The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: God's voice began to go across the ether waves and God put flesh around it. That is His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the revelation and to reject Him, to not accept Him, to not bow before Him, to not obey Him is to push God completely out of one's life. He is the full and complete revelation of God Almighty. Jesus came. He made the great stoop into humility. He becomes a babe in a manger. He is Emmanuel, God with us.

Guest (Male): Can creation itself point us to God? Can history reveal His hand? Today on the Healing Word, Pastor Jack Morris continues Foundations of Faith with "In the Beginning God" Part 2. We'll discover the many ways God reveals Himself and how Jesus Christ is the clearest and fullest revelation of the Father.

Pastor Jack Morris: You are part of a holy community that will never be dissolved, the Church of Jesus Christ. That is a great mystery and this is what Jesus was saying when He prayed, "Father, make them one." Make them one. The Church is not a divided Church. People will become divided, but the Church, the true Church, the mysterious Church, the Church that is in your heart, you're not divided. You're one. You're in an indissoluble, eternal union.

You have come out of the world into a holy place. Something mysterious has happened in your life. You have been changed and transformed and have become part of God, for He has breathed into your nostrils His own breath. You are part of Him. He is linked to you. You can't get away from Him. He can't get away from you. He is linked to you with an eternal covenant.

You are bound to Him. You're not alone in this world. You're not a wandering pilgrim or an orphan that is lost. You have a very special relationship as real as the relationship that the Trinity has with the Trinity, so does this relationship God has with you. Now we need to have that relationship with one another. We're hooked up, whether you like it or not. You can't divorce me. Do you know that?

God has made us one holy, new people. And it all begins in this fourth word of the Bible telling us that the Church is one because of God's nearness and preciousness to us. God now is going to disclose Himself. "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory above the heavens." Look at verse three: "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have set forth."

Here is God beginning a great work, and that is the disclosure of Himself. Now you can see God if you follow me now and become sensitized to His revelation in nature. In Psalm chapter 19, verses one and two: "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."

The atheist would tell us that there is no God. Absolutely there is no God. We're all here by accident. Something just happened, but that something they can't fully explain, but they know what they don't believe and they will purport that belief with all of their energy. There is no God. The agnostic will come along and say, "Well, I'm not sure. There may be, there may not be a God, but none of us will ever know whether there is a God or not because all true knowledge is uncertain and can never be discovered."

The pantheist will come along and say, "Well, God's everywhere, in a tree, in a river, in a flower, in a candlestick, in the carpet. You can just bow down, just worship him anywhere because everything is God." But God is saying no, all of that is erroneous. None of that is true. And so God now is beginning to reveal Himself and come to us in knowledge and in understanding step by step that we might truly understand Him and discern Him and truly worship Him.

Notice what it says. "The heavens declare the glory of God. Day after day they pour forth speech." We can look at the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees. We can look and as we look we hear there's a sign language that is coming forth and God is saying, "I'm here. I did it. I created it." Predictability, understanding, and perfection is no accident of nature. Where there's an accident, there's always confusion. But the universe is so ordered. It is so clear. It is so predictable.

There is no confusion there at all. And so God is saying, "Look at the universe. I'm speaking forth volumes to you." How could anyone say there is no God? Nature itself is not sufficient to bring us to salvation. It's not sufficient to bring us to the place of forgiveness of sin. The purpose nature serves is to incite our curiosity to search further. It's the first step.

So without a Bible, the people of far-off lands who've never heard of God, God has placed a witness of His truth and of His person and of His being in the stars, in the moon, in the trees, in the seasons. It's already there and without Bible or missionary, the first step God set in order and put it forth. The scripture says, "Day after day they pour forth speech, night after night they display knowledge." This is our God. He's trying to get through to us.

Go to Romans chapter 1, verse 19. Look at one more scripture with me. "Since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them." Look at 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." If people do not know God, if people are eternally lost, they are going to be without excuse.

Now here's what I believe happens. We wonder sometimes why certain missionaries discover a new tribe somewhere. All of a sudden they said, "Oh, there's a group of people back here. They don't have a written language. They don't know the Bible. They've never heard of Jesus Christ. We just stumbled on them." How did that happen? No, it didn't happen. It was no accident that that happened.

When a group of people begin to look at nature, they're awed by it. Nature gives a general call to come to God. Nature incites their curiosity. And when that tribe or people within that tribe begin to look up and look around, they see the sun coming up, they see the sun going down with regularity. They see the change of the seasons, they begin to predict it, and then it dawns on them: there is someone behind all of that. When that truth dawns on them, a missionary finds them.

When they take the first step, then God will take the second step. One little bit of revelation leads to a greater revelation. Nature itself will never bring a person to a saving knowledge of Christ. It'll never convey the message that Christ died, His blood was shed to cleanse them from all sin. But nature is the first call that leads to the second bit of knowledge that will bring them into the kingdom of God.

And so when you hear that a new tribe has been found, that the Gospel has never reached them, but now missionaries are going in, you can be sure that they heard the speech of nature first and now they're ready to hear the second, which is the written word of God. Isn't that wonderful what God does and how God leads us in His ways? The second revelation of God is history. One has only to look at history to understand that there is a God, particularly look at the world wars that we have come through.

God has preserved America, the greatest missionary gospel-teaching, missionary-sending, word of God printing nation in the world. The Bible is still the bestseller. What would have happened if one of the other nations that we were fighting against, what would have happened if Hitler had won the war? We would have been under Nazism today. What would have happened if Mussolini had won or Tojo? Would we have been called a Christian nation? Would the Bible be the bestseller?

Could you give money to the church and get tax exemption for it? Could you raise your young and send them forth as missionaries? I think not. And when that would have happened to America, the whole world would have become an atheistic state. Look at history and see how God has preserved and cared and protected His word, His truth, His knowledge to give this nation the opportunity to still do His work.

When you stop praying and when you stop giving and when you and I become unconcerned about lost souls and missions, when that starts happening, then it's just as well if Nazism had won or communism had won. But look how every ideology that is anti-Christ, including communism and the Soviet Union, watch history and see it go down and see the truth and the freedom of the Gospel still have an opportunity to go forth. Particularly in the history of Israel we see God's great hand of mercy.

And then the heart, the human heart. Would you turn with me to Romans chapter 2, verse 14? Here not only nature, not only history, but God has done something to the human heart. "Indeed, when Gentiles" that means all other nations other than Jewish nations "who do not have the law" that means the first five books of the Old Testament "do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. Since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them."

The part there that I want you to see is that the law of God is in nature. The law of God is in history, but more importantly, the law of God is in the human heart. When man is honest, man believes in God because God has stamped a certain knowledge in the heart that He is there. That He is God. And here in Romans chapter 2 again, without Bible, without preacher, without missionary, without church, there is a particular call to conscience within.

That's why you can go into any country and any tribe in any nation and you'll find feelings of guilt, feelings of shame. People's conscience will bother them. They must make restitution, they must make things right. What's going on? It's the stamp of God. Every person here today and every one of your acquaintances and friends have that knowledge stamped within their heart. It is another step toward God, but again, not great enough to bring a person to Jesus Christ.

These are some of the divine revelations that God has put forth to say that "I AM". In the beginning, God. In the beginning, Elohim. And God from the very beginning of human history has been attempting to get through to us to say, "Here I am! Look at Me! Acknowledge Me! You're part of Me! You have the breath of life within you!" And as eternal as God is, just that eternal are you, your spouse, and your children.

To live in peace and to know God is to know God. To live in eternal peace is to know God. But the greatest revelation of God, the fullest revelation of God is Jesus Christ. He is the very image of God. One time Philip said, "Show us the Father and we'll be pleased, we'll be happy if we just knew, if we could just see." And Jesus said, "Philip, he that has seen Me has seen the Father."

Jesus comes in the fullness of time. The great creator who spoke the worlds into existence by the breath of His mouth, the very word of God from the very beginning. God spoke. You can tell a person now not only by their fingerprints but by the wave of their voice. God's voice began to go across the ether waves and God put flesh around it. That is His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the revelation and to reject Him, to not accept Him, to not bow before Him, to not obey Him is to push God completely out of one's life.

He is the full and complete revelation of God Almighty. Jesus came. He made the great stoop into humility. He becomes a babe in a manger. He is Emmanuel, God with us. To know Jesus Christ is to know God, to worship Him and to be blessed of Him forever. Do you know Him today? Have you received that revelation of God? It's not that you need to prove God to anyone. God's trying to prove God to you, to Himself, that He cares for you, that He loves you, that He is the Elohim, that He is the one who reaches out through nature, through history, through the voice of your conscience, your heart, but more completely the revelation of His Son Jesus Christ.

Do you know Him? Do you know God? Only through Jesus Christ can you have that complete and full revelation. We're going to continue on next week and but right now I would like to pause and bow with you as you consider the Savior and the revelation that the Savior is trying to make to you, the message that is pouring forth. Would you bow with me for just a moment, please?

Father God, You care for us so greatly and You have been so gentle and kind and patient in the way You have endeavored to reveal Yourself to us. Thank You, Lord God, for the way You have elected to come to us through nature, through history, through the voice of our conscience, our heart, but more completely through Jesus Christ. Thank You for entering into a covenant relationship with us and binding us to Your heart and binding our heart to our neighbor, our fellow Christian's heart.

Forgive us, Lord, of our sins. Help us to realize that You care for us and love us and that You're here today to receive us even as we receive Jesus Christ. Let us keep our heads bowed for just a moment. Consider the God who cares for you and seeking to commune with you and to reveal Himself. He doesn't want to be austere and far off. He desires to be in your heart to form a covenant relationship.

If you do not know Him, in this moment of silent prayer, ask Him to come into your heart. Ask Jesus to come into your heart and you will know a God, a Father. You will know a security. You will know a presence, an entity. And if you're a Christian who is wayward, not living up to the truth that you know, come back to the Father today. He's bound to you in a union. Acknowledge Him. Enter back into that relationship.

Thank You for hearing our prayer and for being our God and for the great salvation and the revelation of Jesus Christ, the very image of God Himself. In His name, amen. Amen. All right, shall we stand together? Let us bow for the benediction. God be merciful unto us and bless us and cause Your face to shine upon us that Your way may be known upon the earth and Your saving health among all nations through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Guest (Male): God has never stopped reaching out to humanity. Through nature, conscience, and especially through Jesus Christ, He continually calls people into fellowship with Himself. At the Healing Word website, you can sign up for free weekly devotionals from Pastor Morris and discover additional teaching resources to encourage your walk with Christ.

And if you believe in the mission of this ministry, we invite you to support the Healing Word with your prayers and financial partnership as together we share the hope of the Gospel. Thank you for joining us today on the Healing Word. Next time, Pastor Morris shares "God Our Creator", a message about the greatness of God's power and the blessing that comes when we place Him first in every area of life.