The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Chords, Strangely Familiar"
"This gives the believer a strong advantage when sharing the Gospel with those who do not believe. We serve as a confirming, rather than as an introductory witness."
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalm 14:1).
The Hebrew root word for "fool" greatly illuminates our understanding of the Psalmist's indictment of the one who does not believe in God. "Nabal" means senseless, meaning that the unbeliever denies what his senses so clearly tell him.
"The invisible things of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and godhead" (Romans 1:20).
Be it sight, sound, texture, fragrance, or taste, all bear the sounding and resounding message that God exists, and that He constitutes the origin and sustaining power of all things. Sin, however, clouds and blinds the senses that primarily exist to receive and process the Truth that constantly presses upon them. The atheist carries this to the extreme. He rejects the obvious, that is, the patently and plainly revealed reality of God and His truth. His senses constantly tell him of his Maker, and that all things are "of Him and through Him, and to Him" (Romans 11:36). He nevertheless denies the "invisible things… clearly seen" that lie before him and around him. "Fool" well describes the one who lives moves and has his being in God, but who refuses the evidence of his own senses.
This gives the believer a strong advantage when sharing the Gospel with those who do not believe. We serve as a confirming, rather than as an introductory witness. The voice of God speaks through not only through the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures, but also through the world in which the atheist lives. "The things that are made" tell such a one in every moment of his existence that God made him, and that he is answerable to the Creator. Our witness may or may not be received, and it may even be aggressively rejected. However, somewhere deeply within every hearer, the truth and reality we share strikes chords strangely familiar, and which we must pray and hope will be realized for their Composer. "There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world" (Psalm 19:3-4).
Creation reveals the Creator. It bears witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom all things were made, and through whom all things consist (John 1:3; Colossians 1:17). Far too many swim in an ocean, whose very existence they deny. Indeed, to the unbelieving Athenian philosophers, the Apostle Paul declared, "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Thus, we need not fear the bluster of the senseless when we seek to proclaim God and His truth. Their very senses actually agree with us, although their hearts deny. Remembering this fact provides the basis for a far more confident witness, which itself will serve as an even more convincing expression of the Gospel that provides…
"The power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."
(Romans 1:16)
Weekly Memory Verse
By one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified."
(Hebrews 10:14)
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