God in the 21st Century

What I wanted to do tonight is address where God stands in regards to the 21st century. The short answer is that where God is, is where He has always been. He has always been seated upon the throne, He has always ruled over all things, and He will reign over all things forever. We know this and we know that evil, sin, Satan, and false teaching will not win the war of the universe. But we do need to know how we can keep God at the forefront in a world that seems to be devolving into greater ungodliness. Take look at what Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3 or Romans 1 or what Peter says in 2 Peter 1-2, it reads like it was written after the men picked up today’s newspaper. We need to know how to address the heresy’s of our day. Wherever you go, you are going to find false teaching. There is false teaching on the television, there is false teaching on the internet, there is false teaching on Christian radio, there is false teaching in Christian bookstores, there is false teaching within churches. Just because it has the name Christian does not make it truly Christian. Just because it is associated with a church and has an appearance of godliness does not make it a true church or a truly godly thing. The greatest threat to the church comes from the inside. Ungodly men can put us to death but what we have seen from history is that all persecution does is really ramp up Christianity. What is incredible is that anytime in history where you see widespread persecution, revival happens practically at the same time or immediately after. The greatest threat outside of the church ultimately grows the church. The greatest threat then must come from the inside and we need to be able to address that. As Christians, we come from a long line of godly men and women who have stood against false teachings. I think of Martin Luther and what the Lord did through him. In 1520, Luther wrote three tracts that all attacked the false teaching that was spewing out of the Catholic Church. The first in August of 1520 was called To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation and it addressed the Catholic belief that only the Pope was capable of interpreting Scripture and in the book Luther argues for the priesthood of all believers. The second, and maybe the most popular, came in October called On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and he argued that the Catholic doctrines and traditions were keeping the true Church from being able to serve the Lord. Luther argued that just as the Babylonians kept the Jews captive, the Pope and Catholic theology was holding the Church captive. Finally one month later came Luther’s On the Freedom of a Christian which absolutely obliterates the Catholic belief of Salvation by faith plus works. What Luther does so well is that he takes the viewpoint held by his opponent and he breaks down the argument until there is nothing left. One of the greatest examples that I have ever read is Luther’s Bondage of the Will. If you’ve never read The Bondage of the Will, you need to read it. In September of 1524, Desiderius Erasmus wrote The Freedom of the Will which was an attack on Luther and his teaching on the will and it got a lot of attention because everyone waited for Luther to respond but he doesn’t respond. Over a year goes by and Luther doesn’t say anything so people start to think, “Did Erasmus actually shut Luther up?” No one ever shut Luther up before. Luther himself probably couldn’t do it. But in December of 1525, Luther released The Bondage of the Will to the world and it totally destroys every argument that Erasmus made in his own book. Erasmus wasn’t a theologian, he was a humanist but he was an incredibly intelligent man. Luther wrote that the reason that he took so long to reply was not because he had been bested but because his friends prodded him to respond. Luther practically says to Erasmus, “Erasmus, the reason that it took me so long to respond to you was not because your arguments were sound and required much thought, the reason that it took me so long to respond was because I was hoping and waiting that you would write something better. Your book is so vile and the arguments that you have produced are so poor that it is like you have served me dung on a silver platter.” Then page after page, line after line, Luther proceeds to demolish Erasmus’s argument. Luther knew how to fight for what he believed in. He knew how to address the false teaching of his day and he didn’t back down. It has been attributed to Luther that he once made this famous statement: “If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” So, where is the truth of God being attacked in our day? I want to look at two main thoughts that seem to be plaguing the church today: Deconstruction theology and LGBTQ theology. What does God say about that? Before we even get to that though, I want us to take a look at what Paul writes in Colossians 2:4-8. Paul addresses false teaching in this section that I think sounds fairly similar to what we see happening in our world today. Let’s pray and then we will dive into God’s Word. Paul writes:

Colossians 2:4–8 ESV

I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

The Colossian Heresy

What Paul is writing about here and throughout his letter to the Colossians is a heresy and false teaching that had plagued the church in Colossae. It has gone down in history as being known simply as the Colossian heresy and it was actually about 4 heresy’s in 1 package. As Paul writes to the Colossians, he is addressing what would become known in the second century of Gnosticism. It was this philosophy of hidden knowledge that was revealed as later revelation to the church but it was always man-centered theology. We could spend a lot of time dissecting each heresy that Paul addresses but to keep it simple, the Colossians were being told that certain traditions needed to be followed in order to be saved. They believed that angels were worthy of being worshiped. They believed that Jesus was not fully God and that He was just in line with the angels. These are serious problems that need to be confronted and they were happening within the church. Douglas Moo said, “The false teachers were probably people from within the Colossian Christian community who were bragging about their ability to find ultimate spiritual ‘fulfillment’ via their own program of visions and asceticism.” Paul writes in Colossians 2:18-19 “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.” The false teachers in Colossae were insisting on following human thoughts, human will, and while Christ brought it all together, it was not from Christ. Thomas Schreiner said, “The fundamental problem was that it wasn’t Christ-centered; instead, it was in accord with human tradition and it could not deliver on its promises.” There are so many isms today, so many philosophies that have tried to destroy the church from the inside and when you deny central beliefs of Christianity, you are denying Christ and are an apostate. To deny the Lordship and deity of Christ is apostasy and if you don’t believe in that, I believe I stand with Scripture and say that you are not really a believer in Jesus Christ. If you insist on the worship of anything other than God Himself, you are not a Christian. The reason that we do apologetics could be summarized by Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.” So let’s look at these philosophies and human traditions that is deconstruction and LGBTQ theology.

Deconstruction Theology

What is deconstruction? In the youth ministry world, this is a term that we hear quite a bit these days. I get more tiktoks and more questions about deconstruction than any other topic maybe even more than questions on LGBTQ issues. This is something that has really grown in the past decade and there hasn’t been a whole lot, I think published on what the church should do in regards to deconstruction. So, what do we mean when we talk about deconstruction? There is a lot out there and it is hard to really narrow down what it means but to put it simply, deconstruction is based on philosophy and critically breaking down tradition or what has been traditionally taught. In the Church, what this looks like is a rejection of the inerrancy of Scripture, it is a rejection of the authority of God and of the Bible, and many claim that they are simply trying to get to a more pure or direct version of Christianity. Yet to do this, they are pretty much saying that they want a version of Christianity that they get to define the parameters of. You have some people who look at the Church and want to deconstruct key elements of worship. These people reject the authority of God’s Word and reject Biblical teaching. Jon Bloom writes, “Deconstruction is a critical dismantling of a person’s understanding of what it means to be an evangelical Christian.” Deconstruction has almost become just the popular thing to do. Celebrities like Rhett and Link, Joshua Harris, even John Piper’s son Abraham, and Jon Steingard from Hawk Nelson have all deconstructed their faith, some walking away from Christ entirely. If you are in the church or familiar with Christian teaching and don’t like what it has to say, deconstruction says that you are free to deny that teaching and live how you want. It teaches that you should challenge and question the legitimacy of what God has said in His Word. Now I am all for making sure that what a pastor says lines up with Scripture. I believe Scripture supports that, especially if you look at the Bereans in Acts 17 because they took what Paul was saying and immediately checked Scripture to make sure that it was true. But there is a big difference between reconstructing and deconstructing your faith. We should always be deconstructing that which is in us which is contrary to the Word of God and we should be reconstructing to stay true to the Word of God. So, how do we handle this as the church? Where do you start with this problem? First off we must be faithful. We must be caring because the people that are deconstructing from within the church are hurt and broken people. They need to know they are loved and they need to know that it is ok to look for answers. But they need to know where to look for them. The answers that they are looking for cannot come from within themselves because we are far too wishy washy and we are sinners. Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Our first night together, you heard me talk about the student that I talked to at camp who said that she gets her assurance from her own heart and feelings and when I asked her, “What do you do if those feelings change?” She just shut me down and moved on. This is why I say that deconstruction, while ultimately a heart issue, is more than likely an issue of biblical authority. What has God said? Because if God has said A it cannot mean B. If God is God, that means that all of creation answers to Him. I think that we must start with Scripture. The question is not, “Do you feel that what God has said is true?” The question is, “Has God spoken?” Because if God has spoken, as we believe He has in His Word, then God ultimately defines the intention of what He says. Many that are connected to deconstruction will say that they believe the Bible but they only believe in the parts that they like. They say things like the Bible is a word from God and not THE Word of God. Back in the 1950’s, Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave a series of lectures on authority and this is what he said in regards to how the world views the Bible then and it sounds like what is happening now 70 years later. Lloyd-Jones said, “The choice for us today is really as simple as it was for those first Christians in the early day. We either accept this authority or else we accept the authority of modern knowledge, modern science, human understanding, human ability. It is one or the other. Let us not be confused by the modern argument about a changed position. We are still left where believers have always been left. It is still Christ or the critics. For us, there is no real choice. On the one hand, trusting to human ability and understanding, everything is flux and change, uncertain and insecure, ever liable to collapse. On the other is not only the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture; but there is the Light of the world, the Word of God, the truth itself.” I think what we need to do is that one can only deconstruct so far until they have nothing left of what they started with. Let’s say that you have this belief that deconstruction is beneficial for your Christian faith or what’s left of it. I think we need to ask, what is the Christian faith then? We need to ask who Jesus is? We need to ask what the Bible teaches? Because it gets to a point where you aren’t left with anything. You can’t take part of the Bible and leave the rest of it behind. A.W. Tozer said that it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian. Where does one draw the line? So, let’s take the popular issue that they don’t believe that the Bible is authoritative. We ask, is Jesus God? Is Jesus the Savior? Is one saved through Jesus? And if they say yes to all those things we respond, “How do you know that? Is it not revealed in God’s Word? How do you know that is true? How do you know that hasn’t changed? How do you know that it wasn’t solely for a 1st century audience?” You see you do this enough and you will hopefully get them to see that their argument just doesn’t make sense. You take enough out of a pizza and you don’t have a pizza anymore. You take enough away from Christianity and you do not have authentic Christianity. Where do you get morality from? Where do you get justice from? Where do you get truth from? Eventually they get to a point in their argument, where they have to admit some degree of ignorance. Like I said a few weeks ago, apologist Cornelius Van Til used to tell his students that when it came to debating with unbelievers and atheists, all you have to do is let them talk and eventually they will hang themselves because their “theology” is not strong enough to support their worldview. A deconstructionists theology cannot support their worldview and their worldview cannot support their theology. They will say, “This is what I believe is true.” But what is truth then? Who gets to define what absolute truth is because what you say is true for you is not true for everyone. We do not get to run free and loose with the Bible. God’s interpretation is the sole correct interpretation of the Bible. So, one could argue this same line of reasoning over and over again because they have a worldview where they have no way of knowing because even if they see themselves as the sole source of assurance, even that can be challenged because their understanding is constantly evolving. What they think they know one day may not be what they think they know or feel the next day. We could say a lot more on this issue but I really want us to spend some time looking at the issues of LGBTQ and the theology that is associated with the progressive or woke movement.

LGBTQ Theology

Much of what we said in regards to deconstruction could be easily said in regards to the LGBTQ movement. First what I think we need to recognize as the Church is that we have made mistakes in regards to our neighbors. The Church is made up of imperfect people and I know many who treat same-sex sins as if they were totally unforgivable and I think for quite a while, many within the Church have operated in that way. We have not loved these people as we have loved ourselves. These are people that are being totally overwhelmed by the flesh and they need to see the truths of the Gospel. Jesus does not save us from our sins so that we might stay exactly who we are. In Christ we are a NEW creation. The old has passed and the new has come. The old man of sin is dead and the new man that lives by the spirit is here, if we are truly born again. I think first what Christians need to recognize is that we are not here to reaffirm sinful behavior of any kind. We don’t go around encouraging murderers to keep holding true to themselves and go become the next Ted Bundy. We don’t go around telling those who are stuck in sexual sin to keep on sinning. Alistair Begg made a great point where he noticed that in the eyes of the LGBTQ community, the church has to be one of 2 things. They can either hold to the Bible and be hateful or they can love and affirm them and their lifestyle. But Begg said, we cannot be affirming and we cannot be hateful but we must be loving and Biblical. We love them by holding to what is Biblical. It is a greater disservice if we simply affirm. It is like telling someone that identifies as a fish to stay underwater even if they run out of breath. Eventually what happens? They die! If someone holds onto any sin, if we reaffirm to them to keep living in that sin, they will die in that sin and go to hell. We love by pointing to what is true, we love by warning, not judging, but showing a way that is far better. How then do we respond to those that argue that the Bible is wrong in what it says about homosexuality? I’m sure that you have heard the arguments on how those that are in an LGBTQ lifestyle seek to do linguistic gymnastics to get the Bible to support what they believe. There was a website that I was doing some research for this on and I looked at some of the verses that they use to affirm LGBTQ behavior and I think I got stupider after looking at it. I mean the people who made these conclusions must have an incredibly strong pair of legs because you would have to have great legs to be able to jump to such a conclusion. They use the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8 to say that the early church was welcoming of non gender conforming people as if the eunuch willingly made the choice to remove parts of his body. They use Romans 8:38 as a message for all people and not just believers. They say that the word homosexual was not originally used when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 6 and that is true because Paul did not write in English. The Greek word that Paul does use arsenokoites means a man engaging in same gender sexual activity. They also argue against Leviticus 18 where we read in Leviticus 18:22 “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” There translation usually argues that God is saying that they are not to have incestuous or abusive relations. They argue that the Hebrews really says that a man should not lie with a boy, a young and underage boy which was a common practice in Canaanite culture and that is what the verse refers to. So, the Hebrew of Leviticus 18:22, and I’ll remind you that I am not a master of the Hebrew language. I suck at Hebrew but if you look at Leviticus 18:22 and you get a decent Hebrew to English lexicon the Hebrew word that they use as as male in the verse is zakar and if we think the verse is referring to underage boys we can read it as, “you shall not lie with a boy as with a woman” But here is the problem with that, in all of Hebrew Scripture, the word zakar is only used to describe a male child twice in all of the Hebrew Bible. Once in Leviticus 12:2 and then again in Isaiah 66:7 and they are both in reference to childbirth. The remaining 79 times that the word is used in Scripture it is always in reference to males of any age. So, when you go through Leviticus 18, there is no rational reason to interpret it as a young boy. What’s amazing though is that even if the progressives reject Leviticus 18, that does not explain Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.” They seem to ignore that part as if Leviticus 18 is the only place that the Bible condemns homosexuality. Let’s quickly talk about their other argument that Jesus never condemns same-sex attraction and practice as sin. While Jesus may not directly say, “Homosexuality is a sin” it can be clearly implied from His teachings. Jesus also never says, “The Trinity” but we can gather from His teachings that God is three in one. It is a horrible argument to say that something is ok simply because Jesus does not explicitly condemn it. Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus say anything about abortion so does that mean that He would approve of abortion? Nowhere does He say anything directly about molesting a child, does that mean He approves of it? Jesus technically does not explicitly condemn slavery either, does that mean that He would approve of the injustice that was associated with enslaving another human being? No, we can gather from what He does explicitly say that He would stand against all of those things. We also know that Jesus reaffirms traditional marriage between a man and a woman in Mark 10:7-8. Jesus condemns more than just homosexuality, He condemns any form of sexual immorality. Matthew 5:28 “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” and Matthew 15:19 “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” Nowhere can a case be made that Jesus did not have an opinion on traditional marriage and gender roles. I think a good case can be made to ask the question, if Jesus approved of same-sex sins, why does He not say that in the Gospels? Why has that never been passed down through the centuries? Jesus had no problem stirring the pot so if there was this grave misinterpretation of Scripture on the topic of homosexuality, why did He not bring it up. Surely, if there were people that came to Jesus that were struggling with same sex sin in a Jewish culture that condemned the practice, why did He not say anything to them? Wouldn’t thousands of years of struggle be removed if He just said one thing about it? But He never does! In fact, even the traditional argument that homosexuality was widely accepted in the Roman world, is not entirely true. While maybe not condemned, it was certainly not applauded. It was certainly not seen as normative so why then would Jesus having known all of this, not said a single thing about it? If progressives want to argue from silence, let them argue from that point. Why would Jesus, who is all about love and acceptance, not make a bigger effort to love and accept these people? Could it be that the reason He says nothing about it is because He stood for traditionally held Scriptural beliefs on human sexuality? The last thing that I want to address is the quote on quote gay Christian. This might sound cruel but I’ll stand by it and I’ll show you from Scripture where to find it, but there is no such thing as a gay Christian. How do we know this? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

1 Corinthians 6:9–11 ESV

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

So, there is no such thing as a gay Christian. There is also no such thing as an adulterous Christian. Or a drunk Christian. None of whom Paul mentions will enter into the Kingdom of God. What we can gather from this is that there will be no sinners in Heaven. Sin cannot be in God’s presence. The Christian must be washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of Jesus. Here is what we all need to remember, you cannot be a sinner and be in Heaven. But here is what we need to remind those that we come into contact with: you can struggle with sin and not be enslaved to sin. Paul is saying that those that are enslaved to these sins will not enter the kingdom. Those that struggle with sin can enter the Kingdom as long as they belong to Christ and are actively at war with sin. For me, as someone that struggles with anger, I am not enslaved to anger. I know that when I am having a spell of unrighteous anger that it is not good and it is something that I need corrected. Someone can struggle with same-sex attraction and be a Christian because we all struggle with sin. God did not make someone gay, God did not make someone in the wrong body, God makes us exactly who we are supposed to be and just because sin messes with our minds that does not mean that sin has to have the final word over our lives. Let’s pray and then we’ll discuss.