Apostle Andre Pelser

08 June 2008 8AM

Acts 17:26-31

This is the sermon that Paul preached in Athens to 'The Unknown God'. God is not made of man's hands, therefore we are the offspring of God, not by the shaping of art by man's devising. Many religions are man's devising, but it doesn't produce the Divine Nature. But God overlooks these times of ignorance, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because there is a day of judgment coming through Jesus. And He has given us assurance of all this by raising Jesus from the dead.  

500 years ago some men took a piece of wood and they had a ball that they made out of string and all sorts of things, they got the servants to bowl the ball to them. Cricket is between 500 and 600 years old. They would hit the ball and the servants would have to go and fetch it. The servants grew tired of this, as they had to run far to go and fetch the ball. They suggested to their masters to dig a ditch around the yard where they played so that the ball would only roll into the ditch and not go any further. One of the servants came up the idea to rather use markers to stop the ball, and this eventually became rope. This is more or less how the game of cricket began. This rope that stops the ball is called a boundary.

God has determined the times and the boundaries of people's habitation. The problem of xenophobia is that people have crossed the boundary illegally. Some have crossed illegally, without work and a place to live, so they cause trouble. God has set boundaries for us. When we cross those boundaries, we are in trouble. Why has He set boundaries? So that they will seek, and grope, and find God. When you cross the boundaries that God has set, you find out there's a God.

There are national, spiritual, and personal boundaries that need to be in place in our lives. If it is not there we are in trouble.

Today the Holy Spirit is asking: “which boundaries have you removed from your life?”

Throughout the bible the Lord speaks of restoring ancient boundaries. When Joshua led Israel into the Promised Land, the first thing that God told him was to divide the land to the tribes to give them boundaries.

Trouble comes in life when people do not know what their demarcated areas are. It's like playing cricket with no boundary. A boundary allows for the rules of the game to be applied. The law that God gave Moses is the boundary that God has set for humanity, and the playing field is grace. You cannot just cross the boundaries, and if you remove the boundaries that God sets, you are in trouble.

In cricket, you have 2 empires that signal the score, but they also signal when a player is out. The New Testament tells us that peace should be our empire. Think of the world wars that have taken place: why did they occur? Because one man wanted to cross his boundary and conquer the whole world. Every time in history when someone wants to rule the world and extend their boundaries there is problems. Why? Because God has predetermined what those boundaries should be. He has ordained it.

God has preordained the boundaries of your life. He knows how much you and I will achieve in our life times, and when we go beyond that it doesn't work. He knows what you can do because He has designed you in a certain way. He has produced it in you so that you can do His will.

Families should have boundaries. Parents should give their children boundaries, otherwise they are chaotic, rebellious and they do just as they please. Anarchy means lawlessness, and it's the biggest problem in the modern world today because no one wants to obey anything, any rule or anybody. And when a government takes away the law of God, it causes chaos. They remove the boundaries that God has set in His word. If they take the word out of the schools, they no longer obey God and it's chaos. Why? We are back to the ditch. If you remove the death penalty, people can kill as they feel free. Anything goes now.

Today, God is speaking to us collectively and He wants to restore the boundaries that He has set. In any area of your life where you have removed a boundary, you have problems. If you within the boundary that God has set for your life, there is grace. If you decide to do whatever you think and in which ever way you think is right, there are no boundaries to that. You are going to fetch the ball from far. You are going to fall into a ditch. The boundaries make it possible to play the game.

God designed us to have a lot of freedom, but within His boundaries. Why did He set these boundaries? So that they might seek Him in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him though He is not far from each one.

Ask yourself today which boundaries you have removed. In which area of your life do you have no boundaries? God wants to restore that for your own safety's sake and to keep you out of trouble. There are rules and regulations. You cannot play cricket the way you want to. Each game has a different field, but there are boundaries. If the ball is out, it is out. You cannot carry on playing outside the boundaries. Everything has boundaries. We cannot ignore it and think that there will be a blessing on it. Ask God to restore the ancient and divine boundaries that He has set for your life.

When we read of the characters in the Bible, we read what they did right, but we also read what they did wrong. Why is all that written for us? It is as an example for us. It's almost as if they had to pioneer the boundaries, so that we can be in the playing field of grace. Their mistakes work to our advantage. On the other hand, your mistakes are working to the advantage of others. It's like all of us are set to pioneer certain boundaries in life. To show how it should be done and should be lived. Boundaries make things definite and absolute. It gives shape to our lives. All the cricket players are united because of the boundary. There are certain boundaries that God has set for this church. It unites people and brings order. If children know what they are allowed to do in a house and what they are not allowed to do, it brings order.

If we acknowledge these Godly boundaries, then in Him we live and move and have our being; we are His offspring. It's almost like the boundaries that God sets allows us to move in Him. Then everything we do begins to work together for our good, even our mistakes. If there are no boundaries, you are not in Him. There are certain areas in our lives where we have become careless, where we do not think rules are necessary anymore. But God is saying that He wants to restore those boundaries.  You must have certain boundaries in your mind, and the way you allow your thoughts to wander. There should be some discipline in the way you think. A boundary brings discipline. There should be boundaries in your emotions. You cannot erupt like a volcano whenever you want to and think that you are not causing any damage. There should be boundaries in your speech. We all have our words that we say when we let off steam, sometimes those words increase, but it's not right. Repent of it.

Repent means to turn to the opposite direction that you were busy marching. If you keep going the same direction and just keep saying 'I am sorry' it's not repentance. Repentance is NOT being caught out doing something wrong. Repentance means that you are CHANGING. The way you think, speak and act. Today, God wants you to repent for shifting boundaries.

You can't just do what you want, when you want, how you want. There has to be boundaries!

There has got to be boundaries in your finances.

These boundaries are not imprison us or to clamp us down. It is so that He can bless us within those limits, and so that we can have freedom within those limits. God is so ready to work on our behalf if we reset the boundaries.

The boundaries that God set is the