Chester Clark

Ouachita Hills College

To Know God is to Love Him

I am glad to be home and glad to be here this morning after a very busy week and a half being gone, almost 2 weeks.

And grateful for God's blessing and what God is doing around the world.

This morning, if you have your Bibles, turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 4.

And we're going to look this morning at some verses which are very familiar to us and see what God might have for us and them.

We're gonna start with 2 Corinthians 4 in verse 3.

It says, but if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.

It's related to the word evangelism, evangelia.

The gospel is the news of Christ's grace, Christ's salvation, Christ's sacrifice, right?

That's the gospel that God brings to us, that brings us to salvation, as the Bible says.

If our gospel is hid, it is hid to them that are lost.

If people do not see the good news, what is the result?

And so verse 4 says, in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which do what?

Believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." So the enemy of souls has an agenda.

His agenda is to blind the eyes of those who do what?

If he can keep us from believing, then we won't have the opportunity to see the light of this glorious gospel.

If we don't see the light of this glorious gospel, that goodness, that glory is going to be hid and we're not going to have salvation.

And so to put it in a very simple language, we could say, the devil's goal is to mask our understanding of the gospel of God or of the character of God.

If we can have our eyes open, if our minds are not blinded, we are going to have an appreciation for what God has done for us.

Ellen White says it this way in Desire of Ages, page 22.

The earth was dark through misapprehension of God.

That the gloomy shadows might be lightened, that the world might be brought back to God, Satan's deceptive power was to be broken.

The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God's government.

He desires only the service of love and love cannot be commanded.

His character must be manifested in contrast to the character of Satan.

So if to know God is to love him, then the devil's priority is to make sure that we don't know God, right?

The devil's priority is to blind our minds so we don't see the light of the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

He hides that from our face because he knows that if we come to an understanding of who God is, we will be irresistibly drawn.

Now it's not as though a full knowledge of God removes our power of choice.

The devil, Lucifer, in heaven, before he became Satan, he had a full understanding of the character of God.

Especially after God dealt with him so compassionately and kindly and gave him an opportunity to repent.

Satan knew what God's character was like.

That's why there wasn't much hope for Satan and Satan had to be cast out of heaven.

Because once you have been given a manifestation of God's character, which is complete, and you reject it, there's not much more God can do.

And so Jesus came to this earth to open men's eyes, to open the blind minds of men, so that they might see the true character of God, so that they might understand what he's really like.

Now, I remember 1 time when I was in Russia, that was probably the senior trip of, 2000.

And There was a question placed in the question box.

We had a question box on the stage of the theater where we were holding the evangelistic meetings.

Every day, twice a day, 700 or 800 people would fill the theater and many of them young people, and they would come down throughout the message as they had questions or comments, they would come down to the front of the theater and place their questions in the basket or box that was there.

Neal's job to take those questions with the translator and write the translation of them.

And every day I would read through all the questions and 1 day a question came in that said something like this.

Why did you come here and force us to believe what you believe?

Well, I found that question to be a little puzzling at first because of some obvious things.

If you were to come to our meetings, you would quickly learn that all 700 or 800 people that came to each meeting, they came of their own volition.

We didn't drag them, carry them, coerce them, beat them, you know, force them.

We didn't even pay them to come to the evangelistic meetings.

And then during the meetings, there were no guards to make sure they didn't escape.

It was completely open meeting, and the door was open, the stairs were open, there was no restriction that would keep them from leaving.

So why do you come here and force us to believe what you believe?

The question was not that I was somehow row beating them or physically abusing them to make them believe what I believe.

The question, my friends, was placed because they had a misunderstanding of God.

You see, in their mind, because they grew up in the communist system, for generations, they had had this mentality.

And in Siberia, you know who went to Siberia, right?

That's where the labor camps were, That's where the factories were the government set up and they would send dissidents out in the middle of Siberia.

I mean, weeks on a train out into a city that was just built.

In fact, this city had been built in 1940s as a manufacturing city and people had been just banished to Siberia.

The intellectuals, in fact, I'm getting off the subject, but the fact is that in Siberia, the average IQ was higher than the rest of Russia.

This was, you know, in recent history, because the people who were banished were the people who were thinking.

And so, they had been used to not being able to think.

They were used to being told that if the government says something, you have no choice but to agree with it.

If you don't like it, if you're not disposed to it, That doesn't matter.

And if you disagree, you're gonna be punished.

That is the mentality that they had grown up in.

And so These young people are coming to the meetings.

And they're hearing me present, not my opinions, they're hearing me present what God has to say.

And if they were to believe that God is who I think that He is, If they were to believe that He is the ultimate power in this universe, that He is omnipotent, that He's the Creator, that He is the ruler and sustainer of life, if they were to believe that, which they were debating in their minds, they were mostly atheists, If they were to believe that, they would have to, they thought, come to see God as they had traditionally seen the state.

They would have to see God as, if it's right, you have no choice, no opportunity to disagree.

If you don't agree with it, you are going to be punished.

That was their concept of authority, and that was what they were overlaying on their understanding of the character of God.

If you know the truth, and if it is truth, then you are gonna be punished if you don't agree with it.

And so, in answering that question, I did point out the fact that they had their own 2 legs, they had walked in there, and I hadn't coerced or forced them.

I did point out the fact that the door was open and they could leave.

I thought that would be helpful, just in case some of them did feel trapped.

I could tell you so many stories from that meeting.

Not only did they come down, we had policemen come down while I was preaching, Stan, waiting to take me to the police station.

We had a lot of challenges with that government that we disagreed with.

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To Know God is to Love Him

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