Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Can you imagine what it will be like with the Lord in eternity? Here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: Living with him, a joy forever. No sadness, no unhappiness, no sickness. Doctors are all unemployed and his strength provides for everything. What is his dwelling place like? What is it like to be in a place where there's only joy, nothing ever goes wrong, no problems, no sickness, no arguments, no strife, no disagreement? Everybody's on the same page worshipping God. What is that like? Strength where his strength is so strong it can accomplish anything he desires. All he does is speak the word and it happens.

Guest (Male): Exciting days are ahead for those who believe. I can't know exactly what it will be like to walk by his side, but I can imagine with the help of the Scriptures that speak of our glorious future. Thanks for joining us today for Hope from the Word, the daily radio outreach of Calvary Chapel of Marlton. God has made some fantastic promises in his word and we have every hope he will fulfill them. Some of the promises and the fulfillment are found in 1 Chronicles chapter 16. We started studying this Scripture last time and today we conclude this song of David. From 1 Chronicles chapter 16, picking up in verse 25, here's Pastor Bill.

Bill Luebkemann: God's marvelous deeds are amazing and beyond anything that we can imagine. We need to be living our lives for him. If we're living them for ourselves, that's going to be a self-centered, short little lifespan that at the end of it, you're not going to have anything to show for it. One of the things one of the guys said at the conference is one hour in heaven and you'll regret all the grumbling you ever did. To which a few of us said, "Do you think it'll really take one hour?" More like one minute or something in heaven, or a second even, in heaven.

We need to be thinking about his marvelous deeds. He is God Almighty, the creator of the universe. He should be the center of our lives just as he is the center of the universe. If he's not, then our lives are out of balance. If we're living for ourselves so that at the end of our life we can show people how much we have to show for it—look at all my stuff that I got—when you leave this place, it'll all be left behind. You won't be able to show God, "Look at all the stuff I brought. I brought buckets of gold." To which God would say, "Hey, we already have enough asphalt up here in heaven."

The most valuable thing on earth is the least valuable thing in heaven, it would seem. For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. He is to be feared above all gods. Look, he is great to those who believe, to those who are his friends. He is great and wonderful. To those who don't believe, who are his enemies, he is great and terrible. But either way, he's great. If you believe in God, if you put your faith and trust in God, he's great because you can thank him for what he did for you.

Taking you from a life of sin, making you into a new believer, a follower of his that's going to live with him for eternity. If you don't like praising him here, you better practice because that's what is done in heaven. If you can't sing a few songs here, you better practice that because we're going to be doing a lot more singing in heaven. I think there'll be one room for hymns, by the way, and a separate room for praise and choruses, maybe.

How great is the Lord and worthy of praise. To those who are against him, who are his enemies, who are working against him, he's great and terrible because for them judgment is coming. You can have all this stuff here in the world, but when you get there, none of it will help you on judgment day. The only thing he's going to care about is, "What did you do with my son while you were walking on the earth? What did you do with him?" He is to be feared above all gods.

Look, they were worried about every little god idol figurine they made with their own hands, sculpted them out of wood or gold or silver or whatever. They were making their own gods and they were worshipping them, but they couldn't help them and they couldn't hurt them. They were false gods. An idol is nothing in this world. He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. 1 Corinthians 8:4, an idol is nothing in the world.

The Lord, he is who Israel worshipped and he is who we should worship. When we worship anything else, we worship job, career, material goods, a house, cars, anything in this world. If you're single, "If I could just meet the perfect person, that would be it." If you're married, "If I could just meet the perfect person, that would be it. I'd be happy then." Look, he's the one that made the heavens and the earth. He's the one to be feared and he's the one who's the God of everywhere.

The gods of all the nations are idols. They're worshipping the wrong things, but the Lord made the heavens. He made everything. Who are you going to put your faith and trust in? Someone who made everything or someone who was created by the one who made everything? Yet every other religious system in the world—Christianity not really a religious system—so here you have Christianity, here you have the religious systems of the world, and they're all about man-made ideas on how to please God.

God said, "I just want you to believe in me, to know me, to walk with me." Splendor and majesty are before him, strength and joy in his dwelling place. When an earthly king rules, they like to have all kinds of pomp and circumstance. Even when it's not a king, it's the President of the United States. He's coming to Philadelphia. We're going to close I-95 while he drives up I-95 because the Secret Service guys aren't very good drivers, so we have to close it. We're going to roll out the red carpet and we're going to put on a big shindig because here's the President of the United States.

We don't bow down to him, but everybody's all excited always to meet the President, make a big deal out of it. But it says here, splendor and majesty are before him and strength and joy in his dwelling place. He's the one that has these things. We're just giving him credit where credit is due. He's surrounded by splendor and majesty, millions of angels ministering to him. That's a pretty good deal. He made the heavens. There are strength and joy in his dwelling place.

Living with him, a joy forever. No sadness, no unhappiness, no sickness. Doctors are all unemployed and his strength provides for everything. What is his dwelling place like? What is it like to be in a place where there's only joy, nothing ever goes wrong, no problems, no sickness, no arguments, no strife, no disagreement? Everybody's on the same page worshipping God. What is that like? Strength where his strength is so strong it can accomplish anything he desires. All he does is speak the word and it happens.

What is it like in that place? Ascribe to the Lord, o families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come before him. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. Give these things to the Lord, not in the sense that we have them and he needs them, but rather in the sense that we're acknowledging what is rightfully his. We're giving back what we received from him.

It says here, o families of nations, everybody should be doing this. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. We're not giving him his strength. We're not giving him the glory. We're just acknowledging that he has it already. Bring an offering and come before him. We don't give him anything that he didn't give us. When we give back to him a portion of what he's given us, we're just acknowledging that it came from him. If you can't give back to God the first portion of what he gave you, then you have to consider if you really believe where it came from.

Bring an offering and come before him. The offering that he really wants most of all is ourselves. If we're going to live our lives for ourselves, we're going to miss out on what God has for us. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. He's holy, we're not. He invites us to worship him within his holiness and tremble before him, all the earth. The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved. In Star Trek they could put rockets on some planet and make it move, or in the new Star Trek they blow up a whole planet.

They won't be able to do that. It says here the earth cannot be moved. We can't move our stinking little planet one inch. It's just such a small planet, nowhere near the biggest planet in our solar system. Our sun is unremarkable, just a small star by comparison. Compared to the biggest stars, our sun is this big. Compared to the biggest planets, our planet is this big. Our galaxy is unremarkable. A small planet in a small solar system in a small galaxy in this giant universe, but we can't even move that. Tremble before him, all the earth. The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, let them say among the nations, "The Lord reigns." Let the sea resound and all that is in it, let the fields be jubilant and everything in them. Then the trees of the forest will sing, they will sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. Creation praises God and God speaks to us through creation. Over in Romans, chapter 1, verse 20: For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

You can't say, "I don't know if there's a God or not. I'm not that familiar with the Bible and I really don't know what to believe." The Bible says ever since the beginning of time, God's qualities have been clearly seen. You can understand them by looking around at what he has made. Want to shut down a conversation with an atheist real quickly? Just tell him there are six billion chemical codes in your DNA and ask him how they got in the right order by themselves. End of discussion.

They have nothing to say to that, or else they'll say it was aliens that came here and planted the planet here on us. We believe in aliens, we don't believe in any of that God stuff, but it was probably aliens. We know that's true because we saw it on Star Trek. Look, I like Star Trek, but it's not true. Psalm 19, verse 1: The heavens declare the glory of God. You don't think inanimate objects can talk? Look, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. You look at the sky at night, you see the work of God's hands.

You look at the sky in the daytime, you see the work of his hands. You see the clouds in the daytime, the sun, sometimes the moon at nighttime, you see the stars. They declare the glory of God. How big is the glory of God? Bigger than the universe, which we already know is pretty big. God's glory is bigger than that and he puts on a display every night. Day after day—I love this verse—day after day they pour forth speech. Night after night they display knowledge, free for the taking.

God revealing his glory, speaking to us through that, saying, "Hello, here I am. Look at all the things I've made." I told you a few weeks ago I was having an email discussion with an atheist guy who stopped writing to me after I brought up the six billion things a couple times. I asked him if he was walking on the beach with a metal detector and he found a Timex watch buried in the sand and he opened it up and saw the gears working inside of there, would you naturally assume that this must have just been a bunch of molecules in the ocean that got kind of swept together by the current?

That ocean current kind of swept the molecules together and they made themselves into gears. A watch is a very simple device compared even to a human cell. A human cell has billions of parts. A watch probably doesn't even have 100 parts in it. He said, "Well, that wasn't a valid comparison." Why not? Look at the sky at night. Look at all the stars that are out there in the galaxies. Look at the HubbleSite.org and look at the pictures that the Hubble telescope takes of other galaxies and things.

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. It doesn't matter, even those headhunting guys in South America that couldn't even write down their own language, they understand. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world. God's qualities are visible in nature and even nature worships him. Let the sea resound and all that is in it, let the fields be jubilant and everything in them.

Then the trees of the forest will sing. They will sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. All of nature worships him. How much more should we, created in his image, be doing that? Instead, so many people are off worshipping some other god or no god at all, or just the god of themselves. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. Cry out, "Save us, o God our Savior. Gather us and deliver us from the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name, that we may glory in your praise."

Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Then all the people said, "Amen," and "Praise the Lord." Look, you could just call these last few verses remembering God's goodness. Again, think about the fact that they're given to those returning from exile. They're being told give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love endures forever. It never ends. Cry out, "Save us, o God our Savior. Gather us and deliver us from the nation."

When we cry out to him, he answers. When we come to him, he's always there for us. Wake up in the middle of the night, something's not right, and you pray and God is there for you. He's not sleeping. He's always there on every channel, on every wavelength. You can always reach out to him and he reaches out to us through his son. Give thanks to him. Cry out to him. Give thanks to his holy name that we may glory in your praise. Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.

Sometimes you say, "Praise the Lord," around an unsaved person and they make fun of it. One person I knew would tell me, "Well, from your lips to his ears," and just make fun of it. They don't believe in the Lord, or I guess they're jaded or who knows what's going on in their minds. But it says in my Bible here, praise be to him, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Left and right, east and west, north and south, up and down, past, present, and future. Wrap it all together, we're going to praise the Lord because he's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Look at how little these people knew about God's ultimate plan. They were returning from exile. They didn't even know their own history. Many of us here may know more about their own history than they did. We know everything that happened after this. This is only in the middle of the Old Testament. There is so much more after this. So much more that we know today because we've seen God's plan be fulfilled. We've seen all that he's done and how he brought it all together.

We saw how the Old Testament system of sacrifice was brought together finally and ended with one sacrifice to end all sacrifices. We saw how his plan was to reach all the world, not just the chosen people. We saw that he's not willing that any should perish, but that everyone should come to everlasting life. That's what God's will is, that everyone would be saved by coming into a relationship with him. We know so much more than these people did.

Yet David is telling them to praise the Lord and to be thankful and to remember who he is. How much more should we be doing that today? How much more at a greater level and how much more excited about it we should be? If David could write, or whoever the Psalmist was that wrote Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the beauty of the Lord, day after day they pour forth speech," they knew that much. We know so much more and how much more so should we be committed to following him?

Get rid of the idols in our lives and be dedicated and committed. That we would grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior and what he wants for us. Make him the center of our lives. He just doesn't want an hour of your time on Sunday morning. If that's all you're giving him, just forget it. He wants all of it. He wants us to live for him. He wants to change us so that we're like him, so that someday we're going to see him, we're going to be like him face to face.

I don't want to see him and have to explain why I was so busy trying to accumulate all these things, spent all my time getting things. Look at how much time we spend in America saving for retirement and so many people never make it. Even if you do make it, if you're really blessed, you get maybe a few years of retirement. Maybe if you're really, really, really blessed you get a couple decades of retirement. But life with him goes on for all eternity.

Yet it seems like more time is spent planning for a short period of time than a long period of time. It just seems so odd. It's like going on a trip and spending all your effort planning for the flight and not thinking about what you're going to do when you get there. You get down to Disney World and your wife says, "Well, what hotel are we staying in?" "Oh, hotel? I didn't take care of that arrangement." "Well, which rental car line should we get in?" "Oh, rental car?" "Well, did you get the tickets?" "You need tickets to get in there?" "Yeah, they cost a lot, too."

Look, it's like spending all the time worried about just a short transitional stage instead of worrying about the time of eternity that we spend with him. I encourage you, spend time in the word, spend time with the Lord in prayer, spend time getting to know him, letting him work in your life, and be prepared for that day when you meet him face to face. All the material things in your life is just junk. We don't need it, it doesn't help us. What'll help us is if we spend time with the Lord.

I know you need food to eat and you need a car to get where you're going and all that kind of stuff, but you know what I mean. We spend a lot of time having the right car so the neighbors can see what kind of car we have, or the right house in the right neighborhood or in the right part of town, or the right kind of TV so that we can watch more shows that we shouldn't be watching anyway because they don't glorify God. We know so much more now. How much better can we praise God today than these people could? How much better should we be doing it today than they were?

Finally, if you confess with your mouth—it says here—Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. The culmination of all of Scripture, what God's whole plan was all about from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation. What it's all about is those people who call upon his name as Lord. The work of God is this: to believe in the one he sent. If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame. And never means never. Not here, not there. When you stand before him on judgment day, you will not be put to shame. You don't have anything to worry about and everything is made new and he loves you more than you could ever imagine. Everyone, it says, who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

How much more so should we be calling on his name than these people were? They were doing it. We should be doing it even more. I should be doing it, you should be doing it. Let's all be calling on his name. Let's put our faith and trust in him. If you've never put your faith and trust in him, it's very simple to ask him, "Lord, come into my life, forgive my sins. I want to be a follower of Jesus." And he'll do that. You don't need to take a class.

You should study the word. Some classes, Bible studies, what have you, can help you to get to know him better. But you don't need to do that to get saved. You need to get saved and then you need to continue to study his word so that you can come to know him in a deeper way. If you've never called out on his name, I encourage you to do that now.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in Pastor Bill Luebkemann's study of 1 Chronicles. If you'd like to hear this message again, you have several options. Visit our website at ccmarlton.org, download the Hope FM app to your smartphone or tablet, or look for us wherever you find podcasts.

If you've been thinking about visiting Calvary Chapel of Marlton, where Bill serves as pastor, we'd love to have you. Our service times are on Sunday mornings at 10. We also meet midweek on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. You can also livestream from home when you visit our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton. For more information, go to ccmarlton.org. We hope to see you soon.

Before the day is done, we'd like to connect with you. Share a praise report, prayer request, or what you're learning from this series. You can easily email us at our website, ccmarlton.org, or just call us at 856-983-1662. There's more to come from Bill's study of 1 Chronicles and we'll have that for you next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel of Marlton.