: It says, No one has seen God at any time.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: But the look at this.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen it this way?
38:17
SPEAKER_00: The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, in that place that I call the center of the universe, he has declared him.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: Why?
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Because only someone in that place can declare who the Father is, the goodness of the Father.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Show us the Father, he says, if you've seen me, you've seen him.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Why?
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm declaring from this place in him that I dwell.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed to the devil.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: He didn't flinch at the law that said, kill this woman and get rid of her.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: He was in the bosom of the Father.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: And he said, I do not condemn you.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: The Father's heart spoke.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Where no one had seen the Father at any time.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: The Son declared us when Zacchaeus was the most unlawful man, probably.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: The father's heart spoke and said, Zacchaeus, come on, I want to be with you tonight.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: The core of creation, the center of your heavenly father's heart speaks in that way.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: Moves.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: That's just his nature.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: He can't stop being that.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: We get past all the masks that we thought were God.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: Because the Son in the bosom of the Father has declared him.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: And I got good news.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: It's in him that we live and move and have our being.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: We're in that bosom of the Father.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, all this seems like news to me.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm showing you what's here.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: It's been here all this time.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm showing you what's inside you.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: It's the Father's heart in you.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm going to take away that stony heart, that rock-hard heart, and I'm going to put a soft heart in you.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: I will put my ways within you.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: We have within us the most beautiful place on earth.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: We have within us the emanation of absolute love, just like the Father.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: We have the heart that rather than condemns pours out life and goodness.
40:36
SPEAKER_00: In fact, 1 John chapter 4 says it this way.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 and 8.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read it from the Passion Translation because it's so clear.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 says, Those who are loved by God, let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: And everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of Him.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: Where did we get that?
41:07
SPEAKER_00: By commandment?
41:09
SPEAKER_00: We got it by knowledge of Him, by knowing somebody, not knowing a thing, not knowing about a thing, or about a person even.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: We got it by knowing the person that says, Come, all you that weary, learn about me.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Get to know me.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he says, because the one that doesn't love has yet to know God because God is love.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: Now that's not an indictment on any of us.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: If you say, Well, I fell short yesterday, that's not an indictment on us.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: It simply means that we've got a lot more knowing that we can do.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: And the more we do, the more we're going to know Him who is love.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: And it's going to affect us.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's really saying is we have an invitation, we have the opportunity, and we have the wherewithal to know that kind of love because we know him who is love.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: In fact, early on in this letter, he says, I'm writing to you because you know him.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: You do know him.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: Tonight it's a reminder.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: Tonight it's a director.
42:14
SPEAKER_00: Tonight it's a it's a focus of putting our attention on what really matters in all the things of life, with all the drama and all the things that are going on, all the confusion.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: We know it's all there, the pain, the hurt, the wrath, and all the stuff that's going on on the planet.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: What is it that really matters?
42:32
SPEAKER_00: It's the center of the universe.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: It's God Himself.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: Because with us tonight is the most beautiful place in all the earth.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: The heart of God is here.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: Right now, I'd like to.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about a think about the what's the most beautiful place you've ever been?
42:50
SPEAKER_00: City, country, whatever.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's your house, I don't care.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: But the most beautiful place, maybe it's your garden.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's another nation, I don't know.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: But whatever, the most beautiful place that you've ever seen with your eyes.
43:05
SPEAKER_00: And you stood there and you looked at it.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: What did you feel?
43:10
SPEAKER_00: For one, you probably felt a good sense of awe, amazement.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: And you couldn't help but say, This is beautiful.
43:20
SPEAKER_00: And it probably gave you a sense of good feeling of some way.
43:23
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it made you smile.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it brought a little tear of joy to your eye or something, but it evoked good feelings to be in the most beautiful place you've ever seen.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: You didn't stand there and say, Oh, I want to get out of here as quick as I can.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: You probably said, Can we linger here a little longer?
43:42
SPEAKER_00: Because in the most beautiful place that you've seen, it's nothing but goodness, is what you're feeling.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: Now, think of the ugliest place that you've ever seen in your life.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking of one right now.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: There's a little uh town in Florida.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: The whole thing, you drive, it's just it's a little spot, you drive through, it's nothing but a whole bunch of different salvage yards.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh and those are necessary, those are good places, but but it's not great scenery.
44:13
SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking of that place, like when you're there, I'm just thinking, like, you know, you're not thinking, man, I'd like to live right here in the middle of this.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: You're thinking, and there, and some people kind of are living there, and you're not, you're thinking, oh, why don't they live somewhere else?
44:28
SPEAKER_00: You're not, you're not thinking good, you're not feeling good feelings when you're in an ugly place.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: And one evokes bad feelings, negative feelings, one evokes good feelings.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: The most beautiful place in the earth, the heart of God given to us, produces peace, joy, love, goodness, patience.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: I remember the movie in the shack, they're looking at this beautiful waterfall, and her dad says, Well, it's time to go now.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: She goes, A little patience, please.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: I want to stay here a little longer.
45:11
SPEAKER_00: The most beautiful place on earth is the center of God, the bosom of the Father.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: It has been given to us, but the kingdom is within us.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the kingdom of God.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: For the kingdom is here.
45:30
SPEAKER_00: Would y'all stand up?
45:31
SPEAKER_00: I want to pray.
45:34
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it great to be saved?
45:37
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it great to be known of God?
45:43
SPEAKER_00: And even rather to know God.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: Father.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: Um well, I did my best.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: And I thank you for.
45:57
SPEAKER_00: I thank you for your spirit to our hearts.
46:02
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for revealing to us the most amazing thing that's more than we ever could have imagined.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: It's you.
46:08
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for such great love.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for such great care in our lives.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for giving us a place where we're the safest we can ever be.
46:17
SPEAKER_00: We're in the most beautiful, wonderful, and powerful place.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: We stand here in the place where there's nothing but life.
46:23
SPEAKER_00: There is healing here tonight.
46:25
SPEAKER_00: There is goodness, there is answers, there is provision.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: There is absolute pure wisdom for us tonight.
46:34
SPEAKER_00: We thank you and receive all these things every day that we live.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: In the wonderful name of Jesus who gave it all to us.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: Amen.