Philosophies Of God (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

We're going to continue this morning with our look at a series that I have now called the

00:07

Philosophies of God and that name requires a little explanation. We're not talking about philosophies of God or does

00:17

God exist or anything of that nature. We are talking about philosophy from the standpoint of worldview and those philosophies that come out of a proper view of God, if you will, and as we said last

00:34

Sunday, this is based mostly on the work of the late Francis Schaeffer. Dr.

00:40

Schaeffer died in 1984 and he was remarkably prescient in all of his writings as he outlined where society was going and warned the church in particular about the adoption of a lot of what we have now adopted and with the results that he predicted.

01:03

But anyway, we're looking at some of the basic questions that face philosophers, whether they are humanistic philosophers or Christian philosophers.

01:14

There are only a few basic questions that they wrestle with and we're looking at, first of all, we looked at the question of metaphysics or the question of being, which is the basic question is why is there anything as opposed to nothing?

01:31

It is frankly much more logical for them to bear to be nothing than there to be something.

01:37

Even the humanist philosopher Jean -Paul Sartre put it this way, he said, the basic philosophical question is that something is there, which leads to the issues of why is it there?

01:52

Where does it come from? How did it get there? And then we also have the issue of integration or of reference point, if you will.

02:04

That the finite and men are finite, the creation is finite, the finite requires an infinite reference point to give meaning, to give context to the particulars, what

02:19

Dr. Schaeffer called the particulars of life. I'm a particular, you're a particular, the chairs are particulars, on and on and on.

02:26

But what ties everything together? What's the universal that ties everything together? And then this is all by way of review.

02:35

There are two schools of thought developed all about the same time, 15th and 16th centuries, two schools of thought developed.

02:43

The first is the Renaissance thought, which in the Renaissance certainly led to huge things in the fields of music and art and literature and all the rest of it.

02:55

But fundamentally, Renaissance thought had man at the center.

03:02

They said, all right, we're going to take man himself and we're going to try to make him the integration point.

03:11

But the problem is, is that man is not infinite, man is finite. And therefore, he is not suitable to be his own integration point.

03:22

We cannot start from ourselves and develop a universal that is suitable to encompass everything that we see around us, the observed universe, for example.

03:35

It is there. And at the same time, we had Reformation thought, and I'm using that term to mean thought that has

03:44

God as its center, that there is a creator God and that all that is, all that is around us, everything has come from that creator

03:56

God who preexisted his creation. The creator

04:02

God himself has always existed. He was not himself created. And therefore, he is a true infinite reference point because behind God there is nothing.

04:12

There's nothing else there if you go past God. In fact, you can take the first commandment, said,

04:19

I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me. You all know that. Well, with a slight rearrangement of the words, you can have,

04:29

I am the Lord thy God, beyond me there is nothing. The same

04:34

Hebrew comes up with that phrase. And God is emphasizing the point that he is the origin of all things.

04:43

All things have their being through him. All things are integrated to him.

04:49

He is the explanation. He is the answer, if you will, to all of man's questions.

04:57

And so Renaissance thought produced a great deal of what we see today.

05:04

It has produced government of law. It has produced modern science.

05:11

It has produced the whole scientific thought, scientific method comes out of this. It aligns with what man observes about himself, that we are not, after all, just one more of the animals.

05:25

We are not simply the one of the animals that clawed their way to the top of the food chain. And we have personality.

05:34

We have manishness, if you will. And that we communicate with each other.

05:40

We are driven to communicate. We are driven to love each other. We are driven to form society. All of these things, it explains all of these things about ourselves.

05:49

Because there is a creator God and we are created in his image, the Bible specifically says of man.

05:56

That man is different from the rest of creation. We are created in God's image.

06:04

And as a result, we bear, although imperfectly, we bear his image upon ourselves.

06:12

And there is still an echo of that even in fallen man. And so we're going to turn this morning after looking at, as we said, we needed a personal infinite

06:28

God. And the God of the Bible is the only answer to that need.

06:34

The Trinitarian personal infinite God of the Bible. It's not the best answer.

06:41

It's the only answer. And so God is there. These are the two summary things from the first lesson.

06:49

God exists. He is there. He's really there. He's not an idea of God.

06:55

It's not God feelings. We are not an extension of some essence of God.

07:02

God is really there. Now, God is a spirit, certainly.

07:09

God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are spirits. God the Son, and think about this one,

07:15

God the Son is recognizably a human being. When the hypostatic union took place and Jesus came as a baby, grew up, died in our place on the cross, that is a permanent union.

07:31

I'm not sure what you would see if you could look into heaven right now, what the Father would be like.

07:40

But I am convinced myself, based on what I think is good biblical evidence, that Jesus Christ is recognizably a man, and he is seated at the right hand of the

07:52

Father. That's not really part of the lesson. I just sort of threw that in, a little extra note of B -Nay there.

08:00

That brings us this morning to the second issue that we're going to deal with, and man is his dilemma, or the question of right and wrong, or if you will, the question of morals, because we have two problems.

08:16

First of all, man is personal. Man is intrinsically different from non -man.

08:23

And by intrinsically different, I mean different in and of himself. We are different from the rest of what?

08:33

Of the creation, whether it's the animal creation, or plants, or any of the rest of the things that God has created, we are different because we are made in his image.

08:43

And the other problem man has, that we've already touched on, is that man is finite, and because man is finite and limited, he is unsuitable to be his own reference point, to be his own integration point.

08:58

And so we need to address that. The second problem that we have concerns man himself and where, how he acts, how he is, because we observe that there is a nobility to man.

09:14

Men are capable of deeds of incredible self -sacrifice. You may have noticed on the news last week, we presented the

09:24

Medal of Honor, the nation's highest declaration for valor. We presented the Medal of Honor to a young marine corporal, posthumously

09:32

I might add, a young marine corporal who had jumped on a hand grenade, taking the force of the explosion in his own body to protect his men.

09:46

And we recognize things like that. That's a great self -sacrifice.

09:53

Young man died of his wounds, and so we have presented him with the highest declaration for valor that we have.

10:00

Men are capable of things like that. Men go into burning buildings to rescue trapped people.

10:08

Men give up their seats on the lifeboats so that the women and children can go first.

10:14

So man has a nobility about him that the other animals simply do not have.

10:21

However, man is also capable of the most heinous atrocities imaginable.

10:29

Man is also cruel. And so you have these two opposite things.

10:35

Man is estranged. Man is estranged from God, number one. Man is estranged from his fellow human beings.

10:42

Man is estranged from himself. And so you've got these two opposites that you have to deal with.

10:51

And how can you react to that? There's several ways to react to that.

10:57

One is to simply take the bury your head in the sand approach and deny as best you can that man is cruel, or at least to say that, well, yes, man is cruel, but he's cruel because of things outside of himself.

11:17

You know, he's cruel because daddy didn't hug him at night when he was put to bed.

11:25

Mama didn't take him to the zoo. He was raised in poverty. You know, his drawings from kindergarten weren't on the refrigerator with those of his brothers and sisters, and on and on, come up with all these reasons for why human beings are cruel, because you can't really deny that human beings are cruel.

11:47

History holds too much evidence to the contrary. So we can bury our heads in the sand and say, no, well, man is actually intrinsically good, but all of these external things, you know, are to blame for the fact that he acts inappropriately.

12:09

We use words like that. We never say wrong, of course. Well, that's one thing you can do, or you can also take the view that man is intrinsically evil.

12:21

And as we shall see, both of those approaches are incorrect. Man is evil, true, but he is not intrinsically evil.

12:29

And that's an important distinction, and we're going to take a look at that. But just like the area of metaphysics, when you're looking at the area of morals, you get different answers depending upon where you start.

12:42

And if you start from the impersonal beginning, the idea that the universe and all that it contains is merely the result of an impersonal beginning plus time plus chance, you rapidly come up with certain conclusions.

13:03

First of all, morals cease to exist as morals, moral standards. Morals cease to exist in and of themselves.

13:11

They're simply one more part of metaphysics. They're simply one more part of being. Morals are no longer based on an absolute standard.

13:22

Morals are simply something that we come up with because it benefits society. One of the more ridiculous statements that I've ever heard made by someone who is allegedly intelligent comes from the philosopher

13:40

Julian Huxley who proclaimed that, well, God is dead, but it's better for society if we live as if he's alive.

13:48

And when you think about that, you think, what? But actually, he actually did say that.

13:54

God is dead, he's not there, but it's better for society if we live as if he were. And you want to ask someone, do you realize what a ridiculous statement that is?

14:06

You know, God is there and therefore we should live in a certain way is the proper answer.

14:13

But anyway, back to our issue, if we start from the impersonal beginning, then antisocial behavior, wrong behavior, whatever we want to call it, becomes merely what society doesn't like at a particular time.

14:30

It's merely what society doesn't approve at a particular time. That changes.

14:37

You can go back in history and you can look at various societies that have grown up and faded away, and you will see that what they approved of or what they tolerated varied depending upon what society you're talking about and what period of time you're talking about.

14:53

But there's no fundamental basis for it. It's just whatever pleases society at the time.

15:00

And so nothing can be said to be either inherently right or inherently wrong.

15:07

It's merely the statistical average of whatever the members of society happen to think.

15:15

And so you are led down the path of that until you come to the conclusion that whatever is is right.

15:24

And this was the conclusion of the Marquis de Sade. Now, that's where we get the term sadism.

15:31

Marquis de Sade is known in history for his cruelty, particularly his cruelty to women. But where did he come up with this?

15:40

The idea, it started from the fact that there is no absolute basis for anything, and therefore since I am larger, stronger, whatever else, richer than those around me,

15:56

I can oppress them, I can be as cruel to them as I want because there is no right and wrong.

16:02

It's whatever is is right. That's the conclusion that you come to, that you're driven to. And so this whole basis, even though men make what

16:13

Schaeffer calls moral motions based on some vague idea that there is a difference between right and wrong, because what does

16:23

Paul say? The knowledge of the truth is embedded in you.

16:30

This is Paul to the Romans. They have the truth, but they suppress the truth.

16:37

They reject the truth. But again, we are made in God's image, and as much as we try to suppress this knowledge, we are inherently made knowing certain things.

16:53

And you can see this in children, for example. You do not have to convince a child that God is there.

16:59

A child knows God is there. It's only when they get grown up and become sophisticated that they suppress the knowledge.

17:11

That's why evangelism among children is much easier to do than evangelism among adults because you don't have to convince them in the first place that God exists.

17:20

They know that. Other things. We know. We are born with a certain knowledge of right and wrong, and that bubbles to the surface sometimes as much as we try to suppress it.

17:31

And so men make what Schaeffer calls moral motions. But nonetheless, if you ask them why, they don't have any basis for why they say this is right and that's wrong.

17:45

And so there's no standards. You have this cosmic alienation. You have nothing firm.

17:51

You have only the relative. And right is simply, as I said, the statistical average of society's thinking at any given time.

18:00

If they could hook us all up to some great vast computer which could constantly poll everybody.

18:09

We're now a society. We poll everybody about everything. Did the sun rise? I don't know. Let's take a poll. And we could hook every member of society up to some vast computer.

18:21

That computer could constantly tell us from moment to moment what was right and what was wrong, based on the statistical average of what the society thought.

18:29

That's the kind of thing we're driving towards. And so ethics, ethical behavior has been replaced by the 51 % rule.

18:39

Whatever the majority of people agree is right is right at this time. Now, that can change.

18:45

So don't get too locked in to what you think is right. All of this comes out of this whole idea of the impersonal beginning.

18:52

And so to summarize this idea, if you begin with the impersonal, you're faced with the fact that there's no explanation for the complexity of the universe, number one.

19:04

There is no explanation for the personality of man, number two. And there is no final basis for morals because there's no standard.

19:13

Now, the second possibility that we come up with is the personal beginning, as we looked at last time, that the universe and all that it contains is the result of a specific act of creation by an infinite personal

19:31

God and one who has created man in his image.

19:38

Now, this is the Genesis account, which is why we keep going back to Genesis all the time, back to Genesis, back to Genesis.

19:46

Genesis is the book of beginnings. And you really do have to start there with your thought processes.

19:54

Otherwise, you founder. And unfortunately, in our day and age, this scientific age, too many individuals, and I'm talking about Christian individuals, evangelical

20:09

Christians, they sort of ignore Genesis because they bought this idea that, well,

20:17

Genesis is not scientifically accurate. It's a book that, you know, it's some stories to make a point.

20:26

But Genesis isn't stories to make a point. It does make a point. It explains a lot of things.

20:33

But if you don't get a handle on Genesis, nothing else in life is going to make any sense.

20:40

You have to start from Genesis. If you do not start with the idea that there is an infinite personal

20:48

God, and those two, I didn't just hang those two terms together. Schaeffer didn't just hang those two terms together because God has to be infinite.

20:57

He has to be infinite to be large enough to be the integration point for all of the universe.

21:06

He has to be infinite to be powerful enough to create everything that you see around you, not just the biosphere that we live in, but also the universe as it exists and its incredible beauty and expanse.

21:24

God has to be infinite. But if all God was was infinite, we would be in serious trouble because you cannot know an infinite

21:34

God. We would have no way of communicating with an infinite God.

21:40

We would have no way of reaching to a God who was totally transcendent, totally other.

21:51

And so we also need a God who is personal. We need a God who will deal with his creation on a one -to -one basis.

22:00

And we have both of those things in the

22:05

God of Genesis. We have a God that created everything. At the end of each cycle of creation, what does the

22:16

Bible say? And God saw that it was good. Everything God has made is good at the time of creation.

22:26

And yet we also have a God who comes to the garden every day and walks with Adam and Eve and communicates with them.

22:36

We have a personal God who is personally concerned with his creation.

22:44

And so he manifests himself in some physical way to them every day, the Bible tells us.

22:50

And so there he is. We must have this infinite personal

22:55

God. And so within this possibility of the personal beginning, once again we have two possibilities.

23:05

We're just full of two possibilities here. And we touched on this a little bit earlier. There is a possibility, and certain philosophers have said this, is that man is intrinsically evil.

23:17

That man as he was created is evil. We are evil in and of our inherent being.

23:27

And lots of philosophers have said this. And the problem there, because man, let's face it, man does do some very, very awful things, doesn't he?

23:43

In just our own modern, relatively modern history, we think of the Holocaust would certainly jump to mind.

23:49

We think of the purges and what have you that happened in Soviet Russia under Stalin and his successors.

23:57

In more recent times, more recent history, we think of the mass killings that Saddam Hussein oversaw.

24:07

So men are certainly capable of acts of unspeakable evil. But is man inherently that way?

24:17

Because if man is inherently evil, if he was created evil, what does that say about the

24:26

God who created him? What does that say about the

24:32

God who created him? A God who would create evil must himself be evil.

24:39

And philosophers have wrestled with this issue for a long time. And you hear echoes of this even now.

24:49

How could God, you hear, if God is good, how could he allow

24:57

X, Y, or Z to happen, some great natural disaster to happen? How could he allow Katrina to happen?

25:03

How could he allow this to happen? How could he allow that to happen? And when you look at this logically, it becomes, if you start from that standpoint, man's inherently evil.

25:18

Now, keep remembering that. I keep saying that for the benefit of the tape. Don't stop listening now, folks.

25:26

If this is true, and then we come up with the concept of a bad

25:33

God, it actually does become irrational to argue that God is good.

25:40

If man is intrinsically evil, it becomes irrational to argue that God is good. And yet, this is precisely what liberal theology would have us do, is that they would have us abandon all reason, and just, well, we need to believe in a good

25:56

God, so let's just do that, okay? But see, the

26:01

Bible does not support this idea. The Bible tells us, in no uncertain terms, that God is good, that God is good, and that what he created was also good.

26:16

It's not a literary technique that you see in the book of Genesis, where God says at the end of each of the creation cycles, and God saw that it was good.

26:28

It was good. It was good. It's repeated over and over and over and over again. It's good. In fact,

26:35

God doesn't say anything is not good until he gets to man, and he says, hmm, man needs a partner suitable for him, and so I'm going to create

26:44

Eve. So it's good. It's good. It's good. Because the problems that we run into, other issues that we run into, if we go back to the idea that man is intrinsically evil, and if God created the world exactly as it is today, if this is exactly the way he created it, then what basis is there for us to resist evil?

27:14

Because didn't God create that too? The thinking goes, this is the

27:19

French philosopher Camus, one of the big names that pushed that idea, that we can't resist anything.

27:26

In fact, if you go to India, where our pastor has just been, that's one of the central points of the whole

27:36

Hindu religion, is that what's happening to you is your karma, and I must not interfere with that, or else your bad karma will come to me, because we're all going around in a big circle, and hopefully we're getting better and better each time we cycle back, but we might slip back.

27:52

So we've got to watch out for that. By the way, our pastor has stood in the pulpit of Calvin.

28:03

He made a side trip on his way home. He is on his way home now. He made a side trip, and has actually stood in Calvin's pulpit, absorbing whatever there is to absorb.

28:16

That's a side point. Okay, back to this. The other thing about if man is created inherently evil, then there's no hope of a qualitative change.

28:31

There's no hope of a qualitative change. There might be a quantitative change. We might, by our own efforts, become slightly less cruel, but there's no answer to the question that Job raises, how shall a man be just before God?

28:50

And that's a central question. How can we be just before God? We have a righteous

28:55

God, a creator God. How can we be justified before him? And so what's the result?

29:01

The result of all of this is that we spin off into pessimism and despair. I mean, no wonder society has gone into this complete pessimistic outlook, because there truly is no hope for an answer, unless, he rushed on, unless we have the second possibility, that man is not created inherently evil.

29:27

Man is not created intrinsically evil, but he has been changed. He has been changed.

29:35

He is not the way God created him to be. He has been damaged, if you will.

29:42

Ah, then the whole situation changes. And we go back, the

29:48

Bible says God is good, and we have to know that. We have to know

29:54

God is there, number one, that he's really there, and that he's good.

29:59

Those two things are very, very vital to our peace of mind, if you will. That God is there and God is good, because if God is there and God is not good, we're in trouble.

30:11

So God is there and God is good. But the Bible goes on to tell us how evil entered the universe.

30:19

God did not create evil in the universe. God is not the author of evil, the

30:24

Bible tells us in no uncertain terms. So where did evil come from? And this is another thing.

30:32

If you don't get a handle on this, the origin of evil, you will still not come to the right answers about how life is proceeding.

30:40

But if you go over to Isaiah chapter 14, and we're not going to turn there, but if you go to Isaiah chapter 14, verses 12 to 14, you will see the origin of evil outlined.

30:53

And what is it? That the top of the created order of angels,

31:00

Lucifer, son of the morning, he says,

31:06

I will five times. And it sums up in the statement, I will be like the most high.

31:14

I am not satisfied with merely being the peak of God's created order.

31:20

That's not good enough. I want to be God himself. I want to be autonomous.

31:27

Now, the angels were created with will. The angels were created with will.

31:33

We can leave it to theologians to argue over the issue, or the free, adjective free.

31:39

Is their will free or not? Well, let others argue about that. They were certainly created with will that they could exercise.

31:46

And Satan, Lucifer, exercised his will to rebel against God.

31:54

And this is where evil enters the universe. And one -third of the angels, we're not told how many that is as an actual number, but one -third of all the angelic beings followed him.

32:08

It's not enough for us to have will and to be able to act freely within the confines that God has set.

32:19

No, we want to be autonomous. We want to be completely outside of that. We don't want to have to give our loyalty, our fealty, anything to someone above ourselves.

32:32

In other words, we want to be on top. And that's where evil originates.

32:39

And then God, as he creates the world, puts man on it,

32:47

Satan comes to corrupt man. And so, and you know the story, you know,

32:53

Satan tempts Eve. She does the one thing that God said, you can do anything you want except one thing.

33:02

There's only one thing you can't do. So Eve and then

33:07

Adam both do that thing. Yes, you mean who tempted

33:31

Eve? I believe it is. I believe it is. Yes, this is not something, the derailing of God's plan for the universe is not something that Satan is going to give to an underling.

33:44

He's going to take care of that himself. So, yeah, the question was, the question was is that the tempter referred to in Genesis, was that Satan himself?

33:56

And the answer is yes, I believe it was. And so, man makes his choice.

34:04

Man turns from his proper point of integration by an act of his own volition.

34:10

Man had a will as well. Man was created with a will. Man exercises that will.

34:16

Adam and Eve exercise their will to rebel against God, to do the one thing that God said you can't do.

34:23

You can do anything else that you want. You can eat of anything else in the garden except this tree.

34:30

And so what do they got to do? Like, you know, it's like going down the road. You're driving down the road, right?

34:37

And you see the sign that says, do not cross the center median. What do you want to do? Right there, bam, left turn.

34:44

Here we go. Just because somebody said you can't do it. And we all know, all of us who have raised children know, when you tell a child you don't do

34:56

X, Y, or Z, what's the first thing they want to do? It's exactly what you just told them, don't do.

35:05

See, so Adam and Eve, same thing. God says, don't do this. That's the first thing they do.

35:10

And so in Eden, man becomes abnormal. He is not what he was created to be.

35:22

Man is abnormal. And because Adam was the federal head of the human race, he was the representative head of the human race, his actions come down, the consequences of his actions come down to everybody that's ever been born since then.

35:40

That's what the father passes on to his children. Have a nice day, sons.

35:47

You know, that's my gift to you. And so we come, though, to the

35:53

Christian's explanation of man's moral dilemma. And it's this, that man is abnormal.

35:59

He is not what he was created to be. Now, the non -Christian explanation of man's moral dilemma really has no explanation.

36:11

He's saying man is normal, this is just the way it is. But the Christian is saying, no, man is not normal.

36:19

Man is not normal. So now we have an explanation for the dilemma that we've been talking about.

36:28

Why is man noble? Why is man noble? Why do men, under certain circumstances, do extremely noble things, self -sacrificing things?

36:38

The answer is he's created in God's image. And even in the fallen world, men created in God's image, you're still created in God's image, even though you're damaged.

36:54

And that comes to the surface. And so men do. They run into the burning building to rescue the child that's trapped on the third floor.

37:05

They give up their seat in the lifeboat. They throw themselves on the hand grenade to save the men who have been entrusted to their care.

37:14

Men do things like that. Also, why is man cruel? Man's cruel because he's fallen.

37:20

Or why is man evil, if you will? He's evil because he's fallen. He's damaged.

37:25

He's not what he was created to be. But we can now offer, the

37:32

Christian can offer hope for a solution ex machina, from outside the machine.

37:42

In Greek mythology, when the Greeks were big on drama, the

37:48

Greeks would let the story get just as absolutely terrible.

37:53

Things were just going awful. And then they would have a god from outside the machine who would literally slide into the scene on a wire.

38:06

And, of course, this god with absolute powers could slide into the machine, and he could fix everything.

38:13

Deus ex machina, that's what the phrase means. Well, that's what we need.

38:19

Because man's got a problem. He's damaged. He's abnormal. He's not what he was created to be. And he can't do anything about it based on himself.

38:28

We need something from outside the machine. But fortunately, our infinite personal god provides that.

38:42

From outside, God provides a way of escape by sending his own son to die in our place.

38:54

The substitutionary atonement, that is absolutely critical.

39:00

That someone has come who himself does not need to be made righteous.

39:07

He is righteous. He has no personal sins for which payment has to be made.

39:14

And therefore, he is qualified to die in my place. Now, I've done nothing to earn this.

39:22

There is nothing in me that merits this kind of treatment.

39:28

It is totally the choice of the one who is sending the

39:34

Savior. It's totally his choice that he would send his son to die in the sinner's place.

39:46

But that's the hope. That's the hope of man. But now you see why it's so critical that we start off with Genesis.

39:54

Because if you don't understand how you got here, you don't really understand why you need a solution to the problem.

40:01

If you don't understand where the problem came from or that you have a problem in the first place. Now, we can also, on this same basis, we have a basis for resisting evil.

40:15

God did not create evil. God did not create things the way they are.

40:20

The entire universe is damaged. When evil entered the universe, it did not simply result in the fall of man.

40:29

All of God's creation is fallen. Everything is fallen.

40:36

And think about this. If God's fallen universe is as beautiful as his created order is, what must it have looked like before the fall?

40:48

Because we still see these scenes of incredible, incredible beauty. Both here on earth and also out in the universe.

40:57

And so we have this universe that God's created, but the whole thing is damaged.

41:05

But we can resist, properly so, evil. We can resist the spread of evil.

41:15

We can be righteously angry at evil. We don't just simply sit back.

41:23

In fact, this is the solution, or the answer, by the way, to those who say, well, we should just be fatalistic.

41:28

What is, is. No. Because think of what

41:34

Jesus did when he was here on earth. He cleansed the temple, not once, but twice.

41:43

Gave everybody the bums rush. And when you see Jesus standing in front of Lazarus' tomb, it's interesting his reactions.

41:55

Jesus weeps. He has sympathy for Mary and Martha and all the rest of the ones that are mourning for Lazarus.

42:04

He is angry. Jesus is angry at death. Because death is the ultimate expression of the fact that the universe is not the way

42:15

God made it. God did not make things to die. You know,

42:21

God made things to live. But the universal truth among all men is that all men die.

42:28

You know, Paul offers that again as the proof that sin has completely affected all mankind.

42:34

Because the one great universal is everybody dies. Infants die.

42:41

Old people die. People in the prime of life die. Death affects everyone.

42:47

And a universal effect requires a universal cause. And so, and to sum the whole thing up though, is that there now is a moral absolute.

43:01

There now has become a moral absolute. There is a moral absolute. It is provided by the character of God himself.

43:11

God's character totally excludes evil. And so,

43:17

God's character is the moral absolute of the universe. We now have an infinite integration point that we can tie everything else to.

43:30

So, as we said earlier in the last lesson, this is not simply the best answer.

43:38

This is the only answer. This is the only answer.

43:44

And to sum up, first of all, that God is objectively there. He's not an idea.

43:51

He's not a concept. He's really there. God is a real personality.

43:59

He is a spirit. He's not physical the way you and I are. But he is there.

44:04

He's a personality. The triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is objectively there.

44:12

And secondly, God speaks, and he speaks in propositional fact. He has told us who he is.

44:20

And he has told us what his character is. And when you think about it, that's very important for us to know.

44:26

If God's character is going to be the moral absolute of the universe, it would do us well to know what that is, would it not?

44:35

And so, God has told us, this is my character. This is what I am. This is what

44:41

I am like. And he's set this down in objective propositional facts.

44:49

And so now morals are no longer arbitrary. They are not simply the societal averages of what pleases people.

44:59

Morality now becomes absolute because there is an absolute standard by which to measure it.

45:06

And so, when our children begin to ask us questions about why is this right, why is that wrong, we can tell them the true answers.

45:20

We can tell them the true answers. One of the leading radicals of the 1960s commented many years later that he became radicalized at Berkeley when he was at school there because his professors couldn't give him any answers.

45:41

His professors would make these assertions, but when he would say, why is that true, they had no answer.

45:49

They had no answer. And so, his personal reaction to that was rage.

45:56

But we have answers to give our children. That goes back to what I said last time is that Christian philosophers and humanist philosophers both wrestle with the same questions.

46:07

The difference is that Christian philosophers can come up with the answers. Christian philosophers can come up with the answers.

46:17

We can also say that man is morally guilty. He is truly, he has true moral guilt.

46:25

And that moral guilt needs a solution. And the solution is provided by Christ's substitutionary death.

46:34

And there are two things to that that are absolutely critical. First of all, it is substitutionary.

46:39

He has died in my place. He has died in your place.

46:46

He took the punishment that was due you. He took the punishment that is due me.

46:53

And secondly, that death is atoning. It pays the price.

47:02

It satisfies God. It is propitiatory, if you want the $10 word for that.

47:07

God is satisfied with his son's sacrifice on our behalf.

47:19

If, yes, Fred. Okay, man is, the question was how does that fit in with the

47:36

Calvinist doctrine that man is totally depraved? Man is totally depraved in the sense that man is completely and totally incapable of doing anything to address this problem on his own.

47:52

Man is separated from God. Man is separated from God. He is a sinner.

47:59

He has, as we just said, he has acquired true moral guilt. He is guilty before God.

48:07

And he is completely incapable of doing anything about this on his own.

48:14

But the point that I've been trying to make this morning is that simply because man can do nothing about it does not mean that nothing can be done about it.

48:31

We cannot do anything about this on our own. We must have the deus ex machina.

48:37

We must rely on someone outside of our own existence to deal with this problem because we can't.

48:49

And that's all wrapped up in the doctrine of total depravity is that, as we've said before many times, total depravity doesn't mean that man is as evil as he could possibly be, which is a good thing for society.

49:05

In fact, very few people are as evil as they could possibly be. That's why they stick out so much in history.

49:15

But total depravity simply refers to our total inability, if you will, to address our need.

49:24

There's nothing we can do about it. There's absolutely nothing we can do about it. And until we have admitted that and said, yes,

49:33

I have this problem, there's absolutely nothing I can do about it, then we turn to the solution that is provided by a merciful and gracious God and say,

49:45

God, I can't do anything about this. If something's going to be done, you're going to have to do it because I can't.

49:53

And that's a good place to leave. Next time, Brother Dave will be back.

50:00

Pastor Dave will be back. And then in two Sundays, we are going to be looking at the third area of this, which is the area of epistemology.

50:13

Do not be scared off by that word. Epistemology is simply a $10 word that means how do we actually know things.

50:23

You say, well, why do I need to know that? Well, you do, trust me, because you need to have confidence that what you know is real, is the truth, so that you're not constantly foundering about, well,

50:39

I think, well, maybe, perhaps, because we have thus saith the

50:46

Lord right here. We have a standard by which we can judge all of the rest of our thoughts.

50:52

We can judge by God's thought. And he says, thus saith the Lord. And we can, too.

50:59

Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you this morning that you are there and that you have spoken to us, that you have called us to yourself, that you have drawn us to yourself, for we acknowledge,

51:13

Lord, that we have a serious problem that we cannot address. But we are thankful and grateful,

51:20

Lord, that you have addressed it. And you have addressed it by providing a way of escape when you would have been completely justified in simply wiping us out and starting over.

51:32

And so, Lord, we can do nothing except fall on our faces before you and worship you.

51:38

We pray your blessing upon the rest of this service this morning. We pray your blessing upon our speaker as he opens the word to us.