Paul writes to the saints in I Thessalonians
5:27, “I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.”
From Romans 10:17, we know “faith cometh by
hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
“Sometime I think people miss that verse,” says Jordan. “You
notice it didn’t say ‘faith cometh by reading’? It’s not just to read it; you
have to hear it, and that’s not just with your outer ear because if you couldn’t
hear because you had some problem, then you’d be lost.
“He continues in verse 18, ‘But
I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth,
and their words unto the ends of the world.’
“How in the world has their sound gone ‘into all the earth,
and their words unto the end of the world’? How did that happen? Well, that’s a
quote from Psalm 19, where David talks about how ‘the
heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.’
“There’s not a language where the testimony of God’s
reality isn’t made through His creation. That’s why when you talk to an atheist,
you don’t have to argue about people being atheists. Everybody knows there’s a
God! I keep telling you that. Romans 1.
“People try to talk themselves out of it to alibi their
sin, but you can’t live in creation and not know there’s a Creator. Again, you
might have determined to ‘hold the truth in unrighteousness’ and to ‘change the
truth into a lie’ to make yourself God, but it doesn’t change what you know
down inside of you. Creation witnesses, your conscience witnesses. God fixed
you that way.
“I said a minute ago, here’s Adam, and God takes Eve out
of Adam and what does that make Adam? He’s the incomplete dude. There’s
something missing and he’s always pursuing. By the way, in that analogy, which
one would represent God?
“Man has a desire, something down inside of him because of
the incompleteness. Now, people don’t seek the God of the Bible in their blindness.
When the verse says, ‘There’s none that seeketh after God,’ they’re talking
about the God of the Bible, but they seek something to fill that void and
you’re all the time trying to put something in your heart, in your life, to
fill up the void that’s missing.
“You want to be happy, and you want to be fulfilled and
validated and feel like there’s some value and worth to you, so you go out into
a thousand places (activities, causes, etc.) so much smaller than who the Lord Jesus
Christ is, and you cram that stuff into you and it doesn’t work. Maybe it’s
education; maybe it’s religion, or money, or sex or whatever it is. Fame and
fortune but it never works and you’re in this frantic, manic, panic search.
*****
“In Christ you find the answer to those things, and what that teaches you is a ‘humility of mind,’ as Paul calls it, and it
comes by hearing. How do they
hear it? Look at Romans 10:14: [14]
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall
they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
“There’s a process, see? There’s a sending and a preaching
and a hearing and a believing--because you heard, because it was preached,
because someone was sent! Faith comes by hearing.
“There’s a process that brings faith to people! It starts
with the possession of His Word, but then it starts with taking that Word and
preaching it, being a minister, putting it out there. The heralding of it and
the hearing of it creates faith in what’s said. And after you trust it, you get
saved; you get His life.
(new article tomorrow)
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