your Bibles this morning and turn with me to the book of Acts, Acts chapter 17. Some of you may have been wondering when we were going to return to our study on the attributes of God. Well, today is the answer to that question. We're going back to the study on the attributes of God, and I was very excited about doing this. It's been quite a few different weeks since we've last looked at this particular topic and we're going back today and we're gonna get back into talking about the character of God, what makes God, God, and what completely sets him apart from us. We know us, would you agree? We know our limitations, we know our talents, our gifts, we know what we're good at, we know what we're not good at. Everybody in this room is good at something. God gave you a specific skill set that he wanted and he intended for you to use for him, but everybody in this room is also not good at a whole lot of things. Would you say amen? Like, don't come to me and ask me to fix your car, because I'll probably blow it up, and it'll be in a whole lot worse shape than when you brought it to me. So there are things we're bad at. We do have limitations. God has none whatsoever. And the problem with a lot of the modern church world, and this can be a problem even here, this can be a problem with Christians in general, is that we've allowed our idea and our conceptual understanding of God to be taken from its high and lofty position where it ought to be and brought down to our understanding of what we think it should be. And we don't do that intentionally, we do it to try to understand Him. Because there's something inside of us that realizes He is un-understandable. Would you agree with that? And so we have this desire to be able to explain something in terms that make sense to us. So we've had a horrible tendency of taking the infinite God and bringing him down to a finite level so that we can better understand him. Well, what we've done is we've gone in the opposite of what the Word of God says. Instead of God bringing God down to our level so we can understand Him, we, by the Spirit, grace, and Word of God, seek to go to His level where He is so that we can understand who He truly is by the Scriptures. And that's the point of this particular study. And so if you're in Acts chapter 17 this morning, I want you to stand out of reverence and respect to the reading of the Word of God. We're going to read. This is a very, very familiar passage of Scripture to everybody in here. This is looking at Paul's sermon in Athens. He's in Athens at this time. And if you'll look with me in verse 22, it says, Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things. and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live, and move, and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring. For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is likened to gold or silver or stone, graven by art and by man's device. We've, over the last several weeks, we've looked at eight of the different attributes out of a list of 17 that we're methodically working our way through. And these are the ones so far that we've covered. We began by speaking of the holiness of God. And we started with the holiness of God because everything else God is, He is, because He is perfectly holy. And all other of His attributes are perfectly holy because that is who God is by His nature. Then we looked at God's sovereignty. God's sovereignty is probably one of the most hard to grasp attributes of God even though we all understand what that means. It's very hard for us as individuals who are constantly making our own decisions and making our own choices to really come to terms with the fact that every single thing in this universe from the time God set it in motion to the present and will be till it dissolves and melts away. Every single thing under the sovereign hand of God is either ordained or allowed to be. Those are the only two categories. Every trial, test, and error, every single thing in life is either ordained specifically of God to come to pass or it is allowed of God for His glorious purposes. And then in the next six weeks, we looked at six different attributes that highlighted God's sovereign control over His creation. Those were omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, God's infinitude, His eternality, and His transcendence. Today I want to speak of another attribute that also highlights His sovereignty or His utter and complete control over everything, and that is the independence of God. That's what we're going to look at this morning, the independence of God. Now when we Talk about the word independence. It's almost impossible for us to talk about it without thinking of the Fourth of July. That's part of our culture. That's ingrained in us. Whenever we hear the word independence, we just automatically think of the Fourth of July, Independence Day, the birth of our country, and fireworks. That's like in a descending order. That's what we naturally think of. But when we start kind of looking at what does independent mean, our thoughts naturally turn towards the concept of freedom. What does freedom mean? We all presume, we all say that we are free in the country that we live in to do as we please. And to a certain extent, we are. We are free to get up and go to work in the morning or we're free to not get up and go to work in the morning. We are free to go to the store. We're free to buy this. We're free to live here. We're free to move to this place. We do have a certain amount of what we would call independence in this country. We do have a certain amount of what we would call freedom in this country. But when we talk about independence in terms of God, it is altogether different than the way you and I use the term to describe the in and out workings of our day-to-day lives. Listen to these scriptures that I've put together this morning. Before the mountains were brought forth, wherever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. But there was a beginning, and in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. And all things were made by Him that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible and invisible. And He is before all things, and by Him do all things consist. For as the Father hath life in himself, so he hath given to the Son to have life in himself. And this life was the light of men. And God said, I am that I am. Now if you listen to those scriptures, what do all of those texts fuse together in that way out of the book of Psalms, John, Colossians, and the book of Exodus? What do those things reveal to us about the independent nature of God? We see that everything that we know of began in and with God himself. If everything that we know began in and with God, then would it not make sense to say that God himself must be outside of all that he made? And I don't want you to think of outside it like someone is standing outside of a door, looking at the door, wondering what's going on on the inside of the door. God, not only is He outside of everything He has made, but He is also an integral part of everything He has made on the inside as well. And that's what we're going to look at, Lord willing, next week. But independence as it is described of God is this, it is that attribute of God whereby He is, so listen to these things, unaffected, uninfluenced, and unmoved by those things which He has made. None of His sovereignly directed attributes can be manipulated, added to, or exhausted in any way by His creation, and He has no need that is satisfied by His creation, nor can He have any dependence whatsoever upon His creation. If any one of those things is broken, then the entire rule of God falls apart. If he becomes ever, at a single point in time, ever dependent upon any speck of his creation, at that point his rule breaks down and he's no longer the independent God. And so in the text that we've read this morning in the book of Acts, Chapter 17, in this sermon, Paul gives us three overall things that I want you to look at as it's related to the independence of God. And the first thing that I want you to see is the ignorance of men. It's impossible to begin to talk about God being outside and unaffected by everything without also bringing what we think of God into the picture. And I feel like you would agree with me as we read this passage of Scripture that these Greek men and women that Paul was preaching to, would you agree with me, they were ignorant of the true God. Because Paul even says that they were ignorantly worshipping someone they did not have any idea of. Now he calls them something in verse 17. He calls them too superstitious. Now this word does not mean what we commonly use the word superstitious to mean. It doesn't mean if a black cat crosses in front of you, you need to turn around and go a different direction or you'll have bad luck. That's not what this word is talking about. If you break a mirror for seven years, nothing will go right. That's not what this verse is talking about. But too superstitious can have two meanings. It either means devoted and pious. or it means religiously superstitious. So superstitious in the fact of what they actually believed in was erroneous or superstitious in that regard. And what Paul is actually saying by addressing these men in Athens as being superstitious is that he is acknowledging they are devoted to what they think is right. They are pious in what they think is correct. But if everything they think is true is actually false and their whole conception of truth and worship is grossly skewed and ignorant. Now we see the ignorance of these learned men and they were learned. Greece was the most learned and advanced culture on the face of the earth at this time. And we see that this ignorance is highlighted, if you'll go back with me and look at verse 18. Certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him, and some said, what will this babbler say? Or other some, he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Heir of Pagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears, and we would know therefore what these things mean. For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. So the first way their ignorance is shown is what they were doing here in gathering together in this place called Mars Hill. They would come here daily and every time any new thought, reason, God, religion, anything philosophy was ever talked about or presented, they would gather here on Mars Hill to talk about it, to discuss it amongst themselves. These were the wisest men, if I may say it that way, that lived in this particular culture and in this society. And they would gather around and they would hash out details of all of these different schools of thought and philosophies and religions, and they would talk about what's true and what's not true, and that was basically their job. That was what they did in their free time. And you have Paul, who is preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and they catch wind he's preaching something they've never heard before. because none of their gods ever came down and died for any of them and rose or raised themselves from the dead. And so this was an altogether new doctrine they'd never heard of before. So they brought Paul to this place and they said, we want to know who this is you're speaking of. And if you really look at this and what they were doing, I hope that you see something incredibly sad. They were spending their lives, according to verse 21, trying to find real truth. And they were utterly ignorant of the truth they were trying to find. And that's what they did. They sat around trying to discover which God is real, which one is gonna help me, What is the meaning of my life? Why am I here? What is the purpose of everything I see? What's the purpose of suffering? What is the purpose of good? What's going to happen to me when I actually die? Is there any hope for me when I actually die? Now they had their religious beliefs. They had what they thought was going to happen. But they sat around and all they did was discuss what's real and what's not. Because at the end of the day, they actually had no hope in themselves whatsoever. And all of the truth that they thought that they could muddle their way through could not help them a single bit. But not only was just what they were doing in the gathering showing their ignorance, but it was the intensity of their superstitions and the religious complexity of their lives that showed their ignorance as well. They had thousands upon thousands of gods that they had to worship and appease and they had a god for every different blade of grass, every tree, the difference between rivers and seas and oceans and brooks, there was gods for all of them. There was gods for all the different stars and all the different moons and there was gods for this and there was gods for that. And it would have been utterly exhausting to try to keep up with which one am I supposed to be worshiping at this particular time. And not only was there a plethora of gods to appease, they had also concocted extravagant myths to explain things that they did not understand. And they found truth inside of these ridiculous explanations for what they could not understand. And I'll give you a very quick example. Now, the Greeks were smart enough to realize that every spring and summer, if they planted something in the ground, it would grow. But every fall and winter, it got kind of cold outside and everything died. They could see that with their own eyes. They could experience that. But because they didn't have any idea why it was warm for part of the year and why it was cold for another part of the year, the explanation that they made up to explain that is that Zeus, the chief of their gods, had a daughter by the name of Persephone, who was a very pretty young woman, who was playing in a meadow one day, picking flowers, and Hades, the god of the underworld, saw her and fell in love with her, so he erupted out of the ground and took her captive and drug her down to the underworld to be his wife. Well, it made the mother of this particular goddess very mad, and she was actually the one who was in charge of all of the crops, and of whether or not they did well, or whether or not they did not do well. And because of all the bartering that went on of her trying to get her daughter back, and the only appeasement that could be made is that Zeus decreed that for half of the year, this particular goddess would live in the underworld, and for the other half of the year, she would come and stay with her mother. Well, the part of the year when she was in the underworld, her mother, who was in charge of all the crops and whether or not anything grew, was really sad, so she didn't tend to her duties in making sure that the crops would grow, so everything was cold and barren and lifeless. But then the part of the year where she was allowed to leave the underworld and come and live with her mother, her mother was happy and joyful, and so she blessed everybody and everything with all their crops, and their crops grew. Now, I say all that, and I think you would agree with me, that is absolutely nonsensical, right? But that's what they concocted to explain what they did not understand. And that's what they would gather around and discuss. And that's what they would gather around and hash out with each other. These extravagant things to explain everything they thought that they saw. in their lives. And so we see that they were utterly steeped in ignorance. But number two, the ignorance of men very quickly leads to the iniquity of men. Would you agree with me? Ignorance of the things of God, ignorance of God's ways, ignorance of God's person can very quickly lead into iniquity. And we see this in verse 29, if you'll go over there and look at that again. Verse 29, when ignorance is mixed with the natural folly and depravity of the human condition, it leads to worship of the creature instead of the Creator, and it takes the concept of the Godhead and it makes the Godhead something natural like themselves. And so what they were doing is they were looking for causes, as I've just explained, to all of the natural things they saw. And in their blinded ignorance of what was real and what was not, they did exactly what Paul wrote about in Romans chapter 1 and verse 25. They turned the truth of God into a lie. They turned the power of God working in the order that he created the world in into a completely heathenistic concept of God's falling in love with each other and bickering with each other and fighting with each other to get their way to explain something that God had set in order for the benefit of humankind. And they worshipped and served the creature more than the creator who is blessed forever, Paul said. And today, we do exactly the same thing. We do exactly the same thing. Now, we don't concoct nonsensical explanations of gods and goddesses in order to explain things that we don't understand, but we do contract nonsensical explanations to explain where we all came from and how we all got here. And let's look at it logically and reasonably. It makes just as much sense to me to say that Zeus had to settle a family dispute amongst the gods, so he told this goddess she could go live for half of a year in the underworld, and her mom was sad and nothing grew. And then the other half of the year she could come live with her mother, and her mother was happy and everything grew. It makes just as much sense to believe that, as it does to believe that I got here because at one point in time in the history of mankind we once crawled out of something as a single-celled bacteria and we eventually grew legs and a tail hung from a tree and eventually swung our way into walking upright and now here we are. Makes just as much sense to believe the first as it does to believe that. Makes just as much sense to believe that there was absolutely nothing and somehow nothing exploded and became all of the order that you see everywhere around you. It makes just as much sense to believe that as it says that somehow chaos can produce order. When we have never seen that ever. And we never will because it cannot occur. But men are constantly looking for a natural cause to be the ultimate cause of all natural things. And because they're constantly looking for how to explain everything away, then we've taken the truth of God, the power of God, and the glory of God, and we've reduced that to this law, and that process, and that natural cycle, and we have stripped God of His majesty, and we have stripped Him of His glory. Everything to them, to most of the world, must have a natural explanation. In other words, if you can explain God to me, I'll believe. If you can explain all of the little details in here that just don't make any sense to me, and you can put it in a naturalistic concept, I'll believe in it. If you can show me proof somewhere else that's not in the Bible that the Bible is true, then I'll believe the Bible, and I'll believe what the Bible says. If you're looking elsewhere to confirm the account of the Word of God, you don't have faith. Because faith is rooted and it is grounded not in facts that archaeology can dig up for you. Faith is founded and it is rooted in the Word of God. It does not say faith comes by hearing the Word of God plus reading about everything archaeologists have dug up that confirm the Word of God. And then I have both of those things so I can believe in Christ. It does not say that and it never will say that. If you cannot believe in the Christ of the Word by virtue of the Word itself, you will not believe in Jesus Christ. Because God has appointed one way to save men, and that is faith in Christ, and faith is birthed in the Word of God. And so everybody is constantly looking for a way to explain everything away, and this particular type of thought leads to an elevation of reason in the place of God. and it naturally will lead to the deification of one's own self. Turn with me to Romans chapter 1 and let's look at this real quickly. Romans chapter 1 and find verse 19. Ignorance leads to iniquity and iniquity leads to the deification of our own selves. Look at verse 19, Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, or to them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. Neither were they thankful. But they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, and professing themselves to be wise. That's what they were doing on Mars Hill. They were wise. and professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made light to corruptible man and to birds and to four-footed beasts and creeping things. And that explains exactly the account that I just gave. And can I also say that it explains all of science's quest to find an explanation for the origins of everything that does not involve God. They've turned the truth of God and the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made light to a vast explosion, to the process of evolution, to relativistic truth. and to your feelings or my feelings as being the only thing that actually matters. That's where we're at in the world today, would you agree? That's exactly what we've done because in ignorance, we have let our ignorance lead us into iniquity. And I believe that we can see this absolutely everywhere. Did anybody happen to see the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris? If you didn't see it, don't bother, please. Don't bother. But we have gone from making our own selves, our own God, and worshipping our own selves unwittingly and unknowingly because we just naturally place ourselves ahead of God in everything. and we relegate him to at least second, if not way on down the line. And if we're not careful, we'll do that all the time with everything. But we have gone from worshipping ourselves covertly to actual outright paganism in the sight of everyone. We're actually now building golden statues of bulls and dancing naked in front of them, just like Israel did at the base of Sinai. That's paganism. We are recreating portraits and visions of Greek gods that were celebrated for their debauchery, their complete and utter lack of morals, and we're doing it in the name of tolerance, and we're doing it in the name of everybody just needs to have a good time. Everybody needs to just let loose and have a good time. and we're doing it on the world stage for absolutely everyone to see. It's no longer, let's go join our coven over here in the woods where no one knows we are. Let's bring it out into the light and let's let everybody see it now. And that's what we're doing. Because ignorance has led us to iniquity and the iniquity has led us to change God into a four-footed beast or into some debased, idolatrous, pagan celebration that is nothing more than a worship of my feelings and what my flesh wants. I had a conversation with someone this week, and in this particular conversation, this individual told me something that bothered me immensely. And they said, well, I worship God my own way. And I told him, I said, you better be vastly careful that your way conforms to this way. Because if it does not, you're going to stand before God someday, and that way will not have led you where you thought it was going to go. Because there is one way, and his name is Jesus Christ. And so today we have changed the truth and the glory of God into science and nature and laws and processes and ourselves. And why have we done this? Why has our iniquity driven us to this point? It is so we can feel as if we are independent of God. Man wants to be his own God. Man has always wanted to be his own God. That is exactly what Satan tented Eve with. If you will just eat this tree, you can be like God. In other words, you'll become a God. And that same pull has been behind and back of absolutely everything Satan has ever done in history to every people group, every person. You can be your own God. You can have power, you can have wealth, you can have wisdom and riches and beauty. You can be your own God if you will just do this or worship here. God's actually holding things back from you. That's what he told Eve. Everything God had said you can have, you can eat, you can fellowship with, all of this is available for your welfare, except one thing. And Satan got her attention on the one thing and made her think that God was withholding something from her when he had given them an indescribable bounty all around them for them to pick and choose from. He got her attention focused on the one thing and convinced her that that's what she needed to be complete and inside herself. So this is a quest for us to be independent of God. But if that's true, then this begs the question, what does it mean to be independent? So let's look at independence thirdly in light of God, who is the only one who is actually independent. So as we look at this, I want you to examine your own lives and see, do you match up to the criteria to be independent? So there's four things that I want you to see this morning on the independence of God. The first is that God is independent of our existence. Look at verses 24 and 25 of the text, if you will, this morning. God made the worlds, that's how Paul begins. And in these two verses, verses 24 and 25, Paul preaches the independent existence of God in four phrases. The first, he shows us that he is the creator of all creation. God made the world and all things therein. Every speck of dust, every blade of grass, every atom you cannot see was created by the word and mouth of God. Now, one who creates must naturally be outside of what is created. Listen to what Isaiah wrote in Isaiah chapter 42. Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens and stretched them out, he that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it, he that giveth breath unto the people upon it and spirit to them that walk therein. Now if you're going to make something, are you bound by the dictates? Can that thing you make dictate to you what it wants? No. That's nonsense. because you, as the creator of such a thing, are outside of that project. You're not answerable to that project. That project cannot tell you, well, I want this or I want that. It would be utterly ludicrous for you to decide to build a house and walk in that house one day and the wall over here starts screaming at you that it wants to be painted purple instead of the yellow that you were gonna paint it. That's stupid, and that's nonsense, but that's what we do. That's what we do to God. Well, no, I'm gonna do it like this, or I'm gonna do it like that, instead of the way you've dictated that it needs to be done. So he's not only the creator, Paul preaches, but he's also, number two, the ruler of his creation, seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth. He is the master, he is the controller, he is the sustainer of everything that he makes. Now one who, would you agree with me, one who creates must be able to control that which he created. If God set everything in motion and all of a sudden it began to spin out of His control, is He at that point God of His creation? No. Now you and I can turn things into situations that are beyond our control. And when they spiral out of our control, a lot of times we just have to kind of sit back and wait till they're done. Sometimes they never finish. A good example of that would be a fire that gets out of our control. But since God said, let there be, and there was, there has never been a single speck in all of reality that is outside of the control of the sovereign God. Can you say amen to that? Listen to what God said to Job in chapter 38. Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days, and caused the day spring to know his place? Where's the way light dwelleth? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof? Hast thou entered into the treasures of snow? Or hast thou seen the treasures of hail? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? And what God is trying to get Job to understand is that He is the Creator, is the one who ordered everything the way He wanted it to be. I've said this before, but it warrants mentioning again, if our planet was a centimeter closer to the sun, we'd all die. And there would be no life here whatsoever. If we were a centimeter further back, we'd all freeze to death and there would be no such thing as life. And yet somehow, our planet, the only one out of billions upon billions upon billions upon billions of rocks in this grand universe, somehow, managed to be the only one that was in a perfect location for life to actually exist. And not only are we in the perfect location for life to actually exist, life is ordered, it is beautifully constructed, and it works. And it doesn't work because we crawled out of some primordial soup that got struck by lightning that somehow created life. It works because it was designed with the fingertip of the Almighty God who said absolutely everything in order the way it needed to be for that creation to actually survive and exist. But number three, we see Paul tells us that he is infinite, he is unbound, and he is also unlimited by his creation. In verse 24, he dwelleth not in temples made with hands. One who created something cannot be contained within the thing that He created, and to even think that makes absolutely no sense. You see, to them, in their culture, the gods didn't exist in high and lofty places like our God does. Their God lived on the highest mountain just outside of the city of Athens. They were down there on earth with them, and that was as high as their gods could go. But the Bible says our God is in the heavens, and He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased. Listen to what Isaiah wrote, It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers, that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. Stephen said in Acts chapter 7, Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands, as saith the prophet. Heaven is my throne, earth is my footstool. What house will you build me, saith the Lord? Or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things? In other words, you said you're going to build me a house for me to dwell in, but everything you make that house out of I first made in creation. How can you possibly build me a place to dwell in when I created all of the things that you're even going to try to put together to make such a house? And number four, we see that he is not sustained. by his creation. Paul says in verse 25, neither is worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything. Now take your Bibles, we were here last week, but go with me to Psalm chapter 50 and I want you to see this excellently laid out. One who creates everything in existence cannot be dependent upon anything he has made. And this is beautifully illustrated for us in this passage in Psalm chapter 50 beginning in verse 9 down through verse 13. It says, I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee, for the world is mine and the fullness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? The One who created cannot be in need to the thing that He has made. And last week we looked at this passage of scripture and we talked about the idea behind what the psalmist was writing of all of these people bringing their sacrifices to God, thinking that God actually needed their sacrifices. That they added something to the Almighty. They completed Him. They satisfied Him. They filled Him up. We don't fill God up. We cannot add to, nor can we take anything from God. And if God ever decreased or increased in the slightest way, He's not God. And that means that He changes. Because He either becomes better than He was, or He becomes worse than He was by having something taken from Him. And if He is and does, then when He told us that I change not, That was a lie. And at that point, the entire rule of God begins to break down. So we see in these four verses in our text, we see that God is, we see that He is the creator of all, the ruler of all, that He is unbound by all and unsustained by His creation. But then secondly today, God is also independent not only of our existence, But He is independent. Now this may sting some people. He's independent of our help. He is independent of our help. Now we have this tendency in Christendom at large to almost view God as this well-meaning, well-intentioned, lovingly benevolent figure who is running around doting over his creation and wringing his hands at the state that the world is in. And wondering, oh who is going to go and help me in this particular place? Or who is going to go and help me in this particular place? Or how are these people over here going to ever hear the gospel if nobody goes and preaches it to them? What are we going to do? I hope that that's not your conception of God. Because if it is, it's the wrong conception of God. God is utterly independent of our help or our assistance. And God's independence of our help is shown here by Paul also in four ways. If you'll look at verse 26, the first thing I want you to see is God created the nations and the men or the women, the humanity that would inhabit them and have made of one blood all nations of men. He created everything from absolutely nothing. Do you think the one who created everything from nothing needs you or me to complete his plan? Absolutely not. Number two, God appointed the area that the nations would settle for to dwell, he goes on to say, on all the face of the earth. Not only did he make the men, not only did he establish the nations, he established the territory that these nations would inhabit and be. In other words, America does not exist on the North American continent because it was an absolute accident that people managed to get here from England and just fell ashore on a beach somewhere in Plymouth and said, well this looks like a good spot. No, God ordained for there to be a nation here by the name which it bears today. Iraq is not in the position Iraq is in because it was an absolute accident. China does not exist where it exists because it was an absolute accident and people just happen to be there and never leave. No, God ordained there to be nations in every corner and place in the world. That's why He went down to the Tower of Babel and He drove the people asunder because they did not do what He said and spread out abroad upon the face of the earth. So when people don't do what is commanded, it is still done. it is still accomplished. And this is one of the things that we're gonna talk about at length tonight in our study in Romans 9. God's will is always done. And if men won't spread to the far ends of the earth the way they were commanded and they had the free will to do of their own volition, they're still gonna spread there. But they're gonna spread by the finger of God dispersing them as he willed for them to be. And so if God disperses the nations, does he need our help in any way? Number three, God determined the times that nations would rise and rule. Look what he says, he hath determined the times before appointed. Listen to these scriptures from the book of Daniel, chapter two and chapter four. And he changeth the times and seasons, he removeth kings, he setteth up kings, he giveth wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. Until thou knowest, and this is him talking to Nebuchadnezzar, until thou knowest that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. And then Nebuchadnezzar, after his incident, or after his being driven into the field for seven years, says, I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored Him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation, and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. And He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay His hand. Or saying to Him, What doest Thou? And then fourthly, God determined the times that the nations, not only they would rise and have their time, but he also determined the time that the nations would be destroyed and be brought down. And if you go back and you look at all of human civilization and all of human history, the Greeks was the strongest nation on earth at the time, and they fell and disappeared. The Romans conquered most of the known world, and they disappeared. Because there was a time when God said, you will arise, and you can read about that in the book of Daniel. There's a time when you will arise, but everything God sets up, He also has the power to remove and set down. Listen to what the psalmist said in Psalm chapter 75. The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved. I bear up the pillars of it. But God is the judge. He putteth down one, and he setteth up another. There was a time when God sovereignly decreed that this nation be founded. For all of the good and all of the glory that this nation has spread around the world, there was a time when this nation was founded under the sovereign providence of God. And there is a time when this nation will be put down. under the same providence and under the same sovereignty that raised her up. This is illustrated in a beautiful example of how much God does not need us. If today, now everybody can see outside that it's gloriously sunny, correct? If we all went outside today and all of a sudden, with the stroke of a finger, every person alive on earth went completely blind. Completely blind. Would our blindness affect in any way at all the light of the sun? Or would the sun still shine on like it always has and like it will until God is done with it? We will never decrease its light. We will never decrease the effect of its light. We will never be able to change its light. And the point I'm trying to make is that if the whole world groped in darkness and nobody could see by faith, does that change God at all? Or is He always still God? Listen to this quote by Tozer. The truth is that God is not greater for our being. nor would he be less if we did not exist. That we do exist is altogether of God's free determination, not by our desert or by divine necessity. I fear that much of modern Christian service stems from no higher motive. than to help deliver God from the embarrassing situation that his love has gotten him into and his limited abilities seem unable to get him out of. If you think about that for a moment and you really let that sink in, and what I want you to do this morning is examine what you do by why it is that you do it. And I made the comment earlier of people that sometimes we seem to think of God as wringing his hands over the state of the world and wringing his hands when someone does not believe. And, oh, they just won't believe. If only they would just believe. If only this person, if only I had some help and I had some support to go out here to these other countries or to go out here to these other places. But nobody's willing to go. And what are we going to do? Christian service is motivated or should be motivated for one reason alone. And the reason is Jesus Christ. If a missionary has ever decided to go off into another country to preach the gospel and help people, and their concern or reason for going was, I feel sorry, For these people, they went for the wrong reason, and they are not there for the right reason. But if they looked into the face of Jesus Christ and saw what He did for them, and they fall so in love with Him that they cannot help but go and tell people, that's the reason that God blesses. What is your reason for why you do what you do in the house of God? What is mine? Is it out of utter necessity and is it out of just, well, if I don't do it, nobody else is gonna do it. Because that's the wrong reason. Or have you looked into the face of your Savior and seen His glory and seen His beauty and seen His truth as He has poured it into your soul and into your life and it stirs up the Spirit of the living God in you and it motivates you to get in and work for Him so that others might know the same glory and joy that you've been privileged to see. Because if it's the first one, it's the wrong motivation. But if your motivation is Christ, then your motivation's never misplaced. And so, all of these things, God being independent of our existence and God being independent of our health, should show us that we cannot be independent of God. And so that's what I want to talk about very briefly. Lastly, the last two points. God is independent of our existence and God is independent of our health, but we are dependent on God's existence. Look at verses 25 through 28 with me. We see our dependence upon God in four ways. God grants, in verse 25, man all the necessities whereby he lives. Verse 25 says, seeing that he giveth to all life and breath and all things. If God did not give you air, you would drop dead in the floor right now. If God did not keep my heart beating, I would fall over right now. There's an old song some of you are familiar with. It says, I can't even walk without you holding my hand. You and I would not exist if God did not let us exist. And yet we as people have the audacity sometimes to raise our eyes and shake our fists in the face of God and tell him, you messed this up, you didn't do what I wanted you to do, and therefore I'm gonna do my own thing. Do you see how rebellious it is possible for humanity to actually be? And that's what rebellion is, is it shaking your fist in the face of one who if he did not give you breath, you would be gone that fast. And has it occurred to you that God grants those who hate Him and reject Him the very air by which they blaspheme Him and curse Him and degrade Him, and yet He's still merciful enough to continue giving them life, the blessings of life, This is excellently illustrated in Daniel chapter 5 in Daniel's speech to Belshazzar. He says, And thou, his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, but hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven, and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified. But number two, we also see that not only does God grant to man all of the necessities of life, that He also grants man a place and a time to live. We see that in verse 26. You are a part of a nation. You are a part of a nation sovereignly founded by God, and you live not by mistake and not by accident, but by the sovereign and providential decree of God. Number three, God grants man the privilege of finding Him, according to verse 27, that they should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after Him and find Him. We see that's exactly what they were doing here in the Arapagus. We see that's exactly what they were doing in all of their temples to all of their gods. And what they were doing is that they had set up an inscription and an altar to a particular god that they didn't even know how to name, but they just wanted to make sure they crossed all of them off the list. So they had one to the unknown god. And Paul said, you go about in your ignorance, in your iniquity, worshiping, trying to find the truth of this unknown God. Let me tell you who He is. And then number four, God sustains man, according to verse 28, by His fullness. In Him we live, in Him we move, and in Him we have our being. We cannot exist without Him. And it is utter stupidity and foolishness, the height of foolishness, to think that somehow we're going to tell Him or dictate to Him the way our lives are going to be. And then lastly, not only are we dependent upon God's existence because God gives us everything we need to even live, but we are also dependent upon His help. And there are three primary ways in which we are dependent upon the help of God. Number one, without God we are blind and we are utterly destitute of truth. And we are unable to lead and guide ourselves. Because if you look back, that's exactly what they were doing. They were utterly destitute of truth. And they were leading themselves, they were guiding themselves, but as the book of Proverbs chapter 16 says, there was a way that seems right to a man, but the end is a way of death. When we are lost in sin, there is a way that seems right to us, and we don't have any conception that the way we walk will only lead one place. And we are perfectly content with walking along that road. until we have an encounter with truth. And truth is the thing that wakes us up. Truth is the salve that is put on the eyes of us when we are blind, like in John chapter 9. And when we go and wash in obedience to the truth, the word of truth, we will come seeing. We are blind and utterly incapable of going the right way. Number two, without God, our sin will ultimately wreck and destroy our lives. Moses told the people in Numbers 32 verse 23, If you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out. You know, it doesn't really matter what our excuses are for the reasons why we do what we do. Because if we're honest, we all have excuses. We're very good at making up excuses. We're very good at justifying our actions. We're very good at justifying our sinful behaviors. But there's going to come a day when we're gonna have to stand before God and not a single one of those great excuses that we've mustered and manufactured is gonna matter whatsoever. You're not gonna be able to tell God, well, it was because of this person, or it was because of this person that I did that, or it was because of this person, or this person that I am the way that I am, or I made the decisions that I made. It's not going to matter what your excuses are. I told somebody this week, they were complaining to me about how much they hurt and why they couldn't be in the house of God. And I just told them, I said, listen, that I'm not trying to be unkind and I'm not trying to be mean. But you stand before God and tell him that excuse and you see how far it gets you. And you see how sympathetic he is to you. when that's what you tell Him as to why you cared nothing for the things of God. Because it will not work. God doesn't care what your excuses are. He doesn't care what my excuses are. He has given us commands and He expects us by faith in Him to obey them. And our sin will utterly wreck and destroy our lives. Number three and lastly, we are wholly dependent upon God for salvation and cleansing. Turn with me, if you will, lastly, to Psalm chapter 51, and I want you to see this. This is excellently summed up here for us by David. Not only does God give us everything that we need to even live, if it was not for God, no one could be saved. If it was not for God, none of us could have eternal life. We would wander around forever blind. Listen to what David said here in Psalm 51, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Does that sound like it is coming from a man who thinks he can save or cleanse himself? But he knows that if God does not clean him, He will never be clean. If God does not clean you, you cannot be clean. You can do every good work in the world. You can be the best person in the world, the most joyous person in the world. You can be an absolute privilege and delight to be around. But if God does not clean you, you will never be washed from your filthiness. and you will never be allowed to enter His kingdom. Wash me thoroughly, verse 2, from my iniquity. David's not washing himself. Cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter. than snow. Not a single thing in any of those verses or in any of the rest of the chapter does David do to help David. Because David understands that if God does not help him, David has no hope. And you know what David did. His lies, he had a man murdered out of lust, He committed adultery. He tried to cover it up. He lived in it for nine solid months. Unrepentant. And look what he says there in verse 4. Against who have I sinned? Thee. Do you think that's interesting? He didn't say against Bathsheba have I sinned, or against Uriah have I sinned, or against Uriah's family have I sinned. It's not against the nation of Israel, it's not against my kingdom have I sinned. It's against you. I've sinned against you. God and no one else, you. And look what he says, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and clear when thou judgest. You know what David was saying? I don't have an excuse. I don't have one. And I'm standing before you as somebody who realizes that if you do not help me, then you have every right to take me away from the earth and let me perish in my own filthiness. You see, when Christ becomes real to you will be the point where you realize that it doesn't matter how good of a person you think you are, how much you work in the church, how much you help, how loving you think you are and kind you think you are. But when it actually finally sinks into your soul, that you deserve to go to hell. You deserve to be eternally separated from a thrice holy God because you are a filthy, wretched sinner. And when that finally sinks in to my life or to your life, The glory and the beauty of the help God came to give us will become increasingly magnified in our souls. To know that I deserve destruction, but I was delivered instead. Not because of me, not because of my fortitude or my gifts or my talents or this or that. because of His mercy and His mercy alone. God could have taken David and thrown him into the blackest, darkest corner of the pit. And David is standing before God here in verse 4 and he's saying, if you did that, I would have nothing to rail against you, I would have nothing to accuse you of, I would have absolutely nothing to say against your justice and your judgment, for you are holy, and you are sovereign. And if you do not come and help me, I cannot clean myself. And if you get to that point in your life, or if I get to that point in my life, can I promise you something on the authority of the Word of God? He will come and help you. He will come and save you. And He will come and wash you so thoroughly you didn't have any idea it was possible to be as clean as He can make you in His sight. God does not need me. And if I drop dead tomorrow, you'll find somebody else. But can I also say God does not need you either. He does not need you. And if anything happened to any single one of us tomorrow, the world will just keep going. times will continue to change and turn at the hand and tithe of God, and His will, His sovereign, holy, gloriously perfect will to redeem Himself of family out of the earth by faith in Jesus Christ will march forward totally unimpeded if I am no longer in existence tomorrow. And I'm going to go as far as to say this, And you're hearing this morning, because I believe it's true with all my heart. I feel like, and I can't speak for you, so I'll speak for me. I know that I've believed in Christ. And I know He has saved me. But if I died tomorrow, when I woke up in the flames of hell, I would have nothing that I could accuse Him of. I could not utter a breath against Him. Because no matter what happens to me or what happens to you, He is the independent, all-sufficient, completely free God, who doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and no one can stay His hand. And how dare we, as mere people, question Him? What doest thou? Or why hast thou made me thus? Let us look to Him and glorify Him because of the God that He is. Let's stand together this morning. Father, we thank you today in the name of Jesus for all that you've done for us and in the Word of God that you have given unto us to look into tonight and to study. Father, we thank you for your mercy and your grace to us. Lord, you do give us life, you do give us breath, and not a single one of us, Father, could be here this morning if you had not allowed us to live. We too often, Father, will go through an entire day, Lord, and it seems that we'll think of You so little, if at all. And we'll just be going and busy and doing this and doing that and going about our jobs and our activities and doing all different kinds of things. And we will not stop to give You praise, Lord, for the fact that if it was not for Your sustaining grace, none of us would even be here. And when we think about how long we went in sin and how many different things that could have befallen us while we were in sin and we would have perished therein, and rightly so, we have to look back and marvel at the mercy of God. You sustained us when you should have taken us away. In our own affliction and in our own iniquity and in our own judgment, Lord, you should have just taken us away. But You sustained us until the point when mercy got a hold of our souls. And Lord, we ought to be gloriously happy in Christ because of what You've done for us. Lord, we thank You so much for Your answer to prayer. We thank You, God, that we are completely and wholly dependent upon Thee. It would be a miserable world if you had created it and just stepped out of it and left us to fend for ourselves. We would be in absolute chaos and ruin if we were even still here at all. But Father, time marches forward toward that glorious end whereby you have appointed all who will believe by faith in Jesus Christ and give themselves wholly and fully surrendered unto Him, will join you in the everlasting world that is to come. Though this one is perishing and will ultimately fade away, we will join you in the realm eternal. And Father, everything then that we have such a hard time understanding here, like thoughts we've looked at this morning, I hope and pray, Father, will make perfect sense. And though we are limited and we are hindered so often by our finite nature in worshiping you here, Lord, there we will worship you forever, unimpeded, unhindered, and infinitely. Thank you for allowing us the privilege to be in your house. And Father, I don't know who you're dealing with. I don't know how you are speaking to people, how you have spoke to people this morning. And I pray, Father, that you've given people a little bit of a deeper appreciation of the grandeur and the glory of the eternal, independent God. Lord, and I pray that the Word of God is ministered to your children, and Lord, that you would give them peace and strength as they go, Father, and live for you. And if there is someone here this morning who is lost, I pray that the words of Moses would sink into their heart. Be sure your sin will find you out. They may spend their entire lives getting away with it down here. But it will catch up to them someday. Please, Father, don't let it catch up to them in eternal judgment. But please, Father, have mercy upon their soul and open their eyes that they may see their drastic and desperate need of You. Because as far and as long as they go on in sin, every day in sin, they mock Your mercy. And I am thankful, Father, that Your mercy follows us still. And it is presumptuous of us to think that we can do whatever we want and live however we will. And God's just always going to be merciful to us. Because there also comes a day when the mercy of God stops. And you deliver us, as we looked at last week, over to the process of hardening. At which point, Father, there is no help, nor help for us anymore. Lord, please speak to this congregation. Please, Father, manifest your glory and your presence in their lives. The most wonderful thing you do in our lives is convict us, for it is the conviction of God that leads and draws us to repentance. If anybody, Lord, needs to come and pray for anything this morning, I never want to not have an opportunity for them to come and pray. If anybody needs prayer for anything and would like to pray with somebody, there are always people who will pray and will help them pray. But Father, as we tarry for a moment, Lord, I pray in this stillness, Lord, that You would speak to those hearts and manifest Your Word and we give You the praise for that in Jesus' name. Amen.