Why Biblical Christianity Is Intolerant in an Age of Tolerance
Selected Scriptures
Well as you know we have taken a bit of a break from our study of the Gospel of Luke. I had a time of rest and we came back and we had the Shepherd's Conference, and that was followed soon by our celebration of the resurrection. And we haven't gotten back to the Gospel of Luke yet but we will next Lord's Day morning. And, as I said, next Lord's Day evening we'll start a study of 1 John. I think we'll start next Sunday. That's what my plan is at this point. So we have some great things ahead of us and I'm very very anxious to get back into the Gospel of Luke. But these interim times have given us an opportunity to emphasize some things that are very very important and to speak directly to some of the issues that we face as Christians in our world today.
I had the opportunity, of course, to speak a number of times at the Shepherd's Conference here just a few weeks ago and then to travel the next week down to Florida to speak at the Ligonier Conference. A number of people have prevailed upon me to tell you what I spoke at the conference and down in Florida as well. Because the message that I gave there is a pertinent and important one for us of us to understand. I spoke on the subject of why biblical Christianity is intolerable in an age of tolerance? Nobody would argue that we live in an age of tolerance. But it seems to me that the one thing that's intolerable is the biblical gospel, true Christian message. And it's important for us to understand why. And so that was what I gave in these various conferences. People have said, "Well you need to tell the whole church what you said so we can all hear what God has placed upon your heart from his word in this regard." And so that's what I want to do this morning. Some of this is in the little book that came out recently called, Why one Way?" which talks about an exclusive message in an inclusive time. So if you want further input that little book will provide it for you if you want something that you can pass along. Those are available to you in the bookstore.
Let me began by saying this, it seems to me that popular Evangelicalism today, and by that I simply mean most churches seem to be in this trend. The popular Evangelical fear today, the biggest fear that I see is the fear that somehow Evangelical Christianity will be out of synch with the culture. There seems to be an almost panic mode to figure out all the nuances of the world around us, all the nuances of society and culture, in order that we can somehow adapt the gospel, adapt the church to their thinking. There is underlying this one very important reality, however, that has to be stated and I will state it and then we'll go on to talk about it. And it is this, antipathy; hostility toward God's word resides in the heart of all natural human beings - that is unconverted people. They have a built in, ingrained, innate, antipathy toward biblical truth and the gospel. So if you're going to try to figure out a way to get in synch with the culture you must downplay the message of God, to which they naturally rebel. Courting the favor of the world is a very serious thing to attempt and I say that, not in the sense that it's a serious human endeavor, but that it brings you into serious conflict with God Himself.
In James 4:4 we read, "You adulteresses," pretty strong language, "you harlots, you prostitutes. Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." Now last Sunday morning you know that I gave a rather strong message. You of you were shocked when I told all the people who were here, including yourselves, that your worst enemy is God. That's true. God is the enemy of the world of the unconverted. Their thinking and their system, their attitudes, their dispositions, their conduct, their ideologies, are all in hostility toward God. They are the enemies of God and he is their enemy. To then become a friend of the world purposely is to choose to be an enemy of God. I am astounded, frankly, to think that the church in so many places would desire to be a friend of the world, and, therefore, put themselves in a position of being an enemy of God. Courting the world's favor, courting and catering to the unchurched and the church unconverted, aping every worldly fad in music and every worldly fad in lifestyle, terrified to offend somebody who's not a believer.
Evangelicalism has, because of those motivations, been hijacked by legions of carnal spin-doctors trying their best to convince the world that Christians can be just as worldly as non-Christians. That we can be just as inclusive, just as pluralistic, just as open minded as any post-modern politically correct world ling. Somehow the illusion is that if we can get into to buy that we think just the way they think they're more likely to embrace the gospel. This is a horrible error. The reason they resist the gospel is because they hate it. They're living in antipathy toward the truth of God. And wherever that antipathy lies they have a wall of rebellion erected. And in order for them ever to have a relationship with God that wall of rejection has to come down. That wall of rebellion has to come down.
And, so, as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago the goal of any preacher or any person giving a witness is to find exactly what it is in the gospel and in the Word of God that offends the unbeliever and talk directly to that. Because wherever it is that the rebellion exists is where the rebellion has to end. There has always been and always will be a fundamental, irreconcilable, incompatibility between the truth of God and the world. That's the way it is. And true gospel faith involves a denial of every worldly value. Biblical truth is an open contradiction to human philosophy and religion. And this is very basically what Jesus taught his apostles at the very outset.
In John 15, 18, and 19 he said, "The world hates you. That's the way it is, they hate you because you're not of the world." It is that distinction; it is that difference that makes clear their hatred. Jesus went on to say, "I chose you out of the world, you're not of the world, therefore, the world hates you. That's how it is." He didn't go on to say, "Now here's a plan to eliminate that hate." There is no plan.
In fact, in Luke 6:26 Jesus said, "Woe to you when all men speak well of you." The word woe means to curse, judgment, judgment on you. "Cursed be you when all men speak well of you for so did they're fathers to the false prophets." False prophets can alter their message any way they want to get popular. And false prophets always want to be popular because they want to be rich. And the more people they can seduce the better. So the more people they offend the worst. So you got to eliminate as much offense as you can, woo the people in; seduce the people in so that you can get their money. "They do it for filthy lucer," the bible says. "But, woe to you who are the people of the truth when everybody speaks well of you because that's an indication that you have somehow prostituted yourself, you have become an adulteress in endeavoring to be a friend of the world."
In fact, Jesus said in John 7 and verse 7, "The world hates me and here's why, because I testify of it that it's works are evil." Jesus said, the reason they hate me is because I confront their evil; evil thinking, Ungodly thinking, blasphemous thinking, wrong religious thinking, as well as evil conduct. "The world hates me," Jesus said. And there never was a more winsome, a more wonderful perfect human being as he was, sinless Son of God, perfect holiness, perfect love, perfect beauty, perfect compassion. All the virtues that anybody could ever desire in a human being were in Jesus in absolute perfection. There never was a person who, from a human viewpoint, would be more winsome, more attractive than Jesus, at yet, they hated him and it had nothing to do with his personality. It had nothing to do with those characteristics that set him apart from all other human beings. It had to do with his confrontation of how they thought and how they acted, which he said was wrong. They were sinful. Their contempt for the gospel isn't directed at the messenger, it's directed at the message. That's how it has to be. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.
The simple statement of John 3, 19 and 20 is that evil people come to grips with their evil. They come to terms with their evil; they are in love with their evil. They do what they want to do, they do what feels good, they do sin as a way of life and because they love their sin, they, therefore, create systems that justify their sin. They're not going to live in guilt and remorse and anxiety if they don't have to. So to accommodate their love of sin they develop justification for that sin, systems of thinking and conduct that allow for their sin. They even make it into virtue. They love darkness because they love evil. And so when we come and confront their thinking as evil and their behavior as evil they are hostile toward that. That's how it is. That is fix, unchangeable. "The world hates you," Jesus said, "because it hates me. It hates me because I tell them that their works are evil."
So what are we as Christians doing in the world and what is our responsibility? What is the commission? To go into all the world and preach the gospel and to tell people everything that Jesus commanded them. In other words, we carry on the confrontational ministry of Jesus that confronts people who love their sin and have developed systems of self-justification for that sin. We tell them that their thinking is evil and that their conduct is evil and that there is a horrible horrible destiny in eternal hell awaiting them. That is the truth that we are called to tell them. And yet, through all of church history there've always been people who somehow want to mitigate the message, soften the message, downplay the message, make it less offensive. But through all church history there has never been a time when the church had spiritual impact that it didn't confront the culture with the truth. The only times, and I say that advisedly, the only time the church has made any spiritual impact on the world is when the people of God have stood firmly and uncompromisingly and boldly for the truth. And proclaimed that truth right into the face of the world's hostility.
Whether you're an Evangelist, whether you're a pastor, whether you're a teacher, whether you're just a Christian giving a witness, it's the same thing. If we're gonna have any conquest in the spiritual sense, we're gonna have any impact in the effect in the world, we have to speak the truth into the situation. And wherever the rebellion is we have to speak it to that very point of contact. Find out what people don't like about the bible and where they have set up the walls of rebellion and that is the very point at which you must attack, because before they're gonna submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ as their adonai, they're gonna have to have that wall crushed. There's gonna have to be a broken and a contrite heart at the very point of their most rigid rebellion. And the church comes along with this kind of ministry, which is designed to kind of accommodate the culture and to figure out how to be a friend of the world. This faddish kind of ministry is not only a compromise but it is guaranteed to be obsolete because yesterday's fad is not tomorrow's lifestyle. Tomorrow's generation will renounce all of today's fads. Tomorrow's generation will renounce all of today's philosophies. Biblical Christianity and only biblical Christianity adheres to the Word of God, regardless of what the fads and philosophies are, regardless of what the society wants, what the culture says. Biblical Christianity holds its ground in the shifting sands of cultural evolution.
Here we are living in a time when the church is jettisoning it's theology for the sake of becoming a friend to the world and ending up, I'm fearing, the enemy of the Lord of the church Himself, Jesus Christ. The characteristic of our modern philosophy today in this postmodern world is tolerance. That's the dominating dogma of our society, is tolerance for everything and everybody. That's the idea. And that has seeped into the church and the church now is wanting to be tolerant of everything and everyone. And so it more eagerly jettisons its message to accommodate a tolerant environment.
Now I want to give you what I would call a biblical paradigm in which to counter this today. This is one of those kinds of things where I'm just gonna talk to you from my heart a little bit. It was some months ago before the book came out, obviously, when I was sitting at my desk and I was thinking, "How can I give the people. . . how can I create something that will frame up a paradigm; a framework for thought that'll help people understand what's going on around them in the Christian world in Evangelicalism and how can I shape that?" And it's one of those kind of things that happens rarely where all of a sudden it hits you and within about 30 seconds I had the whole thing in my head and I wrote down 6 words on a piece of paper. Bing . . . bing . . . bing . . . bing . . . bing . . . bing, sequence of words. They stood the test of further scrutiny and here they come. Word number 1, here is a biblical paradigm for you the midst of an age of tolerance, an inclusive paradigm.
The first word is objectivity. Don't worry I'm not gonna get too philosophical on you. The first word is objectivity. If you're going to understand the way things really are with God, if you're going to understand what Christianity must be, what you must do and be in this society then you have to start here with objectivity, objectivity. When we say something is considered objectively or we talk about objectivity we're talking about something that is outside of us. If you say something is subjective it means that it is given to your own private assessment or private, personal, internal, intuitive understanding. If you say something is objective it is outside of you. You might say to somebody, "look, I don't want your subjective feelings about the issue just give me the objective facts. Objectivity is that which is outside of us. Subjectivity is that which is inside of us. In dealing with divine truth we're dealing with objectivity, with objectivity. That is to say, we start with the reality that the source of truth is completely outside of us. I can't tell you how important that is. The source of truth is completely outside of us. Luther called the bible the external word, the external word. It is fixed and it is outside of us. You can believe it or you cannot believe it. But it is not subject to your interpretation. You must understand this is outside of you.
That was what was so compelling to me when I was on the Larry King program and Deepak Chopra was saying, "Well I believe this and I believe this and this and that." He was talking about all this double talk that seduces people and on and on. And the Rabbi Krischner came on and said, "Well I believe and I believe this and I believe that." And I said, "Well with all due respect Mr. Chopra, Rabbi Krischner are not the authority." And Larry King knew, because we had talked about it, and he said to me, "And you don't believe you are either, do you John?" And I said, "No, I'm not. The bible is the authority." See that is revolutionary stuff. I don't care what Deepak Chopra thinks. I don't care what Krischner thinks. I don't care what I think. I don't care what any human being concocts as his philosophy of life. That doesn't make it true. That has no bearing of what is true. It has no relationship to what is true. What is true, if you never existed, interests me. I don't care what your opinion is. You bring to the table in terms of being a source of truth. No human being is a source of truth. That's true in the material world. There is no scientist who invented and inaugurated the law of gravity or centripetal force or any other law. Man can observe that, he can look at the material world and observe what someone else created, material truth.
The same is true in the spiritual realm. No human can lay claim to what is true spiritually, what is true eternally, what is true about God, what is true about man or angels. No man can invent that. That is the idiocy of our time. When you have all of these self-styled philosophers and all of these self-styled theologians saying, "Well I believe . . . well this is my . . ." Who cares? You have no bearing on what is true, none whatsoever. That is profoundly essential. To understand that simple idea is to literally knock the props out from under post modernism, because post modernism says everybody has his own truth. The fact is nobody does. This idea that you got your truth and I have my truth and his truth is good for him and my truth is good for me, nobody has truth because no man is the source of that truth. Truth doesn't come from men. You can read it, you can learn it, you can discern it, but you can't make it. You aren't the source of it. Authentic Christianity understands that. Authentic Christianity understands that Scripture is the objective absolute divine truth, period, paragraph.
It is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And no person ever has had in himself any idea or any intuition or any experience that determined the truth. The truth comes from God. It comes down and it is in a book. And Paul says, "If somebody else comes, an apostle even, and preaches another gospel that is contrary to the revealed truth or even an angel comes and gives you another gospel let him be . . . what?" destroyed, cursed. You cannot determine truth. You have nothing to contribute to it. You hear these people today who would be extreme like philosophers and gurus that we referred to earlier, but you also hear Christian people who will say, "Well, you know, my experience indicates to me that this is what the bible means." Don't tell me that your experience makes no contribution to the bible. Has nothing to do with it.
I remember when I was up in a retreat center with one of the leading, well-known Evangelical teachers in America and we were walking along the road in a wooden area - very lovely area, and he said to me, "John, what do you think of the exception clause in Matthew 5?" Well in Matthew 5 there's an exception clause in the statement Jesus made about divorce. "If you divorce your wife except for the cause of fornication you cause her to commit adultery." In other words, there was only one exception. God says, "I want you to stay married. You're married for life except for divorce. And if you divorce for any other reason you cause your wife when she remarries to commit adultery because God doesn't recognize the divorce." He said, "What do you think of the exception clause?" I said, "Well what do I think of it isn't important. It's there and it's there. It says that the only exception of divorce is fornication." He said, "Well I don't believe in the exception clause." I said, "What do you mean you don't believe? You believe the bible don't you?" "Yes, of course, I believe the bible but I don't believe you can allow for the exception." I said, "Well show me." He said, "Okay, see those Canadian geese?" This is true. There was a pen with Canadian geese. And he said, "See those Canadian geese?" And I said, "Of course." He said, "We cut their wings so they don't fly and we feed them, we take care of them, and just keep em around here for the people to enjoy." And he said, "One day there was a hole in the fence and they all tried to get out and that's why you can't have an exception clause." Now to him this was profound insight. I said, "Look, just answer me one question. What does Matthew 5 mean if there are no geese? Those geese are not a part of the interpretive process of Matthew 5. How can you think like that?"
They've built a whole ministry on that kind of thinking. Your analogies and your illustrations and your experiences have nothing to do with how you interpret the Word of God. You bring nothing to the truth, nothing, except a submissive mind. No experience, no insight of yours has any bearing on the truth. This is an objective document. And God did us a great favor he put all the truth in one book. Sixty-six books make up the one book written by God but this is the one book that contains all the truth God wanted us to have and it's outside of us. I'm not necessary to an understanding of this truth. What would that say to everybody who lived before me and after me and who doesn't know me? What kind of idiocy is it to assume that somehow I have some spiritual contribution to make to what the bible means? It is outside of me. Somebody says, "You know I think this verse means . . . no one cares what you think. No one care what you think this verse means. I want to know what does it mean, not to you, but to God. He wrote it. But see this goes against the grain of this postmodern world where there's no such thing as absolute truth. But the bible is absolute truth, fixed truth, outside of us. It is God's revealed truth and it is . . . I gave you that word a few weeks ago, perspicuous; it has perspicuity. That's an old word theologians used to use. It means clarity. It's not a bunch of puzzles, it's not a bunch of hidden things, it's clear. It's clear.
"There are some things," Peter said, "hard to understand." That's true. But for the most part it is clear. Those secondary matters are tough to understand. You can work hard at them and usually come to an understanding of them but the great bulk of Scripture, the main message of Scripture, is clear and unambiguous. And Peters writes in 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 20 and 21, that, "Scripture came, not by the will of man. Not by the will of men but holy men were moved by the Spirit of God." "And all Scripture then is given," as Paul writes to Timothy, "by inspiration. It is God breath." It is true whether you lived or didn't live. It is true whether you had an experience or didn't, whether your intuition was applied to it or not. It is true in and of itself. It isn't dependent on you or me or anybody else to bring truth to it. And by the way, Scripture only has one true meaning, just one. And I said this in the past and I say it again, if you don't get anything else, get this, the meaning of the Scripture is the Scripture. If you don't get the meaning you don't have the Scripture. Now some people say, "Oh, yeah, you know, I believe the bible and this is God's word." It's only God's word if you understood what he meant by what he said. It's the meaning that is the message. It is God's Word and its true meaning . . . listen . . . is contained in it. God put it there. You don't bring the true meaning to the Scripture.
I contest that one of the hardest things for me to cope with is this Christian TV thing, where you have people standing up saying, "God told me this and Jesus told me that and God showed me this and the Lord spoke to me about that." This is just horrific cause they're saying God said what he didn't say. They're saying Jesus said what he didn't say because this is the faith once for all delivered to the saints. And when God closed the book he said, "Don't add anything to this book or it'll be added to you the plagues that are written in it." God spoke here and then he stopped speaking. This is the Word of God.
But the second thing that drives me crazy about these people is, not only that they say God said what he didn't say, but they go to the bible and they say, "The Lord showed me this means this and this means that and this thing means this and here's how I interpret this verse." And somehow every verse, no matter where it is, is designed for God to tell you how rich you can be if you just believe. And they pervert the meaning of Scripture as if they were somehow given some special insight and without them we would never know the truth. This is such a serious thing. Because I said a couple of weeks ago to you, I don't wanna put words in anybody's mouth, but last of all God's.
Now this deals a tremendously heavy blow to a large segment of professing Christianity. We have people in good churches who are trying to learn how to listen for the voice of God. Somehow to turn on some spiritual antenna to hear God's voice, this is so dangerous, so dangerous. God has given us this truth in a book. The book of truth is objective; it is true, in and of itself. It is true whether you know it exists or not. It is true whether you understand it or not. It is true whether you feel it's true or not. It's true whether or not its ever been validated by anybody's experience. Psalm 1:19 1:6 he simply says, "The entirety of your word is true." Now that is the starting point of any kind of Christian worldview. And the reason the church today is in so much trouble is because it doesn't understand that starting point. We are bound to this truth. Bound to it.
They call themselves Christians. They talk about the bible. They say they believe it. They use the language of symbolic Christianity, but the real source of authority is themselves. They're getting messages from God and the Lord is showing this verse means that and this verse means this. True Christianity begins with objectivity.