Address—C. Hendricks
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Place where I work.
And she has a question.
How do I know that this book is true? How do I know that that Bible that you're preaching from and read from is presenting the right religion? There are many religions in this world, many different faiths.
There's Mohammedanism, there's Buddhism, there's Hinduism.
I lived in Wilmette and there was a Baha'i temple there.
And it's a nine sided building, and each one of the nine stands for one of the nine major religions in the world, two of which, according to the Baha'i Faith, are Judaism and Christianity.
They're just two of the nine major religions in the world, and to those who espouse that religion.
The Lord Jesus Christ.
Was just another prophet.
Comparable with Mohammed and other great prophets of other religions.
And I pondered. I pondered this question.
What would be?
What are the? Are there any distinctive features?
About this book The Bible.
You see, these other religions have their Bibles.
Muhammad and ISM has the Quran. The Hindu Bible is like one of our encyclopedias. It's many many volumes and it would take a lifetime just to read through it all once.
But here we have a book that we is so small and yet so incomparably vast and infinite and precious, but so small that I can hold it in my hands.
Consists of.
Two sections, the Old and the New Testament.
And as I pondered it.
I would address the question in a very simple way.
This is the only book, the only book that reveals the true state of man. The only book.
It reveals the heart of man, All other books, all other religions.
Outside of Christianity.
Start with the fundamentally false premise that man is essentially basically good.
This book, and only this book, tells us faithfully what man is, that he has lost, that he is corrupt, that he is wicked and sinful and needs to be saved. All the other religions present man as.
Able to do something to merit.
Heaven, or they may call it some other term, but to merit bliss.
Which is current, which is true.
Which is correct? The Lord Jesus when he spoke of the Old Testament? I would like to look at the testimony of this book.
Addressing these two things and the first, I've mentioned the true state of man, the heart of man, his his true condition. This book tells it faithfully, and it's the only book that does.
And it doesn't hold out any false hopes for man either.
And this book also unfolds something more precious than that, because that's not a very happy thing to look at. The true condition of man.
But this book unfolds the heart of God.
Heart of God, who is a God of love and grace and mercy and goodness.
Whose desire it is to bless man in spite of the fact that he is as rotten, as filthy and corrupt as this book tells us he is. It tells us the heart of the God who created man with the ultimate object in view.
To bring man into fellowship with himself. To share with man his creature.
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What his heart of love wants to share with him, it's this book that declares it, and only this book. Well, the Lord Jesus, let's look at the Old Testament testimony, and then we'll look at the new. And we're going to look at the testimony of Scripture about man and about his condition and about his heart.
The Lord Jesus divided the Old Testament into the law books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Psalms and the Prophets. So let's take a testimony from each one of these three major divisions of the Old Testament. Let's turn to Genesis 6.
Genesis, the Book of beginnings.
Tells us how man got here. Tells us how sin got here.
And you don't have to read very many chapters.
Just up to the 6th chapter Genesis and we read these words verse 5.
God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Tremendous statement, So totally contrary to the modern day philosophy of the humanists and of all these other false religions in the world, that man has essentially a spark of divine goodness deep down within his moral being, and if that spark is only fanned, it will grow into a great flame.
Of love and devotion for God.
That's the lie of the devil. It's not true. And this book is the only book that tells us it's not true. It's the only book that tells us the truth of man's condition and his desperate need of a Savior, and it tells us of the provision of God. Verse six. It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart.
Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil.
Continually.
And then God destroyed the earth with the flood, and there were only eight souls that were saved. Noah, his life, his three sons and their three wives preserved through the mercy and goodness of God. Otherwise the entire human race would have been.
Destroyed.
Now let's look at the testimony of the Psalms in connection with this.
Let's turn to the 14th Psalm. We're going to look at 2 Psalms.
The 14th Psalm first.
Verse 2.
Well, I'm going to read the first verse as well of Psalm 14. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.
They are corrupt.
They have done abominable works.
There is none that doeth good. It doesn't sound much like what they're teaching in school today about.
Man's inherent goodness.
No, that's not what God says.
Verse 2 The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any.
That did understand and seek God.
We're told that man is a seeker after truth.
He's a seeker after God.
Well, God looked down to see if there were any that sought Him, to see if there were any that had that exercise of soul that was really seeking God. And what did he find?
Verse three, They are all gone aside, they are all together. Become filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one.
I remember when I was saved.
Between my freshman and sophomore year in college as an engineering student at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
My mother was delving into one of the apostate religions in Christendom, which is really a Christianized Hinduism, and it's called Christian Science. And they deny the reality of sin. They deny Mary. Baker, Eddie.
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She denied.
The need of a savior.
She made the statement once quote.
Whether Jesus of Nazareth had ever lived or not wouldn't make a particle of difference to me. UN quote.
Blasphemy.
And yet the founder of a vast religious system pattern after Hinduism.
Well.
This scripture says they are all gone aside, they are all together, become filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. I used to tell my mom that mom was no good in man. We're rotting through and through.
There's absolutely nothing good in us. Not one is good, not one.
And you remember the rich young ruler came to the Lord Jesus, and he said, Good master, what good things shall I do to inherit eternal life? And the Lord asked him pointedly, Why call us thou me good?
Because you see that I am God, manifest in the flesh are.
Is it just that I'm another good religious leader?
Now the question of course searched his heart. Why call us thou me good? There's none good but one. That is God, but he is God.
And that's the great truth that we're going to look at in a little bit.
There is none that understands. There's none that seeks after God.
And that was the hardest thing for mom to get to get ahold of, because she had been poisoned in her thinking that everything is good and man is good and there's no such thing as sin.
I remember when my mother was dying of cancer, suffering on a sick bed. I asked her once, mom, where does it hurt? And she said there's not any part of my body that's not in the excruciating pain.
And her sister and Elsa, who was in that religion, never forget it. She stood at the doorway of the bedroom and she shook her head and said, oh, if she only had enough faith, she wouldn't feel that pain.
Well.
That's the delusion that Satan has brought out when he's got hundreds of false religions.
To pass out to anyone that will listen. But let me tell you, this afternoon is the only book, this is the only book that tells the truth of man's condition, the truth of man's heart, and the truth of God's heart. Let's look at the 53rd Psalm. It's the same truth that we just looked at. In fact, almost identical words.
The 53rd Psalm, the fool had said in his heart. There's no God.
Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity. There is none that doeth good. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek Him. Just think of that view. Now here it is, God the Creator, looking down upon all His creation, all the children of men. Surely if there's some good in man, he would have seen it.
Surely he would have seen it if man is what they tell us in our schools.
In our philosophy books and that man is not altogether bad.
But he sees the same thing.
Says in verse three, everyone of them has gone back. They are all together, become filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. Now let's look at the prophets. Let's look at the prophet Jeremiah.
Chapter 17. Let's get his testimony. We've seen the testimony in the book of the law, book of Moses, that every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually.
We've got, we've received, we've read the testimony in the Psalms that there's none that doeth good. No, not one. There's not one that seeks after God. I mean truly seeks him.
Jeremiah 17 verse 9. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Does man know his own heart? No, he doesn't. Does he understand the true condition that he's in? Not for a moment. Not for a moment.
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We'll get into that in just a minute. When the law was given and how the children of Israel.
Committed themselves to keeping it.
And they did so because they didn't understand their true condition before God.
The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it, You say. Well, that might be true of the the poor, of poor outcast Skid Row bum, but that's not true of me. Yes it is. It's true of me, it's true of you, it's true of every one of us. Our hearts are that way. Deceitful, desperately wicked. Who can know it? Man doesn't understand and know his own heart.
I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the reins even to give every man according to his ways.
And according to the fruit of his doings.
Well, you might say these scriptures applied to the, to the, to the bums and the derelicts. And I remember you for years, we used to go down to Skid Row in Chicago and Wilson Ave. and preach the gospel. And those are the down and outers. But we're educated nowadays. We've gone to school, we have college degrees and and we're not like that. Our hearts aren't that way. Our hearts are changed.
Better and improve. They're educated and that's what man likes to believe. He likes to believe.
That there has been a change wrought by education. We are an enlightened age. We live in the 20th century, not not in the dark ages where man believed in all kinds of superstitious nonsense, but we're educated and we understand these things now. And now we're not that way well.
When God brought Israel out of Egypt, he led them.
Carried them as on eagle's wings, brought them to himself, and they murmured, and they complained, and they.
Rebelled against him over and over again. And then he tested them. He tested them.
He said. I'll tell you what, I'm going to give you this, I'm going to give you a perfect.
Law. A perfect code of ethics, a perfect moral code for you to live by.
And that's what man wants because he's so self confident. Man is so self confident. He says so much false confidence in his own inherent goodness that he says, now you just give me what your requirements are and I'll keep them.
And so God gave them to him.
10 commandments and I'm going to recite them to you, Five God word and five man word. The 1St is thou shalt have no other gods besides me. And when they heard that, they said that's good, we shouldn't have any gods but the true God. The 2nd is thou shalt not make any graven image, any image of anything in heaven or earth, and bow down to it and worship it. That's idolatry. And they said that's good, we won't do that.
The third is, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for he will not hold him guiltlessly that taketh his name in vain.
Because the name of the Lord is holy. When they heard that, they said, we'll, we'll keep that commandment. The 4th was the only one that's ceremonial. And it has to do with keeping the Sabbath day and sanctifying it and remembering the Sabbath day. It was that day that that signified his covenant relationship with Israel, his earthly people. And the 5th commandment was honor thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth. And when they.
That they said yes, that's we should do that as children, we should be obedient and honoring to our parents. That's good.
Now those commandments all have to do our to have to do with our responsibility, God word. And then the other five, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. And then the 5th, the last one, the 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet or lust.
And they heard these commandments.
And they said, Well, that's the way we ought to live. All that the Lord hath spoken we will do and obey.
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Now I've read what Jeremiah says about the heart. I'd write I'd like to read the testimony of another prophet, Isaiah chapter one, please. And this is a testimony sent to that people of Israel who had received the holy law of God.
And hadn't kept it. And this is their condition that he describes. You see, where we're prone to think that those verses I've read about how wicked man was and how wicked his heart is and that there's none that seeks after him, that that's describing the the lowest class of mankind.
But now we're going to read a passage that describes the highest class of mankind, the nation of Israel, who were blessed with having that holy, just and good law of God, the perfect measure for man's responsibility, how man should live with respect to God and man. The Lord summed up those two tables of stone in Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength. And the 2nd is like it.
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, and this hang all along the prophets these two commandments.
One is our responsibility to God Word. He deserves our complete and entire allegiance.
And the other our responsibility, man worth.
How we are to treat our fellows well, Jeremiah, I mean Isaiah chapter one, verse 4.
He's speaking to this very people now that had received the law and had departed so dreadfully from it.
Our sinful nation, our people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children that are corrupters, they have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger. They are gone away, backward.
Thou shalt have no other gods besides me. Oh yes, they said, we won't will be true to thee, the only true and living God. And they went back and forsook him. He says in verse five, Why should you be stricken anymore? You will revolt more and more the whole and here's the condition.
That nation, the best of mankind. Not the worst here, but the best.
The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint from the sole of the foot, even under the head. There is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire. Your land strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers.
And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard.
As a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city, except the Lord of hosts had left us a small, a very small remnant. We should have been as Sodom and should have been made like unto Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom. He's addressing the rulers of Israel, and he calls them the rulers of Sodom. That's how low they've gotten.
You hear, under the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord. They were going on with an external religion, totally ignoring their true state before God.
He says, To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt offerings of Rams, the fat of fed beasts. I don't delight in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of goats.
Well, I'm not going to read anymore.
We've had the testimony of the Old Testament. Let's look at the New Testament.
Time is running out.
Let's read Romans 3.
Romans 1. Excuse me?
I'm not going to read it all, but.
Verse 22 Says, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four footed beasts and creeping things. The very things that they had said they wouldn't do, the children of Israel wouldn't do. I know this is about the heathen, but Israel did the same thing.
They bowed down to these things, they made idols. They failed in every single commandment. They didn't they didn't keep one of them, not one, not one and yet they had said all that the Lord has spoken. We will do the Lord Jesus and John seven. I won't turn to it because of time. He says did not Moses give you the law and none of you keepeth the law. Why you go you about to kill me.
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The Spirit of God speaking through Stephen, a man full of the Holy Ghost in Acts 7, says ye stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Ghost.
As your father's did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your Father's?
Persecuted of whom you have been, now have become now the slayers of the just, one who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. Again another testimony from God having kept it.
They said they would. They didn't. They failed.
Verse 24 of our chapter, God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. This is this is a description of the heathen world before the light of Christianity came to it, but it's a description of the Christian world today.
It's a description of what is going on in the bosom of Christendom today. We've made a complete circle, a complete circle. We're right back to the corruption that existed before the light of the gospel came into this world.
Light rejected bringeth night, and that's where we are. Let's read these verses.
Thinking of our times, verse 25. Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature became idolaters more than the Creator who was blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections.
For even their women to change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one toward another. Men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was neat. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient.
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, covetousness, maliciousness.
Full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backfighters, haters of God, despiteful, proud boasters in fetters of evil things, disobedient to parents without understanding, covenant Breakers without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, Who, knowing the judgment of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. What a description.
Of the heathen world, and what a description of the Christian world.
But that's what it is. That's what it's become.
Man not merely having the light that was given when the law was given, but that was a measure of light, but the light of the grace of God, the light of.
Of Christ, the Son of God, coming into the world to save sinners.
I've fallen into the same trouble our brother Dan fell into the first night, and that is I've talked so much about man's lost condition, having left myself much time to talk about the wonderful heart of God. And that's what I want to talk about.
Let's look at Ephesians chapter 2.
The condition of man is described here.
It's described even in a deeper way than we saw there in Romans 1.
I'll read it verse 2, Ephesians 2. It says, Well, I read from verse one, You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.
That's what man is. He is dead in trespasses and sins. That doesn't sound too much like the books of philosophy that are being.
Promoted and taught to our children in school parents, you are responsible to guard their minds against this wicked teaching of.
The philosophers of this world that reject the light of God, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
Wherein in time past Ye walked according to the course of this world. He's talking to Saints, he's talking to believers here.
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And he's talking about their past life according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
Among whom also we all had our conversation, our lifestyle in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and whereby nature, the children of wrath, even as others. What an indictment upon the human race. Now you can pick up any other religious writing. Take the Bibles of all the other religions. You'll never find a statement like that in there.
You'll never find the truth. That man is absolutely corrupt.
And vile. And he's dead without a spark of life towards God at all. And if God doesn't come down in sovereign grace and pick him up and save his soul, he's hopelessly lost. That's the condition that man is in, and that's the condition that is painted in the Word of God. This is the only book that does that.
The only one.
Tells me the truth about my condition. How good to know the truth of it and not to be believing the lie of the devil. That man can make it on his own.
We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. That was our condition. Everyone is a child of wrath.
Now we read, but God.
God, who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us. God the one true and living God.
There's two basic errors in man's thinking. The one is he thinks too much of himself.
He's deluded himself to believe that he's essentially good and he's rotten to the core, and he thinks very low of God. He has very low thoughts of God. He thinks of him as a hard master. He thinks of him as a big policeman up there with a Billy club waiting to just clobber us when we get out of step.
I knew thee, that thou art an hard man, an austere man. That's man's thought of God. You see it in the Pagan.
Multiplicity of gods that they had, they worshipped many, many gods. And the reason they did this, and they offered sacrifices to their gods because they had to appease an angry deity. Their gods were always out to get them. They were always out to pounce upon them and to punish them for doing something wrong. And so they offered sacrifice upon sacrifice upon sacrifice, sacrifice.
To appease an angry deity.
This book, the only book in the world, doesn't paint that kind of a picture of God.
The picture that it paints is this, that God isn't up there trying to get us.
He loves us.
Loves us with an everlasting love. Doesn't want to send us to hell. Doesn't delight in the death of the Sinner. He wants your blessing. You were created for eternity and to spend it with himself.
The summoned substance of all blessing, both in this life and in that which is to come, is to know God, and He can only be known in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know Him? He wants to bless you God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love, wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in sins.
He has quickened us together with Christ.
By grace you are saved, and He has raised us up together and made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
For what purpose that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches?
Of His grace and His kindness.
Towards us through Christ Jesus.
God wants to bless us.
And he's given his son. He couldn't have given more.
Dear old brother used to say, if God hasn't won your heart, what more could he do to win it?
He's given the darling of his bosom the son of his love.
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Couldn't have given more and he wouldn't have given less, because less would never have met our need.
When we were in prayer.
A few moments ago.
Many prayed and then a brother prayed and he thanked God for the precious blood.
And I thought with this, the burden of this message that I had upon my heart this afternoon, I thought, this is the only book.
That presents the necessity of the precious blood of Christ being shed to save sinners.
There is no other way but a Sinner of vile, guilty, wretched, lost, undone, corrupt, rebel, and that's what man is, could be saved but through the precious blood of Christ. The blood first of all meets the eye of God and glorifies God, satisfies God as to the whole question of sin, and it cleanses.
Vile Sinner like I was and makes me fit to stand in the light.
Of His presence God, who was rich in mercy. Let's turn to Titus 3, where we have another beautiful unfolding of God.
Verse three of Titus 3 For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish.
Without intelligence, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures.
Living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. Again, a true picture and description of man's condition. And yet, man says we're just around the corner from that utopia where we're going to live in peace with one another. We're all going to be brothers and we are all brothers and we're all going to live in happy harmony with hearts like that, With hearts like we have, we're going to live.
Harmony, the human race, Everyone wanting his little piece of the action, everyone wanting something for himself.
No man's never going to live in harmony and peace with himself until he vows to Christ and receives the Lord Jesus.
But after that, the kindness and love of God, our Savior toward man, appeared.
The kindness and love of God, our Savior toward man, appear.
Christianity is the only religion this book presents, the only God, the true God, the living God.
Who loves man?
Every other religion comes from the inventions of man's mind.
And it presents their deities as hard and exacting. And the concept of love. You could search through all the Pagan religions of the world. You look at Hinduism, you look at Buddhism, you look at all these religions. The concept of love is totally missing.
Must be very difficult for missionaries that go to some tribes and they're trying to convey to the tribe, to translate into their own language the concept of love, and they don't even know what that concept is. They don't understand the concept of love of God, giving of God, desiring to bless man when he's totally undeserving it.
Man's thought is if he deserves a whipping, give him a whipping.
But when we deserve the whipping, when we deserve the dungeons of the damned, when we deserve eternal separation from God, the blackness of darkness forever, the lake of fire which shall never be quenched, that's what I deserve.
That God loved me so much that he didn't send an Angel. He came himself in the person of the sound, became a man, came right to where I was, and laid his hand upon me, and being God, he laid one hand upon God.
And he's brought me to God. Has he done that with you?
This is the only book I tell you. This is the only book that reveals the heart of God.
As it reveals very faithfully the desperately wicked heart of man. Time is up. I trust enough has been said to bring before us. And if you're ever challenged with that question, how do I know? How do I know this book is true? Maybe you can remember those two things.
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It tells us man's true condition, and it tells us God's heart and his provision, and there's no other book that'll do it, because this is God's wearing.
Let's pray.