Sunday Sermons
Indecision
Immediately when I think of the word indecision I am reminded of the example in Genesis 19 when the angels had warned Lot to flee Sodom with his family for God was going to destroy that place, and the text says, “But he hesitated” (Genesis 19:16). May I suggest to you that presently we are surrounded by a culture of indecision. In an article entitled, Just keep it simple, the author Joel Belz noted that so many people in our society today want to make so many issues into a hopeless and tangled ball of yarn. In the Bible we have two genders, male and female (Genesis 1:27 “”Male and female He created them”), and these two genders form the foundation for the marriage relationship (Matthew 19:4-5). But our culture today wonders whether there may be three, four, or even more genders and argues that it will take a good bit of further observation and research to know for sure. In the Bible God says, “For I hate divorce” (Malachi 2:16), but our culture responds, “It depends on the circumstances, and you will probably never fully understand all the difficult things that were going on, and you will probably never know how much these people have suffered” (Belz). The Apostle Paul noted, “If, then, I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything worthy of death, I do not refuse to die” (Acts 25:11). Yet modern society argues for “an endless series of appeals to discuss all the things that might have affected the criminal’s childhood” (Belz). Maybe you have noticed that we are living in a time and in a culture where people seem more and more incapable of making a firm distinction between right and wrong. F. LaGard Smith, who has taught Law at Pepperdine University noted that many of his Law students refuse to accept the concept of absolute truth and further refuse to acknowledge that the Holocaust was inherently evil, even his students of a Jewish background took the same stand. One of his Jewish students noted, “Oh, sure, I’m personally offended by the thought of any wholesale slaughter of the Jews, and I sure wouldn’t want it happening to me or my family, but I simply can’t impose my morality on anyone else” (The Cultural Church p. 76). In response to a similar attitude, long ago God through the prophet Elijah, God said to the Israelites, “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him” (1 Kings 18:21).
Biblical Clarity
In contrast to the culture of indecision, in the Bible we find a definite line and distinction between right and wrong, good and evil. You were either on Noah’s ark, or you drowned in the flood (2 Peter 2:5). In Psalm chapter 1, we find the righteous man and the wicked man and no other category (1:1-6). In the book of Proverbs we find the wise man and the fool or the scoffer(Proverbs 9:7-9). In Jesus’ teaching, we have light and darkness (John 3:19-21), the five wise virgins and the five foolish virgins (Matthew 25:1ff); the wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand (Matthew 7:24ff); the lost and the saved (Mark 16:16); the sheep and the goats, eternal punishment and eternal life(Matthew 25:34ff).
Black and White and the Pharisees
Some are under the impression that when we talk about absolute truth, right and wrong, black and white, that we are falling into the trap in which the Pharisees found themselves. Yet Jesus did not condemn the Pharisees for insisting on absolute truth, rather the Pharisees were very adept at circumventing God’s truth (Mark 7:9 “You are experts in setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition”). Please note that it was Jesus who contended that God’s commands were absolute and unbending. The Pharisees, like many today, made the mistake of insisting on the wrong set of absolutes. They considered tradition and their opinions to be absolute rather than God’s word being the final authority. Remember, it was the Pharisees who were divided into various schools on the teaching concerning “divorce” (Matthew 19:3).
Paralyzed by “What If’s”
I have observed that what keeps people at times from making a firm decision is all the hypothetical situations that our culture brings up in order to muddy the water, for example we cannot carry out capital punishment because we might execute someone who is actually innocent, or we cannot take a firm stand against some sin because it just might be genetic. Allow me to offer the following when it comes to hypothetical situations.
· Let us remember that the Bible is the inspired word of God (John 17:17; 1 Thessalonians 2:13 “that when you received from us the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what is really is, the word of God”; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). As such, the Scriptures are the product of God’s wisdom. God is eternal, all-powerful and all-wise, and He can see the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). Paul tells us that the church, which would include all the teachings that compose Christianity or the faith, are part of God’s eternal plan (Ephesians 3:10-11). Therefore, before the New Testament was ever written or before any doctrine or verse was given by the Holy Spirit, God had already anticipated every possibility and every “what if”. For example, when Jesus gave His instructions concerning when divorce was allowable, He already knew about every situation that could happen, in fact He knows far more hypotheticals that we do, yet He gave one verse on the matter, which means that verse governs any situation that might arise (Matthew 19:9).
· Hypothetical situations do not alter Scripture or take away from the relevance of a verse, rather, all “what if’s” are subject to the teaching found in Scripture. They are not over Scripture, rather they are under Scripture.
· There are a good number of “what if’s” that God has already answered: What if a Christian becomes unfaithful? (2 Timothy 2:11-13) Do Christians have to pay taxes if they are under a domineering and unbelieving civil government?(Matthew 22:21). Could homosexuality be a genetic issue rather than a moral issue? (Romans 1:27 “the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another”). What if two Christians divorce and neither have been unfaithful to each other? (1 Corinthians 7:10-11) Can a widow remarry? (1 Corinthians 7:39) What if someone claims that an angel has appeared to him or her with a new revelation of God’s truth? (Galatians 1:6-9) What if someone claims that when Jesus was upon the earth He did not have an actual fleshly body? (1 John 4:2) What if someone claims that the resurrection has already taken place? (2 Timothy 2:18) What if someone claims that there will be no resurrection of the dead? (1 Corinthians 15:12) If Jesus was not raised from the dead, does that mean I am “safe” and no longer accountable to God? (15:17)
· There are hypothetical situations that are meaningless, that is, they assume something that is not true (Matthew 22:23-30). Belz notes concerning truth “First draw the main lines boldly….Establish early the borders that are beyond dispute; then you can move on to the details. Nail down the big stuff; the nuances can keep us busy tomorrow” (World Magazine, 11-9-2002, p. 5). Often people talk about hypothetical situations in which one might be faced with either dying or lying to remain alive, yet Jesus would quickly point out that this is not a moral dilemma, in fact, God never places people in situations where the only choices are one violation of His will verses another (1 Corinthians 10:13). Lying is wrong(Revelation 21:8), but dying for the sake of Christ is not wrong. In this type of situation, Jesus could say, “Have you never read the Scripture, ‘Be faithful until death?’”(Revelation 2:10). Others present the situation in which someone breaks into your house and asks the whereabouts of your wife and children, but where did we ever get the idea that we are morally obligated to answer all questions? Do we give someone our Social Security number simply because they ask for it? And whatever happened to real life? If someone breaks into your house are you going to actually have a conversation with them, are not the whereabouts of others in the house easily detected, and before they can make any demands are they not going to be met with some sort of deadly force? In addition, does anyone really believe that if a person lies in such a case that the intruder will say, “Oh, Ok, I guess I had the wrong house”?
Dying on the way to getting baptized?
In order to avoid the weight of such passages as Acts 2:38; 22:16; Mark 16:16 and 1 Peter 3:21 some have devised the argument about the person dying on the way to being baptized. In such a situation it is argued that surely God would save the person who dies on the way to fulfill the command to be baptized and then they somehow conclude that such means that baptism is not necessary for salvation. This is a classic example of people using a hypothetical situation for the purpose of ignoring and rejecting clear biblical teaching. Sounds like an argument the Pharisees would have liked, “And by this you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition” (Matthew 15:6). People forget that if dying on the way to get being baptized makes the command to be baptized nonessential, then dying on the way to hear the gospel and belief in Christ makes faith in Christ nonessential as well. If dying makes one set of Scriptures meaningless then they would make the Scriptures dealing with “faith” meaningless as well. Secondly, such an argument fails to believe in the “power of God” (Matthew 22:29),something that the Sadducees forget in their own hypothetical example. Does God want people saved? Certainly He does (2 Peter 3:9). Is God patiently waiting for people to come to repentance? Yes! Then why are we arguing about something dying on the way to being saved? Is God powerful or not?
Finally, there is probably somewhere a mathematical formula for determining the supposed probability of dying on the way to getting baptized, but let us not forget the mathematical probability of ending up lost if one is not baptized! The answer to that question is 100% (Acts 22:16)!
Encouraging Truths
It is easy to become paralyzed into inaction concerning the need to serve God. Our culture is filled with so many excuses, “Maybe the Bible has been corrupted”, to which God answers, “no” (1 Peter 1:23-25). “The Bible is too complicated”, to which God answers “no, you can understand” (Ephesians 3:3-5). “Maybe all religions simply lead to the same God”, to which God responds, “no they do not” (John 14:6). “Maybe God will simply save me for being a generally good moral person”, to which God says, “no, all have sinned” (Romans 3:23). “Maybe I really do not need to follow everything Jesus taught”, to which Jesus noted, “think again” (Matthew 7:21). In the book of Acts we find many examples of people becoming Christians; and consider the following points: 1. Such people came from all different backgrounds. 2. Such were simply ordinary people. 3. They understood what the apostles taught and they understood it relatively quickly, at times on the same day they heard it (Acts 2:37,42). 4. They were urged to obey God as soon as possible (Acts 22:16; 2:40). 5. When a person really understands that Jesus died for their sins and wants to be saved, everything else seems to take care of itself (8:35-39).
