94-97 Christmas Questions – The Question of Trust

This sermon is Part 1 of the series "Christmas Questions" by Dr. Chuck F. Betters.

Christmas evokes numerous emotions, and in 1994, the emotions Dr. Betters experienced were not of warm, fuzzy Christmas scenes, but heart-breaking as he faced his second Christmas without his sixteen-year-old son, Mark. In this series, Dr. Betters acknowledges that not everyone loves Christmas or even looks forward to it. Rather than running from Christmas, though, he encourages us to recognize the opportunity to experience even deeper comfort as we recognize the pain of that first Christmas. Dr. Betters opens up a list of five significant questions that people are longing to ask, not only at Christmas, but throughout the uneasiness of living life in this broken world. We will see five influences that shaped the culture of the Christmas story and continue to shape our culture today. Our culture is hungry for someone or something to trust. In this message, Dr. Betters asks, “What about the question of trust, and what does Christmas have to do with it?”

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Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Betters, produced by Mark Ink Ministries. Each in his grip message is designed to help turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Betters as he preaches today's message.

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Take your Bibles, please, and turn to the book of Isaiah. I'm going to use the messages over the next several weeks to kind of recap some of the things we have talked about over the past year. And I've entitled this series Christmas Questions. And each of the five weeks, we're going to be looking at five very critical questions that we need to ask at Christmas time. In fact, we need to ask these questions all year round, but as we focus upon incarnation, as we focus upon this time of the year that conjures up so many mixed emotions, we need to be asking and answering the right questions. You see, on the one hand, there are countless traditions, family celebrations, religious services, childlike suspense, the wonder, the expectation of Christmas Day. But on the other hand, there is a frame in which all of this occurs, a frame within the context of a culture that is fragmented, a culture that is lonely, a culture that is groping for answers to even life's most basic questions. Now, this special Christmas series is going to deal with the five most significant and life-changing questions that our society is asking, whether or not they admit they're asking these questions. The answers to these questions need to be understood within the context of the stories that our Bible tells us surround the incarnation or the birth of Jesus Christ. In other words, we need to enter into the context of that first Christmas if we are to begin to fully understand the relevance of the incarnation and the incarnation narratives to us today. It was into a specific culture and a specific time that Jesus Christ chose to come. It was at a low point in Israel's history. They had been stripped of all of their cultural identity. A theocracy that thrived under Solomon, and all of the glory days of Solomon had now become dry and lifeless as a corpse. Something that was portrayed in the vision that Ezekiel had in the valley of the dry bones. As a people, they had become dry and rotted and internally dead and lifeless. Now there were at least five great influences that dramatically shaped the culture into which Jesus came. You have the Pharisees, you have the Sadducees, you have the Herodians, you have the zealots, and you have what I simply call the Greco-Roman culture or the Hedonists, the polytheists, the ones who believed in any God or many gods. And these five influences shaped the culture into which, as we read this morning in the Gospel of John, the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. The longing in man for the answers to these five questions represents what ought to be a Christmas wish list for every one of us. We ought to desire answers to these questions as believers. We ought to crave the answers to these questions for those of our family and friends and relatives, that oikos, that extended family, that mission field in which we live. We ought to crave that God would give them the answers to these five questions. And when any attempt is made to correct the problem that people have today with seeking the right answers to the right questions, that's literally when confusion sets in. Every one of you knows someone who has raised one or more of these five questions. In their quest for a lasting solution, for lasting peace, maybe they've listened to the voices of the dark world of demonism and evil around them, only to become disillusioned, discouraged, and even cynical. All of us know someone who has made an attempt at discovering peace in a way other than the Christ who came that first Christmas offers peace. And when we attempt to right the ship by relating to them the hope they have in Jesus Christ, they're quick to reject this faith as simply another in a string of false hopes and subjective hype. After all, if I cannot touch it, if I cannot feel it, if I cannot taste it, if I cannot hear it in a way that satisfies my rational mind, it simply cannot be true, they reason, and it is to be rejected as another of man's endless theories. What are these five questions man is asking? What are the answers to these five questions? Over the next several weeks, we're going to take one at a time. Today I want to deal with the question of trust. Here is a question everyone is asking. Is there someone? Is there something I can trust? Is there someone? Is there something in whom I can place my trust? Can anybody be trusted? Can the answers that are being offered to the questions I am asking from the sources I am hearing those answers coming from, can they be trusted? The question of trust. Well, now in the first century context, Jesus came into a world that was governed by five major influences. The first of these influences were the Sadducees. They were the rationalist of their day. And may I suggest to you this morning the rationalist, the Sadducee lives. He lives on, and he keeps proposing answers to the questions people are asking. And as they respond to the rationalist, as they try the means and ways by which the rationalist says they can discover peace, they run up against the brick wall. They discover despair and disillusionment because the rationalist is wrong. What does he say? Here's what I believe a rationalist today says. And here's the answer that he gives to people who are discovering or questing after peace. The rationalist says, My trust, and you college students are going to hear this probably more so on your campus than many of the rest of us will hear it. You're going to hear it in the classroom. You're going to hear it from your professors. You're going to hear it from the students. You're going to hear it as people begin to raise questions about the thinking processes of man. Here's how it goes: The rationalist says this My trust is in my own ability and the ability of others who hold similar commitments to reason, to think, and to exercise my own free will. Thus I possess, they say, an innate ability to make a significant contribution to the betterment of society. I will use, they say, all of the systems of human reason as a basis of discovery of vital life principles that affect my society. All of mankind possesses some degree of truth, they say. Every human being has some semblance of truth. My job as a rationalist, they reason, is to discover truth from within the context of what is verifiable and what is reasonable. If it cannot be verified, or if it is unreasonable to my infinitely glorious mind, then it cannot be true. It must be rejected as fantasy, fairy tale, and myth. That's what the rationalist teaches today. If I can't put it into a test to, if I can't prove it, if I can't discover it as reasonable, then it has to be false. It cannot be true, and it is to be rejected as a myth. Now, my job as a rationalist, they say, is to look at all of the different pools of thinking that are out there. And I am to pick out of this pool of thinking the good, and this pool of thinking the reasonable, and this pool of thinking the verifiable. I'm to put that all into the pot of my mind and conclude what I want to conclude about what's true and what's false. That's nothing new. The Sadducees did that. Their belief system parallels rationalism today. And may I suggest to you this rationalism and Sadduceism is the root doctrine of Protestant liberalism today. Mainstream Protestantism holds to this rationalistic Sadducean view. And so it's not unusual for a professor on a campus or a pastor in the pulpit to deny the inerrancy of Scripture. Why? Because it's not reasonable. It's not reasonable. And so the Bible is subjected to standards of interpretation that no other book is subjected to. The historical accounts in the Bible are subjected to scrutiny that no other piece of literature is subjected to. Why? Because it's not reasonable. Man cannot understand it. And if man cannot understand it, therefore it cannot be true. So as he begins to deny the inerrancy of scripture, what's the next logical thing for him to deny? Anything in this book that speaks of the supernatural. Anything in the Bible that is supernatural is to be rejected. Why? Because I can't reason it through. That's why the Sadducees denied the resurrection. They denied the existence of heaven. They denied the existence of hell. They denounced anyone, even within Judaism, the Pharisees in particular, who held to the mystical understanding of the Bible. That is, anyone who held to the fact that there is a supernatural God who superintends the affairs of man, the Sadducees rejected that supernaturalism. They were the rationalists of their day. They're alive and well. The problem is they're filling not only the classrooms, they're filling the pulpits. So not only do the students hear it when they go to campus, but the students hear it when they go home to church. The pastors stand up in their pulpits and create a significant imbalance of truth. If I cannot reason it, if the Bible is not inerrant, if there is no such thing as the supernatural, then what is left in this book for me except a social gospel that says, be good to your fellow man, be the best person you can possibly be, then everything else is going to make sense. The problem is they look at their world around them and they see that it's not getting better, it's getting worse. That life is not making any sense. They also look around at the empty pews in their mainline churches. They see that people in droves are leaving these churches because, again, they're in a quest for answers. The preachers stand up as the professors do and preach Sadduceism, rationalism. Isaiah 5, verses 18 and 19. A text you ought to be familiar with. I've preached on it before. Chapter 5, verses 18 and 19. Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cartropes, to those who say, Let God hurry, let him hasten his work so we may see it. Let it approach, let the plan of the Holy One of Israel come, so we may know it. The picture here is one of a beast harnessed to and dragging a cart with cords of deceit or falsehood. By holding on to what is false, Israel found themselves in the bondage of sin. What starts out as cords become cart ropes. Unbreakable bondage to sin. Unbreakable sin and wickedness. Notice how he puts the terms together in verses 18 and 19. Whenever you see sin and iniquity, sin and wickedness used together, they point to both the behavior of man in sinful ways and the attitude of man in sinful ways. Not only does he act wicked, he thinks wicked. And this leads to an arrogance that demands, as the prophet portrays this in Isaiah 5, this demands that God proves himself. Prove that it's true. Prove that it's reasonable. Prove that I'm bound to it. Prove you are who you say you are. And this is a skepticism which doubts that God's involved in the world at all. A blindness which cannot see his hand at work and thus denies the supernatural. You don't believe that you haven't listened to many preachers lately. You don't believe that you haven't been on a college campus or in an educational institution. You haven't heard what that world out there is saying about what we believe in here. This is the heart of modern-day rationalism, but it's nothing new. It's as old as the New Testament Sadducees. As the early church formed, they developed a heresy called Gnosticism. An early heresy, rooted in Sadduceeism. The Gnostics, in fact, many of the books in the New Testament were written to combat the heresy that had sprung up from within the church. This heresy of Gnosticism basically said this spirit is good, matter is evil. Spirit is good, matter is evil. There's a spark of deity in every man. There's a spark of deity in every man because spirit is good. But matter is evil. So since spirit is good and matter is evil, therefore these early quote Christians, and I say this in quotes, these early Christians formulated a heresy that went something like this: Since spirit is good and flesh is evil, Jesus Christ could not have really been flesh and blood since he was spiritually pure. And so the humanity of Christ was relegated to myth. And Paul and John had to consistently deal with that heresy. Christian people walking around saying that Jesus Christ was not really human. Because spirit is good, matter is evil. What have we got here? We've got a denial of inerrancy. And what is the birth child of the denial of inerrancy? A denial of the supernatural. Therefore, God could not have possibly worked the miracle of the virgin birth. You thought the quest for the truth of the virgin birth began with the modernist in the 50s, didn't you? The question of the virgin birth is as old as the New Testament. God could not have worked such a dramatic miracle as to become a man because it's not reasonable to me. So therefore, since it's not reasonable, I will come up with a philosophical argument. Spirit is good because Christ was good. Flesh is evil, he died on a cross. There were some Gnostics who actually went as far as to say he didn't really die on the cross. That was just an illusion. It was just a plot. We had a book some years ago entitled The Passover Plot, written by some idiot who objected to the fact that Jesus physically died on a cross. So what do we have here? We doubt the inerrancy of Scripture. We doubt the supernatural, and what are we left with? An ethical system, just like the Islam faith, just like the Hindu faith, and even just like the Jewish faith. But certainly not a unique gospel that says God became a man. So in that context, what do we read? What you read this morning. In the beginning was the Lagos, and the Lagos was with God, and the Lagos was God. And that word became what? Flesh and dwelt amongst us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. What's John talking about here? He's talking to the local philosophy professors. He's talking to the local ministers of the first heretical church of Jerusalem. And what's he saying? God became a man in flesh. Paul would say in Colossians chapter 1, he says, Listen, at one time you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. He says, Remember when you weren't a Christian? But now he has reconciled you by Christ's, listen to this, he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation. This is the gospel you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a servant. Why did he say that? Because he was dealing with the Gnostics. He was dealing with this heresy. You have been reconciled through some ethereal, mystical, existential, rational, unbelievable myth. Is that what he said? Did he say to the Christians, you have believed a myth? He makes a point in Colossians 1, 21 and 22 to say, you have been reconciled by the physical body, by the physical death, by the physical resurrection of a physical Christ who was fully human and fully God. And then he warns them in Colossians 2, verse 8. He says, See to it. Now listen, listen to me. See to it. That's an imperative. It's almost as though he says, Wake up, become alert, see to it, that no one, no one Takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy. You college students ought to remember that one the next time you're in class. Which depends on, now here is what he calls empty, hollow, deceptive philosophy. Here's what he says it is. Colossians 2, verses 8, 9, and 10. Empty, human, hollow, deceptive philosophy depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. And then he goes on and says, for in Christ all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form. And you have been given fullness of Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. So much for the divine spark theory. The divine spark theory that every man has this spark of deity in him, and that this spark was the key to unlocking the mysteries of knowledge to gain greater spiritual illumination. The heresy caused many in the church to seek hidden knowledge beyond what God reveals in his word. And so the word of God became secondary, and other documents, other texts began to emerge as systems of truth. That's where the cults come from. Every cult today has its own writings beyond the scriptures, don't they? Every cult has it. Why? Because man is still asking that question: in what can I place my trust? Whom can I trust? What can I trust? And he looks around and he says, Well, I guess I better trust myself. I better trust my own mind. Even in that first century church, it became a very elite, exclusive movement that held that the Christian who found truth in the Word of God alone was unenlightened and naive. The Christian who believed that the Bible was his sole source of wisdom and authority, who believed in the supernatural, was considered unenlightened and naive. It's true today. Very few churches hold to the doctrines of inerrancy. Very few churches hold to the integrity of the book, even in the miracles. When we say that we read in the scriptures, Jesus miraculously fed 5,000 people, do you know what we mean? We mean here that he miraculously fed 5,000 people. We don't mean that he shared his lunch and gave an example that caught on like a contagious wildfire, and everybody else shared their lunches. When we say that he physically rose from the dead, you know what we're saying by that? When the angels came and rolled away the stone, he was gone. They didn't come to roll away the stone to let him out. They came and rolled away the stone to let us in, so that we could see that he was risen just as he said. How did he rise? Physically from the dead. The liberals say. It's a spiritual resurrection. That's evil. Right out of the kingdom of hell, it's evil. The sad part is it is the basic philosophical system of mainline Protestantism today and our educational institutions across the country. Why? Because we can't prove it, we can't verify it, we can't put it in a test tube, we must hold it up to the scrutiny of our own reasonable minds, our own puny little brains. And if it doesn't jive, it can't be true. Paul says of these saying, hurting Christians, my purpose is, Colossians 2, too, that you may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that you may have the full riches of complete understanding in order that you may know the mystery of God. Namely, now what's the mystery of God? Namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures and wisdom of knowledge. What's he pointing us to? What's he telling us we need to look to? Where is this truth to be discovered? Paul would say to the Corinthian Christians, who were very worldly, by the way, very prone to this kind of empty deceit. 1 Corinthians 1.20, he says, Where's the wise man? Where's the wise man? Then he says, Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? You know, it's interesting, especially as I talk to college students, especially as I talk about what their professors are saying and teaching in their classes. I'll tell you, I thank God for Christian professors who are on the campus. And there are some good Christian professors on campus. One of them is a PCA pastor, by the way, a good friend of ours, who teaches a philosophy class, quite a challenge for him down there on the campus, to be a Christian teaching the philosophies of world religions. Interesting work that he has. And I gotta tell you, it rips his heart out when he hears the students talk. But you know what amazes me when I hear about the rationalistic liberal thinkers who are teaching our young people how little they know about Bible interpretation. They know nothing about how the Bible is to be properly interpreted. They have no science of hermeneutics, they have no rules of discovery, they have no rules of evidence, they don't know how to take something within its grammatical context, its historical context, its literary context, its canonical context. In fact, they have no clue as to what those words even mean. And that's the science of Bible interpretation. Yet they subject this book to rules of scrutiny that they would not submit Shakespeare to. They change the rules because fundamentally they don't want to believe what this book says. Problem is our students sit there and go, they don't know what to say. Paul says, Where's the scholar? Where's the wise man? Where is the philosopher of this age? And then he makes this profound statement has not God made Christ foolish the wisdom of the world? He invented a word, by the way. He put the word Christ and the word foolish together and came up with a whole new word. Called it Christ foolish. Has he not made Christ foolish the wisdom of this world? But God chose the Christ foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He says, someone asks, How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come? Then he answers it this way: how Christ foolish. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies, and then goes on and explains to us why Christians must believe in a physical resurrection from the dead. He would say to the Galatians, you foolish, Christ foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or did you receive the Spirit by believing what you heard? Are you so Christ foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? These are the rationalists. This is what they're teaching us: human effort, spark of deity, verifiable in my own mind. Where are you, scholars? You know what's going to be interesting? And I'll tell you, on the one hand, as a Christian who loves and wants to love the unsaved of the world, I am significantly burdened. And it grieves me to think of what it's going to be like on that day of judgment. But there's that carnal side of me that says, boy, I want to be there. I want to be standing there. When Christ brings up to judgment those liberal pastors and those rationalistic unbelievers who have inculcated the mindset of our young people with phony doctrines out of the pit of hell? I want to be there. When Jesus Christ, the King and the Judge, stands there and they are face to face with him. And the question is asked by God the Father, what have you done with my Son, Jesus Christ? Who came, who died, who rose from the dead? Well, Jesus came also within the culture of the Pharisees, not just the Sadducees. These were the legalists. Let me define religionists to you. You see, the Pharisees, just as the Sadducees were the rationalist of their day, so the Pharisees were the religionist of their day. These were the legalists that placed requirements and burdens on man that God did not place on him. And that legalism led to a form of, listen, traditionalism that deifies the past. And there are many people this way who deify the past. They refuse to admit that our God is a fluid God who aims at and hits moving targets. The church needs to be continually on the move, continually fluid, continually pulsating. But the religionists, and there are some who exist in every church, including this church, are the people who are hooked on the traditions of the past, which is fine. But they deify those traditions and say God cannot be a fluid God to change his methodologies to become more relevant to an ever-changing culture without compromising the distinctives of our faith. And you know what that does in a lot of churches? When you have on the one hand the traditionalists and on the other hand the progressives, usually what happens in most churches is it creates what? Division that categorizes on the basis of burdensome laws, and that church becomes a lukewarm church made up of practical atheists who hold tenaciously to orthodox doctrine, but haven't a clue as to how that doctrine is to be lived out in the context of everyday life. You see, what matters to these people is self-advantage. It's what's in it for me. It's how can I build a large estate? How can I build a kingdom of power? How can I hold and bind people in such a way so as to gain a following? Marry them to the past, place on them burdensome laws, create division within the body, capture as many for my purposes as I possibly can, and create in them a mindset that says, God only works one way, and that's my way. Revelation chapter 3 to the angel of the church at Laodicea. Write. These are the words of the Amen. You know what Amen means? So be it. We usually say it at the end of prayers, right? It means what we've just said, Amen, so be it. That's the end. Here's what he writes, verse 14, chapter 3. Here are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. I know your deeds. We could stop right there and close up shop, couldn't we? I know your deeds. End of discussion. I know your deeds. That you are neither cold nor hot. Now, by the way, that doesn't mean liberal or conservative. It doesn't mean fundamentalist or social gospelite. Remember what he's talking about here. I stand at the door and knock. Now, typically we have that picture of Jesus. Most of you have it in your living room somewhere, or in your Bible somewhere. He's standing outside of a door and he's knocking at the door. We use it evangelistically, don't we? We say, standing at the door of your heart, knocking. If you hear my voice, open the door, I'll come in and sup with you. The problem with that is the context. He is not speaking to the unsaved when he says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. He's speaking to the church. He's speaking to his people. And he's been locked out of his own church. Isn't that amazing? He says, I know you're neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other. You know, some of the most disturbing people to be around are people where you don't know where they stand. They're very disturbing people to be around. Politicians like to be this way. Not all of them, some of them. It depends on who's in the crowd, what they say. It's like come down somewhere, land somewhere, take a position, and regardless of what we say about the rationalist professor on the campus, I can admire him in this context. At least you know where he stands. At least you know what he believes. It's when you come into the context of church life and you stand up and say, I believe A, B, C, D, and E, but practically you live out as though you believe F, G, H, I, and J. And that inconsistency that never seems to meet creates a great disillusionment within the church. And a lukewarmness falls over the body that makes the Spirit of God, not my language, his language, want to throw up. I mean, he could not use stronger language. I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, I'm rich, I've acquired wealth, I don't not need a thing. You know, that'd be easy for a church like this to say, wouldn't it? Wouldn't that be easy for a church like this to say? Wow, we've got great numbers, beautiful buildings, budget surpluses, people who are committed, people who love the Lord. Wonderful music program. Great people, handsome pastor. What else do you want? What else do you need? Right? Wrong. He says, come down and land and tell me where you stand. You know, I think it's about time for some of you Christian men who are living out there in the world who hold positions of influence to take a stand. I think it's time for the people who work under you, with you, beside you, and in front of you, I think it's time for them to know what you stand for and where you stand. I'm not saying for one minute, I'm not saying for one minute, use company time to evangelize. I think that's wrong. You're there to work. But I think it's time for you to model your life and to ask yourself this question. Why has God placed me into this position of responsibility and power? So that I can have a great vacation? Just as quickly as you rose to that position of prominence, he can take it away. You know that, and I know that. If your trust is in the corporate world, you have already lost. Take a stand, be counted, but not lukewarm. Either deny that you know him or love him with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength, but don't sit in the middle because that makes God want to throw up. That doesn't only apply to those of you who hold positions of responsibility and power. I only mention that because I don't believe God places any of us into positions of responsibility without liabling us to satanic attack. Well, we've got a third group of people that surrounded Christ in that day, the Herodians. Now, the Herodians spoke out of both ends of their mouths. You know what I mean by that? They were the epitome of lukewarmness. The Herodians served Rome as their stooges while claiming to be Jews. So they were Jews who served Rome. They were compromisers. Today we would call them the relativist. Not only do we have the rationalist who's raising questions, and the religionist who's raising questions, but we also have the relativist. Now here's what the relativist says today, just like the Herodian. Spiritual reality is to be perceived apart from human intellect and my natural senses. It looks for truth internally, weighs feelings, intuition, other internal sensations more heavily than objective, observable, external data. Now, mysticism ultimately derives its authority from some sort of self-actualized, self-authenticating light that rises up from within me. Its source of truth is spontaneous feeling. It's what I feel at the moment rather than objective fact. In its most extreme form, in the East, it's called Hinduism. In the West, it's called New Ageism. It establishes its moral code on the basis of some inner light. In other words, every man does what is right in his own eyes. Truth is not truth unless my inner light tells me that it's truth. Therefore, what I do morally is either right or wrong if I think it is. Furthermore, you are considered to be narrow and intolerant or phobic if you dare to codify a moral law or an absolute that calls my lifestyle wrong. Are you following me? That's the relativist. That's what the Herodian was. Speaking out of both ends of their mouths, what Isaiah would say in chapter 5, verse 20: woe to those who call good evil, and who call evil good, who put darkness for light, and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. That heresy, by the way, is alive and well today. We are then reduced to believe in a God who doesn't care, a Christ who is deluded, a Holy Spirit who lives only in the neighborhood of make believe, and a church that is intellectually naive, moralistically neutral, and socially irrelevant. Salvation through Christ the Lord. Too narrow. Salvation by faith is salvation by works. Felt need replaces real need. Hell becomes soul sleep. Divine sovereignty pales in the backdrop of human free will. God is then bound to prove Himself to us and see if my light internally corresponds to the light external. And if it doesn't, then the light external, which is God's light, is to be rejected. That's why when you watch these talk shows on TV, every aberrant behavior in society is called normal. And any of you who dare to codify something morally that says that's wrong, you're usually tagged with the label phobic, and you put whatever prefix you want in front of it. Homophobic or whatever other phobic you want to be. In other words, when you tell that person his or her lifestyle is contrary to the word of God, you are holding a moral absolute up to them, and you see those who are relativists reject moral absolutes. Talked to parents recently whose kids go to junior high school in another school. I won't tell you which one. They said the teacher has a group session, and the question that's asked of the group is, would you sell your parents? Would you sell your parents? Now, you have to kind of stand back for a second and say, what in the world does that have to do with education? You know what it has to do with education? The teaching of relativism and the denial of moral absolutes. I read in Dobson's newsletter some time ago when he was commenting on the judicial system in our country. And specifically, he was dealing with the O.J. Simpson trial and the Menendez trial. Now, in particular, the Menendez brothers. These were grown men, grown men who literally took a shotgun and blew the heads of their parents off. They planned it, they executed it. In fact, the Menendez mother wasn't quite dead yet, and one of the brothers loaded his gun back up again as she's crawling to the door and blows her head off. They then take the money, go on a $700,000 spending spree, buying a Porsche, everything else in between, and some slick $600 an hour lawyer and lawyer team brings these men up on trial and somehow convinces a jury that the reason they blew their parents' brains out was because they were abused as children. Somehow or another, they became the victims. That's what relativism leads to. The victimization of our society. Everybody's a victim. Who will forget? The riots in LA. When Reginald Denny is pulled out of his truck, thrown onto the ground, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is beaten to a pulp. One man takes his foot and puts it on his neck, while the other one takes a brick and slams it down on his face and literally splits open his head. And then does a demonic dance around this bleeding body on the ground only to go to trial and be tagged as a victim and walks with literally nothing in the way of penalty and punishment because he was a victim of turbulence and riot. Somehow or another, the justice system has meted out a relativism that victimizes anybody and everybody. I don't believe O.J. Simpson, I may be wrong, will spend one day in jail. Whether he's innocent or guilty is not the point. The fact is, he has the money to get the kind of trial that will get him off. The little pauper sitting out there who may or may not have committed the same crime will not get the same kind of justice. You know, they're worried. Lawyers on both sides are worried about what? Can he really get a fair trial? He's getting the fairest possible trial any human being could get, and he's getting it because he can buy it. Now I don't know whether he's innocent or guilty. I, for one, hope he's innocent. I hope and pray that we don't have an American tragedy in terms of him. But you see, the American tragedy's already happened. There are two people who are dead. The tragedy's already occurred. You see, I don't see O.J. Simpson on trial. I see our court system and our system of justice on trial. You know what that is? That's nothing more than the birth child of relativism, of the failure of our society to come up with any moral absolutes. So we search for truth, and we don't find it. Nothing's permanent, nothing's stable. And that's what the zealots said. They were the fourth group of people, the political zealots. The solution to man's dilemma can be found in the institutions of our society. We can trust the social, scientific, geopolitical structures of man. They'll find the answers to the problems of disease and crime and war and injustice. We must simply keep fighting the curse of evil, even though we no longer know what evil is, until we attain a world order of peace and prosperity and equity. Any human institution which promotes this new world order, this knitting together of the nations of the earth in a world of peace and safety and prosperity is to be held in messianic esteem. Anyone or anything resistant to this quest for a structural messiah is considered to be an enemy of peace and is to be ridiculed until he fades into the oblivion of history. If the historical record of this quest for a geopolitical messiah contradicts what the zealots propose to be the truth, then you either silence the critics or you revise the record of history. We have both. Woe to those, Isaiah would say, who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sights. Zealots were a dime a dozen in Jesus' day. Their whole idea of bringing in the kingdom of God was by political might, by structural might, by geopolitical change, and they were the ones who were willing to die, if necessary, to bring a political solution to the problems. Rationalism. Herodianism. The zealots, the politicists. And then finally, we have the Greco-Roman culture, or what I would call today the Hedonist. Here's what the Hedonist says, and I'll close with this. It is in the pursuit of pleasure, power, control, and the satiating of my every desire that I will place my trust. After all, the only one who can make me happy is me. Values are to be determined by one overarching principle. What's in it for me? After all, I am the victim. Therefore, all who can be found to point the finger at for the suffering I have to endure, they are the ones who are responsible for fixing the problem and ensuring my happiness. Any and all who invade this process with platitudes or judgments, calling my quest for pleasure sin or self-centeredness or greed, they are to be condemned for their critical and heartless spirit. If the values and the taboos of my society hinder the pursuit of happiness, that is my happiness, then those values and taboos must be altered, eliminated, or redefined for my purposes. It is in this pursuit alone that I place my trust. Sensual indulgence and the lack or the loss of spiritual perception go hand in hand. Drink is their life, sex is their life, pleasure is their life. So a man, Isaiah says, will be brought low, and mankind humbled, and the eyes of the arrogant will be humbled. So then the question is: having said all of this, is there someone or something I can trust? The rationalist offers no hope, the religionist offers no hope, the relativist offers no hope, the politicist offers no hope, the hedonist offers no hope. Where then can we turn for hope? And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the Christ glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord. This will be the sign. You will find a baby wrapped in clothes and lying in the manger. Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly hosts appeared with the angel praising God and saying, Christ glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests. And the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his Christ glory, the Christ glory of the one and the only who came from the Father full of grace and truth. If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his father's Christ glory with the holy angels. For the Son of Man is going to come in his father's Christ glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. At that time, the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great Christ glory. When the Son of Man comes in his Christ glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly Christ glory. That's who you can trust. But stand. For the patience of these people this morning, Lord, we give you the praise. We thank you that this service, as full as it's been, has sought to glorify you. We seek nothing but Christ's glory. Father, you are the one we trust. All others have come up short. Empty, vain, ridiculous arguments. And here we stand as your people, knitted together by one common bond. Our belief that Jesus Christ is the hope of your glory. That he is our Savior. Now may the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of his Holy Spirit abide with each of you now until Christ comes again and forevermore. And all God's people said.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

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