Answers In Genesis - Sunday School - Week 13

This is the last lesson in our first section. we've been calling this, this class is we can trust the Bible. Next week, we'll actually start God is our redeemer and we'll be moving through Material like the, we'll be going back and reviewing the creation days. we'll be talking again about dinosaurs, Adam and Eve, how old is the earth, stewardship of God's creation.

And, basically, from this point on, we'll be just taking the things that we've talked about in this first section and applying them to the rest of the Bible. The whole rest of the next 3 years is built upon this first class. And we've called this first class, we can trust the Bible a academic term for this first class is bibliology. We've basically tried to lay out for you guys a philosophy of how to study the Bible and how we should approach any text that we have in scripture.

and so we're gonna take a little bit of time to review that and then we're gonna try to apply the same ideology, from this point on in this class and it's the same ideology that the children are getting in, in their coursework as well for Sunday school. And so let's, let's go ahead and pray. We're gonna take a little time to review. And then we're gonna wrap this up by reminding ourselves of our biblical worldview.

Let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you for this time for us to be together and to study your word. Thank you for the blessing of being in a free country where we have the First Amendment and we can practice our faith without fear of reprisal. We ask God for our brothers and sisters around the world that do not enjoy such freedoms that you'd be with them.

especially this day of worship. And we ask Lord that you'd fill us with your Spirit and guide us. We know that what we do when we study your word is not merely a physical activity. It's not merely a mental activity though it involves those things.

But we need You to illumine your word. We need the Holy Spirit. And so we ask that you would just guide us during this time together in Christ's name, we pray. Amen.

All right. So let's, let's take a little bit of time to review what we've talked about in this course. We spent time talking about towards the beginning that scripture in and of itself is sufficient. This doesn't mean that the Bible will help us learn how to fix a carburetor.

Doesn't mean that the Bible is gonna help you know how to become a world-famous track athlete. But the Bible is gonna answer the most basic questions in life, right? so the things that are the most important questions in life, God, we believe that God has given us answers. Where have we come from?

Where are we going? What's gone wrong with the world? How do we fix it? How can anybody be saved?

the Bible, when, if the Bible speaks on marriage, the Bible is sufficient what it says about marriage and so on. We've, offered the approach of the literal, historical, grammatical, hermeneutic. In this class. There's lots of different hermeneutics that people are using today.

They're becoming more and more popular. Our approach to the Bible is to take the Bible at face value given the genre that we're in. And, and to try to understand what was the original author. Inspired by the spirit saying to the original audience, and then how does that apply to us today?

We're not trying to reinterpret the Bible through the eyes of feminism. We're not trying to reinterpret the Bible through the eyes of any given philosophy. We're trying to let the Bible stand on its own 2 ft, as it were. And because of that, we want to do X Jesus.

What's the thing that we're trying not to do? Is of Jesus. So we've tried to encourage exegesis in this class. This may seem like a no-brainer in our circles, but you don't have to read too broadly to discover that not everybody is, is really trying to do ex Jesus.

I of Jesus is actually gaining more and more ground. We have, have affirmed in this class the inerrancy of scripture that the Bible does not affirm anything contrary to fact. This used to be a no-brainer with Christians. around the 1960s, you had the rise, that largely came out of Fuller Seminary where they began to redefine terms.

They began to use the term infallibility to basically say that we believe that the Bible is infallible when it's talking about faith and practice. But when it's talking about history or science or other things, the Bible may have errors. God never intended for the Bible to be without error. It's a human book, but when it speaks of spiritual things, it's without error.

And so they began to use the word infallibility. That's why the term inerrancy began to rise in the 1970s, particularly with the Chicago Conference of on inerrancy. And then more recently, at Grace Community Church, just this last year, there was another big conference on inerrancy because this doctrine is always being attacked. you don't have to look too far on the internet to find people who named Christ, believe in the gospel, so to speak, but who do not believe in inerrancy.

They believe that the Bible in the original manuscripts does, does have errors. And what's really pushed this to the forefront is the Book of Genesis. I can we really believe that the Book of Genesis is without error? We would argue yes.

We've argued in this class that it's reasonable for God to swear by Himself. Is there any other higher authority than God Himself? No, if God is, if we believe that God has spoken to us in His word, then is there any other authority higher than his word? No.

Therefore, we do not necessarily have to appeal to anything outside of the word of God to prove the word of God. The Bible proves itself. You say that's circular reasoning, all starting points are of necessity circular. If you say that reason is the ultimate basis for truth, the only thing that you can do to support that is to say it's reasonable.

If you think empiricism is the ultimate basis for truth, the only thing that you can say is say because it empirically seems to be so. So all arguments for starting points of necessity are circular, so we make no apologies for starting with the Bible to prove the Bible. That being said, when we put on our Bible, biblical glasses, we look out and we see that the world comports with our assumption, our presupposition. It's not like the Bible saying that there's purple, purple polka dotted unicorns in the universe, and then we look out and we don't see any.

The Bible comports with what it claims. This is radically different from those that would argue, say, from the Mormon religion. Just pray, go into a closet, get a burning in the bosom about the Book of Mormon, and then you'll realize that it's the word, or God's word, and then you look at reality and it completely contradicts reality. there's no archaeological evidence for the peoples that are, that are reported on in the Book of Mormon.

However, in the Bible, it, we see a comporting with reality. we've also, because of that, we've argued that the Bible is authoritative. We've also affirmed in this class the preservation of scripture. And we've argued that there's two different aspects of this doctrine that God promises to preserve His word forever in heaven.

and we know when we look at the end of the Bible that God's word will be preserved. But there's also a human element is that we are responsible as the church to take care of His word by not adding to or taking away from His word. And we looked at some examples where human beings have tried to take away or add to his word. and so we've argued that.

We've also argued that there is no neutral ground. This comes from our idea of presuppositionalism, presuppositional apologetics. Everybody regardless whether they admit it or not, enters into every conversation with certain presuppositions. And when they're telling you to lay down your presuppositions, we don't do it, right?

We, we just wanna lay our presuppositions on the table, get them to admit theirs, and then we admit ours as we come into this conversation. let's see. We've also answered these questions in this class. How does the Bible go about proving the existence of God?

Answer. It doesn't. It presumes the existence of God. The Bible presumes because if God really does exist, which we believe he does, if God put God knowledge in everybody's hearts, then God does not have to prove his existence.

He's made it clear in creation. He's made it clear in the hearts of every human being, but human beings by nature will suppress the truth and unrighteousness since creation. Why does clear evidence not always, why is clear evidence not always clear? There you go, Brian.

Yeah, because people are wearing the wrong glasses, right? People by nature until the Holy Spirit comes along, begins to open up their eyes. You can present the evidence to them, but they've got the wrong glasses on and so they interpret the evidence wrongly by nature until the Holy Spirit begins to help them see. Remember, the gospel comes along and to the, to the natural man, it is foolishness, but to the spiritual man, it is the power of God.

And so because of that, we can be patient, humble because we've all been there. We know it's not an issue of intelligence. There's a, there's a will problem. There's, as First Timothy says, the person who's not come to Christ yet, they've been taken captive by the devil to do his will, and so we're waiting for the Lord to grant them repentance.

We spent time talking about the attributes of God. we spent time talking about the Trinity in this class. Can anybody remember the, three components of the doctrine of the Trinity? Well, let's start with the threeness of God.

Yeah, what is it? OK, yeah, Father, so first of all, there are 3 persons, right? There are eternally 3 distinct persons. We see in the baptism, so God is 3 persons.

Secondly, each person is fully God. And then if we stop there, we would all be tritheus. So what's the third component? There is one God.

And so these are the three components of the Trinity. In the first passage, we have the baptism scene, so we know that Father, Son, Holy Spirit are distinct. then we can demonstrate from the scripture that each person is fully God. But we also can demonstrate from the scripture that there is one God.

Are there any analogies that work perfectly in In nature No. Yeah. Yeah OK. Oh, cool.

Do what the, the physics argument was or? Like time, space matter or something like that or. OK, OK. OK.

Yeah, that's great. I'd, I'd love to check that out. yeah, that sounds very interesting. So this Muslim knew more about Christianity than the Christians that were trying to convert him.

That sounds very interesting. That's great. Yeah, a lot of the analogies that you'll typically hear and, and honestly, they do help us on an elementary level, right?, as a young believer, for when someone was explaining to me, like H2O, it's ice and then it's also, a solid liquid gas. That at least shows you how that one element can be three different forms.

Where it falls short is it's not, it can't be all three forms simultaneously incomplete at the exact same time. You don't have water, solid, and gas being the full component like we have in the Trinity. As we've talked about the Trinity, each person is not part of God and we're not talking about different masks. Each person is fully God.

And yet distinct and yet there's one God. In my apologetics, when I'm witnessing and talking about the Trinity, one of the things that I argue is, is no human being would have ever made this up because there's nothing in nature that really comes close to this concept. Where, where would they look to find such a concept? this must be of divine origin.

And then I'll argue like we've done in the past that it does explain things like how does God love anyone for all of eternity? How do you have what we've called the assaity of God, that is the independence of God. In other words, the, the Muslim God, who does the Muslim God love before he creates? Yeah, no one.

So, the Muslim God cannot be relational, but the Trinitarian God can be relational and have love for all of eternity, and there's nothing that necessitates God creating anyone to fill a need in God Himself. For God had love and relationship for all of eternity and timelessness before creation occurred. And so when God creates, it's not out of need, personal need. He just creates to share his glory.

And so, so that's, that's part of our argument from the Trinity. we've also argued in this class that there's a difference between history and geshita. Geshika, bless you. What does that mean?

What is gashika? Yeah, good. It's, it's a big fancy term for story, right? Versus history.

This, the word geshika originally was, it was put out there as a positive argument by German theologians trying to protect the Bible from attack. When people were attacking the Bible in the 1800s, saying, how can you believe these ridiculous stories in the Bible. some of the German theologians said, well, we, we believe these, because they give us spiritual hope. We're not arguing that they're all historical accounts.

They were never meant to be history. They're geshita. They are, stories that give us spiritual hope. In doing so, these Christian theologians thought that they were trying to ward off attack of the Bible.

In reality, what they did is they just cut the heart out of Christianity, because Christianity is a historical religion. it has never claimed anything else but to be historical. Let's see, we've also talked about the seven C's. Does anybody remember what I keep thinking I have a pointer here and I don't.

does anybody remember the first C of creation? the Sorry, I let the cat out of the bag. OK, so the first C is creation. The second C, corruption.

The third one, catastrophe. Confusion, Tower Babel. We're gonna be, Pastor Milton's actually gonna be talking about that, I think next week. Or is it today?

Either today or next week. and the next one. Christ Cross Consummation. OK, so these are the seven seeds of history.

And this is really where we're going with the rest of this, rest of the next 3 years is, is we're just gonna be chronologically moving through the Bible, studying the Bible through the seven seeds of history. And we are saying that these are the seven seas of history, not just seven seas of Geshika. And, and, in, in, in our minds, that's very important. If we're gonna say that the 1st 4 C's are Gshika, on what basis do we suddenly say that the last 3 C's are history?

And I think people appropriately see the contradiction. If we, if we say part of the Bible is Gshika, and then all of a sudden we want to claim Christ and his virgin birth, which cannot be demonstrated by the scientific method. Christ's walking on water cannot be demonstrated by the scientific method. Him healing the blind can't be demonstrated by the scientific method.

Jesus Christ dying, raising from the dead, Lazarus being raised from the dead. Christ ascending up into heaven to the right hand of the Father. These are all matters of faith that have been given to us by the authority of God's word. So it's either history or it's not.

let's see. In our culture today, do you think the average person understands the sentence, Jesus died for your sins? Why or why not? don't See Yeah, Yeah, we're living in a very different world.

back, in the 50s and 60s when Billy Graham was going around doing his crusades. You're still living in a world where people, kids were learning about Christianity and Christmas in the public school system. And so, even if people weren't believers, they show up to a Billy Graham crusade and they've got a context in which to put a lot of the teaching. today.

I'm, I'm driving home with one of my baseball players who's Roman Catholic who goes to public school who's never heard of Adam and Eve. Never heard of Adam and Eve. Doesn't know. I had to tell him.

The history of Adam and Eve to help them understand sin and so on and so forth. And so, This comes from really last week's lesson that as we're sharing the gospel, We need to understand our cultural context that, that people don't have a context necessarily for what do we mean by Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. We've got to go back and give them some biblical history. it used to be in the past that I would avoid some of the biblical history and just try to get straight to the cross.

More and more, I'm going back to Adam and Eve, and I am talking to them right about creation, and I'm talking to them about the flood and God's destroying of the whole earth with water as a jumping point into the cross. I'm also finding that with some folks, with many folks in my evangelism, I can start with Jesus. But I'm not, I'm not 2 or 3 minutes into the conversation before people are saying, oh, the Bible talks about, doesn't even mention dinosaurs, or the Bible, talks about this worldwide flood.

They're not learning a whole lot about Christianity, but what they are learning is all the arguments against why, why they should not, receive Christ or take Christ seriously, based upon science.

And so we need to be willing to talk about those things. Put it Into context. let's see. What are the 3 elements of the gospel that we talked about last week?

Yeah, we've got the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is gonna make sense in context. Now, let's go ahead and open up. We're gonna look at 3 different passages this morning. And in doing so, we're going to remind ourselves in this final lesson of this section of why it's important for us to have what we're calling a biblical worldview.

So open up to Colossians 2. And as you do so, I just want to say, did everybody Pick up this worldview quiz on the way in. Anybody get a chance to do it before you came to class? Did you guys, OK, cool.

Are you guys getting my emails and stuff? OK, good. Let's, before we read Colossians, let's run through this worldview quiz. I've got this one is for you guys.

You can use this with your unbelieving friends. I'm gonna post another quiz that we've used over at UCR that has actually worked, man. I, I really like the way it, it helped me get into, gospel conversations. Part of the way it starts is, What is 2 + 2?

And then the person says 4. And then the next question is, do you believe in any absolutes? And most of the students at UCR said no. And then the third question is, do you believe that 2 + 2 equals 4 is an absolute?

And then they're like, and then it just gets you into a conversation about absolutes. How do we know what is absolute? And then there's like a nice turn to the gospel. So I'll, I'll send you guys that this week, but let's, let's go through this quiz real, real quick.

Absolute, absolute truth exists, true or false? Yeah, we're gonna argue true, obviously. There is only one way to heaven. We're gonna argue true and your average unbeliever is gonna say, No, that's false.

There's, there's many ways to heaven. Number 3, the Bible is a book of true history. We're gonna say true, but many of your Christian friends are going to have questions about that. And this is where we want to come alongside our Christian friends and try to help them see that, no, this, the Bible does purport or does report through history.

Number 4, abortion is acceptable in many circumstances. We're gonna argue false and we'll spend some time in the next class demonstrating why. Number 5, humans evolved from ape-like creatures. We're gonna argue false.

Next time we're gonna argue why. It starts with the Bible. If we believe that God, if God swears by Himself, it's appropriate for God to swear by Himself. he is the highest authority, and God has told us very clearly how man and woman were created.

Then we start with that viewpoint and then we go out and we begin to look at the evidence and is there evidence out there that supports our presupposition? If you guys were here last year, very definitely, very definitely. in fact, the evidence against the eight-man position is much stronger than I would have ever thought, when I was being taught this stuff in high school and college. number 6, the God of the Old Testament is harsh while the God of the New Testament is loving.

True or false? False. We're talking, we'll be developing in the next class or we've talked about this in this class, that God does not change in essence in his character. Number 7, people in the Old Testament times were saved from their sins by sacrificing animals and doing good works.

True or false. False. As we read what the purpose of the sacrifices were, sacrifice could never take away sin. They were a pointer in Hebrews tells us to the once for all sacrifice of Christ.

Number 8, the Bible prohibits dark-skinned people from marrying light skinned people. False. It's amazing how many unbelievers think that's what the Bible teaches. The Bible never comes close to teaching anything like that.

The Bible does warn the Israelites against intermarrying with people of false religions. but the Bible never prohibits people from marrying, interracially. All death and suffering in the world is a result of Adam's sin. We would argue true.

Science can prove the Bible is true. We're gonna argue false that while the while science does make the Bible probable, you cannot prove metaphysics by following a physical method. You cannot prove metaphysics by with physics. You cannot prove spiritual stuff with the scientific method.

The scientific method only goes so far. And by the way, you can't prove the existence of matter or where matter came from with the scientific method either. We're in the same place. Where did God come from?

Where did matter come from? It's a metaphysical question, not a science question. Number 11, Noah took dinosaurs on the ark. Our answer is true.

If we're doing a straightforward reading of the Bible, all animals, bland breathing animals were created by God, and God brought animals of female and male onto the ark. 12, the Bible has guidance for every situation that an individual might face. Yeah, I'm gonna argue false. But there, it, it is, the Bible does give us guidance for every situation for which it has been written, right?

I think the way this is phrased is probably a little inappropriate. For every situation, I, when I, when my engine blew up on the 241. a couple of weeks ago, the Bible did give me advice on things like losing my temper, patience, being patient with Century 21 when I was calling them and it took them 3 hours to get out and helped me get off the freeway, but does the Bible teach me on how to, how to deal with the pistons that just melted in my, in my engine? No, it didn't help me with that.

I called other people to deal with that. OK, so that's, that's a review of that. I, I will send you the other worldview quiz that you can use with your unbelieving friends. Let's open up, let's take a look at Colossians.

Who wrote the book of Colossians? OK, we've got Paul, and obviously, Paul is writing to who? The Colossians, yeah, Colossian Christians. there's a good chance that this is a circuit letter that's being passed around.

But let's start in verse one, we're gonna read the text. And then we're going to make some observations of the text, particularly down in verse 8 and following. For I want you to know, I'm reading from the New King James, what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea. And for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. And you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ.

For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And you are complete in Him. Who is the head of all principality and power. So we've already established that Paul is the author.

And Paul is writing to the Colossians to encourage them. Let's look at first, go back and look at Verse 2 He says he wants, he wants them to know that he had a great conflict. I have for you and Leo Dea, for as many as have seen my face in the flesh that their hearts may be encouraged. So he wants the Colossians to be encouraged.

being knit together in love and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding. To the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and then some versions you have of Christ. So, Paul is wanting the Colossians to be encouraged, to be knit together in love, and to come to full assurance. He wants his believers to come to be settled in their minds about their relationship with God and about the what's called the mystery of God.

What do we, what does Paul mean by mystery? What do we mean by mystery? In the New Testament. Are we talking about like Sherlock Holmes type of stuff?

Excellent. Yeah, that's, that's right on. You can cross reference what Larry's talking about with Ephesians. When Paul's using the word mystery, we're not talking about Sherlock Holmes or some novel or some mystery novel or show that you like to watch.

We're talking about something that had previously been veiled but has been unveiled now in the New Testament. And, and Paul talks about these things that were mysterious to Old Testament believers that now have been revealed now in Christ. And so we've got this, this hidden treasures of wisdom that have now been given to us through prophecy that has come to the apostles, and the apostle Paul. and so we now are beginning to understand these things that the Old Testament prophets wrote about that were mysterious to them and they didn't quite understand everything.

We get to the New Testament and the lid has been blown off. The veil has been taken away, and now we have a deeper understanding. Now, so with that, so Paul wants the Colossians to be encouraged and loved. He wants them to come to a full knowledge of the understanding of the mystery that is the gospel that has been revealed.

But in verse 4, there seems to be some people have come in to contradict this mystery, this, this, the stuff that has been revealed to the Colossian believers. Verse 4, now I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words. though I'm absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and steadfastness of your faith in Christ. So Paul's not there and he's speaking of people who are coming in with persuasive words.

So, what do you think could be implied by this? Paul has worries. He's not there and he's warning them of people coming in with persuasive words. Yeah, he's not there, but there's people that are trying to influence the Colossians.

And so he's concerned, he's worried. I, I'm not there present, in your presence, but I am there in spirit. I wanna give you warning. verse 6, as you therefore have received Christ the Lord, so also walk in him.

I know that you guys are born again, and I wanna encourage you to continue that walk with Jesus. Which verse 7 should be rooted and built up in him established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it in thanksgiving. I've already taught you the gospel. I've taught you this mystery.

Walk in it. Now he cycles back to these people that he's concerned about that have been persuasive with him. Verse 8, and this is where we're gonna spend the bulk of our time. Beware lest anyone cheat you.

Through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, not according to Christ. So Paul, what is Paul concerned about here? What's the basic What's one word that describes His concern Said, yeah, beware. So beware of what?

Yeah, so false teaching, false hope. He's a He's, he's afraid of, of people coming in to cheat the Colossians. The Colossians have been given this wonderful mystery that's been unveiled, the gospel of Jesus Christ, his, life and, and, and death and burial and resurrection. People have come in with philosophy and empty deceit.

And they're they're teaching. Is, is described in a couple of different ways. What's one of the ways that their teaching is is described? Say it again.

OK, yeah, so you got hollow teaching and it's based upon what? OK, good. So, yeah, we've got human tradition or the tradition of men and philosophy. the basic principles of the world.

And it's not according to what? Not according to Christ. So you've got two different approaches to wisdom here. you've got a philosophy that is empty, that's based upon the traditional teachings of human beings and it's according to the basic principles of the world.

So there's, there's certain assumptions that just every good Roman citizen, everybody knows this, right? This is like just common sense, right? If you lived in the Roman Empire at this time, there's certain things that are just common sense. Everybody knows these things.

They're based on the traditions of all good Romans. basic principles that we all understand, but Paul's telling us these are not according to Christ. What do you think some of the basic common sense principles might be? in the Roman Empire at this time.

OK, so there could be the idea of multiple gods. Maybe there's people coming in talking about polytheism versus monotheism, could be. Will be some other common ideas in the Roman Greek mindset. Yeah, materialism.

Good. So the idea that we have, there's a couple of different ways this could go. This is all that we have is what we see. Probably the bigger idea would be that matter is evil.

a real common philosophy at this time, there's what we would call proto-gnosticism or an early form of Gnosticism that basically says that matter is evil, the flesh is evil, and so, and, and so whatever they're teaching, it's not according to Christ. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ came down. And dwelt in a body, right? He had dwelt a body, lived on this material universe or this material world, died, was raised up in a body and went to heaven in a body?

That is totally contradictory to just common sense in a Greco-Roman mindset. Everybody knows. That matters evil Everybody knows we're trying to escape this body, not stay in it. And yet you're teaching that Jesus Christ came, lived in a body, God himself came in and dwelt a body, dwelt among us, died, and then was raised from the body instead of being rid of his body.

This is a huge problem. for the gospel, and so there would be. Temptations, if you are a Christian at this time, and you want people to receive the gospel, but every time you start talking about Jesus Christ being in a body and being raised from the dead. Do you guys remember Acts 17?

Acts 17, Paul's on Mars Hill, and he starts talking to them about the gospel. And where did they start laughing and shut him down? At the resurrection. Once Jesus, once Paul mentions the resurrection, they shut him down.

They're like, that's ridiculous. the resurrection is a real sticking point. Why is the resurrection a sticking point? We just mentioned it.

Because matter is evil. How in the world can you have God who is pure light? Come into evil and then be raised in evil. The, the basic Greco-Roman at this time period, the goal of his or her life is to be rid of the body.

they wanna get out of the body. They wanna get into a spiritual existence. and so these folks are coming in, we don't know exactly what they're teaching, but that's very possible based upon, what Paul has said, in this context about Christ. In fact, notice what Paul says in verse 9, for in him that is in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead what?

Bodily So Paul is making a big deal. He's not backing down. These people are saying, probably saying, there's no way that Jesus Christ dwells in the flesh bodily. He says, in Christ, the whole fullness of God dwells in him bodily.

And you are complete in Christ, who is the head of all principality in power. So let's, let's draw a couple of applications here. If you were a, a pastor at this time, a Christian, you're trying to lead people to the Lord, but every time you start talking about Jesus Christ coming into a body, every time you start talking about the resurrection, you lose your audience. And maybe a few people come to know the Lord here and there as the Lord's moving, but the vast majority of your audience just laughs at you.

And in fact, maybe you used to be a teacher in one of the academic clubs, maybe you used to be respected, but then all of a sudden you started talking about this resurrection stuff. You started talking about this body stuff, and now you don't get invited to those clubs anymore. There'd be a real temptation to start talking about the physicality of Christ and the physicality of his resurrection as Gshika. Because if you can convince people that, hey, when the Bible starts talking about the resurrection of Christ, we're not talking about a real physical resurrection.

We're talking about spiritually that we're all raised to new life. That's what we're talking about. Then all of a sudden, you've got a, you've got more of a hearing. Because people in the Greco-Roman mindset, they can accept that.

They can accept the idea that Christ wasn't physically on this earth. It was just an appearance. And he wasn't raised physically. It was just spiritually.

Turn to First John real quick. First John chapter one. First John is another epistle that seems to be dealing with a similar problem. And this problem gets blown out big time in the 2nd century.

And really, it probably becomes the the biggest issue of the church in the first five centuries. And that is what is How is the gospel connected to the material universe? Are we just to reinterpret the Bible as spiritual matters? Or is the Bible mean what it seems to say?

Notice what John says starting in verse one. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled concerning the word of life. The life was manifest and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life which was the which was with the Father and was manifest to us. In which we have seen and heard, and we declare to you that you may have fellowship with us.

Truly our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full. This is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light and in him is no darkness. They're acknowledging that God is light.

There's no darkness in God that would be acceptable to the Greco-Roman mindset. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness, we lie, practice, and do not practice the truth. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sins. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins, our sins to cleanse us from all righteousness. If we say that we have sinned, we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. I want to focus on just the first two verses there. Notice the big deal that, that John makes about the fact that, that they had seen Christ, they had heard him, and that they had handled him.

Why would John make such a big deal about actually touching Christ, hearing his voice, seeing him in this context? As you read the rest of the of the book, he makes a big deal about the fact that Christ was in the flesh. In the flesh, not just spiritual. We're not just talking about that he, he, he was an appearance of a man, that he really was a man.

And so what you have on the pages of scripture is that while there were people that were coming in to the Colossian Church to try to teach something that was different from Christ, Paul does not back down. He says, in Christ dwells the fullness of God, bodily. This is not Gshika. This is history.

Jesus Christ lived as a man in history. You Colossians know this. what I've taught you in the past, do not be taken captive, do not be cheated by the traditions of men in the common sense of the Greco-Romans. Now, it'd be great to report, it'd be nice if we could report that the church picked up this teaching of Paul and John, and that for the next 5 centuries, the church won the battle.

The sad tale is in the 1st 5 centuries that you see the church largely losing the battle. The church loses the battle to what we would call Gnosticism. and just, I'll just give you one example would be the early church father origin. You write, it's O R I G E N, origin.

Origin, by the time he's in the church, Gnosticism is in full force. And he basically begins to develop the system of four levels of interpretation. There is the fleshly or fleshy interpretation, trying to just look at the text, the way it seems to appear on the page. The highest interpretation is the spiritual interpretation.

And he began to give us the allegorical method. The origin, didn't just suddenly just decide, let's just start doing allegories with the Bible. He did it for a reason, because the people of the day said we cannot accept the teachings of the Bible. There must be some deeper meaning.

And he said, yes, there is a deeper meaning. And so he goes back to the Old Testament, he begins to reinterpret. A lot of stories that seem to be immoral to the Greeks and Romans, and he just spiritualize it. and so, you have the spiritualizing of the Bible from origin on.

Even a guy like Augustine, who we respect in so many ways, Augustine seemed to try to keep a literal approach to the gospel and to justification and so on and so forth. But in his day, who's the big emperor that rises to the scene in, in Augustine's day? Constantine. So, Augustine, he's reading the Bible about that there's coming, that that Christ is going to return to the earth, there's gonna be an anti-Christ, then the, the knowledge of the Lord will spread throughout the whole world.

Up until the time of Augustine, you have 10 huge persecutions of the church over a two century period where the church is just getting hammered, people are getting killed. All of a sudden, Constantine rises up. And overnight, Christianity becomes the state religion. Overnight, you go from hiding in the catacombs to being free to practice Christianity.

And then about 70 years after Constantine, it becomes illegal to believe in anything else other than Christianity. And, and so Augustine's looking at the situation, the spread of the gospel, the spread of Christianity, the rise of Constantine, and takes origins hermeneutic, goes back to his eschatology and says, we're in the kingdom. This is the kingdom. This is the millennium.

Christ is now reigning on the earth through his emperor Constantine. And so he begins to apply the spiritual hermeneutic to all of his eschatology. And so we end up with a spiritual eschatology of the medieval period, that you're living in the millennium at that time. And so, the bottom line is, is we need to ask ourselves just like Paul is trying to challenge the Colossians.

In what ways are we tempted To give over to empty deceit. Now as Paul arguing, when we say here that all philosophy is of necessity deceitful and evil? Why would we say that Paul is not condemning all philosophy? Say it again.

Yeah, and I think that's actually a good rendering because you have the coupling of, of the conjunction, philosophy and empty deceit. This can be seen as like parallel or what you might call adjectival. So we have the, the deceitful philosophy. Philosophy in and of itself just simply means love of wisdom.

And the Bible commends us to love true wisdom. but First Corinthians tells us there's a wisdom that is from God, and then there's, there's something that's falsely called wisdom. So we're not talking about the rejection of all love of wisdom. What we are talking about is making sure that everything that we're looking at in the world comes through the glasses of the gospel, that we're looking through this world through the mystery that has now been unveiled in Jesus Christ, and our interpretations of the world now come through that.

Yeah, Dan. Yeah That's good. So a philosophy that's according to the traditions of men rather than ie a philosophy that is according to Christ. And we wanna, so we wanna build our philosophy on Christ and, and, and how do we know anything about Jesus Christ?

Where does our knowledge of Christ come from? Yeah, it comes from the Bible. And so, we are developing our knowledge of Christ from the Bible. Let's go ahead and look at a couple of other passages and then we'll open up to questions, Let's look at Proverbs 1:7.

Proverbs 1:7. Say this, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Now In the proverbs, you have this concept called parallelism where you have a couplet. And the first part of the couplet, you need to figure out how is it compared to the second part of the couplet.

This one is a contrasting type of couplet. You have the fear of the Lord is, is being contrasted with fools. You have knowledge, the beginning of knowledge being contrasted with the despising of knowledge. Different terms are being used.

When the Bible speaks of, of the word fool, it's not talking about somebody who doesn't have intelligence. It's not speaking, a fool can be somebody who is incredibly wise, incredibly intelligent in the things of the world. They might be a A rocket scientists. They might be a brain surgeon.

The idea biblically of a fool is somebody who is arrogant and self-sufficient and orders his life as if there is no God. That's the biblical definition of a fool. Somebody who orders their life as if there is no God. They can be incredibly, incredibly intelligent.

And so this passage is telling us, this has given us a good what we call philosophy of education or pedagogy. What should be our very basic starting point for how we go about educating ourselves, educating our children. The fear of the Lord is the beginning or the ABC's of knowledge. You want to get at the very beginning of knowledge, it has to start with the worship of Yahweh.

If you take the worship of Yahweh and set it aside, then you don't even know the ABC's. That's the very basic level. And so we need to start with that, lest we be fools who despise true wisdom and instruction. And so this is just another argument for having the right glasses on.

We've got to put the worship of God on. We've got to have a concern for the gospel, for his truth, the way God views things as, one of my, apologist that I read, it was Ben Till. He says, we wanna think God's thoughts after him. Think God's thoughts after him.

It's God's thoughts are primary. We just want our thoughts to be right in line with his thoughts. He's in the lead line and we're just following in his footsteps, and we find those footsteps in His word. Let's look lastly at 1 Timothy 6.

1 Timothy 6:20. First Timothy 6:20-21, 0 Timothy, guard what was committed to your trust. Avoid profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. By professing it, some have strayed concerning the faith, faith, grace be with you.

Amen. This is a warning that all of us need to give heed to. In every generation, There is what's falsely called knowledge. And there is a temptation.

I think that all of us can fall into that we want. I don't know about you, but I, I feel the desire, the pull to want to be liked. And I, I want people. To accept me and I want people to accept Christianity as something that is appealing, something that is intelligent.

Cool. I've used these analogies in the past, but I, I really felt it as a young person. I was in high school, I loved Christ, I wanted to share my faith. I wanted my friends to come to know the Lord, and so often what seemed to be clear to me just was not clear to my friends.

And so, I would just take strange tacks to try to convince my friends that Christianity was smart, Christianity was cool, and why don't you come and be part of the, the smart, cool club. It, it, it felt in the youth group, I had a, I was part of a really good church and I really loved our youth group. There's so many good elements to it. But it felt like the whole goal of our youth group was try to prove to our un-Christian friends how cool we were.

And so we would invite all of our unbelieving friends to come out to the youth group and just try to be as cool as possible, so that all of our friends would fall on their knees and say, you guys are just so cool. I want to be a Christian too. And no matter how, how hard we tried to make our youth group cool, there was something that always nagged at us. And that is that eventually, our past, our youth pastor would open up the Bible and start teaching the word.

And all coolness left. I remember one of, one, a good friend of mine invited her non-believing friends. She'd wanted this unbelieving girl to come to youth group forever and ever and ever. And finally this girl showed up one day.

And then our youth pastor started teaching on First Timothy. He was doing a study through First Timothy, and he went through the section of First Timothy, just happened to be the section about modesty and not all kinds of braided hair and not trying to get all, making your beauty about just your jewels and stuff. And by the way, we do not permit women to be teachers, but men need to be the teachers in the public setting. And my friend was just so embarrassed to the point of apologizing to her friend and the friend never came back.

And she just felt like, man. Pastor Louis should have known that my friend came to church that day and he should have avoided that passage that drove her away from our youth group. And that could be the temptation for all of us. is, is, is we can, we can be so concerned that the Bible fit the common sense of the world that we're almost embarrassed for what's on the pages of scripture.

But according to what Paul's telling us, if we're thinking correctly, God's got it right. God has it right. And, and, and, and our friends in the world, they've been taken captive by the devil to do his will. We have no reason to be embarrassed.

We wanna have compassion, we wanna have patience, but bring our friends the cornerstone, bring our friends to church, and just when the word of God is preached, just let the Spirit do what he's gonna do. And, and make no apologies for just what the Bible has to say. John MacArthur has shared on a number of occasions that people have gotten saved in some of the wackiest sermons he's ever preached. He gets up there and he's just preaching some passage right out of, he's talking about Uriah, is it Uriah or David and, and some passage that you wouldn't necessarily think somebody would get saved on, all of a sudden the spirit just falls on people and they get saved from the preaching of God's word.

And so we wanna to not be embarrassed. We want to just lay out the word of God and look at the world through biblical glasses. As we begin to move to the rest of this course, next week, we're gonna start, start God is our Redeemer. There are different sections and passage of scripture that'd be very easy for us to want to avoid or wanna set aside, not talk about, not bring up.

And, but we wanna, we wanna talk about them and we wanna study them through this, what we're calling this, our particular bibliology, our approach to the scriptures. And it's, it's not, that doesn't mean that all of us are always going to fall in the exact same. Paige, there are some issues that believers will disagree on, but as long as we've got the same basic approach, then we're gonna just let the chips fall, all right? Does that make sense?

Any, any questions you guys have at this point? we're a little bit over time, but I could take a couple of questions. Anything that we've covered over the last 13 weeks. I nailed it, man.

That's, things went well and nobody has any questions. That's I'm being facetious, yeah. Origin was in the in the 2nd 1 of origins in the 200s, and Augustine and, and it's Augustine and Constantine that live about the same time. So, actually, Constantine's in the 300s.

Augustine comes just a little bit later, but Augustine's looking at what has happened with the rise of Constantine and interprets that as the coming of the kingdom. Origin sets up the interpretive approach that allowed Augustine and others to do what they do, but he does that really early. He does that in the 200s. I'm not sure.

I'll have to look that up. I'm not sure who died first. Yeah, he didn't think that like Constantine was Christ or anything. He just felt like Constantine was a fulfillment of the kingdom and that Constantine was a Christ-like character.

that he was somebody that the Lord had sent to bring about peace. And, and from, we have to be historically sensitive. We won't, we don't wanna be like too harsh on Augustine. If all, if one day everybody's getting killed and beat up, and then literally 3 weeks later, Everybody's free to practice their religion and you're, you're come out, coming out of the catacombs.

That's pretty significant. You start looking at your Bible and why is this happening? And at that point, Christianity is largely now a Gentile religion. The Jews have largely rejected it.

So now all these promises that are made to the Jews began to get reinterpreted. And as as applying to the church. Yeah, I, I, I can totally understand why Augustine did what he did. From a historical standpoint.

By the way, it's interesting in, in, in more recent history. in the early part of the 20th century. a lot of people were post-millennial, believing that things are getting better and better and better. Even unbelievers were, had a a post-millennial, a non-Christian post-millennial view that just our world is getting better.

We're discovering all this stuff. we're just coming to the heights of human civilization. And then World War 1 happened and then World War 2 happened and then everybody became pre-millennial again. So, Much more negative view of humanity after the World Wars.

All right, one final thing that we're gonna pray. I put a copy of a track back there that I'd made up a few years ago. This is something that I've used for several years now in December as part of, December 7th. Anybody know that?

Remember the what's the significance of December 7th? Pearl Harbor Day. And so, a really neat guy in history, Mitsuo Fujita, came to know the Lord. This guy led the attack on Pearl Harbor, but through a series of circumstances came to know Christ.

And this is just a really neat gospel track about his testimony. And so I've used this like over here at UCR I'll just walk up to people that wouldn't normally receive a track and I'll just say, hey, happy Pearl Harbor Day. Do, do anything about the guy who led the attack on Pearl Harbor? And they're like, oh no, no, and, and they'll take them and read them and then get a little bit of idea of the guy who led the attack on Pearl Harbor became a Christian.

So, a lot of times they'll, they don't wanna, they don't wanna receive it until I tell them, hey, this is about the guy who attacked Pearl Harbor and they're like, 00, OK. So anyway, there's a couple back there and then there's a couple in the foyer if you guys, if you guys wanna take a look at them. All right, let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you.

For the clarity of your word, we thank you for the sufficiency of your word. And we thank you for the warnings that we see from the apostle Paul about deceitful philosophy and just the common sense of man. We know that your word gives us true wisdom and true philosophy. We pray that we would hold that humility, just knowing that we don't come to the knowledge of the truth just because we're smarter or better than anybody else.

In fact, in many ways, we are the least of all peoples, and yet you have had mercy upon us. And so help us to be humble in our sharing of the gospel with people who many times are more intelligent than us but who honestly have been taken captive. And so we pray that you'd help us to be part of that rescue mission that you have established for thousands of years. Help us to open up our mouths for the gospel, trusting you to do the work and help us to grow in our equipping and we just thank you so much for your goodness to us this day.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. God bless you guys.

We will be back next week and then the 20th, we'll have off. That's our Christmas service. So December 20th, there'll be no Sunday school. I'll send you a reminder.

Please come back next week and we'll introduce our new, new section.