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Our Father in heaven, we gather before you this morning as a people called by your name, called here by your grace. Father, we would pray that as we gather here this morning, that we would look to the things that you have told us about yourself, about ourselves, and about how we ought to respond to the chasm that exists between you and us.
And Father, how so many men throughout the ages have misunderstood that, or tried to redefine that chasm. Father, I pray that you would bless our time in Christ's name. Amen. Well, I would invite you without any ado whatsoever, so there's no further ado, it's just no ado whatsoever, to go to, to turn to Psalm 50, Psalm 5 -0.
So I was thinking about some things this week, and I have a few, I mean we're going to continue doing what we're doing, but a few things I thought might be helpful to us as we do this. Psalm chapter 50, a psalm of Asaph.
The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. Our God comes. He does not keep silence. Before Him is a devouring fire.
Around Him, a mighty tempest. He calls to the heavens above and to the earth that He may judge His people. Gather to me, my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice. The heavens declare His righteousness, for God Himself is a judge.
Hear, O my people, and I will speak. O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you. Your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds, for every beast of the forest is mine that cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me. But to the wicked God says, What right have you to recite my statutes, or take my covenant on your lips?
For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you. If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers. You give your mouth free reign for evil, and your tongue frames deceit.
You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother's son. These things you have done, and I have been silent. You thought that I was like yourself. But now I rebuke you. And lay the charge before you.
Mark this then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver. The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me. To one who orders his way rightly, I will show the salvation of God.
This psalm is basically a summons. This is a court hearing. The psalmist sets up the situation, and then as he describes it, when we see the judge coming as it were into his courtroom, look at the terms he uses here.
He says, Before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest. Does he literally mean that there is a devouring fire before God as he comes to make this judgment? Is there a devouring fire? Well, I guess there could be.
But what's the point of that? What's the imagery designed to relay to us? He's the supreme judge. And what about around him a mighty tempest, a storm? Power, exactly. The picture is of this all powerful, all consuming, possibly, judge coming to take his place, his chair as it were.
And it's interesting because it says here in verse 4 that he calls to the heavens above and to the earth that he may judge his people. And this happens over and over again in the Old Testament. God says, Listen, I'm going to use the earth, the sun, the stars.
These are going to be, as it were, the jurors. Here's my case. I'm the judge. I'm the prosecutor and I'm the judge. And you all be my witnesses because you're impartial. And he's talking to these inanimate objects as if they can judge.
Again, the imagery of it. And what's his complaint against the people of Israel? They're not paying their taxes on time. He doesn't like the editorials in the newspaper. What's he complaining about? They're unthankful.
They're doing everything right though, aren't they? They're bringing their sacrifices to the temple. They're dutifully bringing in their calves and their bulls and their lambs and whatever, and they're slaughtering them.
And what does God say? I have no interest in those things. Do you think I need to eat the flesh of a bull? Do you think I need to drink the blood of a goat? I don't need any of those things. I don't need anything.
Here's what I want from you, Israel, and what you will not give me. Hearts filled with thanksgiving and worship for the God that I am. I'm calling in these witnesses against you. Why? Because of your faithlessness, because you're not doing the very thing that I want you to do.
By the letter of the law, were they following it? Yes. The contrast here is between external obedience, that is doing the things of the law, fulfilling the law, and internal obedience. Understanding rightly, well, let's just get to it.
What are the sacrifices? What do they represent? There has to be atonement for sin, and the nature of the sacrifice again and again and again. I mean, first of all, it's costly. If you're constantly having to give of your flocks and of all that you have, your herds, and taking these offerings to the temple, it's expensive.
So right away we should understand, and they should have understood, that there is a heavy price to be paid for sin, that sin is a serious matter. And the nature of the ongoing sacrifice shows that the work is really never finished.
And this is, again, not an issue that it's really not that difficult to discern. They are failing in the one thing that he cares the most about. They can do all these externals, but they're failing on the inside.
Look towards the end here in verse 16. He says, God says, Well, they might do it, but they don't have the right to it. Why? Well, are they not members of the covenant people of Israel? Yes. Well, why shouldn't they have his word on their lips?
Because they don't have it in their lives. It's not in their hearts. They don't have a broken and a contrite spirit over their sin. As far as they're concerned, they can do what they want, and we see that it's evident.
Verse 18, What does this remind you of in the New Testament? They not only do such things, but they... Romans 1, yeah, they give hearty approval to those who do such things. These are not people who are showing a love for God, but it's quite the opposite.
You give your mouth free reign for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. They're liars. They're slanderers. And then look at verse 21. These things you have done, and I have been silent. God's not judged them every single time that they've sinned, and so somehow they think they're okay.
Maybe he even approves of what they're doing. Look at that. He says, That I wasn't serious about sin, just like you're not serious about sin. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. The message here is repent.
Why? Because God is able to tear you apart, and there will be none to deliver. He's the only deliverer. If God is after you, who will deliver you from God? I thought it is important for us to keep in mind this difference, this separation between God and man, and this imagery that appears in Scripture of God, the anthropomorphic language.
In this case, there isn't all that much, but there is some of it. And the ultimate point of this, or the ultimate matter of anthropomorphism here, is when he says, You think I'm like you. He's not like us in any respect, not just physically, but spiritually.
We are like him, but he is holy. He is perfect in all of his attributes. Now I wanted to get back to a few things that we're talking about, and I told Pastor Dave, and I will do this. I'm going to create a bit of a cheat sheet here for some of these terms, because I think they are important for us to understand.
Now I'm just going to throw this out here. If I say something is neo-something, neo, just those three, N-E-O, and I attach that on to anything, what am I talking about? If I say somebody is neo-conservative, what does that mean?
New and a variant. Kind of a hearkening back to older things, but with maybe a new twist to it. So when we say someone is neo-orthodox, we're saying that they claim to be orthodox. They can't claim to be a throwback to biblical Christianity, but they've got a little bit of a new twist to it.
So we come to great theologians, quote, unquote, like Karl Barth. I found this definition online. This is a new one. Neo-orthodoxy, a movement in 20th century Protestantism stressing traditional doctrines, orthodox doctrines of the Reformation in reaction to theological liberalism.
And I knew I was going to go out of order on these, so Elder Pradeep sent me this this week, and I thought this was helpful, so I printed it out and brought it in. He said Karl Barth brought in this theology, neo-orthodoxy, which was orthodox compared to the liberals who said that scripture was fallible, that it had mistakes in it.
Liberal theologians said that there were mistakes, and therefore, you know, if there is a God that we can't really know him. Neo-orthodox theologians say that we can believe God even if the scriptures have a lot of mistakes in them.
And I don't know what to do with that. Pradeep goes on to say, today when people accept the world's premises, their foundations, their presuppositions, and then try to defend God against attacks from evolution or psychology, they fail because of the compromise they have already made in accepting the world's views about scripture.
And he says, I finally understand why the liberal church thinks it believes in God when it does not. Its slide began with its first compromise so that its original reference point no longer exists. In other words, when one says, you know what, sure, the Bible has mistakes.
It was written by men. Of course it has mistakes. You've already lost. The foundational principle is the inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible. If the Bible itself is not inspired by the Holy Spirit, written down by men, and then preserved by his power for us today, then we have nothing.
And that's where liberal theologians go. Somebody says, well, why would somebody want to be a liberal Christian? I sat down, Janet and I were at a dinner once, and I probably told this story, but it's rather unique.
We were at dinner, and we were sitting with, it was on a cruise ship, we were sitting with a couple who were Mormon, and we were sitting with a couple who were Presbyterians, and we were sitting with a couple who were Charismatics.
And so here were the eight of us at this table. And one of the other guys on this cruise comes over to the table, and he says, I have a question for you guys. He says, now, you're all Christians, right?
And everybody looks around the table, and they say, oh, sure. Yeah, we're Christians. He goes, how come you guys disagree on everything? He says, I'm a pagan dog. That's what he called himself. And he goes, I don't understand how you guys can all be Christians and all have different ideas about things.
And everybody gave their own little spiel, and this woman of the Presbyterian couple said, well, we're liberals. I mean, that was her big defense of why they would see things differently. We're liberals.
And of course, I used that opportunity to preach the gospel, but getting back to this liberal thing, why would somebody want to be a liberal Christian? What does that mean? What is a liberal Christian?
You're accepting of everything, including sin. And you know what? I would say that's a great starting point. And I would say what they really want to do is wear the label Christian, and then they want to be consumed with doing what?
I'm sorry? Well, whatever they want. But I would say most of them don't want to do that. Here's what they want to do. What do they want to do, Bruce? They want to do works to justify themselves. And they're good works.
They want to feed the hungry. They want to clothe the poor. They want to go around the country and around the world to build houses and all sorts of things. I mean, these are good things. You want to give water to people who don't have water.
They want to find common ground. They want to coexist. You know, after all, if the Bible's filled with errors, and one holy book is just like another holy book, and we're all serving the same God, and our main thing is the brotherhood of mankind, and loving one another, then all these religious differences don't really mean all that much.
Pastor Dave? That's right. The God of liberalism is going to be a God who loves us too much to judge anyone. And you know what? We're all just doing the best that we can. And just like any father whose children are doing the best that they can, does a father hold it against his kids when they're all doing their best?
No, he just wants them to do their best. It's when they slip up and they mess up, he gives them a helping hand. He's not there to judge them. And this is the God of liberalism. And the Bible of liberalism is one where, you know, the miracles didn't occur.
Of course, we know from Darwin and other places, the Gospel of Darwin, that, you know, the sixth day creation is a myth. The Bible is filled with myths. Jesus didn't really walk across the water. He just knew where the sandbars were.
I mean, this is the picture of liberalism. You have to take the presupposition is you take all the supernatural out of the Bible. All those miracles couldn't have happened. The power of God is limited.
Maybe it's not limited, but it doesn't really matter because God doesn't deal with us in that way. He's just kind of rooting for everybody. He doesn't have any favorites. And so neo-orthodoxy was, you know, kind of a, in a sense, it was a step in the right direction.
The problem is it was still on believers making a step in the right direction, which is not all that valuable. Neo-orthodoxy would say, for example, about Luther and the Reformation. Luther discovered, they would say, or rediscovered the gospel, but you know what, the gospel was never really lost.
The gospel is that which is experientially salvific for all of us. In other words, when we encounter Christ in Scripture, we all have our own Reformation. I mean, this is the kind of thinking, you know, it, again, the Word of God becomes the Word of God as it impacts me, me, me, me.
It's very me-centered, anthropocentric, man-centered. This is neo-orthodoxy. Some notes from the ESV Study Bible. And this is from, they're talking about Schleiermacher, who really is the father of modern liberalism.
He says, theology then cannot be the study of God himself, but should rather be understood as the study of the human experience of God in different ways and throughout different cultures. This is liberalism.
I mean, this is perfect, right? It's all culturally subjective. Theology does not attempt to describe God objectively, but rather expresses ways which thoughtful religious people experience their personal God-consciousness or feeling of absolute dependence.
The religious liberalism stemming from Schleiermacher then was anti-authoritarian, more about God-awareness. I mean, this is, how many people today would even describe themselves as, you know, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual?
And this is, this sprouts out of liberalism. And the ESV Study Bible goes on to note this. Protestant liberalism today continues to have significant influence. It represents the underlying theological position held by most of the leadership and professors in the theological seminaries of several mainline denominations in the United States, including the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the United Methodist Church, the American Baptist Convention, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the United Church of Christ, though all these denominations still have some conservative evangelical congregations, teachers, and people within them.
It's the most common viewpoint at campus ministry offices, secular universities, and also among the professors who teach the Bible in religion departments among these universities. It's hard to go to a university that doesn't have some kind of religious studies program.
But most of the scholars there are liberals. Let's see, the rise of Protestant liberalism in the 19th century had a chilling effect on Christian confidence in the Bible as fully divine and authoritative.
Following principles made popular in the Enlightenment, liberal scholars and teachers called into question the historicity of the narrative accounts in both the Old Testament and New Testament. So basically they said, look, there are mistakes in the Bible.
You can't rely on it. The miracles, the supernatural things in the Bible never really occurred. And this is the stage into which neo-orthodoxy comes. Now the good news is, and I'm going to stop our little lesson on church history here and we'll move on, but the good news is the response to neo-orthodoxy was what?
It was what? It was fundamentalism. Thank you very much. It was fundamentalism. And fundamentalism, you know, now has a horrific stereotype attached to it. But the idea of the fundamentalists, which started about, I think it was 1875, was really the beginning of the fundamental movement and it really gathered steam in the early 20th century, but was focused on the fundamentals of the faith.
It was focused on the inerrancy of Scripture, the inspiration of Scripture, the virgin birth, the divine and human nature of Christ, all these things that we would consider, well, duh, those are Christian, but they were rejected by the liberals and then kind of redefined by neo-orthodox theologians.
So there was a lot of confusion in the church. And guess what? There's a lot of confusion in the church today. So fundamentalism ultimately was a good thing because it drove a lot of folks back to the Bible.
So we've been talking about a lot of these big, big words and we're going to wrap up our study of this and then move on to further study here in the weeks to come. But talking about anthropomorphism, the idea that there is figurative language in the Bible that tells us about God by saying, for example, you know, His arm is not so short that He cannot save, or talking about His judgment as His mighty hand, or, you know, all these different kinds of language that we've talked about.
This was, I think, interesting. Why does this happen? Why is this kind of language used? And he notes here, Culver does, that it is really a means of comparison. He says that our formulated knowledge about God is analogical.
That is, it is comparative. How would we understand anything about God unless the Bible used language that we could understand and somewhat relate to as the idea? So when we read, for example, in Isaiah chapter 40 that God does not grow weary, how does that help us to understand God?
Because we get weary. I mean, you know, if we think about it, if God somehow was, you know, matched up against me in a marathon, 26 miles, 385 yards, and, you know, we started out, and I was feeling pretty strong for about the first 385 yards, and He could go on infinitely.
And I just go, well, how can He do that? Because He's God. He has no beginning. He has no end. He never, energy never dissipates from Him. There's a passage, I forget the exact verse, but it's in the Minor Prophets, where it talks about, you know, the sun is just the hiding of His power.
In other words, it's just the very tail end of it. It's just an image of it. It's the trail of it. I mean, this is the sun, the most powerful thing that we experience is nothing compared to the power of God.
And so, you know, we are given these analogies so that we can just kind of get a glimpse, a shadow of the truth about God. So we'll see things, Psalm 5 .5 says that God hates sinners. Why would language like that be used?
God hates sinners. Because God hates sinners. Thank you, Chuck. How does it help us to understand anything about God? It shows how serious He is about God. But when we think about, how about us? If I say, you know, Becky hates green beans, and I go, I'm going to do Becky a favor.
I'm going to take her over a big plate of steaming green beans. Well, what do I understand Becky's response is going to be about that? Steve will be wearing the green beans. We understand God's hatred of sin in some form because we understand how we hate things, right?
If I say, you know, I hate Brussels sprouts. I don't know why I'm picking on vegetables. I guess because I want to be politically correct. Oh, that wouldn't be politically correct. I'm in trouble. If I say that, and then I see that God hates sinners, I have some frame of reference, no matter how silly it might be, I have some idea of how God really feels about it.
If I see in James 5 .11, this is his paraphrase here of it, the Lord is compassionate and merciful. If I think about, you know, my own levels of compassion and mercy, and then I multiply that times a few billion, or if I imagine that, then I can just get a picture of how much more compassionate and merciful God is.
Culver gives the example of somebody laughing. When you hear somebody laughing, what do you think? That they're having a good time? Right away we understand, when we hear laughter and joy, when we hear that, we know that something, they've heard something, they've seen something, they've experienced something that made them joyful.
We may not even know exactly what it was. Maybe we were in the other room, and we heard people laughing. And we know right away what? That something funny has happened, has been said. Something funny is going on.
We wouldn't go in there and expect to see some tragedy going on and seeing people laugh. So we have some kind of understanding there, and that's the same idea. When we see this sort of language, we understand something about God.
Well, in that same way, let's turn and look at Romans 2, 14 and 15. And when somebody has that, would they read it, please? So what can we tell? Now, this is kind of an interesting question. What can we tell about God by that passage?
He's gracious, okay? Okay, that there's common grace, that even the people who are unbelievers have some benefit from following their consciences, following the law, right? What else, Pam? Okay, he has, I like that, he has installed an internal witness of himself into every person.
Every single person knows that there's a God. Why? Because they have a conscience. How about this? We understand, by virtue of having a conscience, that we are responsible to him, that we are accountable to him.
When we know, when that little alarm goes off that tells us we're doing something wrong, we know that there's a reason that it's wrong. Even people who don't know God know that there is someone, there is something higher to which they're going to be held accountable.
But Culver goes on a note, he says, our proposed analogies, our understandings, our comparisons lead us astray. I like this, he says, we suppose God's justice is feeble like our own, that God's love is sentimental like our own.
God is love, and so we think that he's somehow in heaven with candies and flowers and just trying to woo us and love us. Listen, if we go down that road, we've got it all wrong. On the other hand, when we think about our love and how conditional it is, aren't we glad that his love is not like ours?
He goes on to say that until the moral likeness is restored in regeneration, in other words, until we are born again, such analogies may lead to grievous error, as in all representations of the invisible God by images to be worshipped.
Anybody know 1 John 3 -2? John's talking about knowing God, and yet he says, you know, we don't know Him perfectly, but we will, when we're face to face with Him, this is my own paraphrase of Him, we'll know Him more fully.
Culver says, look, in the very broadest sense, all affirmations about God, in other words, all statements about God are anthropomorphic. They are language used of us, and then applied to Him, and it's not ever going to fully fit.
Let's, I thought this was interesting too, talking about, now let me see if I can say it, anthropo-poiesis. Close enough. Let's look at Genesis 1. The really nice things about Genesis 1, of course, is it's easy to find.
Genesis 1, verse 1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And Culver notes, what do you think about this? He says, that language there is anthropomorphic. Let there be light. Why would he say that? Because he's speaking and, what would make that anthropomorphic?
Yeah, that we speak, okay? This is at a time where what exists? Nothing. And God says, let there be light. Well, why would he have to say that? Furthermore, why would he say it in Hebrew? That's what it's written down in.
So these are all accommodations, so that we can understand what actually happened. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, wasn't informing the other two persons of the Trinity, let there be light.
And there was light. Second person of the Trinity, true or false, at the point of creation had a mouth, lungs, was breathing oxygen. And so he said, let there be light. And so he's just going on about this.
And it's interesting because we think about that and that's just language made so that we can understand exactly what God did. Genesis 11, 5. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower. Well, did Yahweh, the Lord, come down from the heavens to look at the Tower of Babel?
You know, did he say, you know what? I'm going to go down and check this out. No. He's everywhere, right? But it's anthropomorphic language made so that when we see it, we understand that there was a special focus of God on that tower, a special judgment rendered upon it.
And we talked a little bit about impassibility, this idea that God is incapable of suffering, that he is inaccessible to harm. That's impassibility. And we talked about anthropopathism, meaning emotions that are our emotions, that are said of God, that God grieves, that God repents, that God is jealous.
Now, these are true, but they don't really fully express all that is there. When it says that God is jealous, well, is God up in heaven getting angry and is jealousy? And, you know, it's just kind of stoking, and he's determined to put an end to it.
Well, yes and no. He's always been that way. He's never, you know, deigned to share his glory. In fact, he mocks the whole idea that there would be other gods. He says, listen, you guys carve these stones and these pieces of wood, and then you go and worship them.
How dumb are you? But he's not. His feelings aren't hurt by those things. But listen to this. He says, this is Culver. When he is said to repent or to be grieved or to be jealous, it is only meant that he acts toward us as a man would when agitated by such passions.
In other words, it's not that God has a sudden change of mind. It's so that we would understand the change in his actions, that he's taking action where previously he'd let it go. For example, in Exodus 4 .14, it says, The anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.
And it actually says in the Hebrew, The nostrils of the Lord burned. But this kind of language is used over and over and over again so that we would have some idea, some way of understanding who God is.
Not perfectly, but as much as we can, in our sinful way, understand the holiness and the perfection of God. Let's see. The names of God's scripture uses a few generic words for deity. The most high, and he says, and I thought this was interesting too, Culver says this, Yet as we shall see, even terms like the most high and Adonai, Lord, are anthropomorphic.
Again, not perfect pictures of who God is, but analogical or comparisons, ways that we can understand his position, who he is. Just concluding, he says, you know, that there are some problems that we run into with this anthropomorphic language.
I use the example of the one guy who says, you know, it's in Isaiah 40 where it talks about God measures the heavens by the span of his hands. And then this gentleman goes on to figure out that God's about six feet tall and, you know, all this other stuff from that.
But Culver notes this, he says, When pagans, unbelievers, construct images and other likenesses of God as true representations, they are creating a God in their own image and likeness. About six feet tall.
Not only is that false, but it is blatantly illogical. And if we had time, we could go through Acts 17, where Paul just blasts the same kind of thing that they were doing in Athens. But he says here, A group of ancient Christians who took the anthropomorphic language of Scripture literally are known today as the, not really familiar with this term, but it sounds really bad, anthropomorphites.
And they were regarded as heretics. And I guess they still would be today. But if you take that kind of language, then you would think what? If you take that language, that figurative language about God, and you take it literally, then what do you wind up with?
Someone who is just like us, only more powerful. And so what would we wind up being then? Mormons. Thank you. I read this and I go, this is exactly it. Because if you believe that sort of thing, then you wind up saying that as man is, God once was.
And as God is, man may become. That's from Joseph Smith. And that is absolutely false. What do we know from John 4? God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. Was there a question?
Okay. As we're reading the Bible, I would just encourage you as you're even reading the Bible this week, to look at the language that's used of God and to understand that we can only pull in a fraction of what is true there.
When it says that God hates sinners, we understand that only in the respect that we hate things or we understand what hatred is on a human level. How much more is that true of God? When it says that God hates sin, when it says that God is going to pour out his wrath on sinners.
If we just think about hatred and then we just think about how much more God hates sin than we hate anything, then we understand what? How horrible hell is going to be. And when we think about God's love, and we think about how we love each other, and then we think about how much greater God's love is for us than the best love that we have for each other, then we have some picture of what?
Of what heaven is going to be like. That we have no idea how great heaven is. I mean, Revelation, when you read through, we talked about heaven for many weeks. When you read through about everything that the Bible says about heaven, I think we just get a glimpse.
We just get a shadow. We just get a sketch. I think we're going to be stunned. And when we see our Savior face to face, that we will still not know him perfectly, I think we're going to be stunned. Because our thoughts of God ultimately are what?
Too low. They're too human. We do, just like in Psalm 50. We think of him as being kind of like us. And he's not. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, we would confess that our thoughts of you are far too human.
That we don't give you the honor, the glory, the position that you so richly deserve. And in part is because of the fog of sin, that we can't see you as we ought. That we can't picture you as we ought.
Father, we do so work in each of our lives, that we have a better view of you, that we might understand ourselves better. That we might understand your grace, your love, your mercy, and your compassion in a stronger and deeper way.
That our efforts for the kingdom, for your grace, for your mercy, for your glory, might be multiplied as we consider the mighty works that you have done on our behalf. Father, would you bless the rest of our morning here as we worship you.
Bless each one here this morning. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.