Three Big Questions

Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.

We're startup church.

We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together.

And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more.

You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that.

We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today.

It's always good to see you guys.

Now that we've been back in Michigan for about a year and a half, a lot of faces are familiar.

We got to know some of you guys as time has gone by and that'll just continue over the years that we're here.

As long as the Lord gives us a couple more years, we'll see.

Nobody knows, nobody's guaranteed, but for right now, everybody's here and doing well.

And we'll go from there.

Lori and I, for the last 18 years have been going over to the Baltics, you know, a little bit about that.

I think we shared maybe just a little bit about at one time, Jared and Bianca have done a number of things over there as time has gone by.

They were over there last summer.

Did you share about your trip a little bit?

A little bit, yeah.

Yeah.

But it's those countries right there, bordering Russia and Belorussia and a little bit with Poland.

Go ahead to the next slide, Jared.

And then this is more of a close-up look at those countries.

We have four churches over there and a couple of unique things about them.

When the war broke out in Ukraine, not quite two years ago, a lot of the people, the disciples that were in those churches in the Ukraine actually found refuge in the Baltic countries.

They have relationships up there, but they also, it's fairly easy to get there.

And the governments of all of those countries made it super easy for Ukrainians to come in.

Some of the money that you have given to help support the Baltics and the Nordics over the last several years that you've been doing that has gone to help with those people, get their physical needs met.

And the disciples over there have done amazing things, just trying to welcome these Ukrainians in and get them connected with government agencies.

Many of them have stayed right there in the Baltics, in those churches.

Some of them have moved on to other cities in Europe, but you've been a part of helping that whole transition there.

So Morihai, as we've been going over, this was my, I think, 39th trip, something like that.

Glory is not far behind, but I've gone a few extra times.

And so we've logged a lot of miles, sat in a lot of airplane seats, for me, fairly cramped and everything, but we've developed relationships with these people.

It'd be just like coming here and seeing you.

We know these people really well.

These are some of the things that we've done.

There's three nations there, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, but within that little area, they speak six different languages.

And so in an average service, somebody will speak, like if we're visiting from out of town, I'll speak in English, but then it'll get translated into the native language.

But then depending on other people that are in those services, there's all these little side conversations going on in some other language.

And if you're not used to it, it sounds like people are just talking while you're preaching.

It comes across like, hey, I came from America.

Don't you want to listen to what I have to say?

Stop your conversations right now.

But they're just translating, and it's absolutely normal.

Nobody thinks anything of it.

We would probably struggle with it here a little bit until we got used to it.

So there's Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian.

Then when they were occupied by the Soviets, everybody in those countries was forced to learn Russian.

Then when that ended, and now everybody's learning English, but now with the Ukrainians coming in, now there's services actually with Ukrainian songs, Ukrainian speakers, and it's just a really cool, interesting mix.

A real vision of what heaven might be like, where you've got all people from all different backgrounds coming together, being trained.

That was pretty quick on my part.

Yeah, that was good.

That was good.

That was good.

All right.

To give you a perspective, that's kind of the size of those three countries.

They would all fit within Michigan, just like that.

Pretty crazy, huh?

Yeah.

All right.

Go ahead.

We're going to read the Bible today.

Is that all right?

Come on, bro.

You guys still read the Bible in Kalamazoo?

Yeah.

Some of it.

I think everybody gets to a point in their life, whether they're honest with themselves and others, where they ask themselves three big questions.

That's what we're going to talk about this morning.

When you think about what's going on in the world, not only the stuff in Ukraine, but now recent developments, Israel, there are some people that are going to sensationalize this and even put the spiritual, distorted, scriptural view of, oh, Jesus must be getting ready to come back any moment now because of the events that unfolded with Israel and the Hamas and all that kind of stuff.

A lot of people get unsettled, even thinking about what's going on in our nation right now and always has been.

I would caution you to say this.

Those of us that are a little bit older, we've seen waves of weirdness throughout our lives.

This is another one for some of you.

Maybe this is the first time that you've seen the world this messed up, but all you have to do is go back through history a little bit, even in biblical times, and you realize that the world is an unbelievably unstable place, that the only refuge there really is in the world is Christianity.

It's us having this connection with God.

This is what leads people to start asking these three questions.

The first one is, is there a God?

It's easy to think, like with all this nonsense that's happening, in all the ways that people are unbelievably worldly and mean and harsh with one another, could there even be a God?

It's proof that there isn't a God, because if there was a God, he would do something about it.

That's just a naive view of how God actually works.

He allows us to be our own worst enemies at times, and sometimes allows the bottom to fall out on our lives, so that we'll ask this question, is there a God?

Then if we get to that point, then we would ask this next question is, who is this God?

Who is he?

Some would even say, who is it?

Or, who is she?

But we know that God is used in the masculine sense in the scriptures, and so I've phrased the question, who is this God?

Who is he?

Where does he live?

How does he exist?

What are his intentions for my life?

Because we always look at God first from a selfish standpoint, and then only secondly do we look at God from the standpoint of, hey, maybe this God has something for my life, and maybe he wants me to do something with it.

If we get past this question, then the third question is, where do I find him?

And I believe right now, all over Kalamazoo, all over Michigan, all over the Baltics, all over the world, people have already asked themselves these three questions, and they're in this state where they're looking for answers, and that's where you and I get inserted into the equation.

It's God that has passed this knowledge on to us, that now are in a position to pass it on to other people, so we can provide answers for the existence of God, and the character of God, and we can actually show people how to find God.

You know, there's not a person in this room, self-included, that found God entirely on our own.

We had these questions, we had the thoughts, for Lori and I, that started back in 1981, but we didn't know where God was, we didn't really know who God was, we didn't know where to find him, but God had put this woman in our life that had invited us to church, that had tried to talk to us about spiritual things, and we just totally were not interested at the time.

But then when some events unfolded, all of a sudden, we started wondering, how can we find this God?

I don't know if we use that exact question, but in our minds, that's what we were looking for, and so we went to that reference point that we had, of someone that seemed like they had found God, and they were excited about their relationship with God, and that's what led us to become Christians all the way back then.

Go ahead, Jerry.

There's a book, actually several books, a guy named Josh McDowell, he's a writer, author, theologian, some of you are nodding your heads, you've heard of him, he writes a lot about the existence of God, Christian apologetics and things like that, he did some of his work at Michigan State University, that's not a bad word here, is it?

Michigan State?

Just the other place?

This place?

Yeah, right here.

Okay, alright.

But he had in one of his books this word, not a word, just a collection of letters, and he talked about people that are skeptics and come from more of an atheistic background would translate those letters, God is nowhere.

He's nowhere to be found, it's obvious, just look at the world, look at my neighbors, and you know, whenever people get critical like that, they never take a look at themselves, it's always outward towards all their sources of irritation.

But you and I, and people that come to faith, would see that same collection of letters in the form of God is now here.

He is here.

You and I have come to believe that.

But there's a lot of people in this world that still have yet to grasp that.

Maybe they're atheists, like many of the people, if not most of the people in those Baltic Nordic countries, they're just pure atheists, they're not bad people, they just grew up without God being a part of conversation, part of their daily life.

They have all these churches, unbelievable structures, but to them, that's all they are.

They're parts of history and a time period where some weird people came and started building churches with crosses on it and stuff like that.

Turn with me to Psalm 19.

Go on, Tom.

We'll try to, just in the short time that we have, address some of these questions.

Alright, Tom.

In Psalm 19, one of my favorite psalms, because it talks about the existence of God and that God can be identified as real if we would just simply pause for a minute and take a look around us and then secondly, make a little effort to reach out to him.

In verse 1, this whole section talks about natural revelation.

Realizing that there is a God simply by looking at our creation that we live under and it starts out in verse 1, The heavens declare the glory of God.

The skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech.

Night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out to all the earth.

Their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other.

Nothing is hidden from its heat.

This speaks of the creation itself, and for extra credit you can read Romans 1, 20 through 25, which basically all these things point to that if we would just simply look at the creation that we live under, there's enough evidence right there to make us start realizing that someone had to create this.

This is not just a collection of accidents that collided all together at one point.

And if you do subscribe to the Big Bang Theory, which may or may not be exactly how this universe was created, we ought to ask the other question, well, who created the Big Bang?

Makes sense, right?

I'm not a bright man, but I'm smart enough to know how to ask that question.

And so just from the grandness of things like the universe that this speaks about, to all the way down to molecular biology, it's amazing how this creation functions in harmony and has got to have been created by someone or something, and we know that someone or something to be God himself.

But many people are not at that point yet, but we could encourage them to just take a look around and think about even something like a tree.

How did that get there?

We could break it all down, the creation from seed to a giant tree, but what created all those processes?

That's important, but that's not enough to help you or me become Christians.

It just points to, man, I've got to start thinking about, is there a God?

And then secondly, the second part of the psalm starts in verse 7, we won't read the whole thing, but it says, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.

The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever.

The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous.

And it goes on from there, but let me highlight a few words here.

The law, the statutes, the precepts, the commands, and the ordinances all talk about the words that come from God.

These are all indicators that there's more revelation to be had than just simply observing creation, but this is called special revelation, that it's acquired revelation of the knowledge and the existence of God.

We can do some of these things on our own.

I suppose if you were on a deserted island and a Bible just happened to wash up on shore and you opened it up and you started to read it, you'd figure all this out, but that doesn't happen very often.

And let's just be honest, none of us have ever lived on a deserted island and had a Bible wash up on shore.

You can call me a liar if that happened to you and I'll apologize for being so judgmental.

It's the law, it's the statutes, the precepts, the commands, the ordinances.

These are things that will give us details about not only the existence of God, but about the other questions as well.

So you and I play this unbelievable role in another person's life where people actually will sit down and open up the Bible and show us some scriptures that will help identify who this God is and that's part of how we ended up here today.

Second is, who is this God?

Acts chapter 17.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

The first century world was chaotic, confusing, there was an order to it, but it was only an order that was established by those that ruled the worlds or parts of the worlds at that time.

And as a result, there was a lot of idolatry and questions about who this God is.

Some people just viewed him as a power that they wanted to have on their side so they could conquer other nations because of that power and many other obscure thoughts, theologies, philosophies and things like that.

Paul, as he traveled around establishing churches he went on three missionary journeys and those are detailed in the book of Acts and on one of these journeys he ended up in the city of Athens which was a very cosmopolitan city very advanced culturally and very significant in the world at that time.

And he meets a group of people that belong to this collection of philosophers known as the Areopagus.

They were specialized in thinking and philosophizing and exploring new ideas and things like that.

And we're going to read about one of those interactions that Paul had with this group of people.

Let's start in verse 22.

Then Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious for as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God.

Now what you worship is something unknown I'm going to proclaim to you.

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 hands and he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth and he determined the time set for them in the exact places where they should live God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him though he's not far from each one of us.

He's saying this God can be found and I can see you're very religious which was giving them credit for the effort that they had put in up to this point but what he didn't tell them but he realized is they were also very ignorant of God.

They had all these statues all these figurines, all these things that talked about this God and that God and this God and that God and that wasn't enough because they also put something up that said to an unknown God so all of these other things never fully satisfied this void that was inside of them you follow what I'm saying?

And so if they're still looking they haven't really found the real God but they were at least intelligent enough to realize that all these gods and goddesses, all these statues and carvings and figurines they weren't really doing it for us there's got to be still something else out there I think again a lot of people are in that spot in this world Some of you were pretty religious before you actually became a Christian.

Maybe some of you are holding on to your old traditions and rituals and beliefs from the religion that you were raised in and are just stubborn or prideful even maybe to see what the Bible is actually saying.

Amen Amen for being religious that kept you off the streets kept you out of some trouble I was religious growing up but I wouldn't say that that translated into spirituality at all Amen for being religious I credit my upbringing to my belief in God and my understanding that Jesus is the Son of God and so somehow in my mind I knew there were consequences for bad behavior and rewards for good behavior but that was about the extent of it but as I studied the Bible as this couple Dave and Therese studied the Bible with us I wasn't so wrapped up into the way that I was brought up spiritually that I couldn't let go of it because I saw clearly in the Bible that there are things there that I was never taught growing up and there are things there that were actually contradictory to the things that I was given growing up and so then I was at a decision as all people are do you hold on to your past just because you have this emotional connection to it or do you decide, hey, it's time to cash that in for the truth why hold on to a lie or a distortion of the truth any longer why not grab hold of the truth there is only good that's going to come from that like your salvation and other people being saved as well so Paul is telling these guys this God who you still don't have figured out yet because of your to an unknown God statue he can be found in fact he's actually not that far away from you right now he puts you in the right place at the right time so that you could reach out to him and find him and then he assures them that he's not far from each one of us I want you to think about your connection to Jesus Christ all of us in this room came to Christ in many different ways but it all culminated in exactly the same way some of you grew up religious some of you grew up worldly some of you grew up believers some of you grew up agnostic maybe at best some of you had a pretty righteous life and never really got into big trouble as if there is big and little trouble it's just trouble in God's eyes and others of you lived an unbelievably sinful life but we all were brought to that same point in time where we saw the truth laid out in the Bible and we had to decide am I going to grab this or am I going to hold on to the life that I've lived up to this point he does call these people to reach out to him and find him though he's not far from each one of us it's amazing how much God how much more God will reveal of himself if we apply a little effort in our lives if you want to be lazy with God then God probably isn't going to be all that fired up about showing you who he really is and what his plans are for your life we have this theme throughout the Bible that God gives more to those that make an effort and seek him he will reveal more of himself to them when you look at the parables many of the parables are centered around that very topic but that's another sermon for another time alright alright still got a little gas in the tank?

I do let's turn to Matthew chapter 7 where is this God?

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

that's even kind of confusing for us that already know God and believe in God where is he?

well he's up in heaven well is it really up?

what is heaven?

is it clouds or is it space?

does he live beyond the borders of the known universe?

where is God?

I don't know and I don't think any of us will truly know until we meet his son on the day that he comes back but that's not what this is talking about we don't have to know his address we have to know where he is I've known Paul and Lorene for a good number of years first met Paul, I don't know back in the early 80's mid 80's I never really knew where he lived I just knew he lived in southwest Michigan you may not know where Paul lives but I could ask I could ask one of the ladies hey do you know where Paul lives?

and they'd say nope you better ask somebody else I could ask Oprah do you know where Paul lives?

yep I know right where he lives and Oprah is shaking her head I don't know where he lives you guys all need to have dinner together and then someone could give you their address back in the old days in my day and age you pulled out a map and you hoped that all the roads were on the map to the location you were going you didn't know addresses you just knew streets and then you had to hand pick your way through your navigation which was all visual nowadays we plug it in Jared forgot to send me the address so I said this morning Jared where's your address and he sends it to me and I just touch it on my phone and all of a sudden the map pops up do you understand how this stuff works?

it's kind of fascinating to me and then I knew right where the building was but when we pulled into the parking lot we had to come through the door I didn't know for sure if the door was locked or open I saw strange people walking in and out and I thought must be the church I say all that so that we can read this passage here in Matthew chapter 7 let's start in verse 7 ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find knock and the door will be open to you for everyone who asks receives he who seeks finds and to him who knocks the door will be open anybody in this world can find God if they really want to anybody anybody from any language any culture any background no matter how corrupt a life they've lived anybody can find God in fact God wants them to find God but I've got to ask I've got to ask some questions and then I've got to seek him out put in some effort, some study and then finally I've got to knock on his door figuratively, maybe literally, I don't know but then it's up to God to whether or not he's going to let us in and here the promise is that door will be open it will be open that's a great promise because we could all end up at Paul's house we got the directions we plugged it in and there we are and Paul may say I don't want you guys coming in I just don't want you around I kind of think he'd let us in I don't think he'd close the door but with God you know for sure that you can get in if you want to what an unbelievable promise there is a story in Luke chapter 13 about the owner of a house that actually closes his door on people that are knocking and the whole point of that parable is that now it's too late he gives us all a window of opportunity during the course of our lives but then when we die or when he comes back then it's too late there's no more knocking there's no more seeking no more opportunities to ask the door's closed there's so many people in this world and I hope they make it in the end but I've studied with so many people over the 40 some years that Laurie and I have been Christians that got right to the edge and then they didn't want to knock on God's door they turned away sometimes because of their sin a lot of times because of their religious pride they didn't want to accept the fact that even though they believed in God they still were not Christians all you have to do is read your Bible and you know there's a lot of religious people that believed in God some of them made it and others walked away because they couldn't deal with their pride being crushed I want to show you a story here this happened just a few Sundays ago in Riga, Latvia that's the Baltic Sea in the background and it was an angry sea that day a lot angrier than what the picture looks like there were huge waves coming in the wind was blowing about 30 miles an hour we all left the service in Riga and drove about 45 minutes to the Baltic Sea where this young man Andris got baptized it was great to be there and to see him, how happy he was but he's got a great story because he, like the whole point of this message he got to a point where he literally started asking these three big questions he grew up like most young Latvians without God in their lives no religious experience, no knowledge of God whatsoever and then like all people do at some point in time they realize that there is a hole deep inside of them a lot of times people fill it up with drugs and alcohol, sexual immorality other indulgences sometimes they really get into hobbies you invest a lot of money in stuff that brings them pleasure those are all smokescreens to fill the void that's in each and every one of us and he had done that he didn't have a lot of money because he was only 21 years old and when you have a really good paying job in Riga, Latvia, you're not making much money the poverty level occupation is here like all young people he has a computer and he's on the internet and so he stumbles across a video on YouTube and it says if you want to find God pray this prayer 5 days in a row and so he thought, well, I'll give it a try and so for 5 days in a row he prayed the prayer which was something like God, if you're real, please reveal yourself to me God, if you're real, please reveal yourself to me so for 5 days in a row he did that and nothing happened he closed it up I guess God's not real and then 2 days after that he was at a party and I'm sure there was some activity going on at this party that probably you and I would not participate in nothing wrong with parties we just have to leave certain things out of our types of parties can I please have an amen on that because I was thinking, Lord, you're trying to stifle me so he's at this party and they're making a lot of noise and there's 2 young guys, disciples in the Riga church that hear all the ruckus and so they start going over to the party not sure why, but we do know now and they stumble across this Andres and he I guess it was late at night and they invited him, hey you can crash at our place tonight if you want we're going to go to church in the morning and if you want to come to church, you can come with us and so he does, he walks in he hears the singing in all these different languages he sees the people from Latvia, Ukraine, Russia and probably a few stragglers from other countries that were visiting that day and he hears the message, and he hears the singing and all of a sudden he starts to think, maybe there really is a God and could you show him to me and so some guys started to study the Bible with him for the next 2 weeks and this is what happened after just 2 weeks of being introduced to God it's amazing is there a God?

Matthew 7 · chapter mention Luke 13 · chapter mention

he found the answer to that to be yes who is this God?

as he started to study the Bible God became real he understood that this God really is real and then how do I find him?

they showed him how to do that and then that afternoon, just like it says in Acts 2 he repented of his sins made Jesus Lord he entered into the waters of baptism the form of water in this case was the Baltic Sea as soon as they baptized him and he came up out of the water God miraculously took all of his sins away placed his Holy Spirit within this young man and added him to the church not just the Riga church but he's every bit as part of our church as he is that church and that's the way it can be for every single person that's ever lived or will ever live it can happen for you in this room as well if you haven't done that yet you just have to be humble enough to surrender to the will of God for all of us there could be another question we're not going to address this one today but here's the bonus question what does this God want from me?

what he wanted from you in the beginning I'm talking to older Christians now and I say older Christians if you've been baptized longer than 6 months consider yourself an older Christian what he wanted from you then was just to get to this point where Andres was but what he wants from you right now I think is something different because his intent is that as we grow and mature there are more and more things that God wants us to do to carry out his work here on this earth but that's another sermon Lord's going to share a couple thoughts about that Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast if you're in the Kalamazoo area we'd love to get connected please go to kalamazoo.church and fill in your information to come to a Sunday service or any other event that we have going on in any case, you'll be hearing from us next week