LAW HOMILY: Practical Atheism

The Shepherd's Church

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Every week we look at the law of God because we want to understand what God's heart is for his people

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And we understand that we know that and we receive that from the law Today we are back again on the first commandment

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But before we get there, I want to read Psalm 14 1 It says the fool has said in their heart.

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There is no God and I think that that is a great Interpretive lens for how to actually read the first commandment, which says you shall have no other gods before me

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Now that commandment doesn't ask us for a polite Acknowledgement that God is real it demands

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Allegiance you shall have no other gods before me is a is a command for us to have

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Nothing, but God on the throne of our life and yet many of us many of Christians While confessing that creed betray it by our conduct

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We recoil and we sneer at the Richard Dawkins of the world or the pompous nature of a man like Christopher Hitchens Forgetting that atheism doesn't always shout from a lectern.

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Sometimes it whispers from a pew You may never say with your lips. There is no God, but what have you said with your life?

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The most terrifying form of atheism is not philosophical naturalism It is a practical denial of what the scriptures say

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It's not declared in manifestos, but it's lived in daily decisions it's when a man praises

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God on Sunday and yet lives as though it is not true on Monday as if God were blind and deaf and distant to his

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To the things that he does and That man or that woman or that child may be sitting in your own chair

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The heart lies to us psalm 14 doesn't just say that fools speak out loud it says that fools think in their heart

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They might teach Sunday school. They might preach they might tithe. They might be deep within the boundaries of Christendom and yet Not uttering a single

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What is the word Decibel of rebellion with their vocal cords and yet there's a soul level treason that exists within the heart

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And how does that kind of hidden heresy live there? Well, it lives there in all of us

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The spirit of atheism is alive like cancer cells in every one of us and it exists in things like prayerlessness

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We say God is near and yet we don't talk to him We're living like God is not near Anxiety we say that God is sovereign that God has providence over our life and yet our hearts get

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Mangled by the affairs that we walk through we are saying with our emotions That God actually is not what we say that he is with our lips

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Compromise we say that God is pure and holy but in the dark we welcome sin like an old friend

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Self -reliance we call him Lord and yet we act like we must control things

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In order for things to happen This is a kind of atheism

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That is severe and must be repented of Where our body and our mouth come back into alignment again

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Where the things that we say with our lips conform to the way our feet

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Go the way our what our hands put their work to what our hearts actually feel and This is a kind of atheism

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That all of us are culpable for Who among us this week has not had some anxiety over something?

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where our heart said I Must be need be should be afraid

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Well, what does that thought or what does that feeling say about God? You're saying that he does not exist or that he does not exist in the way that you profess with your lips

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Every one of us have lived out of alignment with our profession and in that sense we've become practical atheists

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The fool says in his heart there is no God and we have all been foolish and We must all come to the throne of grace and repent however, that has manifested itself for you, however that has

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Shown itself in your life. Whatever it is that you can see that is out of alignment Maybe you can't maybe you say you know what things look good from my angle

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Okay, pray about that one pray about discernment pray about Spiritual eyes to see the ways that we have lived out of alignment with what the word says

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So either take this time to pray and repent for something known or pray and beg God to show you how you have

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Lived out of alignment with his word, but in either case, let us pray Lord, there's often a great chasm of difference between our confession and our character and Lord while these things

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Need not should not ought not be This is the wretched man that we are that's still struggling with sin.

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This is us Who in our most honest? posture Say I do the things that I don't want to do and I don't do the things that I know

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I should do Lord help us and Lord help us in a particular way

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Help us not in a way of groveling and in a way of Beating and beating and beating ourselves into a posture of morbidity and shame

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Trying to prove to you that that we're that we're a worm of such of Such despisable character that maybe you would have pity on us

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Lord help us instead of that To repent on the basis of what

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Christ has done Help us to repent knowing that we stand in the shadow of his grace and We do not repent in order to be accepted and we do not repent in order to to please you

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Because you already have pleasure because of Christ Lord let us repent and And let us turn over the areas of our life where we live and we act and we move and we

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Do as if you don't exist and you're not real let us to give those things up because they're bad for us and because they

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They dampen and sour the sweetness of the communion with you that is available to us in Jesus Lord like a marriage that doesn't lose its

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Marital status by a fight or a conflict, but it does lose its sweetness

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Let us repent So that we may once again have the sweetness of communion with you

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So that we may have the joy of our salvation so that we may taste and see that you are good so that we will

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Understand that your mercies are really new every morning Lord let us get rid of the things that weigh us down Let us cut off every weight that encumbers and entangles and let us run with grace to the throne of grace

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Because you are good and what you have done for us in Christ is sufficient

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Lord be with us and help us to lay these things down and help us to have confidence that we are forgiven

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It's in Jesus Christ. We pray. Amen. I Isaiah 118 says it come now.

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Let us reason together. It says that because we're prone to a kind of Belief where we think

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God it's not gonna forgive me what I did Was too significant Come let us reason together is stop thinking that way and Receive what

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I'm getting ready to tell you Though your sins are as scarlet

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They will be as white as snow though they are like red crimson They will be like wool and Isaiah could say that confidently because he could say it on the basis of Jesus Christ So brothers and sisters though your sins too are like scarlet though your sins

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By your own but by their own merits should have damned you and I to hell on the basis of Christ who took our judgment

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Our punishment we have been made whole We have been made clean So I say to you today stand as a saint forgiven by Christ stand joyfully

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Leap like calves let out to the pasture and let's stand and let's declare our confession together, please

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Dear Christian, what do you believe and further confession of our faith the

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Heidelberg Catechism question 17? The question says this would you respond with the answer?