The Texts
Eternal Life Is to Know the Only True God
In John 17, the Lord Jesus turns aside from the world and devotes four chapters to the instruction of his own for their task. After he finishes speaking to his disciples, he looks up into the face of the Father and says: “Father, the hour is come. Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee — as thou hast given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
There are two Greek words in the New Testament translated “know.” The Greek is much richer than the English. The word here means to actually get acquainted with — to experience the power of God. Our fathers believed in what was called experimental religion. They did not believe that a man was saved apart from coming into actual contact with the living God — that power came from God into a man. That is what salvation is. This is life eternal: to actually know and experience God. To pass out of the realm of mere opinion into experience. This is the gift that the risen Christ has for sinners.
A Great Revival of Believing in God — and Its Danger
We are having a repetition in our own day of what is recorded for us in Romans 1. There has never been anything like the revival of religion that has taken place in recent years. Everything that even claims to be a religion has experienced a tremendous surge. Mohammedanism has ten missionaries for every Christian missionary in Africa. Our preachers have gone to Japan with great zeal and had no difficulty getting multitudes of Japanese people to accept Jesus — only to add him to the shelf with the rest of their idols. They will look you in the face and say, “Jesus saved me from hell, but the Emperor is my God.”
But my friends, that sounds exactly like American Christianity. Just about everybody in America has got converted these last few years. They have taken Jesus and put him on the shelf with the rest of their thoughts. We have popular songs that refer to “the Man Upstairs,” every football team prays before the game, and everybody is powerfully religious between drinks of booze. The God that comfortable, well-satisfied, churchgoing American people are acquainted with is not the God of the Bible. He is the God they have created to bring him down to their level — where they can be religious and sinful at the same time.
Men’s Pocket-Knife Gods: Romans 1
This page of Romans 1, beginning at verse 18, reads like a modern newspaper. It is the record of men who did not like the God of revelation — who did not like the God of creation — and so took their own pocket knives and made them gods they could get along with, that would not interfere with self, that would leave them comfortable in their sins.
Men hold down the truth so they can live unrighteous lives and still be at peace. And having created a god in the image of a man, and finding even that made them a little uncomfortable in their sins, they threw him away and carved a god that looked like birds. And finding that uncomfortable, they carved a god like four-footed beasts. And finally they carved gods after the manner of creeping things. Wherefore, God — three times in the rest of the chapter — gave them up: to dirty living, to vile affections, and to a reprobate mind. That is a pretty good picture of this generation.
You see, men have got to do one of two things. They have got to get acquainted with the only true God who lifts them up — or they have got to bring God down to where they can be happy in their sins and still have a God. This generation has done the latter. And what you need, my brother, is not a little improvement. You need God to show mercy and kill the god you now worship — and leave you absolutely naked, without anyone to give you peace. For that is the only way he can get you to look to him.
Your Business, Your Home, Your Children — These Can Be Your God
That thing, or that person, or that affection that has the first place in your life — that is your god. And this is not just preaching. In this fast-moving generation where the business world is a jungle and society is rotten from top to bottom — you better be careful lest your business be your God. You better be awful careful lest your home be your God. You better be awful careful lest your children be your God. You cannot have Jesus Christ in your heart and share your affections with another God.
Most of the time when we say our prayers, we are begging God to bless our loved ones. And as long as God keeps blessing them the way he is blessing them now, they are going to hell. They need to be orphans. What we need now is for some gods to be slain — for some men and women to turn from their idols to the true and living God.
The Story of the Millionaire
Several years ago I was in a meeting in a southern state, and the radio station took the evening service and played it over the broadcasting station late at night. One night I said something I do not know why I said: “Somebody is going to be listening to me preach when this goes out over the radio tonight. That somebody ought to turn the radio off, put his hat and coat on, get in his car and drive over here and look me up — and if you’ll come, I’ll tell you how to be saved.”
There was a man ninety miles away, dialling his radio that night. Two weeks before, he had gone to bed a millionaire and woken up a pauper. His business was destroyed, he was head over heels in debt. He had been a prominent church member — generous, religious, well-respected. A million dollars was his God, and he had worshipped it very comfortably. But one night, the true God showed mercy on that old sinner and killed his god while he was asleep. When he lost his god, he did not know what to do. He just wandered about.
He heard my voice come out of the radio. He turned it off — then dialled back. He heard the invitation. He turned the radio off, told his wife to get her hat and coat, and they drove ninety miles through the night. They came and woke me up at one or two o’clock in the morning. And God saved him that night. But he had to kill his god first. I have seen that man half a dozen times since, and every time he goes over the same road — he throws his arms around me, and he tells me how every night he and his wife get down on their knees and thank God that the true God killed his false God and left him without any hope and without any god. For, ladies and gentlemen, you will never be interested in getting acquainted with the only true God until the god you now worship is smashed into a thousand pieces and you are left orphaned — with no one to turn to. For you will never look up as long as there is anywhere else to look.
The God of the Bible Is Not the God of This Generation
The God of this generation is not like the true God of the Bible. The only true God is the God of holiness — holy, holy, holy is the God of the Bible. But this generation’s gods make mock of the holiness God requires.
The God of this generation is not the God of all power. This generation has been using God like a farmer uses a milk cow — all we have ever had any use for God for is to get something out of him. We have completely lost the biblical conception that we breathe every breath as a free gift from a God who holds the nations in his hands — in whose sight all the nations are but a drop in a bucket. The God in whose hands are our very breath, as the book of Daniel tells us. The same God who drowned three billion souls in the flood and still be God. The same God who opened the earth and dropped 26,000 followers of Korah into hell without a moment’s notice. The same God who wiped Sodom and Gomorrah and their sister cities off the face of the earth so that there is no trace of them today. We are in his hands.
The God of this generation will not send anybody to hell. But the God of the Bible, oath upon oath, line upon line, precept upon precept, says he will. The fastest growing theology in the world today is universalism — that man is of such infinite worth, and God is so infinitely a God of love, that a man is too valuable to be destroyed in hell, and God is too good to send him there. But unless it is true that God is so holy and hates sin so badly that he will, if he has to, send people to hell — if that is not true, then God is a monster for hanging his Son on a gory tree outside the city of Jerusalem. For if there is no hell, there is no need for the cross. The shed blood of Jesus Christ and the awful fires of hell go together. All the attacks on hell are simply attacks on the nature of God.
God sends people to hell to punish them — not to correct them, not to do them good, but to punish them for their sin. And in order to create a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness — where nothing that defileth shall enter in — every sinner whom God cannot give a new heart must be sent away. That is why hell exists. That is the God of this book.
Pray for God to smash the gods of your loved ones, or they are going to hell. And there is still life in a look — and nowhere else.