11_20_22_AM_What_are_you_waiting_for_Tony_Bartlette

The speaker begins by reading from the book of Genesis, discussing the creation of the world and the contrast between the biblical account and scientific theories. He criticizes the idea of humans evolving from apes, stating that humans' love for bananas is evidence to the contrary. The speaker emphasizes the power of God's creation and the importance of having God in our lives. He discusses the state of humanity without God, describing it as being without form, void, and in darkness. He highlights the need for God's light and understanding in our lives. The speaker also discusses the importance of recognizing God's existence and the tragedy of denying it. He criticizes the hypocrisy and practical atheism in religion and calls for a genuine relationship with God. The speaker warns against becoming distracted and compromising in our faith, and urges us to be aware of the influence of the world. He emphasizes the need to seek God's presence and live out our faith genuinely. If you have your Bible, turn to Genesis, the first chapter, please. Genesis, the first chapter. And we'll read the first few verses. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And then it goes on in verse 6, And God said, and God made, and God called, and God this, and God that. Science and the experts, which are supposed to be the authorities of creation and life, they tell us that the universe began 14 billion years ago when a fireball exploded with atomic force, which they call the Big Bang Theory. And miraculously, the entire universe and nature fell into place, and our earth miraculously started revolving around the sun at exactly the right angle of distance to keep from burning the earth up. And somehow the clouds and the sun showed up just in time to evaporate all the water from our seas to provide enough for our wells and to keep us alive. And then Charles Darwin came along, and he showed up to solve the mystery of where man came from, and he discovered that man evolved from anatomical similarities between humans and African apes, and concluded that our forefathers were gorillas. What a brain, huh? And you know what convinced me that all that was hogwash? We love bananas, banana pie, banana pudding, banana bread, banana and peanut butter sandwiches, and Watts' banana and peanut butter salads. Amen. We didn't come from apes. Maybe the apes, maybe the chimpanzees like bananas, but humans like them as well. Personally – and you look at this text which describes how God created everything that there is in the world – but personally, I like the Bible's program a lot better, because it says in the beginning, God. Period. That's the end of the subject. In the beginning, God. But I like God's version of building program a lot better than the other people that are in control when it comes to building something. God doesn't deal with all the regulations and all of those things. He built everything in six days and then he rested. If the current administration would come along and try to create Earth, it would be another billion years because of all their limitations and all of this and regulations. But obviously, God was not of that party who imposes all these sanctions. So I want to talk to you a little bit about this creation. And the truth is, this vast universe with its billions of stars and two trillion galaxies, not including our Milky Way which has a hundred billion stars in it, everything that God created all fell from his fingertips like just a few drops of rain. All God had to do to create everything in this world is say so. And it happened. All God had to say, let there be light. And it happened. Let there be a sun. Let there be a lesser light. What an absolutely amazing God we have. Genesis 1-2 says, and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. As I thought of that, I thought of the parallel to humanity without God. Just as everything was void and empty and without form, so our lives were the same way, but God showed up and he looked into your heart and he looked into my heart and he said, let there be understanding. Let there be light. What a wonderful God. What a parallel to humanity without God, our text says, and the earth was without form. Do you know what that means without form? Stop and think about some of these definitions. What does it mean without form? It means without order, without procedure of conduct, without boundaries, without common sense, without character, without discipline, without organization, and most importantly, it's without God and without God's influence. The earth was without form and then the writer says it was also void. Are we without form, without order, without boundaries, without conduct, without character? Can't we see it developing all over the world and now it's in American cities and it's everywhere in every institution? We see things going on without common sense. That's what happens when God is not in the picture. And then he goes on and says it wasn't only without form. He goes on to say it was void. Void means empty. No legal force, no purpose, a feeling of loss and emptiness, useless, a useless existence. That's what God found when he showed up. Everything was dark and without form and void. And God spoke to it and changed it and God's life caused everything to come alive. And so God spoke to our hearts and we also came alive, thank God. And then he goes on and says, and darkness was upon the face of the earth. Just like darkness is upon the expressions of lost humanity. Just like darkness is in the minds of humanity. Webster calls it ignorance of God. No understanding, evil tendencies. We talk about types and shadows of the Old Testament. This is a classic type. And the Spirit of God was hovering, moving over all the dark and emptiness and all the elements that were without order and purpose and without boundaries. That same Holy Spirit hovers over the souls of humanity throughout the world and God wants to speak to humanity as much as he spoke to the inanimate things of this world. And the climax of all of God's creation is you and I. We're the apple of his eye. And the reason that he created the kind of world that he created, and he created nature, and he put everything in the world and everything under the earth and everything on the earth, everything that we needed, and then he put a sun up there in the sky. And then he caused clouds to bring water. He did everything to provide for us. Think about it. It is no coincidence when Paul was glorious saved on the Damascus Road, who saw the Corinthians also saved from all kinds of filthy practices, he used our text to say what he said in 2 Corinthians 4, 6. This is amazing. He takes what happened in the first three verses of Genesis, brings it all the way up to the New Testament, and then compares it, what happened for creation, and he compares it with what happened to him and the Corinthians. Listen to this verse. It is absolutely amazing. 2 Corinthians 4, 6. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Just like God brought order and boundaries and purpose and light into the world, He brought the same thing into our lives through Jesus Christ. And I say hallelujah. The great question we have about God is not, God are you here? The Bible does not waste, I love this, it does not waste one drop of ink arguing for the existence of God. Creation of the vast and complex universe and the creation of human beings demands, hands down, no questions asked, that there is a divine creator. You have got to be out of your mind to believe that there was a big bang and everything just fell into place and humanity fell into place and the anatomy of the body and the working of the eye and the working of the heart and the working of our organs, it all just happened that way. No, a million times no, God showed up. Thank God for that. Amen. So the great question we have about God is not, are you out there in space somewhere, but are you here? God, are you here in this world? Are you able to save us and to help us and to deliver us? And the answer in Jesus is 100% yes. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And here's the dilemma that humanity is in. Any person who denies the existence of God and has no time for God, they are fools. You've got to be insane. And here our generations are being conditioned and taught and educated that there's no such thing as God. And America is being dumbed down and our upcoming generations are being dumbed down in a terrible way. Ever see on TV when they go on a beach or they go into a city and they got microphones and they ask people all these questions? They don't even know who George Washington is. They don't know who Abraham Lincoln is. They don't even know who Jesus is. That's all without form. That's all without common sense. I mean, how stupid can we be? Thousands and millions of people are coming across our borders and the people that are opening the borders and they're being questioned, are we in a crisis in the border? No. When you're without God, you're without common sense. Why do you think you see so many weird things happening today? The way humanity looks, the way humanity dresses, the way humanity thinks, the way they act, you're looking at a human race that's without form, it's without void and it's in darkness. John 14, verse 21 says, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. That's the greatest darkness that can ever happen in this world when a man or a woman says there is no God. Mark Twain, an American writer, lecturer and humorist you all know, did not believe the existence of heaven or hell. He did not believe the divinity of Jesus. He was skeptical of the Bible's contents. He said, and the reason that he started believing that is because what he saw was going on in his generation. And this is what his opinion of Christianity was. He said it's bad, it's bloody, it's merciless, it's money grabbing and it's predatory. And he sees that in Christianity. He sees that in the dark ages where 60 million people were martyred. He sees it in Protestant religion where they had armies on the battlefield and they were killing one another over their doctrines. He sees that when Christians are acting like animals today. And this is what he put in his writings. You all know the adventures of Huckleberry Finn? He was putting thoughts in what he wrote about Huckleberry Finn to show people what they're really like and what Christians are really like sometimes. And in writing about the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he highlights religious hypocrisy in the feuding of the Grangerford and the Shepherdson families who attend church services every Sunday and then go right back to engaging in bloodshed. He was always repudiating organized religion. And one of his sayings was, you're not a better Christian because of your religion. That man should have been a preacher. Religion is full. This is the point. Religion is full of practical atheists, people who are so busy accumulating the things of this world, they simply do not have the time or interest to think about God except in emergency. We are becoming so distracted in our religion and we have compromised terribly and we have allowed a lot of things to go on in the schedules of Christianity and we just kind of whitewashed it and overlooked it. And people are missing church, missing God, missing worship for every other thing that their flesh wants to do. And that is a practical atheism. Mark Twain was no dummy. Maybe if he'd seen real Christianity, he would have been a tremendous Christian, I'm sure. But religion is full of practical atheists, people who use, who I'd said are so busy. Somebody said it well when he said most people treat God like I treated. I love this. He says, most people treat God like I treated the builder who built my home. And then when he was through, we gave me the keys and I moved in, but he didn't move in with me. From time to time, I thought of the fine job that he did, built a beautiful house, but I didn't call him or invite him over until something went wrong. If the roof leaked or the furnace didn't work, I would call him over immediately to fix the emergency. And that is exactly the way that many professing Christians treat God. We enjoy and we appreciate the nice things he has done, the nice things he has given us, the health, the wealth, the prosperity, our families. But God, for the most part, in the lives of many professing Christians, is not an integral part of their lives. We will call on him when things go wrong and forget about him in between. That's called practical atheism. And if we're not careful, we can add a little religiosity to our practical atheism and we can worship and pray all we want to. But if we persist in disobedience to God, his word, his spirit, are we not guilty of having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof? One of the saddest truths about many churches is that God and the Holy Spirit could walk out and leave that church and it would be business as usual. And how many churches have we been in where there was absolutely no presence, no sense, no form, no feeling of God being there? That can happen to us. And it's happening to a lot of good churches. Ian Thomas, a Christian evangelist and theological teacher, he says, we have substituted Christianity for Christ. We have churches and creeds and religion, but few of us have God. Getting back to our text, and I'm not saying this because I think we're going down the tubes. I'm saying it because I don't want us to go down the tubes because what's going on out there is beginning to affect what goes on in here. And I want you to be aware of it. And when you see it, something inside of you needs to rise up and say, I want no part of it. And it ought to drive us to our knees to call upon God and to pray that God will help what's going on out there and help the families out there and all the hundreds of thousands of young people that are being drugged. We're under an assault, our southern borders, and be our northern borders. We're under assault from every direction. And our leaders are standing up and they see all the death. They see all the women and the young girls going into sex slavery. They see all the young families from 17 to 40 that are dying. And they got the nerve to say, no, none of that's going on. You remember in the summer when all the cities were burning down and the cameramen and the reporters were there and they had the microphones and they're saying, this is a peaceful demonstration and the cameras showing over the corner, they're fighting, they're throwing things at the cops, everything's on fire and these idiots are standing up. It's a peaceful demonstration. You're without form, you're in darkness, and you don't have any sense. That's what happens when we walk away from God. And the point that I'm making with the introduction of our text, the tragedy of life without God is we are like the early earth, we're like that early earth that was marked by emptiness, darkness, and was without form and void. Look at the verbs that are in this text. In verse 2, and the Spirit of God moved. Verse 3, God said. Verse 4, God called. Verse 1, God created. Verse 4, He saw, John 3, 16, for God so loved. It's up to us to keep ourselves in the love of God. I had a person come up to me in the funeral, come up to the table where I was talking. I had a little audience there, she performed. Hey, Tony, I left your church, you never called me. If you'd called me, maybe I'd come back. I left your church, nobody ever called me. And I didn't even correct her, because there was an audience. But before I left, I went over to her table, and I whispered in her little ear, by the way, the reason I didn't call you is because you were telling everybody you were leaving, so I didn't call you. People better start being honest with God. They're always trying to throw off on the church, always trying to throw off on the church's leaders. It's the song leader's fault. It's the pastor's fault. It's the Sunday school teacher's fault. You're never going to get to heaven that way, until you get down on your knees and you say, God, it's my fault. Amen? That's right. That's right. You know, if I said all the things that I thought about people, you don't want to know, do you? What did you say, Brother Gayhart? That goes for all of us, right? And this is the point. In a time when Martin Luther hit a spiritual slump in his walk with God, his wife came to him and said, when is the funeral, Martin? Whose funeral? Martin snapped back. She said, God's. She said, the way you're acting, he must be dead. Let me ask you a question. Will people look at us and say, you know, the way you talk and the way you act and the way you fill out your taxes and the way you try to work and give an honest day's labor, you make me feel like God is dead. They know. They know whether or not we really love God and whether or not we really love them. That's why I said a long time ago, not too long ago in this preaching, I mentioned it, when people walk in here, I want them to first feel like they belong, no matter what they look like, no matter what they smell like. When they come into this church, I want them to feel from our hearts that they belong before they believe. But we don't even let them into our churches if they don't look like we think they ought to look or dress like we think they ought to dress. And we slit our throats over and over and over again. Talking about slumps, the truth is we're all our best hitters, our best averages, our best gifts, our best talents, but we're all going to hit our slumps along the journey of getting to heaven. We're all going to hit our slumps. We're all going to go through our valleys. And for that reason, every once in a while, we need to ask ourselves honestly. We need to look into a mirror. We need to be honest with ourselves, and we need to say, is it still real? Have I lost the thrill? Have I lost the thrill of getting together with God's wonderful people? Have I lost the thrill hearing the wonderful prophecies and the truths of the Bible being revealed and expounded on? That was one of the things that thrilled me the most when I became an early Christian. These prophecies, Brother Barber, Brother Wilson, different ones. I heard so many preachers for 18 months while I was in Korea. And one of the most beautiful truths is when I heard the truth about the lion lying down with the lamb. And then I read a little further. I said, where is the lion ever going to lie down with the lamb? And I read a little further, it said, upon my holy mountain in the church of God, in the church that Jesus built, the lion characteristics and the snake characteristics. Jesus said of Herod, go tell that fox characteristics. When Christ gets a hold of us, he changes our nature. He changes our characteristics. And we who used to be roaring lions now can lay down with the lambs, the sheep. We're in God's family. After Jesus says, let there be light, and a man or a woman sees themselves and sees their nature and sees their actions. And then the Spirit of God strikes their heart and humility hits their soul. And they realize they're acting like animals instead of human beings. In America's culture, the way it is now, it's easy to slump because evil is more committed to its agenda than many believers of God's people are committed to God's agenda. It's affecting us. That's right. Yeah, it's in our schools. It's everywhere. It's in every institution, the only institution upon this earth that has been untouched is the kingdom of the living God. Everything else has been tarnished. Everything else has been stained. You talk about without form and void. How can you get up as a politician and say to mothers and fathers, we are the ones that have the right to tell your children. You no longer have the right. What, are you crazy? You don't even have common sense, man. It's what's happening right in front of our eyes. And so many people don't see it. That's right. Oh, yes. Amen. That's right. Communists scream. This is what they say about it, the communists. You think when the communist countries look at America and they see we're murdering millions and millions of babies, and men are marrying men, and women are marrying women, when they see all that's going on in this country, the communists, atheists, they're laughing at us. Why? Because we're without form, and we're void, and we're in darkness. Communists scream, oh, God is dead. But when they look at our sluggish churches, and they look at the laws that we are, the things we are legalizing that are an abomination, they look at us who claim to be Christians, and they say, you're more convincing to the world that God is dead than we are, the communists. The things have turned. David Redding, a Christian analyst, says millions of church members and ministers have been declaring the death of God for years in their lifeless prayers and prayerless lives. The point is the tragedy of life without God is emptiness. In Ecclesiastes, the king tasted all the good things life had to offer. The king says in Ecclesiastes, who can follow the king? Who's going to have as many things, as much wealth, as much power as the king? Nobody can follow the king. The king had everything, but at the end of the road, he said all is vanity, vanity of vanities. What's the conclusion of life? Fear God, keep his commandments, for that's the whole duty of man. The king woke up, but he messed up. The point is the tragedy of life without God, it's emptiness. You know what's happening? The earth, this earth. Jeremiah makes the connection from the literal earth to the spiritual earth when he's talking to a backslidden nation and he says in Jeremiah, oh earth, earth, earth. He's not talking about the terra firma. He's talking about humans. Earth, earth, earth. Hear the word of the Lord. He made the connection. That's what I'm trying to do with this text. All is vanity. It's meaningless. What convinces me that what's out there is void, without form, and it's in gross darkness? This is what convinces me. Motherhood no longer connects to children. We can kill them just as easy as we can have them. Men can be mothers and have babies. Genders can change on a whim. Law no longer connects to order. Crime no longer connects to punishment. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Old Testament principles. Husbands and wives no longer relate to male and female. Without God, there is no order. Life becomes chaotic, disorganized, random, dark, and dismal, just like things were before God showed up and God said, let there be light. But in spite of all the darkness and confusion surrounding life in this world, God is always going to be that eternal spirit who's looking for those hearts who are perfect toward him. God is one step away from bringing law and order into every sinner's heart. That's why anything in this world you may experience pleasure, power, wealth, riches, addictions, pleasures, like the kings, concubines, fraud lines, felines, hotlines, California wines, Georgia pines, diamond mines, and gold mines, none of it, none of it even come close to being as good as Christ can be to you. Jesus said you can gain the whole world, but if you lose your soul, what profit is it? You can have it all. But without God, you will always be without form, and you'll always be void, and you'll always be empty, and you'll always be in darkness. I'm closing. It doesn't matter what you believe. One of Satan's biggest lies is that thou shalt not surely die. It doesn't matter what you believe as long as it is right in your own eyes. But God said if you don't believe what's right, you won't know how to live right. And what follows emptiness is what we see everywhere through America today. When we place question marks after Bible comments, commandments, in our mind, we are on pace to disobey God. If we really believed we were on God's candid camera, it would do wonders for our behavior. And the truth is every one of us is on God's candid camera. God sees everything, every one of us. Not only what we do, not only what we see, not only what we hear, but even what we think. There's no place to hide from God. But here's the happy ending of our text, our chaotic, formless earth is hurling through space and, verse 2 says, the Spirit of God was moving over the waters. Why? To give life and form and purpose to prepare this earth for his dear children. God wants to turn our chaos to order. God's first word was, let there be light. Let God into your life and he will take the chaos of emptiness and wickedness and make it orderly and make it fully moral and wonderfully spiritual. The old preachers put it this way, you have to get lost before you can get saved. And most of Christianity in this country, maybe even more than half, is a joke. And all these people making all these laws and legalizing all these things that are an abomination and obviously wrong in God's Word, they all go to church. All these women that are yelling, my body, my body, I can do with my body, they all go to church. What's their preacher's preaching? The truth is, they don't have guts to preach anything because they've got too much of their own skin in the game. Martin Luther said it well. God created the world out of nothing and as long as you are nothing, God can make something out of you. Here's a wonderful story that I came across. John Maxwell. He tells the story about a blazer he bought from Nordstrom's about a year ago and he bought a new blazer at Nordstrom's. He said it was one of those cases where you buy an item of clothing and the more you wear it, the more you realize you don't like it. He says, my blazer wasn't the right color. And by the way, you better make sure that when you buy underwear at a store, there's people that buy underwear for just an occasion, they buy clothes for just one occasion, they bring it all back. You better give it the smell test. So he says, my blazer wasn't the right color and to make matters worse, it attracted lint like it was going out of style. After wearing it pretty regularly for six months or so, I put it back in the closet and didn't wear it for a long time, maybe a year. In the back of my mind all the while was that famous Nordstrom unconditional return policy. And I thought, I've had this thing for a year and a half, I've worn it lots of times, and there's just no way that they're going to give me a new blazer. About two weeks ago, I decided I had nothing to lose. I pulled the blazer out, threw a lot of lint on it, made it look bad. This is a preacher, and took it down to Nordstrom's men's department. And I walked in and immediately felt nervous, like I was about to pull a scam or some sort. But he said I played it straight. I walked right up to the first salesman I saw and gave this little prepared speech, I'm about to put your famous unconditional return policy to the test. I have here a blazer I've worn. I've worn it a lot. I've had it for a year and a half. I don't like it. It's the wrong color, and it attracts lint like it's going out of style. And I want to return this blazer for another blazer that I like. Then I stood there. I couldn't believe. This guy, I went up to him, and I gave him the spiel. And this salesman, he had big handlebar mustache, just looked at me and shook his head and said, for heaven's sakes, man, what took you so long? Let's go find you a blazer. Ten minutes later, I walked out with another blazer that was marked $75 more than I paid for the one that I bought a year and a half ago. It was perfect for me. It didn't cost me a penny. In a small way, Nordstrom's department store is a lot like God. They are willing to back up their promises. My question to you this morning is, will you take him at his word? If so, listen to the final promise in Romans 10, 13, for everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. This morning, if you've never accepted God's promises for your life, if you are in a slump, he's waiting and probably wondering, for heaven's sakes, man, what's taking you so long? We're dealing with God, full of love, full of compassion, full of longsuffering, full of patience. And he knows we're going to keep messing up time and time again. But we have an advocate with the Father. We have a lawyer, an interceder. Christ Jesus, our Lord. If there's things in your life that are not what they ought to be, for heaven's sake, man, take care of it. Take care of it. Find a place where you can kneel down somewhere in a quiet place and take care of it. That's right. Amen? Let's sing a song and we'll be dismissed. Casey? Casey?