"Narrow is the way and few there be that find it!"(Matthew 7:14)
Beloved, that word few is getting smaller and smaller every day. We were just reading that our whole younger generation, the vast majority of our kids, not all, but the vast majority have no concept of what is right and wrong. They are taught nothing from this Book anymore. And we know a lot of our language is based on things Scriptural. In other words, we have often read even in a secular accounts, "a Damascus experience." Well, what does that mean to our younger generation? Nothing! They don’t know about a Damascus experience. See? And that is just one example. And so, we are now in a time when the way is getting narrower and fewer and fewer then are coming in to it. It is sad! But we are going to see why, here, as we move on through Hebrews.
Alright, so Israel now has to be constantly on our mind as they are sitting there at the gates of Canaan at Kadesh-Barnea. God has told them to go in and in their unbelief, they rejected it. Alright, so He says:
Hebrews 3:12 "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the (One) living God."
Now, the casual readers don’t even think of that twice. But, stop a moment. How many of the religions of this world from all the way back to the present, worshiped a Living God? Not many. In fact, NONE other than Christianity. Oh, even the Hebrews started out worshiping Him who is alive forevermore but along the line they replaced Him with they're own image by reason of mental disease or defect. They made their religion or rather its system of rules and regulations an idol. And thereby making themselves part of the lawless ones by worshiping the created more than the Creator. For now they worship they know not what. Look at your pagan societies, the Hindus and Buddhists - you name it. Do they worship a Living God? No! They worshiped a dead idol. And that is what the Scripture calls it. They are just dead idols. Dumb idols, is what it is called in one place. They can’t even speak. So they are not a Living God, they are a dead god. They are a god of the mind and of the imagination of mans design. They are a god that Satan uses and empowers from his side of the court, but they are dead gods. There are a few churches in “Christendom” with those same dead stone idols or figures of men, women and angels lining the walls and hallways in them. Some don't have those figures but are none the less filled with dead mans bones because the gospel they all adhere to is a lie.
But you see on the flip side of that we are different. Here we stand as Believers and our Faith is in the Living God! Now, we went through our concordance and we found 28 times from Genesis trough Revelation, where we find this term the Living God. Now remember, when David confronted old Goliath, that was one of the first times it was used and Goliath had the audacity to try and withstand the Living God! Well, he found out to his own doom, that it just won’t work.
And so all the way up through Scripture we have these various accounts of the Living God. It is from two points of view. Either the Living God as the God of wrath and judgment, as He was to old Goliath. Or, He’s the Living God who brings joy and peace and bliss to the believer, those who will to receive Him. Alright, now of these 28 times then that the Living God is referred to in our whole Bible, four of them are in Hebrews alone! Isn’t that amazing! Four times out of the 28 are in Hebrews. Now this is the one and the next one we think is in chapter 9 verse 14. We will just look at them quickly so that we will get the impact of just two words! "The Living God!" You see, that is why it is so paramount that we understand that Christ arose from the dead! We don’t worship a dead Christ, the Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Palestine and was crucified. The tomb is empty! And our Faith, NO our trust is in a Living God!
Hebrews 9:14 "And how much more shall the blood of Christ, (that is beyond what the animal blood was in the Old Testament economy,) who through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, and purge (purged the mind of the true believer, for we are to acquire the mind of Christ) your conscience from dead works (to serve Who?) the living God?"
That’s where we are! We are serving the Living God! Alright the next one is in chapter 10 and verse 31 if we remember right. Now here’s the other side of the coin. My, this Living God can be bliss and joy to the believer but He’s going to be the direct opposite to the unbeliever. We'll know them by their manner of life style or fruits.
Hebrews 10:31 "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands (of what?) of the living God."
The Living God! From eternity past to eternity future, He’s always the same Living God! Now the next one is in chapter 12 verse 22. Here we come to the good part again. This is our part of the Living God! For the lost person He’s going to be the God of wrath and judgment. It’s going to be an awful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God, but for us:
Hebrews 12:22 "But you are come to mount Sion, (Zion) and to the city of the living God, (not the earthly Jerusalem, but which one?) the heavenly Jerusalem, and into an innumerable company of angels."
So here is where we are today! My, with our knowledge of Scripture increasing and with the unfolding of the power of the Holy Spirit, we are living evidence every day that we are serving a Living God.
Now, we want to share how we know the Bible is true. "Well why do you believe that that Book, the Bible is true?" We answer those kind of questions with two words. THE JEW. The Jew! He is living proof that this Book is true.
We see, all the way back as far as Deuteronomy chapter 30, which Moses wrote 1,500 years before Christ, which is 3,500 plus years ago from now. Moses wrote that the Nation of Israel would be scattered into every nation under heaven, none excepted. James Michener and his book The Source, chases a Jewish family from antiquity up to the present. In his research he found that indeed, there were Hebrews in every sovereign state on the planet.
Moses said that that would happen. But Moses wrote in the next verse that one day, he didn’t say when, but that one day the Nation of Israel would be back in their homeland. We are seeing it! Against all the odds. Now the average person doesn’t stop to think. Can you imagine a nation of people as small as Israel. Never more than ten million. Today they are around fifteen or sixteen million Hebrews around the world, and that is probably as much as there have ever been. And yet here this small nation of people were driven out into every nation under heaven. Persecuted like you and I have no idea, and yet never lost their Jewish identity.
Now you would have thought that under ordinary circumstances they would have assimilated into the Gentile Nations and they would have disappeared. But they didn’t! They kept their national identity. And here they are 3,500 plus years later just exactly like this Book said they would be – they are back in the land.
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