I hope 20 years from now, 30 years from now, they're still
singing that song, you know, and we've got great young people in
this church and we need to pray for them and we need to stand
behind them. We need to support them.
Want you to turn over to Acts chapter one.
Just for a second. I was here in this verse, I
guess it was sometime last year pastor was gone and I preached a
little bit about this. But tonight I thought we would
just review it just for a second here because I think it makes it
makes sense to us right now. And so let's start in.
Let's just go to verse 8, Acts chapter one.
Verse 8 says and, but, and, but excuse me, but you shall receive
power after that. The Holy Ghost just come up on
you and you shall be witnesses unto both Jerusalem and into all
Judea and Samaria and into the outermost parts of the earth.
You remember that we did talk about I talked about that I felt
like that the God was talking about 3 territories here. 1 is
what we have at home. That's who we need to be
witnesses to. The second was Judea and
Samaria. That's the places that we can
travel to and then to the uttermost parts of the earth
that we can't travel to. But tonight one of us is
traveling over there. In fact, two of us are
traveling. Pastor is traveling over there.
Now, the Bible clearly states that this is our responsibility
to reach all three of these areas.
So the fact that our pastor is all the way on the other side of
the world, he calls Mechanicsville the other side of
the world, by the way, but that's not really the other side
of the world. He's really on the other side of
the world now. But the fact that he's way over
there representing us doing the work of God is something that we
should really glory in because it's meeting our responsibility
in a way. So I hope you are praying for
him. I I really do him and Miss
Rebecca are I am sure that no one Pastor boots.
There is no grass growing underneath his feet because I
don't think there's much grass over there anyway.
But I am sure that his energy is is still going.
So anyway, I just want to say that because I think that this
is a great opportunity for us as well as them to be able to go
into a part of the world that we can't travel, that uttermost
part of the world. So.
But tonight I've got a different topic that I want to talk to you
about. How many of you would think that
in a month's time that you see more people in a month's time
than what your grandparents saw in their lifetime in in in a
month's time? Yeah, Yeah, you do.
It doesn't make any difference if it's television.
It doesn't make a difference if it's traffic.
It doesn't make any difference at the mall.
You see, we have an opportunity today that our grandparents, our
great, great grandparents and all of those good, godly men,
even Dwight, even the Moody's and and all of them, they didn't
have the opportunity we have today because we see so many
people. We see the crowd.
It used to be that we would go to a football game, there'd be
three 4000 people there. Now there's 70,000 people.
A basketball game's the same way.
We have opportunity to see a lot of people that they did not have
in the past. But there's a fault there, and
the fault is, is that we get used to the crowd.
You see, it is easier. Human psychology just just works
this way. It is easier for us to see the
crowd than it is the individual. And the reason is, is because
once we see an individual, it brings responsibility on us and
we don't like that. So it is easier to see a crowd
and focus on a crowd than it is the individual in the crowd.
You could be at a football game and you may be sitting beside
somebody that you don't even speak to, but yet you want to be
a part of that crowd. Now, I think there's some human
nature in that. I really do.
I think there's safety in numbers.
And I think probably instinctively we we just think
of that. And so we like being part of the
crowd. We like that.
But if we're going to see people the way that we need to see
them, we have to go against that nature because it's easy to see
the crowd. It's more difficult to see the
individuals in the crowd. So tonight we're going to be
talking a little bit about how does God want us to see people?
How does God want us to see people?
Not necessarily how we want to see people, but in order to do
that, we have to understand that there's some things in us that
work against that. And one of them is that natural
desire to be part of the crowd. We don't want to say something
in the crowd that's going to upset the crowd, right?
You don't want to, you don't want to cause trouble in the
crowd. So naturally, we we hesitate
saying anything in the crowd. We hesitate, hesitate that
because it brings so much responsibility on us.
It brings so much. We don't want to be responsible
for upsetting the crowd. We just don't want to do that,
whether it's the workplace or whatever, we just don't want to
be upset at that. So we have to understand that.
But there's another thing that goes against us seeing people
the way that God wants us to see them, and it's simply this.
It's that first impression. You see.
We react on first impressions. So very, very often our first
impressions, you see a lady with a newborn baby and you
immediately think that's a Mama. It may not be.
It could be an aunt visiting. So our first impressions can can
cause us to not see people. It may very well be that we see
somebody and we see some someone and it scares us away from them.
You might very well see a mug shot on TV, but it may not be a
criminal. It may not be.
It may be an innocent person. So as we, as we learn to see
people, we have to understand that our first impressions are
not always correct. I want you to turn to, I want
you to turn over to Mark. I mean Matthew chapter 15, verse
21 and 28. And as we get there, I want to
give you a couple of examples here.
When Jesus called Matthew Levi, the Pharisees first impression
of Levi was he's a tax collect, tax collector.
You don't have anything to do with him.
He's an outcast. You don't have anything to do
with him. But Jesus in Mark chapter 2 and
verse 15 and 17 didn't see the tax collector.
That was the Pharisees first impression.
Jesus, he saw a disciple. But if you go to Matthew chapter
15, let me flip over there. If you go to Matthew chapter 15,
you'll know what this account is.
And starting in verse 21 through 28, then Jesus went thence and
departed into the coast of Tyrea and Sidian.
And and behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same
coast, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O
Lord, thou son of David, my daughter is grievously vexed
with the devil. And he answered her, not, not a
word, Listen to his disciples, this is their first impression.
And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her
away, for she cried after us. You see, she was a Canaanite
woman. They don't want anything to do
with her. But he answered and said, I'm
not sent, but into the lost sheep of the House of Israel.
Can't you see the disciples? Yeah, see, get out of here.
My first impression was right. And in verse 25 it says, And
then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
But he answered and said, It is not me to take the children the
the the children's bread, and cast it to the dogs.
I can hear the disciples again. And she said unto him, Truth,
Lord, yet the dogs eat the crumbs from which fall from the
Master's table. Then Jesus answered and said
unto her, Old woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee, even
as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole
from the very first hour. Don't you think the disciples
should have been very careful with their first impression?
I think that's the way we are too.
I think sometimes when we see somebody because they may be
dressed the, the, the wrong way or they may have hair the wrong
way, they may have tattoos or, or it just may be a mean looking
person and we say, no, don't want to see them that way.
The truth of the matter is, is they're, they're God's children,
no matter who they are. And I think that at this point,
you're going to have to look at that and you're going to have to
say, I have to combat that. I have to combat the crowd
mentality and I do have to combat my first impressions, and
I have to see people the way that God wants to see them.
We must fight our natural man. Let's pray and we'll get into
this a little bit. Father, we do thank you that the
gospel of Jesus Christ, Lord, is for everyone.
We thank you, God, that You have chosen to use us to do that very
thing. We do Look forward to heaven one
day, Lord, when those crowns will be given out and we'll be
able to put them at your feet. But Lord, those crowns are only
given if if we're doing your work and we know that your
number one work is to get the gospel out.
So God, we do pray tonight that you would help help us to
understand this. Help me to give clarity as I, as
I teach it. And Lord, I pray my brothers and
sisters would just open their hearts and they would see the
truth of the matter. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
Tonight we do want to, I do want to concentrate on one particular
area of how we need to see people.
And I want you to turn over to Romans chapter one, verse 16.
And we're going to read 16 through 25, give you just a
second to get there. Romans 16 through 25
verse 16 says, for I am not ashamed.
Of course this is Paul speaking, says I am not ashamed of the
gospel of Christ. For it is the power of God unto
salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew 1st and
also to the Greek. For therein is the is the the
righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is
written, the just shall live by faith.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in
unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is
manifest in them, For God has showed it unto them.
For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world
are clearly seen being misunderstood by the things that
are being, excuse me, being understood by the things that
are made even His eternal power in Godhead.
So that they are without, they are with, they are without
excuse, because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not
as God. Neither were thankful, but
became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish
hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be
wise, they become fools and change the glory of the
uncorruptible God into an image made like a corruptible man, and
two birds and four footed beasts, and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanliness, to the lust of
their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between
themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie and
worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator,
who is the blessed forever. Amen.
Now there is a whole lot to unpack in these verses, a whole
lot. And we're going to start with
verse 16, and we're talking about how we need to see people.
In verse 16, Paul says, Paul said that I am not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ. Wow, This is tough to talk about
because I doubt that there's a person in here that hadn't come
to the point sometime in their life when they're ashamed to say
anything. And Paul says that I'm not
ashamed of the gospel. And I think what he means by
that is I'm not ashamed to talk to somebody about the gospel.
I'm not ashamed to do that. So I think first of all, if
we're going to see people the way that God wants us to see
them, we're going to have to use the lens of the gospel to see it
with that's first impressions that we have are going to keep
us from seeing it through the gospel.
They're going to cause us not to see them through the gospel.
And so I think that's the first thing we have to see, that we're
going to have to see them through the gospel.
It's not enough just to see someone at the gas pump, pump
and gas. We must see them with eternity
in mind. They're either going to spend
eternity in heaven or they're going to spend it in hell.
And I think, again, sometimes we get so focused on the crowd that
we forget that the individuals in the crowd are going to even
go to heaven or they're going to go to hell.
And I think God wants us to see it through the gospel.
Look at verse, verse 18 through 20, verse 18 through 20.
Let's go back to that. For the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness.
Now folks, that just simply means that God gets angry over
over sin, over unrighteousness and unrighteousness of men.
But look at this next phrase. I had to study this thing out.
Who hold the truth in unrighteousness.
You know what that verse means? They know better.
Now who are we talking about here?
We're talking about mankind. He's talking about all men.
They know. They hold the truth, but they
hold it and they're still unrighteous.
They know better because continuing on, because that
which may be known of God is manifested in them.
It's already in there. They know it, for God has showed
it unto them. For the invisible things of Him
from the creation of the world are clearly seen being
understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power
and his Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
I have thought so many times he is a young Christian especially
how in the world does God send somebody to have a hell that
doesn't know anything about him? Well, this verse tells us they
do know. They may not know about the
salvation of Christ. They don't may not know the
gospel, but this verse right here is saying that they do know
that there is a God. They do know that God exists.
And if they loved God, if they loved that God, what they would
do is search that God out. But you go down into the other
verses and it says instead of doing that, they make up their
own gods. Now, I, I'm a real history buff.
As far as the Cherokee Indians, well, my grandmother was full of
Cherokee. And so I've studied it a lot and
I've studied what they have done and they have worshipped, They
worship nature. They'll worship a tree.
And find a a tribe of people who have maybe never touched
society, and I would think that you'll find out that they
worship something you see. God has put that in them.
He knows that there's a God. When we see people, we have to
remember that God has planted within them the fact that he is
God, not only God. It says that He knows that they
understand, because when we go back up here, even his eternal
power and the Godhead, the divinity, they know that there
is a God. When an atheist comes up to you
or when you approach somebody and they say, no, don't believe,
don't, don't believe that I'm, I'm not, I don't believe in God.
Yeah, they do. They made themselves a God.
In fact, it goes down here and says that they make themselves a
God in the in the Scriptures down there.
It tells us that they even they, they make like to corruptible
men themselves. Don't let an atheist, do not
allow your first impression to say, OK, they're an atheist.
I can't talk to them. You can.
And how do you do that? Well, go back up here and let's
see how that God tells men mankind that there is a God.
It's through nature, it says, the creation of the world, for
the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead.
You see, we can see God in nature.
You say, well, how can that be true?
How can you see God? Well, look, turn over, turn over
to Genesis. Turn it over to Genesis.
I have to find it. I think it's 26.
First Genesis chapter one, verse 26.
Is that where God said that he made everybody in his own?
Yeah, I'll get to it. Yeah.
And God said let us make man in our own image after our
likeness. Well, my goodness, look, I can
look at my hands right now and see there's no way that that
could have happened without divine intervention.
It has to be divine. God is saying here that mankind
knows that there is a God when they look at nature, when they
look at nature. So if we're going to see people
the way God wants to see us, first of all we have to see that
they need God. But the second of all, they do
have a basic knowledge of God. They have a basic knowledge that
God exists because it's all through nature.
It's all through nature. Now the question is, is this,
how do we use that? How do we use that?
Well, you have to know that that will always be with them.
For one thing, go down to verse 24.
In first Romans, one says, wherefore God also gave them up
to uncleanliness. Now let me tell you what that
does not mean. That does not mean that God
condemned them to hell, OK? You understand that That simply
means that God said, OK, I've tried, I've convicted you, now
I'm taking my hand off of you and I'm going to let you do what
you want to do. You know, there's a place in the
Bible says Christians are sort of like that too.
When the Holy Spirit, they quench the Holy Spirit.
Well, don't think that that verse says that God condemns
them to hell. So that man out here that says
there is no God, that doesn't mean they're condemned to hell
until they take their last heartbeat.
They've still got an opportunity.
We have an opportunity to listen to them.
God wants those people to be saved.
And if we get the idea that, well, they're too far gone.
Look, I know people right now that unfortunately, I've
probably said to myself, man, they're, they're just too far
gone. You know, there's no hope.
But God says, no, there's still a knowledge of God in them
somewhere. It's just up to us to help find
it. Now, how do we help find that?
I think one of the things that it's just like Pastor taking the
kids to the Creation Museum. I think we need to learn more
about creation. After all, after all, isn't that
what God says? That the way that they know
there's a God? So somebody says to you, oh, I
don't believe there's a God. Oh well, let me come here and
convince you. You know, and we go through all
of this theological mumbo jumbo sometimes.
Take them to nature. That's what God does.
He says, look, he says I'm seen in nature.
Take them to nature. Now let me ask you a question.
When if that is true, and it is, we know because the Bible said
it. If I were Satan, you know what I
would do? I would concoct evolution.
Now think about it. If the knowledge of God, the
fact that God exists is through nature, I'm going to discredit
nature. And Satan did that.
I can remember when I was in school back in the 60s, I can
remember it was called, it would, it had just come out and
we had the, I can remember my biology book and we had the
monkeys and it came up and it came up and it came up to the
Neanderthal man. And it was called the theory of
evolution. Today it's no longer theory.
They've dropped it, folks. Nature will teach people about
God, try to get their attention to it.
Take them to this. If somebody says that I don't
believe there's a God, show them that we can use it that way.
So I want you to think there's three things I want you to look
at here. I want you to understand very
quickly. First of all, this knowledge of
God is placed there by God. We didn't create the world.
We didn't give everybody the ability to see that a God
exists. We didn't do that.
God did that. God placed it there.
He placed it. The second thing I want you to
see, this knowledge of God is eternal.
It's eternal. Those in hell today know that
God is real. I want you to turn over to Luke
chapter 16. Very familiar verse, but I think
we need to read it here. Luke chapter 1619.
I'm sorry, 24 Luke. Luke chapter 16, verse 24.
And he cried. This is the rich man in hell, He
cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send
Lazarus that he might dip his tip of his finger in water and
cool my tongue, for I am in torment in these flames.
But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime
receiveth thy good things, and likewise Lazarus.
Lazarus received evil things, but now he is he is comforted,
and thou art tormented. And besides all this, between US
and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that they which would
pass from thence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us that
would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee
therefore, Father, that thou would ascend.
God send him to my Father's house, for I have 5 brethren
that he might testify them, lest they also come to this place of
torment. You see, even in hell, he knew
God. You see, this knowledge of God
is eternal. The flames and everything.
I don't know about you. I'm glad I'm not going to go
there. But you know what?
I can't imagine living every day.
Of course, there's probably no days, but living all the time in
eternity knowing that I knew there was a God.
Can you imagine that very thing that God planted in me that gave
the ability to see there is a God?
And I never responded, I never got saved.
I never acted on it. And every single day, all the
time in those burning flames, I am saying if only I had, if only
I had acted on that it is eternal.
It is eternal. They will always know that God
exists. The Bible tells every knee shalt
thou they're going to know who Jesus Christ was.
But then the third thing I want you to see is that it is a tool.
The fact that we know that people have the ability to know
that there is a God, it can become our tool.
And the way that it can become our tool is, first of all, as we
said before, we can study a little bit about nature because
we can use nature to help convince them.
Maybe if God has given them over, maybe we can rescue them
by by instructing them on nature and how God created us.
And folks, we have an opportunity today that our
forefathers never had. We know about the DNA.
We know about all of this science that proves that God is
God. And so we can do that today like
no other generation has ever done.
So when we run across people like that, I think God wants us
to see them as an opportunity, but we need to be equipped.
And so I think it becomes a tool for us that we study creation
and be ready to give an account for it.
You know, I see this as a spark. I truly do.
I see it as a spark, spark in every human being.
And before I studied this, to be honest with you, I never really
given it a lot of thought. I know this verse and I know
what these verses mean, but really it never came to never
came to the to the top of my head, if you will, until I
really started studying it because I do look at people so
often and say there's just no use.
There's no need to do that. But now I think I see every
single person still has a chance.
They truly have a chance. They're still with inside them a
little tiny spark that we might be able to ignite.
You know, I, when we go camping, my grandson, when we went
camping, we would, he would always want to start a fire.
And he had one of these magnetic, these magnesium
strikers and they would send out a little spark and he'd get some
little fodder together, maybe dried up leaves or something.
He'd put those in there and then he would take that spark and he
would hit it until a spark landed in there and you'd see
just a little, tiny bit of smoke.
And if you just leave that there, guess what happens?
Just goes out. But I'd seen several times he'd
pick that fodder up and he'd go and he'd blow on it and he we
might blow on it several times, but just about all the time it
turned into a flame. The Bible says without
preaching, the people perish. Now that preaching simply means
you and I, you know, it takes breath to preach.
I mean, I'm out of it now, but it takes breath to preach.
And I believe what God is saying is this.
I want you to see these people as still having that spark in
them. No matter what you think, no
matter what your impressions are of them, there's still a spark
in there. Would you breathe on them?
Would you breathe it into a flame?
You know, you may be able to do that.
God loves these people. And I'm going to close with just
some of the things, some of the ways that God sees people.
And you don't need to turn these or you don't need to write them
down. In Genesis 126, He sees people
as his creation. In John 316, He sees everyone.
He sees someone that He loves first, John 1/3.
He sees someone that he wants to fellowship with.
Matthew 2546 as someone who will spend eternity either in heaven
or hell in Philippians 419 as someone with needs that he wants
to meet. And then Matthew 2819 through
20, someone he wants to use in his earthly ministry.
And that's us. That's us.
So I think as we look at people, it's so easy.
It's so obvious. It's nature.
Let's just take a look at the crowd.
Let me ask you something. I'm guilty of this.
You've been out here with Bibles and you're holding signs and we
look at the cars, all the cars. We hold that sign up.
Look at all the cars. It's easy to look at all the
cars. It's easy to look at all the
people in the cars. But let me ask you something,
have you ever made eye contract with one individual in one of
those cars and said, I need to pray for that individual?
And as that car goes down the road, you are praying for that
individual? Probably not you maybe every
once in a while. But it's because it we're so
used to seeing the crowds, so used to screaming the crowd.
God wants us to see people as individuals with an opportunity
to be saved. So tonight you go back and study
some of those verses, hide them in your heart and learn how to
give an account, how to how to give an answer to someone who
says no, there's no God or lives like there's no God because they
can, they can see that there is a God.
Bible says that Bible says that it's up to us to breathe on that
fire, breathe on that spark, burst it into a flame. 7 after
that's pretty good. You're you, you know, your
pastor's not here tonight when you get out at almost 7:10.
So, but anyway, Brian, you want to come up and close in prayer
or do whatever? I was looking for it in the hymn
book, but it's it's reminds me of the song.
Let me see this world, dear Lord, as though I were looking
through your eyes, a world of men who don't want you, Lord,
but a world for which you died. And then the chorus says, let me
stand high above my petty problems so that we can see the
world, the need that they have for Christ.
And so I, I do thank you for that message.
And I, and I pray that you will. It is so easy to just get in a
rush, kind of what we were talking about this morning.
We're busy, You move along. I don't have time for that.
You may never see that person again ever.
They may never come across a Christian in their life again
that will share the gospel with them.
That was our one chance. And so go ahead and stand with
me. We'll pray and then we'll have a
time of invitation as she plays. Father, I thank you for this day
you've given us. Thank you for the the time we
could spend in your house today that I pray that we would have
been challenged, that our hearts would have been stirred this
morning and this evening, God, and that we would go out this
week into our mission fields, each one that you've called us
to and, and see people the way you see them.
And God, I pray that you would help us to, to really have a
passion to draw men to you. God, I pray that we would lift
you up so that you can do that work of drawing men to yourself
and God that we would see that little spark in them and, and,
and try to cultivate that spark into a flame of of their desire
to know the Savior that you are to us.
And I pray that you would just bless this time of invitation.
In Jesus name I pray. Amen.