Sunday Sermons
Pride of Life
The apostle John wrote that part of what God calls the world, is the thoughts and ways of the mass of humanity in opposition to His will, including, the boastful pride of life (1 John 2:16). In this lesson I want to examine how such pride has impacted the world in which we live and how it is a threat to the church. In the book, The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell notes that behind many of the social experiments that we have witnessed in our culture since the 1960’s many have come from people who view themselves as superior to the common man. He notes, “What is at stake for the anointed in their discussions of public policy issues is their whole image of themselves as people whose knowledge and wisdom are essential to the diagnosis of social ills and the prescription of ‘solutions’. To believe that their knowledge and understanding are grossly inadequate for what they are attempting—even if everyone else’s knowledge is also grossly inadequate for such ambitious social engineering—would be to bring their whole world crashing down around them. They must believe that they know—and that they know better than others” (p. 204). Thus such people view themselves as the anointed and having a vision for how the world should be, and such visions are preserved and insulated from criticism, for the vision is inherently wrapped up with the egos of those who believe it. Centuries ago, Jesus encountered the same type of arrogance among the Pharisees, who viewed themselves as being superior to other men, and viewing the common man with contempt (Luke 18:9; John 7:48-49 “But this multitude which does not know the Law is accursed”). Yet those in positions of power, people who view themselves as the anointed or the elite, even those in religious circles, need to be reminded, that in the past the elite were the ones who often rejected God’s truth, while the common, average person accepted the obvious. Paul noted that far more people from the lower classes accepted the gospel than those from the higher levels of society (1 Corinthians 1:26). In fact, Paul further notes that God deliberately designed the gospel message to shame those who trust in human wisdom and the spirit of the times (1:27 “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise”; 1:20). Carefully note the expressions, “the debater of this age” (1:20); “the wisdom of the world” (1:21); “the world through its wisdom did not come to know God” (1:21). These expressions refer to the expertise, the faddish theories, the current thinking of any society that is not following God’s truth. When man listens to the trendy wisdom of the times, he ends up not enlightened and solving his problems, rather he ends up in sin, “in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2); “Professing to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).
Visionaries
Not only are such “experts” misleading our culture, but the same spirit seeks to corrupt the church. Yet this should not surprise us, for God’s people have always been plagued by self-made prophets and visionaries, who are not bringing God’s truth, but are delivering their own misguided opinions and ignorance (Jeremiah 23:25-28), while at the same time presenting themselves as Saviors (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). Religious men, and even some who profess to be Christians, easily forget that it is not man’s task to discover a vision for humanity, rather it is the task of Christians to faithfully relate the message that God Himself has already given to humanity (2 Timothy 4:2). It is not our purpose to find a new vision or purpose for the church, rather we need to follow the purpose already given in Scripture (1 Timothy 3:15 “the pillar and ground of the truth”). God gives the solutions, God gives the purposes, and the goals, and it is our task simply to following His instructions (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14; Matthew 7:21).
Seeing that such modern visionaries are human and thus fallible, we should not be shocked if the proposed visions advocated today are short-sighted and even dangerous. The false prophets of Jeremiah’s time confidently asserted that God would never punish His people, and thus only exacerbated the problem (Jeremiah 8:11). Therefore, it should not surprise us that modern visionaries are very resistant to factual evidence, and the power of Scripture. Sowell notes, “what is intellectually interesting about visions are their assumptions and their reasoning, but what is socially crucial is the extent to which they are resistant to evidence. Characteristic patterns have developed among the anointed for dealing with the repeated failures of policies based on their vision. Finally, there is the phenomenon of honored prophets among the anointed, who continue to be honored as their predictions fail by vast margins” (p. 7). This last statement reminds me of Jeremiah 8:12 “Were they ashamed because of the abomination they had done? They certainly were not ashamed, and they did not know how to blush”. Even when the solutions offered by such visionaries fail and actually cause more problems, typically they never repent or admit wrong. In addition, they are very resistant to any short of factual evidence and are unwilling to own up to the fact that they did more harm than good.
One-way non-judgmentalism
While modern visionaries often spread the “gospel” of non-judgmentalism, this typically does not apply to them. They are very judgmental of the views and practices of past generations and repeatedly attack what is viewed as “traditional” even if what has been traditional works and has been every effective. For example, the modern elite in our culture has repeatedly attacked the 1950’s family model, which is often disparagingly referred to as the Ozzie and Harriet or Beaver Cleaver family, and then without any proof will argue that such families (where husbands and wives loved each other and where children were respectful) never really existed, and yet they have existed for thousands of years (1 Timothy 3:4).
Bold Statements without any proof
Those who view themselves as the anointed often make sweeping statements without any sort of evidence to back up those claims. We need to realize that only God is infallible, only God knows the hearts and thoughts of men, and only God can really sum up the true nature of man (Romans 3:23).
Smooth speech
When writing to the brethren in Rome, Paul warned of men who, “by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting” (Romans 16:18). Peter noted that false teachers will seek to exploit us with “false words” (2 Peter 2:3). Liberalism in the political or spiritual realm makes its living by using deceptive language. Sowell notes, “Many of the words and phrases used in the media and among academics suggest that things simply happen to people, rather than being caused by their own choices or behavior. Thus there is said to be an epidemic of teenage pregnancy, or of drug usage, as if these things were like the flu that people catch just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. People are often said to lack access to various jobs, educational institutions, or credit, when in fact they may not have behaved or performed in a way that would enable them to meet the same standards that others meet” (p. 198). In the religious realm I find the same word games or misleading statements:
· The term legalism is inaccurately applied to any group of people who are seeking to follow the Scriptures closely and faithfully (Matthew 7:21-23).
· A person or church is labeled unloving “when they place submission to Scripture” rather than accommodating and twisting Scripture to accommodate what people claim they need or want (John 14:15).
· Visionaries ridicule an emphasis on doctrine by claiming that a church might be doctrinally sound but spiritually dead, when in reality such a statement is a contradiction. A congregation cannot be doctrinally sound and at the same time spiritually dead, for being spiritual is inherently wrapped up in following doctrine (2 John 9).
· The elite often ridicule clear passages by claiming that such teaching is too simplistic, yet they ignore the fact that an all wise God can obviously take complicated issues or problems and offer very simple solutions (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
· The faithful are routinely accused of being self-righteous. “The notion that it is somehow ‘self-righteous’ to insist on social standards and rules that are easier for some people to conform to than for others” (Sowell p. 195). The truth of the matter is that insisting that we all conform to God’s truth is not being self-righteous, because we did not make up God’s law, God did. Rather it is actually self-righteous when people insist that we need to follow something other than the Bible, because by doing so we are trying to make our “self” righteous instead of attaining God’s righteousness (Romans 10:1-3). It is not unloving to point everyone to the same divine standard, because that standard applies to me as well (John 7:24). In contrast to such tactics, Christians are commanded to faithfully speak as the utterances of God (1 Peter 4:11), to have sound speech (Titus 2:8) and to follow Scripture instead of trends.
Hard cases and bad law
Liberalism, in both the political as well as the spiritual realm, has an arrogance toward law. When judges feel they are part of the anointed, they arrogantly feel that they are smart enough to bend the law for particular individuals. “Ordinary petty criminals have learned how to manipulate the arrogant gullibility of judges. In 1994 the Washington Post ran a series that included the many court appearances by a woman with a long history of petty crimes. She chose her clothes carefully when she appeared in court, because she wanted to look as poor as possible to draw the judges’ sympathy. The net result was that her sentence was suspended even though she had had a lifelong history of shoplifting (which she had taught her children), drug addiction, and being the mother of children and grandchildren in prison. Sowell comments, “The fundamental problem was not that the judge was taken in, but that he imagined himself capable to knowing enough to disregard the penalties of the law and play Solomon and social worker instead” (p. 158). Christians need to be reminded that it is not our job to bend God’s law for individuals, for God’s entire track record is that He does not bend His law for anyone who is not contrite about their sin (2 John 9; Leviticus 10:1-3). “To help some hard-pressed individual, judges may bend the law to arrive at a more benign verdict in a particular case, but at the cost of damaging the whole consistency and predictability of the law, on which millions of other people depend, and on which ultimately the freedom and safety of a whole society depend. There cannot be a law-abiding society if no one knows in advance what laws they are to abide by, but must wait for judges to create ex post facto legal rulings based on ‘evolving standards’ rather than known rules. The expanding uncertainty surrounding laws creates incentives for a growing volume of litigation, as well as for a blackmailing of the law abiding individuals and organizations into out-of-court settlements because they cannot be sure how some speculative charge against them will be viewed by judges operating under ‘evolving standards’” (p. 130). Preachers also need to be reminded that it is not their task to find a new answer to some human problem or dilemma into which people get themselves; rather it is our task to faithfully proclaim God’s law, which applies to them just like it applies to everyone else (2 Corinthians 5:10). The good news is that we are not at the mercy of following men; rather at any moment in life we can consult the Scriptures and find God’s wisdom, which is timeless and always perfect.
