by Chad Koons
God knows your heart, right? After all, isn’t that what you gave Him?
Quick story. We used to evangelize bars and night clubs. You should try it; it’s entertaining to say the least! There were all sorts of people coming out of those places. We would see it all: the partiers, drunks, cheaters, druggies, people looking for sex, people blindly in love with the world, both gay and straight, from every race and background, even the awkward people who knew that they shouldn’t have been there. It’s fair to say that a lot of them were not loving God. We would ask them about their relationship with Jesus, and their answers were shocking. Want to guess what most of them said?
“I’m already a Christian.”
Really?! So that’s what a Christian looks like! We would ask them to explain what makes them a Christian. Most people would give us some variation of the following answer: “Because I have Jesus in my heart.”
In your heart? This has become a very serious problem within our society, that we can think ourselves one way yet live something completely different.
Having Jesus in your heart used to mean that you’ve traded your heart for God’s own heart, and that your lifestyle would reflect His. Not anymore, however. Now, it has now become a weak slogan and a grand illusion.
Here’s the Illusion
When a person lives a lifestyle of sin and separation from God yet thinks that they’re okay because they have “Jesus in their heart,” it is a way of saying, “Look at my heart and not at my lifestyle.” Just acknowledge Jesus in your heart and you’re safe, God will now overlook your sinful lifestyle so live however you want. They think that somehow the heart and the lifestyle can be disconnected from one another. After all, God understands, right? Come on, we all sin, don’t we?! Have you ever heard someone say, “Me and God? We’re fine! I am sinner but He knows that I love Him!”
Yet there remains a huge difference between a sincere lover of God making a mistake and a person living a lifestyle of intentional sin.
Here’s the Answer
This may sound harsh, but your heart is not enough. It never has been enough. Not as long as you think that your heart and your lifestyle are two separate things, offering one without the other.
Jesus doesn’t want your heart only; He wants your very LIFE. Every action, every attitude, every thought, every breath, every desire, every ambition, every waking moment, and every single shred of who you are and hope to be. It’s that living sacrifice that He is after. Will you be a living sacrifice, consecrated to God alone?
Give it up and give yourself over. Freedom is waiting, my friend. God has need of you, and it’s not too late! He will transform your life as you surrender to Him. If you gave Jesus your heart, be sure that He gets the rest of you, too.
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I took a class during my seminary education called “Psalms and Wisdom Literature.” The professor announced toward the beginning of the class that we were going to read from Qohelet. My classmates and I looked at each other confused; how are we part of the way through our seminary education and have no idea who or what “Qohelet” is?! None of us wanted to ask at the risk of embarrassment. Finally, though, we figured it out - Qohelet is the Hebrew name for the book of Ecclesiastes!
That bit of confusion always comes to my mind when I ponder the book of Ecclesiastes. It is a very interesting book of the Bible, so today I’ll provide an introduction to some background of this book, and then starting next week we’ll dig into its content one section at a time.
The word Qohelet is often translated as ”teacher,” which in the case of Ecclesiastes likely refers to King Solomon. The book starts out in Ecclesiastes 1:1 by saying, “The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem.” The word “Teacher” is the word “Qohelet” in the original Hebrew. Since Solomon was David’s son, this book is traditionally ascribed to him as the author. In Hebrew, Biblical books often get their name from one of the first words from the book, as is the case here, which is why my professor, a great language scholar, was referring to Ecclesiastes as Qohelet.
So where did the English name Ecclesiastes come from? The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, has the word “Ecclesiastos” as the second word of the book, in the same location where we see Qohelet in the Hebrew. This word is related to the Greek word “ecclesia,” which means an assembly or a gathering (often translated as “church” in English), so the Ecclesiastos is sort of like a pastor or the one who heads up the assembly. So, in our English Bible, the book’s name actually comes from the Greek.
Although the authorship of this book is often attributed to Solomon, some scholars believe that Solomon was not the author. All language changes over time, and they believe that the Hebrew of this book is not from the same era as Solomon but rather much later. There are a few passages that some say would not have been written by the king. But overall, the authorship of Solomon cannot be conclusively ruled out.
The date of the writing of Ecclesiastes is closely related to the discussion of its authorship. There are bits of Aramaic in the book, but Aramaic is very closely related to Hebrew as the two languages use the same alphabet and the grammar is similar. Aramaic became the commonly spoken language of the people of Israel sometime before the time that Jesus was on earth, so some consider the dating to be later (and thus not written by Solomon) because of this. However, it was very likely that Aramaic was spoken by the Jews long before the time of Jesus, even while Hebrew remained the primary written language, and the Aramaic in Ecclesiastes is similar to how sometimes we write more like how we speak rather than in “proper” English.
So, what is the purpose of writing the book Ecclesiastes? It is considered part of the Ketuvim, the wisdom writings of the Old Testament. In general, wisdom writings give us rules for living God-fearing lives. While books like Proverbs lay this out pretty plainly, Ecclesiastes digs a little deeper into the meaning of life and how God has worked throughout history as well as in our own lives. It does contain practical words to live by, but in a more subtle way than Proverbs.
The book of Ecclesiastes has been questioned as to why it’s included in the Bible at all. At first glance, it appears extremely pessimistic. But due to its likelihood of being authored by Solomon, it has remained in the canon of Scripture. It was one of the five Megilloth - scrolls of five Biblical books (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther) that are linked together in Jewish tradition. Ecclesiastes would have been read by the Jewish community at the Feast of Tabernacles. Further support for its continued inclusion in the Bible is that Paul pretty clearly refers to it in Romans 8:20.
The general theme of Ecclesiastes is found in Ecclesiastes 1:2: “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’” Life in this world can appear to be meaningless, but as Ecclesiastes explores that concept, it also shows us where we can find our true purpose: only in God. It may seem meaningless that God created our lives to be so frustrating and empty, but the truth is that God made mankind and all of creation to be perfect, and it’s our fault for messing everything up. The book of Ecclesiastes helps us figure out what our purpose is in this world that we live in, based on our faith in God and in how He has created us.
While it’s not directly quoted in the New Testament, there are many places where the themes of Ecclesiastes are referenced and go right along with the teachings of Jesus and the other authors of the New Testament. The overall idea of the book is not to withdraw from the things of this world, but rather to see God in them and see how He continues to work in our lives, even through things that may appear meaningless to us.
I hope you’ll join me as we walk through the book of Ecclesiastes for the next six months or so, and that you’ll find this study far from meaningless.
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Every new year, a popular tradition is to form a resolution to start things new and make things better. Such resolutions often only last a few days to a month or two at most before reverting back to old habits. As last year began to close, I was reading through Matthew 23 and this unpopular passage stood out to me. As I read it, I saw some things in myself I did not like. In most churches today, Jesus is preached as this kind, gentle, loving guy who’d love you into heaven, but most tend to skip over the parts where Jesus gets in your face and tells you what’s up. Matthew 23 is one of those parts.
In this chapter, Jesus goes on what seems like a rant against the Pharisees and scribes, the religious leaders of His day, for being frauds. He starts by exposing the general hypocrisy and seeking of the praise of man instead of doing what is right, and then He goes into eight woes against them. A woe is much more than a mere warning. It is indicative that the judgment may already be sealed and set, with only a matter of time before its execution. When Jesus says, “Woe!” it means serious business. This will be a seven-post series (as two of the woes are related), however, while I do want us to be able to recognize the hypocrisy that is out there, I want us first to examine the hypocrisy in our own lives. This series is a unique approach to the New Year’s Resolution concept. Let us use it as a mirror to examine ourselves and repent of where we are guilty. The first of the woes is here:
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.” ~Matthew 23:13
Misery loves company. Those who want to pout aren’t just satisfied with staying in a foul mood; they want to spread it around and hate those in a good mood even more. A false teacher is no different. In this case, I’m not talking about those who are simply deceived and preaching what they think is true but overall don’t have problems with those who speak the truth. I am talking about those who are concerned about losing followers to anyone else, especially to those who speak the truth. There are many preachers out there who reject the truth of Scripture and will do everything in their power to prevent anyone who might listen to them from hearing it as well.
They will carry what David Wilkerson called “Beware of the Smiters.” It is an “I am a man of God and how dare anyone speak against what I say!” spirit which lashes out against anything or anyone that would dare confront them. They will particularly speak against any ministry or preacher who defends the truth. They want to make sure no one listens to anyone else but them and those of their kind. They want the people to be knowledgeable enough to defend them and ignorant enough to not question them.
Jesus wasn’t merely mad at the Pharisees for teaching incorrectly. He was mad at them for taking advantage of His sheep, those He came to save, when their job was to point their people to Him. Ezekiel had the same objection. He calls the priests cut from the same cloth as conspirers against God, seeking to devour the people as ravenous wolves. This is no small thing. God is MAD about this. And the only thing holding back His wrath against such people is His mercy for 1) to not destroy the wheat along with the tares, and 2) that even those false teachers themselves might be saved.
Yet when I read this passage, I didn’t merely think about the intellectual elite these days, I thought about me. While I am a defender of truth, I had to ask myself: when I defend the truth, am I concerned about the salvation of the skeptic, or am I blocking the way for them to find the truth? It’s one thing to tell them the truth, but it’s something else when you use it as a weapon against the person, not the teaching.
One of the reasons I admire Ray Comfort is for his genuine love for the lost. His apologetics are not spectacular in my opinion, but his desire to see the lost saved is the real deal. Yet to acquire that love, he had to go through a difficult trial: the curse of being labeled “the Banana Man.” He committed some blunders along the way and in some cases deserved some ridicule from it. Yet through it all, he learned to wear the “clown,” be labeled the fool, and through it, he got access to witness to countless people including some big names like Lawrence Krauss and Penn Jillette. While Comfort has at times been foolish, one thing is for sure: no one has been blocked from getting into heaven on account from him.
Have I been that way? No, I haven’t. I have had to train myself to bite my tongue more because I perfectly relate to Voddie Baucham when he describes the unleashing of “Bad Voddie,” the side of him which sees the painfully illogical arguments used against Christianity and wants to “correct them” and then “enjoy this” when the whopping comes. I completely relate to that. It’s not something I like in me. Because as much as I try to restrain “Bad Charlie,” I often fail. I want to see people get to heaven. I want to see them believe the truth. But there are times where my staunch stance for the truth can get in the way. There is nothing wrong with having such confidence in what I believe that nothing can budge me, however, how I use it is the issue. When I come across those who want the truth, I am kind and gentle; but when I come across those who are also set in their ways and it’s not in alignment to the truth, I’m not always so kind. For me, truth is the #1 standard and we can have nothing else unless we have the truth. That’s how I’ve always operated and how I’m wired. What I need is for God to continue His work in me to redirect that wiring to a better use for His Kingdom. I do need to show more love and compassion, but never at the expense of truth. I must share the truth in love, but without truth, there is no love. If I ignore truth and just preach love, I preach them towards a false gospel and a false destination. But if I do not love, the truth I preach is just noise.
Do you find yourself blocking others from finding God? Examine yourself and let God’s spotlight search you. As you do, pray for me as well that I might be obedient to God’s direction in correcting me to stop blocking those who at the moment don’t want truth from hearing it, and instead to encourage them to welcome the truth that they might be saved.
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“Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.” (Psalm 150)
As we bring 2019 to a close, I’m also bringing to a close my study on the Psalms. As I started with Psalm 1 at the beginning of January, I’m ending with the last psalm here at the end of the year.
It is fitting for this marvelous and majestic book to end with a psalm that is totally and completely made up of praising God! I kept the psalm in the format I did above so you can see how basically every phrase starts with the word “praise.” It’s the same in the original Hebrew text; each phrase begins with a form of the verb for praise. Many begin with halleluhu which specifically means “praise him.”
We can break down the structure of this psalm further than just being praise. It starts with telling us who we should praise, then why we should praise Him, then how we should praise Him, then who should do the praising.
We find out who we are commanded to praise in verse 1: we are to praise God. Even though He is in His mighty heavens and we are on earth, we are to praise Him. There is no one else even remotely worthy of the praise that God deserves.
Why should we praise God? Verse 2 tells us that He has done mighty acts, and He is amazingly great. The Bible is full of stories of what God has done for His people throughout history, and even today we still see God doing amazing things in our lives and the lives of those around us. God is still working in the entire world today. He is the epitome of greatness; we don’t even have the words to describe Him. He is ever-deserving of all our praise!
How should we praise God? Verses 3-5 of this psalm gives us lots of ways. You may notice that the ways listed are musical in nature - playing instruments and dancing. Thankfully, we don’t have to be musically skilled to praise God. We can enjoy others using these skills and praise God along with them, or we can make a joyful noise to God even if it may not sound great in others’ ears! God knows our hearts, and any method that we use to praise Him with a right heart is good in His sight.
Who should do the praising of God? We see in verse 6 that it’s not limited to those who are musically skilled. The psalm calls for “everything that has breath” to praise God! That doesn’t even limit it to just humans. All living things were created by God, so all living things should praise God with the breath that He has given us.
As we look back on 2019, this journey through the psalms has gone through times of praise, times of lament, times of joy, and times of sorrow. The psalms are full of all of these emotions and more. Some of them have been a struggle for me to write, but overall it has been a journey led by God. God has given us emotions and free will so that we can better praise Him. He has given us language to express these emotions, whether it was a psalmist writing in Hebrew a few thousand years ago or a blogger writing in 2019.
The whole purpose of this book of psalms is to praise God, just as Psalm 150 tells us. What is the purpose of your life? Does your life line up with God’s Word and praising Him as He calls us to do? Maybe 2019 was a spectacular year for you, or maybe you’re happy it’s finally over. Either way, every day God gives us a new chance to praise Him and follow Him with our lives. Every day we can make the choice to praise God with our lives, whether we’re in a season of joy or a season of lament. I pray that all of us would make the choice to praise God today, and all throughout the upcoming year!
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“For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” ~Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:2
The Apostle Paul was deemed perhaps the most intellectual man of his day. He wasn’t just a Pharisee, but a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He was to be the leader of them all. He protected his religion with fervent zeal until the day he met Jesus Christ. Upon meeting Christ and being born again, Paul became the most zealous evangelist ever. Yet in all that, Paul pushed all his knowledge and all his zeal aside for one thing: to know Christ and to proclaim Him.
Jesus is not merely the Second Person of the Trinity of the Godhead. He is not merely the Savior of the world. He is the Message to the world. John called Him “the Word.” In the Greek, the word for “word” is “logos,” which is the complete expression or message which is to be given. Jesus did not merely come to save and seek the lost. He came as the Message itself.
Everything, and I mean everything, in Scripture is written for one primary purpose: to reveal Christ. Genesis is given to lay the setting of this grand story God is writing. It contains the origins of the universe (Genesis 1-2), the problem when sin entered the world (Genesis 3), and the establishment of the peoples which this Message, this Savior, would come to rescue (Genesis 10-11). It zooms in on one man (Abraham) through whom God’s Message would come. It’s critical to remember that God intended His Message to go to the entire world, not merely one people group. The one people group was to be the vessel through whom that Message would be spread.
Exodus through Deuteronomy covers God’s standards and establishes why Jesus would have to come and die to pay for sin. The history books establish not just the historical data but give us examples, pictures, and types of what Jesus would come and do. The imagery only works if it is history showing it. The writings showcase God’s wisdom. The prophets show God’s sovereignty over history and the nations while also revealing how seriously God takes sin. The four Gospels reveal the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Acts gives us the history of how and why God wanted his Message spread to the ends of the earth. The epistles (letters) reveal the teachings and doctrines we are to follow in Christ, giving us the proper interpretation of both the Old Testament and the rest of the New Testament. Revelation brings the entire epic together in the greatest climax ever where Christ will come for and claim that which is His.
The entire Bible showcases and reveals Jesus Christ. The reason we can trust Jesus is because the Bible is reliable. But also, we can find out what the Bible actually meant to say by looking at Jesus. We can do that because both are the Word of God. The Bible is the Message in textual form. Jesus is the Message in living flesh. When Paul met Christ, he realized that everything he learned had to point to Him or it was false. He went to Scripture to show the Jews who their Savior would be. He occasionally went to the Greek poets to appeal to their history in how God dealt with them to showcase the True God. But his starting point and ending point was Jesus Christ. He was hyper-focused on his Savior.
When Paul went to Mars Hill and preached to the intellectual elite of the world, he not only told them they were all wrong in how they worshiped the “unknown god,” but he took them back to who God was and how He established the universe. Paul went to Creation. He declared that all people are of one flesh. That can only make sense if Genesis and Noah’s Flood and the Tower of Babel are true history. But his end goal wasn’t to get people to believe Genesis; his goal was to get people to believe Christ.
Here at Worldview Warriors, several of us have heavily talked about origins, but the primary reason for doing so is two-fold: 1) because that is where the front line of the battle over the integrity and authority of Scripture is being fought, and 2) because if Genesis is true, the need for a Savior is obvious. When you read the atheists, who are being honest in their reason for believing Evolution, it is nearly universally for moral reasons. They KNOW that the science doesn’t support their position, but because if the universe was created by the God of the Bible as described, then the same God holds man accountable for his actions and man will face Him on Judgment Day. They refuse to consider that, so they will believe what they know is foolish just to keep blinders on from seeing that day coming. All their arguments about “science” is just a façade to cover the true motivation, which is unbelief.
What I appreciate the most about the Young Earth Creation organizations is their focus on Christ. Origins is just their angle of approach, but their target is Christ. You cannot hear a presentation from Answers in Genesis without hearing some form of a Gospel message. Ken Ham is so clear that the Gospel is his focus. And while some of his apologetics can miss the mark, his aim is always heading the same direction. He purposed to share the Gospel three times with Bill Nye in his formal debate with him back in 2014. When I went to the Ark Encounter, while much of it was focused on defending the plausibility of the Genesis account, the central focus is clearly on Christ and the cross. I have not yet been to ICR’s new Discovery Center, but when they came to El Paso for a conference last year, again, the Gospel was the end goal.
As Christians, we must present one message: Jesus Christ. While we may speak about origins, the reason must be to get to Christ. While we may speak about politics, the reason must be that Christ be glorified and that His rule is supreme. While we may speak about sports, the reason should be to enjoy each other and Christ. While we may speak about science, the reason should be to pick the mind of Christ, the active Creating agent of creation and of Whom and for Whom it is all made. While we speak about history, the reason should be to see what Jesus Christ was doing through that time period. Everything should ultimately be about Christ.
People are so confused about Christianity today because the organized churches are focused on just about anything except that which unifies the Church: Christ. Let us get back to Christ. In 2020, let Christ be our focus and our sole desire. If we get Christ, we get everything that comes with Him. While all His blessings come, so do all the sufferings. The sufferings are temporary, but the blessings are eternal. And the greatest blessing of all is to simply be with Him. Christ is the Message. Let us speak only that Message, and let Christ be who He said He was in our lives and in our world. Let 2020 be a glorious new year where Christ is more central than ever before.
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Hallelujah! Today’s psalm, Psalm 146, begins the last collection of hallel psalms, named as such because they are full of praise to God and hallal is the verb for “praise” in Hebrew. It is likely that these praise psalms were used as part of the daily prayers for the people of Israel worshiping in the synagogue.
We do not know who wrote this psalm, though there are some theories. The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) and the Latin Vulgate attribute Psalms 146 and 147 to Haggai and Zechariah, but most scholars believe there is not enough evidence for this authorship.
As expected, this praise psalm begins with simply praising God in verses 1-2. The psalmist both individually praises God and invites those around him to join in as well. He knows that his life is to be lived in praise to God at all times because God is the one who gives him life.
In verses 3-4 we see that committing to praise God means that we don’t trust in our fellow humans. While we should have some level of trust for other humans, they cannot save us as God can, and they are not as perfectly trustworthy as God is either. People may leave us or die at any time, while God is eternal and will be the same trustworthy God forever and ever.
Verse 5 shows us that we need to look to God, rather than people, as our true help if we want to be blessed by Him. Again, we need to put our hope in God who will never fail instead of people who can fail us.
So who is this that we should praise? Verse 6 tells us, “He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them — he remains faithful forever.” God is the creator, the one who made everything, just as the Bible tells us in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20:11. He will always remain faithful to us. He is truly worthy of our praise!
What does God do after the work of creation was completed? Verses 7-9 tell us that He sustains His people. The nature of God’s faithfulness is explained here. He upholds His people, feeds the hungry, sets prisoners free, gives sight to the blind, loves us, and watches over and sustains His people. The Hebrew text uses participles for all of these actions, which indicates that God continually does them. He is eternal, and He continues to sustain His people through all generations.
Finally, the psalm closes with another call to praise God in verse 10. We see that the Lord reigns forever. He will be our God for all generations of all people!
As we look forward to celebrating Christmas and the birth of Jesus this week, we need to continue to praise God for all that He has done in our lives. When this psalm was written, the world was still looking forward and waiting expectantly for the Savior who they knew was coming. Today, we can look back a couple of thousand years and see that the Savior has already come! He came in the person of Jesus as a baby, He grew up as both fully human and fully God, and He lived His life without one single sin so that we could be saved and live eternally with God. We live in a time where the promise of salvation has been fulfilled, and that is the best reason there is to praise God all the days of our lives.
Just as the people of Israel used this psalm and others in their daily worship, we can do that also. These psalms have a different meaning to us, being on the other side of the salvation event of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but we are still called to praise God in all that we do. As you’re gathering with family and friends this Christmas, remember the reason for all the celebrating - the birth of Jesus who fulfilled the promises that the psalmists were longing for. If they could praise God before, we can truly praise Him now!
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Next week, many of us will be celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Last week, I wrapped up my series on characteristics of false teachings and tactics of false teachers. In between writing that series and working on a critique of an Old Earth Creation book in which the authors’ intention was to refute the possibility of a global flood (in my opinion, the 11 PhDs did a very poor job at it), I have been coming to realize something: exactly how lost the lost are.
We live in an academically charged society just as the Greeks were during the time of the early church. They are “educated” by the world’s standards, yet they truly know NOTHING. In this book I was reading, I noticed the authors directly quoting some Young Earth Creation comments and completely butcher them when analyzing them. As “educated” as these authors are, after all they have PhDs and have been working their fields for decades, I got the strong impression they literally cannot comprehend the Biblical Creation, even those among them who claim to be Christian.
I am not insulting these authors, though they typical response from them is to be insulted if anyone doesn’t believe them, but coming to the realization that they are lost. They don’t know any better. They are products of the world’s system, wise by the world’s standards, and God simply calls it foolishness. All their knowledge is not built upon the Word of God, even though a few of them attempt to give Him lip service credit after the fact. Their knowledge is built upon the world’s system and the world’s way of thinking which is naturalistic and anti-supernatural (being defined as not merely miraculous but also not having any input from God). In the process, God is instilling into me a pity for these people who were taught a methodology and worldview that is a complete lie. I have to ask myself: “Do I see these people as enemies who need to be removed, or as a harvest? Do I seek their judgment for their rebellion against God, or as prisoners of false teachings needing salvation?” That is part of what this Christmas season is all about.
Jesus had one mission while on this earth: to seek and to save the lost. He described himself as a physician coming to tend not the healthy but the sick. The problem is that so few of us recognize we are sick. Many who have any history in Christian circles knows that Jesus came to die for our sins, but so few of us really have a grasp of how wicked that sin really is. Sin is much more than just telling a lie, murdering someone with hatred, stealing from someone, or even having an idol in our hearts. It also includes any worldview that does not view things the way God defines them. If at any time we use the lens of man, be it on ourselves or our culture or whatnot to do something, it is not in agreement with God and that is sin. And no one, except Jesus Christ, ever had a completely 100% correct worldview. So that means every single person, except Jesus, has participated in sin, no matter how sincere they are or how “good” they are. Every person is not in complete agreement with God and that, by definition, is sin.
When a geologist looks at the rock layers in the Grand Canyon and proclaims that there was no global flood and this took place over millions of years, he is denying God the record He gave of our history and thus calling Him a liar. That is sin. It came from a sinful worldview, and no matter how sincere this geologist is and how honest he is being to his worldview, his sin in this matter is believing a lie instead of the Word of God. The same geologists get incensed when a Young Earth Creationist comes around and proclaims the Word of God as having the authority on ALL matters in which it speaks, including a historic record of a Global Flood. Why do they get mad? In a word: pride. Just like the Pharisees in Jesus’ time, the Greek philosophers whom Paul addressed on Mars’ Hill, and the idolaters who lost their business due to Paul’s preaching in Ephesus, these scientists get on the defensive because they cannot handle the idea that someone might believe God over them. Just listen to them. When you question their claims, they proclaim themselves to be the “experts” with a “How dare you question me?” tone.
If you know the truth, the truth shall set you free. Jesus came to rescue the lost, the sheep without a shepherd. He came to save us not merely from the fires of hell, but from the false, enslaving teachings, whether they come from the pulpits of the church, the pulpits of the classroom, or the science lab. Biblical Creationists have a singular goal in their apologetic purpose: to point people to the Savior. There is no point to believing in a 6000-year-old universe created in 6 days without also pointing to where it all leads: the cross. Jesus came to save the people and grant them true freedom – freedom to discern the clean from the unclean, the holy from the unholy, and freedom to live their lives as unto Christ instead of as unto the puppeteers of this world.
But Jesus came to do more than just to save the lost people from the false teachings. He also came to save those lost and teaching those false teachings. Jesus didn’t hang out with the Pharisees because He wanted to show Himself to be better than them and to prove them all wrong. He did prove them wrong on many occasions, but why? To save them, too. Nicodemus was one of them. But in order for Nicodemus to be saved, he had to be born again. For his case, he had to scrap everything he knew, start all over again, and start with one singular volume: Christ. Paul had to be born again too. While he was perhaps the most educated man of his era, he realized that everything he knew was useless, pointless, and no more valuable that dung, when he compared it all to Christ.
While in my mind I constantly battle unbelievers’ arguments, one thing I am asking God for is the heart to seek and save the lost as Jesus had. As I battle false teachings, it is difficult to separate the enslaved person from the enslaved teachings. On the other side of the world in Africa and the Middle East, children are being captured and trained to be “soldiers” for the armies, and they will kill because that is all they know. They don’t know they are being used as pawns by generals who care more for their own ideas than their children’s lives. The same is true in the academic world. Satan plays dirty. He deceives people to not merely believe a lie, but to believe it so much that they will defend that which enslaves and destroys them. They don’t know they are lost and need saving.
I am reminded of Richard Wurmbrand whom in Tortured for Christ tells his readers that if the Communist could be saved from Communism, they would not be such evil people. I want that mentality. If those in academia today could be saved from the philosophical naturalism that dominates their minds and see the Truth, things would be so much better, and we would not be having the complete moral breakdown we are witnessing today. Paul is such a good example of this: the most zealous hunter of Christians became the most zealous hunter for souls for Christ. Imagine if Richard Dawkins became authentically born again. The entire academic world would not know what to do. It would be even worse to the political world still panicking over Trump’s election. It would shatter the world and the worldview it’s placing upon people. Just look at what’s happening with Kanye West; both the secular and Christian world are reeling trying to figure out what is happening with him. The same happened with Paul at his conversion: both sides didn’t know how to respond. May God use Kanye should his conversion truly be genuine (as the signs are currently pointing towards).
Jesus came to seek and save the lost, from the starving poor of Africa, to the jungle warrior of the Amazon, to the suburbia of the U.S., to the elite scientists, and even to the politicians. Let us not forget that every one of us was or still is lost. Jesus’ comment about being a physician were not to suggest that there are some healthy and some sick, but that all are sick and in need of a doctor. I still need that Doctor, because I’ve not experienced full freedom from sin yet and I won’t until my time comes. I have to remember that the only reason I have not been enslaved by the deceptions in this world is because of the grace of God. It’s not because I “got it figured out.” Anything God gives to me is meant to be shared and that includes the truth and how God has been training me to teach others to trust Him. We are called to rescue the lost as the physical body of Christ. Next week, I’ll address how we do that: by declaring the one singular message God gave to us, Jesus Christ.
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