Becoming A Better Theologian (part 35)

A few weeks ago, Christopher Hitchens died. How many of you know anything about him? I think Pastor Mike mentioned him the other day, a few hands, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong during his biography when

I get to the quotes, though I won't be wrong because I copied them off the internet, therefore they are 100 % accurate.

Christopher Hitchens is, or was, a very intelligent guy.

And actually, as you'll see in one of his quotes here, I think he went out of his way to present himself as an intelligent.

He would use words in regular conversation that most of us would just go, I can't spell that.

I've never heard it. I'm not sure it's English. I think you've made it up. But we certainly, and a very bright guy, started out as a liberal, became more conservative, but he was always, very much from his youth forward, antagonistic towards Christianity and antagonistic towards God in general.

Let me give you some quotes here. Some of them are quite fun. The first bit of this, first one is quite fun.

Listen, this is Hitchens, owners of dogs will have noticed that if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affections, they will think you are

God. And I would just add to that, that if you do that for cats, they think you're stupid.

He said here, this is a quote from Bill Bennett, he said,

I hope Hitchens is getting a big surprise today. And that big surprise Bill Bennett wanted,

I don't even know what that means. Bill Bennett is Catholic. Now listen to that quote again. I hope Hitchens is getting a big surprise today.

Now Hitchens was an atheist. What do you suppose he meant by a big surprise? I mean, did he, was

Bill Bennett saying, I hope Christopher Hitchens wakes up in hell today? That would be a big surprise to Christopher Hitchens.

What's that? Well, on the other hand, well,

I'll digress just to say this. I was reading an account of a couple of Christians who got smashed drunk with him and then were trying to witness to him.

And I don't know how that really goes, but Christopher Hitchens also, on top of being an atheist, used to start drinking about 10 o 'clock in the morning and really not quit.

He died of cancer of the esophagus, which is what my dad has, but there are different varieties of esophageal cancer and one of the things that helps you get it is drinking a lot.

Smoking is also bad. And he happened to smoke quite a bit. Anyway, I shouldn't have digressed.

Bill Bennett, why would he say that? I think it's because he was hoping that what? In spite of the way that Christopher Hitchens spoke, in spite of the way that he lived his life, that somehow he heard something along the way, believed enough to not go to hell and to be in the presence of God.

I think that's what Bill Bennett was. I mean, I don't think Bill Bennett is the sort of person who would say, I certainly hope

Hitchens is getting his just desserts today. Just a couple more quotes here.

Well, Lewis and I were talking about this quote last night. Hitchens said this. Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.

How about this one? The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism.

That is, no kind of conflict, no mental disturbance there.

It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren song of paradise, heaven, and the dread of hell.

Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely.

We stumble and get up. We are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more, but I want nothing more.

I think that's pretty bold talk. Until he was about to die, do you think that at that moment he probably wanted a little more?

I do. This is one, and I'll move on from here after this, but Hitchens said this, however, one thing that grave illness does, this is towards the end he wrote this, that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings.

And there's one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to.

In particular, I've slightly stopped issuing the announcement that whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

Because he was going through chemotherapy and all manner of pain and everything, and he realized that as he got weaker, this cancer hadn't killed him yet, but it certainly wasn't making him stronger.

But a brilliant man passed away, and here's what I would like us to do for a moment is to turn to, and I put this all the way at the end of my notes, which is a bad move, to Matthew 22.

Because as we continue to talk about monotheism, polytheism, henotheism, henotheism, you know, all these different theisms,

I thought this was an excellent starting point. Matthew 22, verses 36 to 38, and if somebody would read that, please.

We have no lawyers here who would care to give voice to this this morning, Bruce. What do you suppose, just for a moment, what do you suppose if that's a commandment?

Because we... I'm sorry, say it again, Flo? We wouldn't do it unless it was commanded, and he's worthy of that, right?

And yet, even in this most basic command, the most obvious command, what do we do?

We fall short. We're, in some ways, no better than Christopher Hitchens.

There's a shocking statement. We're no better than him in the way we often think, in the way we often behave.

We're only better, why? Because we are in Christ. We're not better in terms of our behavior, we're better in terms of our position.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And that is, if that's the first and foremost commandment, what is the commandment that men most often break?

The first and foremost commandment. Now, to just kind of remind us where we are, I'll go through this real quickly since it's been a few weeks.

The unity of the Godhead is what we've been looking at, and I gave a quiz four weeks ago, and then we continued on three weeks, and Lord willing, we might finish, we'll see.

Number one, true or false? God is both revealed and concealed, and the answer to that was true.

We talked about how, even though we don't know everything about him, that we do know what is revealed to us in Scripture.

Whereas, Cappadocia, and I mention them because the Cappadocians were the first group of theologians, that's in Asia Minor, by the way, in the mountains, mountainsides.

Talked about one of the History Channel specials I saw where they actually had found a bunch of their settlements, and they were among the earliest

Christians away from Israel, and they had baptismal fonts in their churches, you know, for dunking, not for sprinkling, you know, just kind of as an aside.

But anyway, they were among the first, or they were the first group of theologians to really explain and defend at length that every attribute properly assigned by Scripture to God was fully shared by each person of the

Trinity. Number three, true or false, comparative religion classes are helpful in understanding the nature of God.

I think that's both true and false. They can be helpful in some ways, but what they really tell us, most of all,

I think, these comparative religion classes tell us about who? About mankind.

Number four, true or false, every religion has, or every false religion has a God they worship. Absolutely true.

Some of those false religions will even say that the God they worship is Jesus. It's pretty shocking to hear some of the folks running for president.

Number five, what is it called when a religion seeks to universalize various types of phenomena and identify each with a particular deity, such as the

God of storms? That's polytheism. You know, we have a God of this and a God of that, and it's very, to us now, it sounds kind of archaic, very old -fashioned, and primitive, right?

But it is part of our culture when we realize, and I mentioned this before, that Thor, the

Norse god of thunder, and also comic book superhero, that's where we get our word

Thursday. And then there are different, you know, Janus, one of the, is that a

Roman or a Greek god? I think it's a Roman god. Anyway, he's, that's where we get the name for January.

Mars, the Greek god of war, is that the, no, that's the Roman god of war. Doesn't matter.

All these kind of, you know, when you go and you read mythology in grade school, this is what you get. Number six, what tends to accompany a multi -god system?

Well, idolatry. And we're going to see a little bit more of this today. A multi -god system, that is a system of polytheism, of saying that there's a god of this and a god of that, and a multitude of gods to worship.

Ultimately, you find some way to physically represent them, so that you can worship that physical idol.

Number seven, what word means worship of a single false god, and that is monolatry, monolatry, monolatry?

Lottery. Oh, sorry. Worshipping the god of money, lottery. And then we talked about henotheism, which is to pick one god out of the multitude and worship that one.

And I just can't resist number eight, true or false, a little interesting factoid I picked up on the internet. When you have too much time on your hands, you find stuff like this.

The Australian census in 2001, 70 ,000 people claimed Jedi as their religion, true.

And then we talked about dualism, which is the worldview presented in Star Wars.

Does that mean you shouldn't watch Star Wars? I don't know. I'll let you make up your mind about that. But this good and the nature of good and evil battling, and there being some kind of balance to be achieved, that's everything that's presented in Star Wars, and yet that's an ancient false religion.

How many monotheistic religions are there? There are basically three, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, but they don't all worship the same god.

We talked about that a little bit. Number 10, which is where we are here now, and just to, well, we can discuss this here.

True or false, number 10, the coherence of the universe suggests one god. The coherence, that is, the fact that everything functions as it should, we have uniformity, et cetera, suggests that there is one god.

True. Now, how could you prove that scripturally? Genesis 1 -1 in the beginning, right,

God created the heavens and the earth. But in terms of coherence, and I think there are a couple of different ways you could go, but let's turn to Psalm 19, and just listen to verse 1, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Now, do the heavens actually say, God is glorious? Our God is a

God of glory? Does the sky actually say, you know, God is a God of great handiwork?

Do they actually physically, audibly say those things? No. So what's the psalmist's point there?

It all points to him, right? And so, if there's a unity, if there's a coherence, if there's an obvious design behind everything that we see, then that, basically, that would declare that there is a

God. What would we expect if there were a multitude of gods? Confusion, chaos, right?

We would have, just like in a committee, which is the ultimate form of chaos.

What would, you know, in mythology, the Norse gods, the Roman gods, the

Greek gods, what do they do? They fought all the time. So we would expect to see, you know, bizarre, unexplainable things happening all the time, you know, that would basically rend, you know, our existence, you know, that would tear it apart.

We would have all manner of unexplainable disaster. I'm not talking about earthquake.

I'm talking about much worse things. And we would expect to see, maybe, you know, some god, small g, playing a trick on the other gods and moving the sun or, you know, stopping the earth from,

I mean, you know, just, if we have a bunch of powerful beings that are much more powerful than us, you know, all manner of things like that could and would take place, but we don't see that.

In fact, one of the basic arguments for the existence of God is the uniformate, uniformity, uniformate.

I was going to say uniformitarianism, which is that, what? Things are the same as they always have been.

Now, there's a, and I don't want to just appeal to Lewis here because I know he's very familiar with that, but,

I mean, tell me, what is science based on? Science is based on the fact that there are certain laws and principles that are what?

They're provable, they're constant, they're observational, right? Because they are repeatable.

They don't, you know, if you throw a ball up in the air, I don't care how many times you throw that ball up in the air, it's not just going to go and just keep going.

Oh, well, there's the one exception of the rule. There it goes. I mean, you could put healing in it, but that's kind of cheating, isn't it?

Right. I mean, Lewis says it all presumes a creator God. Why? Because everything is the way it was because it's not, we are not the end result of some random chance process.

Interesting this week, and I meant to look it up, but I was reading, there was an article. How many of you have seen this?

And maybe some of you can help me. There was an article, I think it was this week, about they found a planet that looked like it was, you know, kind of Earth -like.

In fact, they're calling it Earth 2. No, no. The first part was true, the second part wasn't.

It just kind of reminded me, you know, I'm in comic book mode with all these things here.

But, in fact, they think they may have found a couple of different ones. One, they said, was too big, and I thought, well, what's wrong with it being big?

You know, we could all go and have more land. But I guess the theory is that it's so big that there'll be a lot of gas there, and it will be, the atmosphere will be uninhabitable.

And then there were all these different kinds of thoughts out there, and they're going, but in all their examinations, what have they not found?

Life. And so they're perturbed by this, because why would that bother them? That's exactly right.

I mean, if you believe in evolution, you know, it's like, how many of you ever rolled two dice?

You know, are you familiar with snake eyes? One, one. Well, if you know what the odds of that, anybody know what the odds of that are, rolling two ones?

One in 36. Because it's one out of six times one out of six, which is one out of 36.

And thus endeth the lesson. Okay, so, so, you know, you wouldn't, when somebody says, you know, he rolled snake eyes, it recognizes the fact that it's a small probability of something.

Well, okay, scientists look at our world, and they go, well, it's a small probability that, you know, life would develop as it has.

And we're very lucky. But certainly, if you go throughout the universe, and you roll two dice, two dice, two dice, two dice, somewhere along the line, you're going to roll snake eyes.

And there's going to be some other life forms that's going to be either like us or not like us.

But they're going to be advanced, and they're going to be intelligent. Maybe we can communicate with them. Let's set up, you know, some kind of program to go out and look for extraterrestrials.

I remember once, well, Jen and I, this was in 2004, we were on a cruise. We were in Mexico, and we went to look at the

Mayan ruins. Those people who have predicted the end of the year this year. This will be fun, you know, at the end of 2013, we can say another prediction, the end of the world, miss.

But I'd rather go home to be with the Lord. But I digress. We were in this Mayan temple ruin. And this young woman was explaining to us, you know, all these different things and how smart the

Mayans were and everything. And she said that, she goes, you know, and then the whole civilization just disappeared.

She goes, you want to know what some people think? And we're like, yes, please tell us.

We paid $70 for this. She said, a lot of people think they were space aliens.

And I'm like, break out the crop circles, boys and girls. It's going to get ugly.

But you would expect if you went throughout the entire universe to find some form of life.

And sadly for the scientists, that hasn't worked. But, you know, according to their principles, it should happen.

We should find it. And, you know, they're looking. I don't know why they're looking forward to it. Because I've seen enough of those science fiction movies to know how those end.

And not good. It's not what we should want.

Let's go back to Culver here for a moment. He says, the coherence of all authentic abstract truths in a single system is further evidence that the

God of creation is one. And he's just talking about getting into the numbers. And he says, look, and basically just says, look, no matter how many times you add up these different numbers.

I mean, it's like me with the dice. He's just saying, if you do all these kind of things, the results are always the same. And the same is true of formal logic as taught in the schools of philosophy, whether the classical system of Aristotle or more modern systems.

These are true laws of reality. They can be discovered and formulated, but never invented. Nobody invented, you know, what do we say?

We don't say Newton invented the law of gravity. We say he discovered it because it was always there.

He just was the first to say, you know, no matter how many times I throw this apple in the air or get hit on the, you know, if I sit under a tree long enough,

I get hit by an apple. Why is that? He figured it out. And those things are just, they're constants.

They do not change. Now, here's an interesting variation on that.

He says, there's a system of ethical ideals, adherence to which is necessary for any sort of community to exist, any form of civilization to exist.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but sometime shortly before I retired from the sheriff's department, they sent me to a leadership seminar.

And one of the things, I mean, we watched, it was kind of funny because we had guys from LAPD and then we had civilians from different departments and stuff like that.

And I thought, boy, this is an easy three days. And it was an easy three days because it was mostly about talking.

It was kind of the new touchy -feely approach to law enforcement. But anyway, one of the things that they came across was they were trying to challenge us to think kind of in different ways.

And one of the things they said was separate into small groups and discuss what cultural norms are universal.

In other words, that are existent and accepted everywhere. What do you suppose that some of those universal norms were?

Murder is wrong. Anything else?

I mean, people basically tried to go down, for the most part, I think it was kind of like the Ten Commandments.

Well, it's wrong to steal. It's wrong to treat children in a certain way.

It's wrong to do this and do that. But you know what the truth is? If you go around the world, what can you find?

Exceptions to every one of those. Exceptions to every one of them. But you will find too that the civilizations that are most advanced, most coherent, least likely to result in revolution, that kind of thing.

What areas do you suppose those would be? I mean, let's get away from the word revolution.

Chaos. What are the least chaotic areas in the world? Western civilizations, you know, they're basically based on at least a

Christian worldview or a Christian prism of thinking. But he says, loyalty to ideals and legitimate human leaders is necessary to civil order.

I mean, this is why I say, you know, I've run into some folks who call themselves Christian anarchists. In other words, they have no king but Christ.

They will obey no one but Christ. They think it's wrong to even pay taxes to the government. And it's like, you know what?

You don't understand the Bible if you think it's okay to rebel against authority. Authority is here for our good.

And God never calls us to rebel against human authority, at least in the sense that, you know,

Peter said, submit to the authorities. And he had Nero for a Caesar. You know, does that mean that if the government says you have to abort your third child, that you have to do that?

No, that's not what it means. We're not talking about extremes. We're just talking about general government. You know, you have to obey the government.

And this is kind of what holds things together. But this idea of a universe, there are universal truths, there are universal standards that help a civilization.

Let's put it that way. Now, listen to this. This is something we hear all the time. These ideal norms are objective and real, even though stated in different ways.

The golden rule of Jesus, for example, can also be found in the teachings of several moral philosophers.

Confucius, Socrates, Buddha. Now, what would somebody who's not a

Christian automatically say about that list there? They'd look at it and go, wait a minute,

Jesus, he stole that idea. Confucius was around before Jesus.

Socrates was around before Jesus. Buddha, if he ever existed, existed before Jesus.

So how is it that Jesus gets credit for the golden rule? In fact, you'll often hear, if you talk to an atheist, they'll tell you that Christianity is nothing but basically a smorgasbord of other religions assembled into Christianity.

That Zoroastrianism, for example, had a lot of aspects of Christianity. Why is that? How could

Zoroastrianism predate Christianity, and yet Christianity is true and Zoroastrianism isn't?

Steve? In the beginning was the word, the person, the second person of the

Trinity. Monotheism is how everything started. Adam and Eve were not polytheists.

They were not atheists. They were not, what's the word for they don't know? Agnostics. I always go, now, just five cents, your five cent word of the day.

Agnostic means what? Against knowledge, okay, or it basically means you're saying,

I'm ignorant. I'm agnostic. Never say that. Yeah. I mean, it's just ignorant.

That's what it means. That's the Greek word. I am ignorant of greater things. Okay, good for you. Yeah. But this,

Adam and Eve were not that way, and things didn't evolve. They devolved. Adam and Eve have the truth.

Their children have the truth. And what happened? They reproduced. Eventually, we get to what? The tower of Babel, Babel.

You say Babel, I say Babel. But I'm babbling.

And then God separated the peoples. He confused their languages. And with that,

I think the entire earth descended into chaos in a multitude of religions.

And I don't think that ever changed. I mean, we certainly had Noah. After Noah, there was, you know, again, we had one mindset.

But then after the tower, I think all these things, we just see God saying, you know what?

It's what? It's kind of a Romans 1 situation. God gave them over. As men worship these false gods,

God gives them over. And it just gets worse and worse. He says there's also certain logic from religious, from the nature of religious devotion, which impels toward the conviction that God is one.

We are told in the Bible that we must love the Lord our God with our whole being. That's what we just talked about. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob allows no competitors.

He is a jealous God. Now, Culver says, let's turn this upside down.

Thoughtful, cultivated worshipers of deity in any religion are apt to assume that their

God desires single -minded, whole -souled worship. So if you're a Buddhist, you think

Buddha wants me to worship whatever it is, Buddhist worship. You know, every religion is going to, you know, if you're

Islamic, Allah wants your worship. And that's just the way that is.

But he says, Culver going on, he says the teaching of scripture is on a totally different level.

It doesn't say, you know what, this God exists among other gods or whatever.

It says the sole existence of one authentic creator God is assumed from the opening statement, as Dallas said, in the beginning,

God created the heavens and the earth. And he says, Culver says, to the claim of the last chapter,

Revelation 22, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. So, I mean, the

Bible, does the Bible ever defend that idea? It just proclaims it.

It just states it. It doesn't really need to establish the evidence as it were.

Now, number 11, question number 11. It is possible that a general religious sense in man developed into monotheism.

In other words, we have a so -called God gene. Something in us that has evolved over time to help us.

You know, I've heard this idea. That yes, we look for something bigger than ourselves and that is a genetic code that protects us from destroying ourselves.

And I'm going, hey, this evolution thing is really, even though it's not intelligent, it's very smart.

It's a miracle. It's dopey. But that idea is false.

I mean, the idea that sociologists, that anthropologists will present to you is that monotheism is the latest in a development of this religious notion that there's something bigger.

You know, instead of throwing, how many have ever seen, cover your ears if you don't watch movies, Joe versus the volcano, you know, where these ancient people think that they have to throw people into the volcano to appease this volcano

God. I mean, you know, from there to these multitudes of gods and then all the way to monotheism.

That's how, you know, some scientists and sociologists would like to present things.

Culver, in fact, that's what Culver says, you know, if we began with low forms of religion and a subsequent evolution towards monotheism, which eventually triumphed.

Now, this is interesting because he asked this, it's a rhetorical way. He says, is there not even evidence that some of the heroes and heroines of the early narratives,

Genesis, Exodus, etc., such as Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and his family and others, practiced lower forms of religion?

Did they not really slowly move from acknowledgement of the existence of lesser gods, that is polytheism, through henotheism, which is the idea of worshipping or focusing on one god out of a multitude of gods, to the true monotheism of the great prophets?

So, in other words, wasn't there an evolution even in their lives? And he says, some even say, yeah, sure.

You know, Abraham was attracted to these oak trees and that sounds like animism.

And Isaac had an interest in certain springs and wells.

And Jacob went to the return to Bethel, where his grandfather had spent some time and rested his head on a stone for a pillow.

And he demonstrated maybe even fetishism, which believes in the good influence of the spirits and portable objects.

So, all these ideas are out there. And Culver responds this way, he says, First of all, the

Bible teaches none of those things. Like, good. He says, What's he saying?

He's saying, and I say this all the time, that you have to be aware of dead Germans. In the 1800s, the

Germans, you know, based on evolution, started reexamining all the claims of Scripture and interpreting them with a hermeneutic of evolution.

In other words, when they saw things that they didn't either believe, well, they discounted all that stuff.

But when they saw something that appeared that Abraham worshipped trees or, you know,

Jacob worshipped this rock or whatever, then they just started going, okay. And then they were able to show in their own minds this development towards monotheism.

But the Bible teaches none of those things. He says, What does that mean?

What is intermittent monotheism? It's kind of like intermittent fidelity to one's spouse.

Intermittent monotheism is idolatry. Okay? You know, just as we would call intermittent fidelity to one's spouse, we'd call that adultery.

You know, are you faithful to your wife? You know, once in a while. We wouldn't go for that and we can't go for, you know,

I believe in one God sometimes. That's just wrong. That many of the

Israelites were more henotheistic than monotheistic. In other words, that they tended to focus on the

God of Israel, the God of the Bible at times. That may, you can get there.

I mean, we even see that in Exodus, right? They get out of, Pastor Mike was just preaching on the

Exodus a few weeks ago. They get out of Israel and they're up against, you know, the sea and the mountain and the army and, you know, what do they start thinking?

They're just like, well, they worshipped God for a while and now they're just, they're not very happy and they're happy to go back to Egypt.

And as soon as they escape and Moses goes up on the mountain, they build or they make themselves the calf, they worship him.

So it wasn't that they were faithful, but that's not the point of the Bible. The point of the

Bible is it never teaches, it never espouses anything less than monotheism.

In fact, let's look at Genesis 17 too. I mean, how many have ever heard that?

About the idea that Christianity was the invention, not even of Jesus, but of Paul.

You know, so it's all this kind of evolutionary thinking in charge of Bible interpretation.

In fact, I'll read, because we should have some kind of context here, I'll read 17 verse 1 and 2.

When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him,

I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly.

Again, you know, the idea that he is one of many is just not there.

The idea of him being God Almighty kind of shoots that out of the possibility.

Let's look at Genesis 18, 25, just a couple of pages later. And we will see that. In fact,

I'll read 24. This is where he's dealing with God concerning Sodom. And he says, suppose there are 50 righteous within the city.

Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous who are in it?

Verse 25, far be it from you to do such a thing to put the righteous to death with the wicked so that the righteous fare as the wicked.

Far be it from you shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just.

So Abram wasn't or Abraham wasn't in doubt of who this was. This is the judge of all the earth.

That's not some kind of polytheistic worldview. This is understanding that there is one

God who can act as he will. Culver notes here that the most high

God of Melchizedek and of Abraham was possessor of heaven and earth. That's in Genesis 14, 18 and 19.

So this idea that out of many gods, they worshipped the

God of Israel was wrong. The idea that it developed out of polytheism is not correct.

The idea that men are given to worshipping false gods, that's absolutely true.

We see that over and over again. In fact, he notes here that apostasy to idols and polytheism was a constant threat.

That's what we see all the time in the Old Testament. Culver notes here that it was for their backsliding, their running to other gods, that the two

Israelite nations, that is Israel and Judah, came to an end. In no case, however, does the scripture for a moment even hint that the

God of its pages is less than personal creator, sustainer, governor, and moral judge of all the earth and heaven.

Not just of Israel, but of all mankind. There is only one God, hence all worshipful love anywhere by anyone is due him.

But now there are many religions. So it's reasonable to ask the question, why are there so many religions?

Why are there many religions? Doesn't the Bible, after all, refer to other gods?

Doesn't even Psalm 82 say that there are other gods? Let's look at Psalm 82.

Psalm 82, and I'll read that. God has taken his place in the divine council. In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment.

How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and fatherless.

Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.

I said, you are gods. Sons of the Most High, all of you. Nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince.

So what's the explanation? Are there other gods? Is God just the chief God of many gods?

Didn't Jesus himself refer to this and say, Have I not said ye are gods? He's referring to those in authority.

In authority in Israel. And specifically, talking about the judges, those who held authority in Israel.

Because it's interesting, here he says, Nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince. Why were they gods?

Because they had the power of life and death. They could determine who lived and who died. But why are there many gods?

I think it's obvious. In fact, we'll develop this a little bit more next week,

I see. But what do we see in the... One of the things that we learn in the

New Testament is that behind these so -called gods are not just harmless ideas.

When we think about even things today that are popular, you can go down the street here in Route 12 and get your palm read.

And some people might go, Well, that's an innocent activity. How about Ouija boards? How about the demon of the magic eight ball?

Should I marry Sally? Unclear at this time.

Check back with me later. I mean, this is the kind of thing that...

Now, I'm joking about the magic eight ball. Those are perfectly fine. Now, Ouija boards, that's a whole different... Or tarot cards, all these kind of things.

What are they? They are appeals to a knowledge beyond that which we have ourselves.

We want to know the future. You know, predictions of 2000...

I almost said 1912. I can make great predictions about 1912. 2012, maybe not so much.

You're getting old when you not only get the wrong year, but the wrong century. But why is it that people desire these kind of things?

Or how do we... To get back to it, how do we know that there are sometimes demons involved with this kind of thing?

That there are demons behind some of these so -called gods or some of these sources of knowledge?

Because the Bible tells us that. The Bible tells us that. Does it make sense?

You know, when I mentioned earlier Zoroastrianism and everything else, does it make sense that if Satan knows the

Scripture, that he would replicate certain aspects of Christianity before it existed?

That he would replicate certain aspects of Christianity after it existed? That he would do anything to distract people from worshiping the one true

God? And the answer is yes. So he creates false gods to which, you know, the human heart...

Calvin said that it is an idol factory. We love to worship anything but God. And you say, not me.

I love to worship God. Well, really. You know, there are times when we are prone to wander, as the songwriter said.

And we look for other escapes, other answers.

And even people who dabble in all these other things. But there are false gods.

There are false religions. And it's because in the heart of man we have the law of God. And I'll just kind of close here.

We have the law of God, which tells us what? The Ten Commandments do what?

They convict us of our need to walk less than a couple of miles on the Sabbath. No, that's not what they do.

What do they do? They show us that we cannot possibly obey, that we cannot be perfect.

But what's the other thing? You know, I mean, I don't want any true confessions. But if you've ever done anything with,

I'll call it malice of forethought, even though it may not be malice, just forethought. If you've done something ahead of time that you knew was going to be wrong,

I don't care whether it was going and defacing the school. These are not true confessions, by the way.

Shoplifting, lying to your parents, something that you knew you were going to have to do ahead of time.

What happens? I mean, when you're just anticipating doing this, what happens?

I can tell you exactly what happens, not because of any personal experience. Your heart starts racing.

You get nervous. You're like, can I really get away with this? Why? Because your conscience is going off, because God has put that in your heart that you know it's wrong.

You're excited not because you're about to embark on some great adventure, but because you're about to shake your fist at God. The heart of man is deceitful.

It's wicked. We are quick to run after false gods, to disobey

God, to not worship him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And that's what we're called to do.

Christopher Hitchens was just honest about it. Rebelliously honest about it.

But are, as Christians, and I say this, and I hope someday we'll all kind of think this way, and I hope that this will be consistent in my life.

The first thing when we wake up in the morning, we should just think how blessed we are. I mean, our tendency is to think, the first thing we get up in the morning as we get older, how sore

I am. How tired I am. Is the coffee ready? And our last thoughts at night should be what?

How blessed I am. We are a blessed people.

We need to think like that. We need to worship God, to love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Let's close in prayer.

Father in heaven, you have indeed blessed us. Lord, we would certainly not wish ill on Christopher Hitchens or on anyone.

But Father, we would pray that you would use us as vessels of truth, vessels of mercy, that we would present the gospel, that we would be faithful in that.

Lord, would you make us a people grateful from morning till evening as we recount all the kindnesses and blessings that you've given us, whether our circumstances at a particular time are blessed or not.

We live not for the circumstances of this life. Father, we are here at your pleasure to do your will.

So work in us that we better reflect the truth that you have given us, that we are redeemed, that we belong to you, that we are set apart, as it were, for a purpose that is to please you, to serve you, to preach your word.

Father, if it were not that, you could take us home now. Father, just give us a joy in knowing that you have called us to yourself, that you have called us to worship you, and that you have granted us eternal life, your

Holy Spirit, and forgiveness of sins. And Father, we pray for these things in Christ's name. Amen.