I have a solemn message for us today, friends. So you better get the wax out of your ears and sit up straight and pay attention. I'm not here to entertain you or make you laugh. I'm here to warn you of your danger. Many of you are well familiar with the passage from 1 Kings about the prophet Elijah and the contents of the prophets of Baal, which took place on top Mount Carmel. Well, Elijah had old wicked King Ahab assemble all the children of Israel together at Mount Carmel. And he addressed them and said, How long, Halchi, between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him. But if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. But they stood there guilty with their mouths shut because they knew in their hearts they'd been playing footsie with God, serving Him with their lips and with their religious ceremonies, but really serving Baal with their lives and worshiping idols for material gain. The Jews in the days of Elijah were following a false god, an idol made of wood, made of stone, a dead god who could neither hear nor talk. The Jews were serving Baal because they believed he was in control of the weather, and he gave them fair crops, gave them their material wealth. It came from serving him. They serve Baal for selfish reasons. Many serve a false god today, friends. out of selfish reasons as well. They don't want to go to hell. Still, others serve a false god out of ignorance. Did you know you can be religious and lost? Did you know you can be religious and misled? Did you know you can be religious and in ignorance? Let me share the final and true story with you, please. pay attention to it. A missionary shared the following story. He said, you could stand on a cliff in Mexico and gaze down at a certain village of Mexican workers. These people work down in the riverbed in their corn patch, and there they grow their corn. And when the corn is ready to harvest, they shuck it and after it dries out they'll take it and grind it into cornmeal and make tortillas. And then take these tortillas down to the open market and there sell the tortillas for a few pesos and put them away. Come back out to their house and there they will live off lizards. They'll go out among the rocks and catch these huge long lizards and delete those lizards and save that money for a special day. A special day when they will start a pilgrimage up a mountain to a wooden statue of Jesus. The terrain to that statue is so bad that most of the people will have to crawl on their hands and knees half a mile, and by the time they get to that statue, they're bleeding all over. Standing beside the statue is a priest, and that priest is saying, now, you love God, give to Him, because you show your love to God by giving. And those people will reach into their little bags and purses and pull out those pesos stained in their own blood and drop that money into a slit in the top of the head of Jesus. But then the priest prays, and when he is finished, the priest will yell, you have not given enough. Look, Jesus is sad. He is crying. And all the time, there'll be another priest hidden in that hollow statue. And with a little hand pump, he will pump water to where it comes out of human-made tear ducts. And that statue is crying. And there, those people will give all they have, crawl down that mountain, and go back to eating lizards growing their corn, to make more tortillas, to get more pesos, to go and give to a dead God that cannot move or hear. Now that's a pretty sad and tragic story, isn't it, friends? But I submit to you, friends, that there are some here, within the sound of my voice, who are serving a God of their own creation. Somewhere, they got out their pocket knives and have carved out for themselves a God they can live with, a God of their own imagination, that won't get in the way of their daily living, and that's the majority of the church right now. Well, that's the end of my little introduction, friends. Let's get down to cases. Today, I will present the evidence of the true and the false. It is up to you to decide and come to a conclusion. I will present the evidence of the true God of the Bible and ask you for a verdict. If God be God, then follow Him. If Baal, then follow him. It is time for the rubber to meet the road. It's time to own up to our false delusions and danger of dying in our sins. It's time to stop wasting God's time that he gave us in the accumulation of wood, hay, and stubble by chasing the world. It's time to go for the gold, the silver, and the precious stones that will survive the fire of testing. It's time to get serious with God. God gets serious with those who get serious with Him. The bottom line is, do you want to follow the true God and go to heaven with Jesus? Or do you want to follow a false God and end up in hell with the devil? But this is a solemn sermon for serious listeners. It's time to stop playing games with God, friend. It's time to stop sinning against God and still call yourself a Christian. It's time for obedience to God. It's time for holiness unto the Lord. He won't come back for a dirty bride. It's time for the people of God to get their house in order and to walk with God in obedience and in the fear of Him. My sermon today is in two parts. The first part is about the true God of the Bible, the living God of the Word. The second part of my message, friends, is about the Word of God. What is it? And how do you know when you've heard it? Let those who have ears to hear May this message be a saver of life to some or a saver of death to others The title of my message today friends is the true God versus your God We will be in the book of Jeremiah You can turn in your Bibles there now friends. We will be in chapter 23 We will begin reading in verse 11. Here now is the Word of God. May the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His Holy Word. For both prophet and priest are profane, yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord. Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness. They shall be driven on, and fall therein. For I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the Lord. I will pause here to say, friends, God just announced he will bring evil upon all religious leaders who are lying prophets. God will punish them. You know, a lot of people today don't believe in a God who will punish sin. If you took a survey in your average Baptist Church today and ask the question, do you believe God will send you to hell? Most folks would be offended by that remark. Most folks would not agree with you because most folks don't believe their God would send anybody to hell unless it was a serial killer or a sociopath. Many today don't recognize the God of the Old Testament because their God is all love. Their God is a big Santa Claus God, full of mercy and compassion, and that's it, no justice. Their God is a sin-tolerating God. But guess what, friends? Jesus never preached sin and religion. Their God has been shrunken down to their level to think and act like they do. But the Word of God says of God in Isaiah, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. But many in our churches today are unfamiliar with the God of the Bible. That's because they never read their Bibles or even spend time to get to know God. Unfortunately, many of our church leaders today are run by men, men who don't know God. In our text, in Jeremiah chapter 23, we read in verses 16 through 17, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you. They make you vain. They speak a vision of their own heart. and not out of the mouth of the Lord. They say still unto them that despise me, the Lord hath said, ye shall have peace. And they say unto everyone that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, no evil shall come upon you. Well, I will pause here, friends, to say, sadly, people are in churches run by men who don't know God. They were never called of God into the ministry. They are false shepherds speaking lies in words of comfort when they should be warning you to flee from the wrath to come. They represent a false god. Many believe in a false god today. a god of their own making, like those Mexican workers, because of ignorance. Many also serve a god of their own imagination. because of ignorance. Their God would never judge a nation for its sins by sending remedial judgments to them in the form of natural calamities like fires and floods and pestilence. Their pastors just sued them saying, no evil should come upon you. And taken to the extreme, this can be universalism. Like a lady I knew in church, back when Michael Jackson died, I heard her say that he was in heaven. I asked her, why in the world did you think Michael Jackson was in heaven? And she said, well, he's in heaven. I said, why? He never claimed to be a Christian. Why was he in heaven? He lived such an ungodly life. And this is what this woman said to me. She said that she believed after we die, Jesus comes to us and gives us all a chance to go to heaven. But that's the God she believed in, and it was detrimental to her, for eventually she took her own life, assuming she'd just get a second chance on the other side. It's dangerous not to believe in the God of the Bible, friends. If you follow the wrong God, He'll lead you straight to a devil's hell. Man must know the God of the Bible versus the God of their imaginations. Man must know the one true God of the Word of God. God declares in Jeremiah 23, 21 through 22, I have not sent these prophets Yet they ran. I have not spoken to them. Yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their doings. This leads us to the second part of my message today, friends, on what is the Word of God, and how do we know when you have heard faithful preaching. Notice the last part of verse 22 contains the answer to our question. Had these prophets preached the truth of God's Word, there would have been a reaction from the hearers, and that would have been repentance and reformation. They'd be turned from their evil way and evil doings. So secondly, men must know the Word of God. Well, what is the Word of God? Look at Jeremiah 23 and verses 28 and 29, and let's see what God says. The prophet that hath a dream Let him tell a dream, and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord? It's not my word, as like a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. Well, let me ask you, friend, what does a fire do? It awakens and alarms. If your family is asleep in your home and a fire breaks out in the night and the smoke alarms go off, you're awakened to your danger. You'll get up, you'll run and get your loved ones out to safety. If you see the flames, you are alarmed to your danger. So the preached word of God, when faithfully proclaimed, will be as a fire to awaken one to their lost condition. outside of Christ, it would be like a fire to alarm them of their perilous position, of dying in their sins. A fire throws light on a situation. When God is barbecuing me, I know it, and I must get my life in proper order. Well, let me ask you this, friends. What does a hammer do? It pounds away on something. It drives a nail in. It penetrates something. It busts something up. When the word of God is faithfully proclaimed, God's word will fall with the weight of a heavy hammer and bust up any and every false foundation of carnal security and bust up every empty religious profession. So God describes his word as a fire and a hammer. Well, what else does he say about his word? In Hebrews 4.12, God describes his word as a sword. For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the divide and asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Oh, what does a sword do? It cuts to pieces. Like Samuel hewing King Agag down with a double-edged claymore. I used to have an exact replica of a claymore sword. It was so big and heavy I had to hold it in two hands. You could really cut somebody up with that thing if it was sharp enough. So the Word of God is like a sharp sword that penetrates the hard heart and cuts the sinner to pieces, bringing conviction to sin. Like the men at Pentecost who heard Peter's powerful sermon, they were pierced through and through. In Acts 2.37 we read, Now, when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Well, what did Peter tell them? and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. So the word of God is afire. a hammer, a sword, and you can recognize when you've heard it preached faithfully when a result occurs in either conviction or transformation. Well, what is the result of the preached Word of God? Not to entertain, but to transform, to bring repentance, reformation, conviction, and salvation through Christ Jesus. So men must know the God of the Word. Men must know the Word of God. 1 Corinthians 2.4 declares, And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. But the Word of God, friends, Must be preached by... the Spirit of God in the power of God to bring transformation and to get that anointing for the preacher. There is a cost. What cost counts and what counts costs. The cost is death to self via the cross. J. Sid Lowe Baxter used to say, how can a man full of himself preach a Christ who emptied himself If you are a God-called pastor, preacher, evangelist, missionary, or Christian worker. It's time to stop playing footsie with the world and go all out on the full stretch for God. Jesus held nothing back at Calvary, but gave all of himself to be nailed up there on that bloody cross. How can we hold anything back from Him? This is the time, friends, for rededication. This is the time, friends, for repentance and reformation. It is time to get serious with the God of the Bible. It's time to surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ, to surrender all to Him. Let us come to Him now and do business with God. Listen friends, get serious with Him right now. Love sent my Savior to die in my stead. Why should He love me so? Meekly to cower His cross He was led. Savior to Calvary go? Why should He hold me so? Nails pierced His hands and His feet for my sin. Why should He Why should He love me so? Why should He love me so? to Calvert.