Envy the Wicked? (Part 2)

Actor Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in the winter blockbuster Lord of the Rings, confesses,"Whenever I stay at a hotel, I always check to see if they have a Gideon Bible, and if they do I tear out a page," says the openly gay actor. "I turn to Leviticus 18:22 and rip out that page, which is directed against homosexuals…. I think by now I must have ripped out a few hundred."

His motives, McKellen adds, are purely altruistic.

"Who knows? There might be someone who has insomnia who reads the Bible because they have nothing else to do and who might be especially vulnerable to what I really think is Leviticus's pornography."

And the disdain and rejection of the Bible continues today. This is the reality from the very beginning. Questioning, doubting, rejecting the Word of God since the beginning in the garden. Instead of listening and obeying the Word of God we subject it to our judgement, to God’s true intentions, to our investigations, to our conclusions, to our discovery, what we see, what we decide, what we can see with our own eyes, to our own independent testing, to our own fact checking. The Bible is continuously subjected to our judgement. We read the Bible and something we feel is not right about it and now we need it explained and justified before we can accept and obey. Why does it need to be explained? Are we actually gonna be in the position where we would disagree with God?

There was a pastor who told me that his wife thought that Jesus was wrong for praising Mary for sitting and listening to Jesus rather than hosting and serving their guests. My question was… who said that hosting is serving is more important than listening to Jesus. My other question, why would you want to? Who said that hosting and serving is more important than hearing the Word? And who said that any thing we would do is more important than hearing the Word? Why in the World is God’s Word ever to be subjected to our judgment and our standard of right and wrong? Why would we ever trust our limited ability and limited knowledge to be able to handle the knowledge of good and evil. Deciding right and wrong for ourselves?

If there is one thing that we have seen in basic philosophical studies specifically when it comes to ethics and meta ethnic… there is no ethical system that any philosopher/man has developed that is able to acquire any kind of objective morality. Plato’s republic failed, Aristotle’s Eudaemonia failed, Hume’s natural affections, Kant’s Pure Reason, Mill’s Utilitarianism, James’ Pragmatism, and the 1960’s model called if it feels good do it. None of it worked. None can be universal and none can be objective. There is no ultimate authority.

The Bible it the source of truth. It is the ultimate of authority. It is the self-authenticating axiom for all knowledge. Without God you cannot make sense of anything. Logic, math, reason, science all make no sense nor have any value without God. Without God you cannot prove anything. In order for there to be truth there must be comprehensive knowledge of something. Only God has that. Only God can reveal that… do we have that? Yes. Its called the Bible. There is no question. Nothing else has what it brings to the table. All that anyone would need for life and godliness.

This is why we do not envy the wicked. The wicked are far from rescue and reason for this is that they disregard the Word of the living God. Lets take a look.

Psalm 119:155 NLT

The wicked are far from rescue, for they do not bother with your decrees.

The grass withers the flower fades but the word of our god stands forever.

Word Rejection

Word Salvation

The first thing we will look at today is the reality of the rejection of the Word of God and its consequences. Second, we will look at how the Word of God makes us wise for salvation and rescue.

Thesis: Though sin and the pattern of this world causes us to become more and more blinded to the light of the Word of God, it is the power of the Holy Spirit and the truth of the Scriptures that will cause us to see the value and power of the scriptures to lead us to salvation and rescue.

I. Word Rejection

- They do not seek the Word.

A. They are far from being saved by God, because they do not seek the Word of God. How important is the Bible. Um Very. Foundational to their destruction and judgement is their failure to hear the Word of God. How are they to know their plight? How will they know their state before God? How will they know about their sin and guilt? How will they know about the coming judgement and condemnation? How will they know that there is salvation? Without the Word of God the question is how… this is why they are far from rescue. They will never call on the name of the Lord because they don’t know they need to.

Spurgeon vividly writes, “They do not try to be obedient, but quite the reverse. They seek themselves, they seek evil, and therefore they never find the way of peace and righteousness. When people have broken the statutes of the Lord, their wisest course is to seek forgiveness by repentance, and by faith to seek salvation. Then salvation is so near them that they will not miss it, but when the wicked continue to seek after disobedience, salvation is set further and further from them. Salvation and God’s statutes go together. Those who are saved by the King of grace love the statutes of the King of Glory. The main reason people are not saved is that they get away from the Word of God.”

B. And making things worse is the church’s failure to proclaim the biblical Jesus and the biblical gospel to the world. As I showed last week how pulpits all over the world are preaching the Bible less and less. People know the Bible less and less… so the Bible is seen as less and less. Once atheist told me, why should he take the Bible seriously, you guys don’t. Some of the worse critics of the Bible these days are from many who call themselves christian.

C. The Word of God is not proclaimed properly nor authentically. For many today trying to build a church know that preaching the Bible will not help you do it. You will offend people. We are being told by church growth consultants not to preach the Bible but tell uplifting stories. Don’t make people feel bad about themselves. Yup this is another judgement on the wicked and the wealthy… the church is so concerned about growth and power and influence that they wont tell you the church. The very entity that God gave the world as ambassadors of the gospel are not gonna tell you the truth because they don’t want to offend you. They want you and won’t say anything that might rattle you. This is the plight of the wicked… they will not read your words and those who are to tell them what is in the Word won’t. This is why they are far from rescue. How horrible is that.

D. They reject the Bible because of an improper understanding of the Bible. Shane the Bible cannot be trusted because it makes erroneous statements and errs in knowledge. It call a bat a bird, but we all know its a mammal.

Leviticus 11:13–19 NLT

“These are the birds that are detestable to you. You must never eat them: the griffon vulture, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, the kite, falcons of all kinds, ravens of all kinds, the eagle owl, the short-eared owl, the seagull, hawks of all kinds, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the barn owl, the desert owl, the Egyptian vulture, the stork, herons of all kinds, the hoopoe, and the bat.

E. The Hebrew word translated Bird is Owph which is more literally understood as a “winged creature”. This is the classification of the people at the time. So would you say that a bat is a winged creature. Bible is not correcting science, but communicating to us. Do we think deception when groceries stores stock tomatoes with all the vegetables, when we all know its a fruit. Do we call everyone who says sunrise and sunset a liar and not believe anything they say.

F. But the Bible clearly errs when it says that the rabbit chews the cud. It doesn't. The Bible is wrong here.

Leviticus 11:6 NLT

The hare chews the cud but does not have split hooves, so it is unclean.

G. Rabbits at the least look like the cud chewing animals. They chewing on something. Cud chewing animals have multiple stomachs and practice what is called rumination. It is chewed swallowed into one stomach then it is regurgitated to be chewed on more and then swallowed into a different stomach. Rabbits are called cecotropes because they practice cecotrophy. This is small pellets of partially digested food that passes through the digestive system of the rabbit and then the rabbit re-ingests it and keeps its in their mouth kneading it for sometime before swallowing it again.

H. Now if we understand chewing the cud as a chewing n order to re-ingest, or more literally to eat that which is brought fourth again, we can easily say that the rabbit does indeed chew the cud. Not in the same way as the main ruminants, but definitely do it in a different way.

I. Try as you may and try as you might… there is no way you will find an error in the scriptures. It is the self authenticating. It is our axiom for knowledge. It is the very breath of God. And one more time… It is a reliable collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses, reporting supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed their writings are Divine and not of human origin. Written by approx 40 men from different backgrounds over the course of 1500 years. Over 25,000 NT manuscripts in Greek Latin Coptic and other languages from the 1st century to the 16th century with numerous variants but clearly not one article of faith or precept of duty is affected at all. With all that there is… the message of the scriptures are not altered in any way. No assertion of contradictions has ever been confirmed. It has survived every skeptic. Survived every attack. Every attempt to annihilate it has failed. Every time it is attacked… when the dust settles the scriptures are still standing. Heaven and earth will pass away but the Word of God will remain forever. Nothing else in this world even comes close. The Bible has clearly made the claim that it is the Word of God and it is showing itself to be and has clearly shown itself to be the Word of God. No way around it. No way. Nothing else in this world even comes close. When all is said and done… it was good enough for our psalmist with limited revelation, it is surely good enough for us now complete and once and for all.

J. We do not envy the wicked because they are far from rescue because they reject the Word of the living God. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools. They wallow in the darkness, ignorant, calling the truth that we speak lies. The reject the Word of God because it is the word of God and they will not surrender to the Word of God. They want to decide right and wrong. Man is the center of all things. By who’s standard do you judge? The majority? The strong? Might makes right until the mightier makes rightier until the mightiest makes rightiest. Then the mightiest find out is not the mightiest. It all fails but they do not care they will never surrender to God nor to His Word.

II. Word Salvation

- Make one wise unto salvation.

A. And they wont because of this thing called sin. Do we not understand it? I mean many times when the world judges God for the terrible and horrible things He does, I ask why do you think its horrible. It is what God does to those who have rebelled, rejected, disrespected, and dishonored the living God. You do this to a powerful leader in our world and he will do the worst to you. So why is God different?

B. The reality is that the Bible declares that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is no one righteous no not one. No one seeks God. There is no one on earth who always does good and never sins. We are all by nature children of wrath. And the wrath of God is coming. Judgement is coming for those who are condemned… and everyone is condemned. But the Word of God tells us another thing… we can be saved from all of this.

C. Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures and he was buried and he was raised from the dead according to the scriptures. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came in to this world to save sinners. Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. He became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. By his wounds we are healed.

D. And the promises continues… All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your hearts that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved. Believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God and you will have life in His name.

E. This is what is found in the Word of the living God that does not err it does not fail… and when heaven and earth passes away it will still remain.