 Is it possible for anyone to seek after God? Well, the answer is no and yes. I want to pose a question that comes up fairly often, and so I want to pose a question for you. Kind of get you to think about this a little bit. It's not really a trick question, but it's a question that does make you think a little bit what's being stated and what we see in the scriptures. In Romans 3, we see this statement that Paul is making. He's contrasting being Jewish and being Gentile, asking about, is there any difference? Is it any better being a Jew or what have you? He says, what then verse 9? Are we better that is the Jew than they the Gentiles? Not at all, for we have already been charged that both Jews and Greeks are all in the same. That's important. We'll come back to that in a second. As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one. That applies to Jew and Greek. Notice what he says here though. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks God. That's the issue. There are none who seek God. These all have turned aside. Together, they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one. So, just by looking at that, it would seem to say that there is no one that seeks after God. You would probably concur with that. Obviously, you would concur with the statement. The question is, what did he mean by the statement? Is it true that no one can seek after God? Well, let me give you a scenario and then go back and explain it and then look at the scriptures as well. Look at the Old Testament, the New Testament. Look at the Greek as well. That's important as well. Imagine you going after a car. Someone is driving away and you run after it. You seek after that car. So, just be using the same verbiage. Well, how long are you going to do so? You can go after it, but not for very long. You just don't have the energy nor the speed to do so. Now, the issue of ability and desire comes up. Do we have the ability to seek after him and do we even have the desire? Well, to get to the heart of the matter, let's go back and I want to look through a few things to see. Is it possible for someone to seek after God? Certain people of certain theological persuasion will say, no, it's literally impossible. You cannot do it. Mankind is so depraved, so messed up that he will not even attempt to seek after God. Can't be done. However, let's look at some passages here in the Bible and let's see could it be done. So, what I just did was just to type in sought after the Lord, sought the Lord. We see in Exodus 33, Moses used to take the tent and pitch outside the camp a good distance from the camp and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out of the tent of meeting which was outside the camp. So, here's a verse where it seems to say they sought after the Lord. What about 2 Chronicles 14-7? For he said to Judah, let us build these cities and surround them with them, walls and towers, gates and bars. The land is still ours because we have sought the Lord our God. We sought him and he has given us rest on every side. Seems in the case they sought the Lord. So, now let's go to the next passage and see the same thing. 2 Chronicles 22-9, he says, he also sought Ahaziah and they caught him while he was hiding in Samaria. And they brought him to Jehu and put him to death and buried him for they said he is a son of Jehoshaphat who sought the Lord. Who sought the Lord, Jehoshaphat, with all his heart? So, here we see some passages that seem to indicate that people can seek or have sought the Lord. 2 Chronicles 26-5, he continued to seek God in the days of Zechariah who had understanding through the visions of God. And as long as he sought the Lord, God prospered him. So, in the Old Testament, we see examples of people who sought the Lord, who went out after the Lord. So, how does that compare when Roman says there are none that seek after him? Just wait a minute, we'll come to there in just a second, but I want to also put up some other passages. What about Jeremiah 29-13? He says, you will seek me, God says this, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. That's a key. I'll put a tag on that because that's very important. It helps us to understand what's being stated in Romans 3. Also, in Deuteronomy 4-29, he says, but from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him if you search for him with all your heart and your soul. There is the issues, ladies and gentlemen. The issue is if you do so with all your heart and all your soul, but wait a second though, we saw that also in other passages. Well, then how does that help us to understand what was being spoken of in Romans 3, where he says that there are none that seek him? Well, let's go back to that passage in Romans 3. Notice what he says. First of all, he says, speaking about, and this is why I brought the issue about Jews and Greek and so forth and kind of contrasting. He says this, there is none righteous, nobody, not even one. There is none who understands. And I want you to notice the tense of the words or the verbs that are used here. This is in the participle form. So you'll see that there are none who are understanding. There is none who seeks and the word that's used here is this is a present active participle. So in other words, what he's saying is not that there are none who seek or none that have sought, he uses the present active participle to say that there are none who are seeking on a continual basis. This is why I use kind of the analogy of the car. Going after the car, you're not going to keep doing that. There are those in the Old Testament who might seek for a while, but did not continue to seek after him. So is it possible momentarily to seek after the Lord? Yes, it is. Is it possible to continue seeking? Ah, therein lies the problem. And when you look at the Bible, when you see how the Bible describes us as believers, then you'll kind of get an understanding of what's being stated here. Is it possible? Here's another question. Is it possible to believe without the Lord having anything to do with it? Is it possible for the Lord, is it possible for you to believe without the Lord interfering? Is it possible to believe outside of the Holy Spirit working in you? Well, the answer is yes and no. It depends on what you mean by belief. Remember, the Bible describes us as not just a temporary belief, but believing in one of our most famous passages. As a matter of fact, the most famous passage in the Bible, John 3.16. That's what he says. For God so loved the world, you can probably repeat it without even sitting on the screen. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. I think that's a wonderful passage. But notice what it says here. The believe. The word that's used here is piste duan. This is a present active part of it. This is the one that is believing. Notice this. Whenever you read the Bible, whenever you see the word believe, almost always you're going to see the see the believer being referred as someone who is believing in a state of constant believing, continual belief. That's how we refer it. As a matter of fact, I want to do something real nerdy here for a second. And I want to go to Dr. Daniel Wallace, one of the foremost authorities on Greek grammar and notice what he talks about as it relates to us as believers. He says this in regards to, really this is kind of in picking up this piste duan. He says that a spectral force of the present piste duan, that's the one that's believing, the believing one, seems to be in contrast with the piste duas. That's the heiress tense. The heiress is used only eight times plus two in the long Indian Marks. So probably just six times. And then how you see those also matters because they have to be used in a couple of cases. There's no other tense that is proper to be used. But I'll leave that alone. He says the heiress is sometimes used to describe the believers as such as and thus has a generic force. For the clearest examples, Mark 16, 16 also, 2 Thessalonians, I'll let you go to those. But that's what he says. He says the present occurs six times as often, 43 times, most often in sotereological forms. In other words, when he talks about the believing ones, he's speaking about it in sotereological forms, meaning about us having salvation. He says thus it seems, here it is, that since the heiress participle was a live option to describe the believers, it is unlikely that when the present was used, it was aspectually flat. The present was the tense of choice, most likely because the New Testament writers by large saw continual belief as a necessary condition of salvation. Along these lines, it seems significant that the promise of salvation is almost always given to the hapistuan. Now, why is that important? Because you can describe the believer in a generic way, with an aspectually flat way, meaning that they believed. And sometimes it comes across when you read the English, just believe. No, be believing. In order to be saved, you have to be believing in a continual state. Now, he's not necessarily addressing the issue of will a Christian be continued believing. He's just saying that a Christian is one that is believing, continuing believing, not stopping, which is why when someone says you have to remain, that's fine, have no problem with that. You have to remain in him. You have to keep believing. You have to keep following. You have to keep trusting. All of those things, sure, all of those things you have to have, you have to be in the ING sense. Bad English, but you get what I'm saying. You have to be believing. You have to be following. You have to be hearing. Now, the issue of it, will you do so? That's a different matter. But that's why Jesus says that of the believing ones, John 3.16, in order that all the believing ones are pissed you on, not that those who believed, but the believing ones that those that are continuing believing, that's the one that shall have eternal life. Now, the issue is this though, is it possible to believe temporarily and then stop believing? And if so, is that the belief that God is speaking of about salvation? Well, no, because we look to Luke chapter 8. He's speaking about the parable of the seed and the soils, and he speaks about those who heard the word, which is a seed, and the word fell on bad soil, which is their heart. He says chapter 8, start in verse, let's start in verse 12, those beside the road are those who have heard, then the devil comes and takes where the word from their heart so that they will not believe. And this word believe is so that they will not be believing. This is the participle. This is actually, excuse me, an Eris active participle, which means that they is still the state of believing. But they notice verse 13, those on the rocky soil are those who when they hear, received the word with joy, and these have no firm root. They believe, not the participle believe, believing, they believe for a while, and in time of temptation fall away. So it's possible to believe for a while or have temporary belief and then fall away, but this is not the belief that he equates with the saving belief. No, because it depends on the heart. Now we can kind of understand where the writer of, or Paul is speaking of in Romans 3. Those that are saved are those that are believing. Those that are saved are those that are seeking. You cannot seek on your own outside the Holy Spirit. So yes, you could seek temporarily, just like, yes, you can believe temporarily. That's not saving you, though. What must be done is a continual state. And how that works about is if the heart is changed. And so the only way to bat English here to be believing or to be seeking, that's why he says, let's go back to the Old Testament. He says, you will seek me and find me when you search me with all your heart. Do the right thing. But from there, you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him if you search him with all your heart and your soul. Well, how does that happen? The heart has to be changed. And the only way that that's done as far as we're concerned is the Holy Spirit must do something to the heart. He comes in and now our heart is born from above. We have a regenerated heart. And then we are constantly in a state of constantly seeking him in a state of constantly believing him in a state of constantly following him in a state of constantly hearing him. The ING is important. So is there anyone that seek temporarily? Sure, all the time. That's just not the word that he uses in Romans 3. He uses the word as there anyone that is seeking. There's none that are seeking except when we have the Spirit in us when our hearts have been regenerated. Then we become like those in the Old Testament and the new that we become those that are seeking. Those that are following those that are hearing those that are believing. Amen.