Large crowds is dumbing down, saying truth doesn't
matter, doctrine isn't really significant, just getting people
here, feeling good, meeting felt needs is what
it's all about.
And the world has just discovered in the
crisis of terrorism, we must have a rock,
we must have truth, we must have right,
we must have wrong, we must have absolutes,
and suddenly it'll take us 30-40 years
to get back up to speed as a
church.
By that time the world won't be interested
in it.
Oh, how sad when the church is just
kind of floating along in the river of
culture.
I really do believe God revealed this doctrine
with others to put fiber into the limp
limbs of our tree of faith.
Third pastoral thought, the doctrine of election is
one of the best tests that I know
of as to whether or not we have
reversed roles with God without knowing it.
It's one of the best tests to see
whether or not we have reversed roles with
God without even knowing it.
This is a timeless problem, but it is
mainly and especially a modern problem.
By modern I mean in the last 200
years.
Modernity, life culture in the West in the
last 200 years, is basically defined by human
autonomy.
Human autonomy, independence, is assumed.
And authority is questioned.
We've seen the bumper stickers.
Question authority.
It just oozes the last two centuries since
the Enlightenment.
That's the name of humanity.
We question authority and we take the judgment
seat to decide if God exists.
We sit in judgment.
God is in the dock.
That's modernity.
Now Paul addressed this already in Romans 9
and he said to an objector who questioned,
why does God still find fault in view
of your doctrine?
Who can resist his will?
And Paul says, who are you, O man,
to answer back to God?
Will what is molded say to its molder,
why have you made me thus?
In other words, it's not fitting for you
to switch places.
It's not fitting for you to be the
potter.
God is God.
The doctrine of election, like no other probably,
helps us decide, are we judging God or
is God judging us?
Job, great help here.
The book of Job, all his defenses are
spent defending his innocence to God.
All of the half-truths of Eliphaz, Bildad,
and Zophar are over.
Now God has spoken in the last several
chapters of the book of Job and the
sum of the matter is given in chapter
42 like this.
Then Job answered the Lord and said, I
know that you can do all things and
that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did
not know.
And God responds, hear and I will speak.
I will question you and you make it
known to me.
In other words, let's not switch roles anymore,
Job.
I'm the teacher here.
If anybody accuses here, I accuse.
You're the learner, you keep quiet.
To which Job finally responds, I had heard
of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eyes see you, therefore I
despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.
There are so many people who have tasted
that as the doctrine of election broke over
them like a wave.
I had heard of you by the hearing
of the ear in Sunday school and in
my little reading and now my eye sees
you and I repent in dust and ashes
for years and years of man-centered presumption.
It is very hard for a fish to
know he is wet.
All there is for a fish is wet.
The fish doesn't even think of it and
so it's hard for a modern person to
know that he is arrogant towards God.
All there is today is arrogance towards God.
It's the ocean in which we swim.
It's the air we breathe.
It's woven into the fabric of our Christian
minds.
We don't even know it's there.
We can't see it because it's the it's
the glasses through which we see everything.
No, it's worse.
We can't see our arrogance or other people's
arrogance towards God, not because it's the glasses,
but because it's the eyeballs.
In other words, it's endemic to us.
It's not just put on.
It's us.
That's who we are.
Arrogant towards God.
Questioning, doubting, belittling, neglecting, putting him way down
the line after television.
Oh, how incredibly arrogant the world is.
It's the air we breathe so that some
of you are sitting there now saying, I
don't have a...
You're crazy.
I don't feel arrogant towards God.
Go take your eyes out.
Put them in some gospel acid and then
put them back in.
C.S. Lewis was a great help to
me in this point years ago, and I
just saw it again.
I keep a little, I keep a very
big Lewis book beside my table at night.
Here's what he wrote.
The ancient man approached God as the accused
person approaches a judge.
For the modern man, the roles are reversed.
He is the judge.
God is in the dock.
He is quite a kindly judge.
If God should have reasonable defense for being
the God who permits war and poverty and
disease, he's ready to listen to it.
The trial may even end in God's acquittal,
but the important thing is that man is
on the bench and God is in the
dock everywhere, including the evangelical church.
And there are not many doctrines like the
doctrine of election to get us off the
bench and in the dock where we belong.
So I ask you, are you still floating
and soaked in the indigenous ocean of arrogance
in the modern world, or are you being
delivered?
And that's all I think I can say
about me or any of Christians.
We are being delivered.
I shudder at my own error.
It comes out towards my wife, comes out
towards my kids, comes out towards finding that
I couldn't find the plan for whether there's
going to be paid parking over there tonight
or not.
And if you have to pay to get
out of that parking lot, tell us next
week.
We'll pay you.
I have permission to say that because I
made calls.
I mean, my quickness of judgment is frightening.
I will not cease to tell you that
until I am perfected.
Number four, this one's so encouraging to me.