Giving an Answer – Part 8
Elijah Confronts Paganism
1 Peter 3:15; 1 Kings 19
1 Kings 17.
We’re continuing our study in apologetics, coming out of 1 Peter 3:15, that we
are “to give an answer for the hope that
is in us.” What we studied in the past few weeks is showing how God
confronts human viewpoint thinking, and that’s essentially what we’re doing
when we’re giving an answer to people. There are different ways in which we do
this, because everybody’s different. So there is no one-size-fits-all.
It’s just like witnessing. There’s no one-size-fits-all. There’s no set
thing. I think all of us, when we first start witnessing to people, use certain
tracts or tools, because that’s just part of the learning process.
We’re studying how to give an answer, how to talk to unbelievers. That’s
essentially what this is—it’s just communication. But, in the process, what
we’ve discovered is that there are right ways and wrong ways to do this. The
way that a lot of apologetics is presented, as I pointed out in the past, there
are compromises that are made in the realm of methodology.
Now, I’m going to point some things out as we go through this this
evening, but just a review of basic questions that we’ve answered.
1. What is apologetics?
2. Why should we learn about apologetics?
3. Why do some people object to
apologetics? [Usually because they don’t understand it.]
4. The Bible doesn’t use apologetics, why
should we?
That’s really the question that we are developing here: how the Bible
uses apologetics. We understand that apologetics has to do with giving a
rational, organized, thoughtful response to the gospel.
Apologetics is giving a reasoned, thoughtful response to someone who
asks, “How can you believe that silly Christian stuff?” Unfortunately, the way
the question is often asked puts us on the defensive, and we need to think
strategically and not emotionally. We need to figure out how—and think
through—how are we going to respond in ways that turn that back on the other
person without it deteriorating into an argument or into “who knows more” and
“who knows less” and those kinds of things. We’ve all had those kinds of
conversations.
We also have to understand that the cultural environment in which we are
communicating the gospel is going to differ. We live in a time when there’s a
worldview shift going on—from modernism to postmodernism. And some of the
people you know really are modernists; for them, facts matter and you can come
to understand maybe some measure of truth.
In postmodernism, there is no truth; everything is relative. The only
truth is that there is no universal truth, which is a self-refuting
proposition. Because if you believe there is no universal truth—and that’s a
universal truth—how can you believe that that’s true? But they do; that’s their organizing principle.
The framework we ought to keep in mind I’ve had since the beginning. If
you were to go to Thailand, or you were to go to China, or you were to go to
Siberia, or you were to go to Mecca as a missionary, and you wanted to as
clearly as possible communicate the gospel to those people, you don’t do it by
giving them “the four spiritual laws”. You don’t give it by taking a tract like
we have out in the back with the cute little question and answer stuff, because
that’s not going to work. Those are
really geared for people who already have had some exposure to biblical
Christianity and have some sort of framework for Christian theism.
If you approached people with some of these tools that were developed
40, 50, 60 years ago when America had more of a Judeo-Christian theistic
framework, you could take that for granted. Those don’t work with a lot of
people today! You have to think in terms of that culture.
When we had the pastors’ conference, Grace Hensarling spoke at noon one
day. Grace and two other women spent about 25 years down in Columbia with a
primitive people up in the mountains before they could translate the New
Testament into their language. They were working on that, but it took them five
years to learn the language, learn the culture, learn
how the people thought, before they could even begin to communicate to them.
See, a lot of us get the idea, “Well that’s silly. Let’s just give them
the gospel: Jesus died for your sins.” Well, “Who is Jesus? What’s a sin? How
does that work? I don’t understand it. Who is God?” You’ve got all these issues
that have to be understood.
If you sit there and listen to me say that, and you say, “Well, that’s
just silly,” then you need to go back to kindergarten in terms of learning the
Word of God! Because that’s the way reality is—we’re talking to people who’ve
got layers and layers and layers of truth suppression mechanism and idolatry
and false philosophies and false religions that are covering up their God
consciousness—that image of God that’s within them and that knowledge of God
within them. You can’t just sit down and shoot them with your gospel gun.
Some people say, “Well, I went somewhere, gave somebody a tract, and
they responded.” Well, great. Well, did you ask them how many times they’ve
heard the gospel before? They’ll probably say, “Well, 15 times. I grew up in
church, but it never quite made sense this way before.” You’re not the first
person to give them the gospel. In fact, many surveys that are taken of
believers indicate that the average person has heard the gospel between seven
and nine times before they respond in faith.
Paul says that somebody plants, somebody waters, somebody comes along
... It’s a process. We often get very impatient. We think we can just sit down
and give somebody the gospel and—boom!—they’re going
to be saved and go into Heaven. It doesn’t work that way, folks. If you take
that approach, you’re going to be frustrated.
Or you’re going to get people who say, “Just pray a simple prayer.” They
can pray the prayer, but that doesn’t mean they understand the prayer. You can’t believe something you don’t
understand, and it takes time to understand who God is, that God is righteous,
that man is a sinner, we violated His righteousness, and there’s only one way
to solve it. It takes time!
Now, you may be the 8th, 9th, 15th, 20th
person that communicates something like that to them, and they get it. You
think, “That was simple!” The rest of us are out there, and all we’re doing is
planting seeds. Anyway, it’s a process, and we have to learn to think
strategically in terms of our communication.
A as I pointed out using this chart, there are four different views of
knowledge in the world. Rationalism means man, through the use of reason
alone—using logic and starting with innate ideas—can come to truth. That has
many fallacies, and it ignores the fact that you can’t learn certain things
just from reason alone. God has to tell
us things.
Same thing with empiricism. Each of these has their counterpart in apologetics. There is classic
apologetics, which emphasizes the law of non-contradiction, logic being the
common ground. The weakness with that
is that the logic machine in 99.9999% of human beings—100% really—is affected
by sin. We can’t assume that their logic machine in their head hasn’t been
affected by the corruption of sin. And this is what it presupposes, that logic
somehow is that area of neutrality. The weakness with classic apologetics is it
only gets you to a 99% probability that God exists and that the Bible is true.
It doesn’t give you 100%, because the ground they’re standing upon is this
common ground of logic.
Empiricism is the idea of evidentialism—that it’s the facts, it’s
history, it’s science; we can go there as common ground. But, once again, you
get into the problem that in empiricism you can get to truth through the use of
logic. But, once again, that logic machine is corrupted by sin. So that doesn’t
mean that God the Holy Spirit can’t use evidence and can’t use logic, but
that’s not the common ground.
Then there’s mysticism, which is, “Well, you know, people just aren’t
going to respond. So all I’m left with is giving them my personal testimony,
and I know it’s true because Jesus lives in my heart.” That’s not how the Bible
presents the evidence of the truth of Christianity.
So we’re left with what’s called presuppositionalism, which accepts the
truth of Scripture as revelation. Now I’m pointing out examples of this as we
go through.
We looked at Genesis 1. We looked at Romans 1. We looked at Genesis 3
and compared that. What we saw when we looked at Genesis 3, compared with
Romans 1…
These are critical, these principles we see all the way through.
Based on Genesis 3:8 and based on Romans 1:18–23, you don’t have to
convince them they’re a sinner. You may have to dig through a lot of their
suppression camouflage to get to it, but everybody knows they are a sinner.
We’re not coming to them as if we’re all neutral,
nobody’s had anything affected by sin. They’re reinterpreting all data in terms
of their human viewpoint thinking. They have darkened hearts (Romans 1:21).
Now, that doesn’t mean you ask them a question, you wait five seconds,
and then you give them an answer. You let them
figure it out and come to an answer. Because they’ve got to have a little
self-discovery in the process, and that can take a year, five years, 10 years.
It can take a long time! Some people it may not—it may be something that
they’re ready for. But it takes time to get people to think.
So that is what we’re seeing.
And we’re going to see this again in the incident we look at tonight.
Elijah is often used as an example, “He’s giving evidence of the
existence of God.” Is that what Elijah is doing? When Elijah calls down fire
from Heaven, is his goal to prove that God exists and that Ba’al doesn’t exist?
Is that what’s going on there? Now, you’ll have some people who’ll take that
view. But is that really what’s going on there?
Now, if you believe what I just summarized and you are a
presuppositionalist and Romans 1:18–23 is true, then you don’t need to prove
God exists, because they already know God exists.
Who is Elijah challenging on Mount Carmel? The priests of Ba’al; are
they religious? Do they have God consciousness? Do they believe there’s a God?
Yes; they believe there are a lot of gods. They have
suppressed the truth; you don’t have to prove to them there’s a God.
So Elijah is not trying to prove there’s a God; he’s doing something
else. He is giving evidence, but he’s not giving it in a way that validates the
assumptions and presuppositions of the unbeliever. That’s what’s important
here.
The difference, as I pointed out, between apologetics and Christian
evidence is that Christian evidence is really a subset; it’s a subtopic within
the broader topic of apologetics.
A soldier’s got his pistol; he’s got numerous different types of
tactical rifles that he can use, from a sniper rifle to an urban rifle like the
Israeli Tavor. He’s got a bayonet. He’s got a knife. He’s got hand grenades,
grenade launchers. He’s got all kinds of different tools.
All Christians have these same evidences. The difference is how you use
the evidences—that’s strategy. That’s really what we’re talking about.
Sometimes it’s hard for people; this gets abstract. I understand that. It took
me a lot of time thinking and reading to come to an understanding of this; so I don’t expect anyone here to really grasp what we’re
going through right off the bat. Because this gets into some of that deeper,
more significant areas of biblical Christianity where we’re really focused on
renewing how we think and focusing on our thinking.
One of the things I pointed in the past is that even trained fighters
only hit their targets in a combat situation about 30% of the time. I had Jeff
run through a lot of evidence for me. Trained SWAT team police officers
who go through all kinds of training will get in a combat situation and only
hit their target 30% of the time—because of the tension, because of the
pressure, because everything’s moving and everything is going really, really
fast. So that’s the importance of training. I wish we could figure out some way
to really engage in one-on-one training like role-play, but we don’t really
have a framework for doing that.
One thing I added to your
glossary. A couple of things to point out here.
I’ve given you definitions for cosmogony. Cosmology,
empiricism, and rationalism. I’ve listed the existence of God arguments.
So you can read over those terms related to metaphysics and mysticism. I didn’t
have it last week, but I added the word “polemic” this time, along with a few
other tweaks.
I pointed out that Genesis 1 is a polemic against the Egyptian
cosmogony, against the Babylonian cosmogony, against Canaanite cosmogony. God
is such a great multitasker that He is able—by the way He presented the
original creation in Genesis 1—to basically refute all other attempts to
explain origins. Whether it’s Greek, whether it’s modern science, whatever it
is, the Bible refutes that in the way Genesis 1:1–2:4 is structured. So a lot
of the Bible is polemical.
Now we live in a world today—and this is a difficult thing—where we have
a youth culture that’s grown up that has a problem with anybody who is critical of someone else’s beliefs. They
think of that as judgmental. So, for them, this kind of judgmentalism is a sin.
If God engages in polemics, in their view that’s a sin; therefore, God is
sinful. See how crafty Satan is at doing this?
I have had people who have been in this congregation in the past who
have reacted; they said, “You’re too polemical.” I’m not nearly as polemical as
the Bible. The reason you don’t understand how polemical the Bible is, is
because you haven’t spent enough time in Bible class to really understand it.
So you’re just using the human viewpoint world’s value system to judge Bible
teaching!
This is a problem today, because the Bible is extremely polemical. God is constantly poking His finger in the
eyes of all these human viewpoint philosophies and systems, and He doesn’t do
it in a nice manner. He’s making fun
of people who believe the wrong thing. And that’s what happens here in 1 Kings
chapter 18. That’s polemics.
The definition goes on to say,
The only reason people don’t realize that is because they’re so ignorant
of what the cultures believed around Israel that they don’t catch it. That’s part
of my responsibility to point that out.
We see this. I think one of the greatest polemical chapters in all the Bible is 1 Kings 18. In fact, all of Elijah’s
ministry and all of Elisha’s ministry—Elisha, who follows Elijah—is designed to
show the superiority of the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and
His revelation of Himself to Israel over against all of the pagan gods and
goddesses. Because this is the problem: the Jews are constantly rejecting their
God and turning to the gods of the Canaanites and the gods of these other
cultures around them.
We see that again and again in the Book of Judges. They are constantly
going to human viewpoint to solve their problems, then God disciplines them,
and you have that whole cycle.
In the Old Testament what you have is that God enters into a covenant
with Israel. He does that when the Israelites have gotten away from Egypt. They
go to Mount Sinai. They spend a year at Mount Sinai, and Moses spent 40 days
and 40 nights up on Mount Sinai where God gave him the Law. It was a contract;
it was a covenant that God entered into with Israel. At the end of the
covenant, God has a section where He says, “If you’re obedient, these are the good things I’m going to do for you. If
you’re disobedient, these the bad things, that are going to happen. That’s called the “blessings”
and the “curses”; you find them in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.
Leviticus 26 has them in a set of five different cycles; they are five
different intensified stages of national judgment, or national discipline, on
Israel. The fifth stage of which is that they will be overrun by an enemy
power. They will be defeated, and they will be deported from the land. Because
God promises Abraham and says, “I’m giving you the Land. If you obey Me, you can stay there. If you don’t obey Me, I’m going to
kick you out. But the Land is yours.” So the Mosaic Law fits that and says, “If
you’re obedient, you’re going to be blessed in the Land. But if you’re
disobedient, I’m going to judge you, I’m going to take all the goodies away,
and I’m going to kick you out.”
That’s the history of Israel. They were kicked out the first time in 722
BC with the Northern Kingdom, in 586 BC with the Southern
Kingdom, and then some of them returned after the 70-year Babylonian captivity.
They began to return, but not all of them. Most of them stayed in what was
called the dispersion or the Diaspora. Then they are kicked out again in AD 70,
when the armies of Rome under Titus destroyed Jerusalem and burned the temple.
And they’re still out, but God is bringing them back to Israel. So that’s the
overview.
Now if you look at Leviticus 26, that’s where God outlines the five
cycles of discipline. In the second cycle of discipline you have this statement
made: “And after all this [that is
the first cycle of discipline], if you do not obey Me, then I will punish
you seven times more for your sins.” “I’m gonna ratchet it up a little
more, and you’re going to have more problems.”
In verse 19, “I will break the
pride of your power; I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like
bronze.” What is God saying? “I’m going to take away the rain. I’m going to
bring a drought that’s going to be so bad you’re going to think that the earth
is like bronze—like metal; it can’t absorb liquid at all. The heavens will be
like iron—no water is coming through, you’re going to have an economic
catastrophe, and people will go hungry because you can’t grow crops.
Verse 20, “And your strength shall
be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the
trees of the land yield their fruit.” It’s an economic disaster. No
fertility in the land, no productivity, no prosperity.
So, in contrast to this, all the different false religions had gods and
goddesses whose function was to bring prosperity and fertility. They were
worshiped in a very graphic, sexual way. They are called fertility religions.
That’s why these temples would have temple prostitutes, and they would reenact
sexual acts in order to stimulate the gods to bring fertility to the land. That
also included things like human sacrifice in order to get the gods’ attention.
That’s the background.
The worst form of this was the
worship of a Canaanite religion of Ba’al, who is the storm god and his consort
Asherah. Ahab’s wife Jezebel is Phoenician; he goes up to Tyre and Sidon, to
that area, and he marries this gal called Jezebel who becomes basically the
poster child of evil and wickedness throughout the Bible and idolatry.
Even though the Northern Kingdom was already into idolatry, it was kind
of “idolatry light.” Then, when he brings Jezebel in, Jezebel brings all her
priests with the Ba’al religion, the fertility religion, into Israel. They
introduce all of this sexual perversion into the Northern Kingdom and label it
“religion”; and that’s why their system is so evil.
God, now, is going to announce judgment on the Northern Kingdom because
of this evil.
So, in 1 Kings 17:1 we read, “And
Elijah the Tishbite ...”
Elijah is a prophet. This is the first time we hear about him. He’s introduced.
He’s a Gileadite. Gilead is on the east side of the Jordan River. He is sent to
Ahab the king.
He announces to Ahab, “As the Lord
God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these
years, except at my word.” What’s he doing? He’s announcing the second
cycle of discipline. He doesn’t have to prove that God exists—everybody knows God exists. He takes his stand on
the truth of God’s Word and he’s not going to argue for that; he’s going to
say, “This is what’s going to happen, and you are now going to feel the wrath
of Yahweh Elohim, the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.”
So we have the episode that’s described in [1 Kings] 17, where he goes
to the Brook Cherith which flows into the Jordan. And
God provides for him there. This is a drought. So what’s going to happen? The
brook is going to dry up, and then God’s going to provide for him. And He takes
him to Zarephath.
If you look at a Bible map, you’ll discover that Zarephath is where? It’s in Tyre and Sidon; it’s in Phoenicia. He takes Elijah
right into the heart of enemy territory in terms of religious enemy. That’s
like saying, “Elijah, after you announce this I’m going to take you to Mecca,
and I’m going to take care of you in Mecca.” Okay? Does that communicate? “And
you’re going to be right in the heart of the evil empire of the enemy religion,
and I’m going to hide you there and take care of you.” And that’s where Elijah
goes. He goes to Zarephath where this widow takes care of him. Of course,
they’re suffering from the drought and the economic catastrophe, but God
miraculously provides for oil and everything and also is going to raise her son
from the dead. That’s the backdrop.
After 3-1/2 years of this drought we’re talking a serious economic
depression. Then we read in 1 Kings 18:1, “And
it came to pass after many days that the word of the Lord came to Elijah.”
So he gets special revelation; he doesn’t just have a feeling; God speaks to
him. He says, “Go, present yourself to
Ahab, and I will send rain on the earth.”
Now, Ahab has labeled Elijah as public enemy number one, and he’s got
his SS troops out scouring every nook and cranny of the Northern Kingdom to
find Elijah. But guess what? God took Elijah out of the Northern Kingdom and
hid him up in enemy territory. They haven’t been able to find him.
So Elijah goes back to Samaria. The note there: there is a severe famine in Samaria. They can’t
grow crops. They go down to HEB and the whole produce section is empty, the
meat section is empty, and they can’t find anything.
The people have completely given themselves over to Ba’al, so they’re
going through all sorts of religious incantations, and rites, and sacrifices in
order to entice Ba’al and the Asherah to save them.
Now why Ba’al? Four things about Ba’al:
1. He’s the chief god in the Canaanite
pantheon. He is somewhat akin to Jupiter or Zeus—Jupiter in the Roman pantheon,
Zeus in the Greek pantheon. They are also the gods of thunder, lightning, rain,
things like that. There is a superior god who is
called El, but he sort of got displaced by Ba’al, just
as Saturn or Uranus was displaced by Jupiter or Zeus.
2. As the storm god, he is responsible for
rain. He’s responsible for lightning. He is responsible for thunder and productivity.
3. He was introduced
into the Northern Kingdom by Jezebel,
and this is why she’s going to suffer such a horrible death at the end.
4. In the mythology of Ba’alism, drought
indicates the death of Ba’al.
When God says there is going to be a drought, He’s not just saying that
because He’s going to bring hard times. God is multitasking over 95% of the
time. 100% is over 95% of the time. God always multitasks.
So, when He brings this drought, He is just sticking His finger right in
the eyes of all the Canaanites and saying, “See! Your crummy little religious
system doesn’t work! And I’m going to show you in a very graphic way why it
doesn’t work!” That’s what God is doing.
Remember our principle. The reason
for this isn’t to prove that God’s right and they’re wrong; the purpose for this is to get them to turn
back to God. That’s a principal for us in evangelism: we are not doing this out
of a mean spirit to prove that these people are idiots and they are following
false gods, or anything else. Our goal
is to win them! That’s why we are to
give an answer with grace and humility and meekness. We are to be winning them
for the Lord.
So this whole episode in 1 Kings 18 is a polemic. God is showing that
their system doesn’t work and that He is the true God. He’s not proving He
exists; He’s demonstrating His faithfulness to the Mosaic Law, and He is
demonstrating that only if you presuppose and live on the basis of God’s
revelation will there be productivity, fertility, and happiness. You’re not
going to get it living on the other side.
What Elijah is doing here is demonstrating the inability of false
religious systems to answer life’s questions. That’s part of what we can do
when we’re witnessing to people by asking questions. Basically, we’re doing the
Dr. Phil thing; we’re saying, “How’s that working for you?”
“Is that really solving your problems?” You’ve got to think a little
more and be a little more sophisticated in your questions. The idea is to help
them think through what they’re trying to do to find happiness and stability
and peace in their life. Most people are defensive, “Yeah, it’s working fine
for me.” Well, great. That’s wonderful.” And you just have to leave it there
and let them now work with what you’ve given them. That takes some time. Not
always. Remember, no one situation is the same as another situation; it takes
time.
Elijah is going to confront paganism. In the picture, this is a statue
that’s up on top of Mount Carmel in Israel, and I just love it! If you look at
it, here you have Elijah depicted. He’s got a great prophet’s beard, and he has
his sword up here. But if you look down here, there is a priest of Ba’al under
his feet. He has his foot on the guy’s shoulder, holding him down, and he is in
the act of chopping his head off, which is what happens at the end of the
episode. I just love that statue. So
he is confronting paganism.
It’s a beautiful area up on Mount Carmel, and it overlooks the Esdraelon
Valley. This is a picture from up on the ridge, looking down below. You can see
the highway down below and some of the other areas—just a beautiful area. This
is the ridge line of the Carmel Ridge.
Here’s another look, looking back at the area where the statue is, and
this is where this took place.
Now, look down, in 1 Kings 18:21. Elijah has called to Ahab to assemble
all the Israelites there. This is not a small event. Remember, there are 450
priests of Ba’al. There are 400 priests of Asherah. How many is that? 950+Elijah+Ahab.
So you have at least 952. Plus, you have this enormous crowd of Israelites.
There might have been 5, 10, 15,000 people who have gathered to watch this
challenge from Elijah to the priests of Ba’al. This is a huge event. This is not something that’s done in the back woods
without a lot of publicity. Everybody knows what’s going on, because in verse
20 we read that, “Ahab sent for all the
children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel.”
It’s a huge crowd.
So Elijah comes out to the people and notice what he does. He asks a
question. He doesn’t tell them what’s
getting ready to happen. He doesn’t tell them what the answer should be; he
asks them a question to get them to think about what they’re going to do. “How long will you falter between two
opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Ba’al, follow him.”
What’s interesting here … We all have heard the
story before of how they build this huge altar and the priests of Ba’al and
Asherah get out there and they start doing everything they can think of to get
Ba’al’s attention. Because he’s probably on a break, or using the restroom, and
Elijah taunts him. You know, this is a godly thing to do. “What’s the matter?
Can’t your god answer your prayer? Maybe he took a break. Maybe he’s in the
bathroom. Scream a little louder!”
You know, he’s pointing out the problems in their view. But see, we live
in a world where if you’re a Christian and use that kind of sarcasm against
Islam, “Oh! You’re just terrible! You’re
so insensitive! You’re just one of
those nasty little Christians who
thinks you know it all and you’ve got the only way to Heaven!”
Look at what Elijah does. He says, “How long will you falter?” The word
there has this idea of “hop from one view to another.” It’s the same word that
is used when you read down to the priests of Ba’al and Asherah, and they’re
dancing and going into all these contortions as they try to get the attention
of Ba’al. They are hopping around—that’s the word.
What he’s picturing is that the Jews are hopping back and forth. One
minute they’re going to go to God, and the next minute they’re going to go to
Ba’al. Whoever is going to do whatever it is they want done, they’re going to
go with that guy, and they just go back and forth. They can’t make up their
mind; they’re not set on Ba’al or God, they’re just total pragmatists, sort of
like Americans today.
So the background for this is in 1 Kings 18:17.
As Elijah came on the scene, he’s confronted by Ahab.
Ahab calls him “the troubler of Israel.” See, one of the things that you’ll
always get if you’re standing for the truth of God’s Word is you will be
accused of being the problem. We’re seeing that today. We can’t react to that
in anger, or resentment, or defensiveness. That’s not what Elijah does here.
Elijah, though, responds and says, “I
have not troubled Israel.” See, he’s not going to grant the assumption of
Ahab. He is not going to ignore it; he’s going to confront it. He says, “I’m
not a troubler of Israel. You’re the one that’s troubled Israel because of what
you have done. You have forsaken the commandment of the Lord, and you follow
the Ba’als.” He brings it right back to Scripture. This is the problem: If you
follow the Ba’als there are certain consequences. Because we live in God’s
world—the God who created everything the way it is—the God who created right
and wrong, and morals, and everything—the divine institutions, and when you violate them, there are going to be
consequences.”
“Now, on your assumption, there aren’t going to be any consequences;
this is just going to be all fine. But we’re going to have a little visual aid
demonstration here to show that you can’t really live on the basis of your
assumptions. Your assumptions about your religion, your mythology, aren’t going
to work in the real world, and so we’re going to have a real test of this.”
In 1 Kings 18:19 he tells Ahab to, “Send
and gather all Israel to me on Mount Carmel, the four hundred and fifty
prophets of Ba’al, and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at
Jezebel’s table.” Now, isn’t that interesting? That means that they’re on
the dole; they’re on Jezebel’s welfare system. She’s the one who gives them
their meal ticket. She’s the one who gives them their food stamps. They are
totally dependent on the government to sustain them. This is an egregious
evidence of the collusion of church and state, religion and politics.
1 Kings 18:20, “So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel.” It’s a huge show.
“And Elijah came to all the
people, and said, ‘How long will you falter between two opinions?’ ”
What’s going on behind this is something that we need to think about. It’s
not part of the content of our witnessing, but it’s part of how we think about
what’s going on here. Because the person you’re talking to—the pagan, the
unbeliever—thinks according to certain ideas, in certain norms and standards,
in certain values, and you think a different set. You have a different
assumption about the ultimate nature of reality, of how you know truth, right
and wrong, and all this. It’s a package deal. So we’re going to step back and
understand what’s at the core here.
I’m going to look at four points on the Elements of a Religion,
Philosophy, Worldview, or Approach to Life. All of those are various different
things. Religion is going to have the idea of worshiping a certain god or
goddess or Pantheon or something like that, a philosophy. It may be, “I’m an
agnostic. I’m a rationalist. _I’m an empiricist. I believe in science. Science
is the key to truth.” So all of these are different worldviews or approach to
life.
1. Everybody has a philosophy of life.
Some have a conscious philosophy of life; they have thought it through. Some
people don’t. Some people have a conscious rational internally consistent view;
most people don’t.
They just sort of live life the way it comes. That is a philosophy of life. It may be a disorganized, irrational,
inconsistent view of life, but it’s still a philosophy of life.
2. Every worldview contains certain
universals, indicated by words like “should,” “ought,” “right,” and “wrong.”
So when you are talking about something … For example, you make some
statement that God is going to hold people accountable for their spirituality.
Somebody may say, “I don’t believe that. That’s wrong.” “Okay, let’s stop and
talk about that a minute. Where do you get this idea of right and wrong? If you
say something is wrong, you are appealing to some standard.”
“What’s the standard? Where did you get that idea?” “Well, everybody
says so.” “Who? Who is everybody? Where did they get that standard?” You probe
these kinds of questions.
So words like “should,” “ought,” “right,” and “wrong” are really windows
that we can take advantage of to open up and expose what people believe and
help them understand what they believe.
3. This is the entry point to the
worldview, and it’s often through values or ethics.
Somebody says, “A terrible thing to do is to drive a car and put all of
that carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide—all those exhaust fumes—into the
atmosphere. That is going to destroy the planet.” “Really? That’s wrong? Where
do you get that idea? What is the evidence for that?” That’s a long
conversation.
But that’s what we’re doing; we’re trying to help them understand what
is going on. Because so many people just talk to other people
who have the same ideas. They just sort of validate one another without
thinking through the evidence. So what does that say to us? We’ve got to learn,
to understand what these issues are.
4. Ethical principles are based on prior
assumptions about the nature of truth or knowledge and the ultimate nature of
the universe.
In the past I’ve used this iceberg illustration. I’ve got a little
different illustration, a way of organizing it in these slides. There is our
little archaeologically discovered statue of Ba’al. He is standing there; he’s
got his arm raised. That’s because he probably held a lightning bolt in that
hand in the ancient world. So that’s Ba’al.
We’re going to start with ethics. That’s what we were talking about just
a minute ago. Ethics, values, right or wrong, are often the starting point for
helping to expose people’s belief systems.
Before I get into this, let me talk about one other thing. Part of our
responsibility as believers, part of my responsibility as a pastor, is to
challenge these human viewpoint, or pagan, beliefs. We all have them, myself
included. We have picked them up from the culture around us.
One of the first areas that you can think about, as we go through this,
has to do with our own souls—exposing the human viewpoint corruption that is
still present in our own souls as we still, in our sin nature, seek to assert
our autonomy, or our independence, from God. Because we are products of our
culture and our environment, and we pick up these ideas.
We are influenced by friends and neighbors. We are influenced by films. We are influenced
by the music that we listen to. We are influenced by teachers, professors, all kinds of ideas that come into our thinking. So we have
to start with ourselves. Jesus talks about that. “How come you can be so
concerned about a speck in your brother’s eye when you’re not taking the log
out of your own eye?” We have to do that self-reflection in terms of our own
worldview.
The next thing that we do is when we have conversations with
unbelievers, we need to help them expose their own belief system in a way
that’s not antagonistic, argumentative, or combative. That we do this in grace
helps a person see the flaws and failures of their own belief systems. That’s
what Elijah is doing.
The goal is to get him to
change. The goal isn’t to beat them over the head with how stupid and wrong
they are. The goal is to help them understand the truth of Scripture so that
they can change.
As we look at this, and as I talk us through this, we start off with
this idea of right and wrong. So ethics and values and right and wrong lead to
something. Once you develop systems of right and wrong, it leads to something
that’s built on that. That’s what
we’re going to have down below: beauty, order, aesthetics;
critical reflection, which is defined as a critical reflection on art, culture,
and nature.
What you should see, as I go through this, is that years ago—I’ve done
this a couple times—where I’ve critiqued music, especially in the church—the
contemporary worship
and music. That’s how you get here. You can evaluate everything that’s
produced in a culture whether it’s art, music, architecture.
If you say, “Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. Architecture is just
architecture; it’s just a building; it’s just what works.”
“Oh, so you’re saying there’s something in this world that is not
corrupted by sin? Something in this world that’s neutral, that is unaffected by
the fall of man? Is that what you’re saying?” There are people who believe
that, because we love our music we love our art. We like what we like!
“Well, why do you like it?” What is it in your soul that resonates when you
look at some pagan art or when you hear pagan music? What is it that appeals to you?”
“Why is it that you are more comfortable?” You walk into, let’s say, a
contemporary worship service at a church. Why is a person more comfortable when
they hear certain kinds of music than if they walk into a church and they hear
traditional hymns? They’ve never heard any music like that, and they don’t feel
comfortable. It has to do with your values of right and wrong.
When you’re having a conversation about contemporary worship, I’ll say,
“I just don’t believe you’re right.” See, it always comes back to that third
stage there—ethics and values and right and wrong. So this is part of
apologetics. It’s part of thinking through a worldview that is internally
consistent with the Word of God, and it’s from that fortress that we’re able to
evaluate the other ideas.
Now if we go back the other way, where do we get ethics and values and
right and wrong? We get that from knowledge. How do you know truth? If you say,
“That’s wrong,” that’s an absolute statement. “That’s right” is an absolute
statement. “Where do you get those absolutes? Where do they come from? How do
you know they’re true? How do you know that’s right? How do you know that’s
wrong?” Philosophers call that “epistemology”; it’s the idea of how we know
what we know.
But that doesn’t operate in a vacuum, either. Knowledge ultimately comes
from our view of ultimate reality, which is God. So in the iceberg illustration
I use, we start at the bottom with God and we build up; nine-tenths of that is
below the surface and we don’t ever talk about it. Here I’m showing the
structure. We start with God, and our view of God determines our view of
knowledge and truth. Our view of knowledge and truth, then, determines our
ethics and our values; that, in turn, determines our beauty.
I’ll tell you something. There is precious
little written from an evangelical viewpoint on aesthetics. I first took
philosophy when I went to the University of St. Thomas. These are the four
branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. Yet,
when it comes to the area of Christian thought, very few people are writing on
this. They used to.
You go back to the Middle Ages and there was a tremendous amount,
because these people thought deeply. They had the intellectual tools to do it.
But we live in a world of intellectual poverty in the 20th century,
because our education system has been so influenced by modernist ideas and
modernist ideas of the nature of man. Postmodern ideas of the nature of man
affect educational philosophy and theory, and so we become impoverished in our education system. Most people that are
listening to me right now are going, “Man! This is really deep stuff!” If you
went back 150 years ago, this would be basic third grade information—or maybe
junior high.
I was talking to some pastors yesterday and said, “Do you realize?” You
go back and you read the commentaries written by theologians in the 19th
century (and our commentaries start with the English text), and those
commentaries had the Greek text at the top. And everything that they wrote was
based on the Greek text, because it was assumed that if you were a pastor you
could read and understand Greek. Now we have to start
with English and put the Greek in a footnote, because nobody really understands
that stuff anymore, so we don’t want to distract him with it. Our level of
education has become impoverished. But this is really, really important! So we have to grasp it. Like many
important things, it takes time. It takes effort and thought to work our way
through these things.
Let me just point out a couple of more things on this slide. When we
talk about ethics and values, there’s a contrast between human viewpoint and
divine viewpoint. Divine viewpoint is up here. In terms of the biblical view of
ethics, values, and right and wrong, we believe in absolute right or wrong, absolute values. It’s based on the essence
of God, and values are communicated and revealed by God through the Scripture.
But if you look at human viewpoint, it’s arbitrary. Values are
arbitrary. In the ancient world they were priest based. They came from
different religions. So the priests would say, “This is right and this is
wrong.”
Or it was power based, and we see that today. You go to totalitarian
countries. Under Hitler, the government determines what’s right or wrong. You
go to Stalin’s communist Soviet Union, the government
determines what’s right or wrong.
That’s what’s happening today. We are caught in a culture war today
where you go to the halls of Congress and the issue isn’t what is right or
wrong; the issue is who has the power to determine
what’s right or wrong. It’s all about power! This is destructive! Because we’ve
forgotten that there’s absolute truth, and so we don’t want to go back to the
standard of the Constitution.
You see this in the great tyrannies of the ancient world, as well as
modern tyrannies of the 20th century; they are violent, they are
destruction, and they are dehumanizing. So that’s your contrast. In the realm
of ethics you go either in the biblical direction of absolutes based on the
essence of God, or you go towards arbitrary priest-based or power-based ideas which ultimately lead to that which is dehumanizing.
In the area of knowledge and truth, for the Bible believer knowledge is
ultimately revealed. It’s absolute and it’s derivative. What do I mean by that?
It’s derived from God. It doesn’t
originate from man; it is derived from God. It comes from revelation.
In human viewpoint, it’s all inductive.
Transfer this back to the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are going to observe
everything in the garden and come to their knowledge of what right and wrong
is. They are missing a piece of information—that God says, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
That is God revealing it. They couldn’t get that information through induction,
through observation and application.
So in human viewpoint all knowledge is inductive, because we ultimately
live in a relativistic world and it’s all relative. Truth
differs only in degree, not in kind. Therefore, all truth is valid. The truth
of a spiritist animist culture is just as valid as the truth in a modernist
science-based culture. That’s called what? Multiculturalism. And it’s
exemplified in this little mantra, “All truth is God’s truth.”
“They have their truth; we have our truth; it’s all God’s truth.” And
that is really an assault. You’ll
hear it a lot in certain Christian circles—it’s an assault on the absolute
truth of Scripture. Knowledge—you’re either going to be up here, or you are
going to be down here, one way or the other.
In terms of God, what we see in this episode is that it is Yahweh versus Ba’al. Yahweh is the Creator God of the
universe; He’s holy, He’s righteous, and He speaks to man. He’s the basis for
knowledge, the basis for communication, vocabulary, language—all
of those things. And, in human viewpoint, He’s always part of creation. As I’ve
been doing more reading in the last week, when I talk about the scale of being
again and again you see secular scholars talk about this. You’ve probably never
heard of it before, other than my references to it. But that God is part of the
process; He’s not outside of the process.
Then we come down to the last stage in terms of beauty, order, aesthetics. In human viewpoint, nature is worshiped as God.
So that’s exactly what Paul says in Romans, “We worship the creature rather
than the Creator.” What this does is that it destroys art and beauty, because
we don’t have an external reference point to be able to analyze God’s creation.
If the beauty and the intricacy of a snowflake, a leaf, a blade of grass, or a
molecule is a product of chance, then you’re destroying it, ultimately, in
terms of beauty. And you end up going in a wrong direction.
Then, in divine viewpoint, God is the Creator. So man is in His image,
and it elevates man. It elevates what man produces; aesthetics is something
that began with God. Who’s the first group to sing in the Bible? The sons of
God in Job; when God lays the foundation of the earth, they sing. They’re
singing in Heaven! Singing involves words and music. Did the angels invent
that? Or was that already in the mind of God from eternity past? That was
already in the mind of God from eternity past.
There is a divine prototype for music, for lyrics, for art. The
Israelites are coming out of Egypt. What is their frame of reference for art?
Egyptian art. What happens at Mount Sinai? God says, “I want you to build a
tabernacle.” What does God do? He gives the Holy Spirit to Oholiab and Bezalel,
so that the art is going to reflect divine viewpoint standards and not the
human viewpoint pagan art standards of the Egyptians. We never think that
there’s a right art and a wrong art! Or a right music and a wrong music!
But if everything originates from the mind of God and man perverts it or
corrupts it through sin, then we’ve got to rethink everything in our culture.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a culture that can even think about these
things anymore, because they are so academically impoverished. But I’ll go over
this again. This is hard for a lot of people.
But this is what happens. We are going to have this head-on
confrontation between divine viewpoint and human viewpoint right on top of
Mount Carmel. I didn’t get there tonight, but we will get there next time. I’ve
got 45 slides in this slideshow, and we’re only on 29. So we’ll have to come
back next time. This just sets the stage.
What you need to pay attention to is that the lessons we’re learning
here are going to be illustrated again in Acts 14 and in Acts 17 when Paul and
Barnabas went to Lystra and then when Paul is speaking at the Areopagus in
Athens to the pagan philosophers. They all demonstrate the same themes; it’s
just tremendous.