Sermon Tone Analysis

Authority

What is authority?

Who has authority?

Does everyone with authority use it for good?

Who gives authority?

Who is your authority?

It seems like everything they are an authority on everything.

I mean you can hardly get on FB without a middle schooler telling you how to fight inflation, or shoot down a spy balloon, or how to fight climate change.

And if you aren’t an authority on the topic du jour there’s a YouTube video and a TikTok-er ready to explain to you why they are an authority and why you should agree with them.

But even in the age where everyone believes they are an authority we simultaneously have a great distrust for authority.

WE don’t just the news, we don’t politicians, we don’t trust the cops, we don’t trust elections, we don’t trust education, we don’t trust pastors and churches, we don’t just power, we don’t trust people.

We have a pandemic of distrust.

And as trust in institutions break down, they is a vacuum of authority.

We create new authorities.

We listen to new voices.

We christen new figures of authority to guide us into a new future where everyone and no one is an authority.

This is dangerous.

Because we tend to listen to the voices that resonate with our lived experience and our desired outcome.

Paul the Apostle calls the people that flock to these authorities as people with itching ears.

We gatherer around the self appointed authority that scratched the itch.

Every side does it.

Conservatives and progressives.

Traditionalists and liberals.

Sinners and saints.

Everyone one of us is looking for autonomy and authority.

We don’t want to be told what to do and we also want the person who does tells us what to do to agree with us.

That’s not bad, unless it is.

It’s not bad unless it is.

What do I mean?

It’s not bad unless our desire for autonomy sets us up against goodness and truth.

It’s not bad to seek out an authority unless that authority sets us up against goodness and truth.

It’s not bad unless that autonomy and authority sets itself up against the ultimate authority.

It’s the challenge from the start, will we believe and will we trust the ultimate authority?

Who is that ultimate authority?

I believe there is an ultimate authority.

I believe there is One who whom is the source of all life and wisdom and beauty and love and rightness and truth.

I believe creation too complex to be random.

I believe life too meaningful to be the result of an happenstance.

I believe that matter doesn’t exist without cause.

I believe truth is truth.

Natural laws are constant and consistent because they were designed that way.

Dr. Jeff Miller puts it this way, “The law of science known as the Law of Causality, or Law of Cause and Effect, says that every material effect must have an adequate antecedent or simultaneous cause (Miller, 2011).

The Universe is a material effect that demands an adequate Cause, and atheism cannot provide one.

The truth is, God exists.

Often the atheist or skeptic, attempting to distract from and side-step the truth of this law without responding to it, retorts, “But if everything had to have a beginning, why does the same concept not apply to God? God needs a cause, too!

Who caused God?”

First, notice that this statement is based on a misunderstanding of what the Law of Cause and Effect claims concerning the Universe.

The law states that every material effect must have an adequate antecedent or simultaneous cause.

A law of science is determined through the observation of nature—not supernature.

The laws of nature do not apply to non-material entities.

The God of the Bible is a spiritual Being (John 4:24), and therefore is not governed by physical law.

In 1934, professor of philosophy at Princeton University, W.T. Stace, wrote in A Critical History of Greek Philosophy concerning causality: “[E]verything which has a beginning has a cause” (1934, p. 6, emp.

added).

God, according to the Bible, had no beginning.

Psalm 90:2 says concerning God, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God” (emp.

added).

The Bible describes God as a Being Who has always been and always will be—“from everlasting to everlasting.”

He, therefore, had no beginning.

Hebrews 3:4 again states, “every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God,” indicating that God is not constrained by the Law of Cause and Effect as are houses, but rather, is the Chief Builder—the Uncaused Causer—the Being who initially set all effects into motion.

Further, scientists and philosophers recognize that, logically, there must be an initial, uncaused Cause of the Universe.”

The y caused cause is the authority.

And that I caused cause is God.

So God is the ultimate authority.

And His authority has been challenged by the Satan since the beginning.

in Genesis 3, the serpent walks over to Eve, Adam nearby, to questions and challenges what God had spoken to them.

Notice the scheme of the Satan, the serpent.

First he questions “Did God really say?

See that’s always his first challenge.

He always starts by questioning God’s authority.

He wants us to question God’s authority.

To question if God really said that and if God really meant what He said.

The scheme of the Satan always begins by calling on you to answer the question, Did God Really Say?

The Satan hope to get you to disbelieve the word of the Authority.

But notice Eve’s response.

It’s the right one.

Eve gives the right response to the cunning question of the Tempter.

Yes, God really said not to eat it.

He said we would die if we indulged in the fruit of that one tree.

They wouldn’t die because it was forbidden.

It was forbidden because they would die.

They had life and they had God and they had the garden.

But the Tempter wanted them to believe that that wasn’t enough.

So notice the second part of his scheme.

“God doesn’t want you to eat because if you do you’ll be like Him and your eyes will be opened.

You’ll be enlightened.

You’ll know what God knows.

You’ll be an equal authority”

Remember Plan A was to get Eve to disbelieve the Authority.

Plan B is to get her to distrust the Authority.

See this.

The Tempter actually backs off of his initial claim.

He backs of his initial plan to call into question God’s authority and tries a new tactic, to call into question God’s motives.

If the Tempter cannot get you to disbelieve God’s authority he will attempt to get you to distrust God’s character.

He will attempt to get you to distrust God’s goodness and God’s love and God’s truth and God’s righteousness and God’s holiness and God’s power and God’s words.

If he can’t get to you disbelieve God he will work to get you to distrust God.

That’s the lesson of the serpent.

He’s cunning.

He’s scheming.

He’s deceitful.

He doesn’t only have one tactic.