Biblical Framework of All Thinking, Part 1

Laying the Foundation: Indicatives and Imperatives of Romans 12:1-2

0:04 This adult Sunday school class was held on February 28, 1988, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now, several weeks ago in our adult class, we began a new series of studies under the general heading of Biblical Perspectives on Crucial Issues. Now, since the Bible gives us a very clear structure for dealing with issues of a very practical nature in the realm of Christian behavior, it was necessary to concentrate for three weeks upon that basic structure in which the Bible sets before us the patterns of behavior required of the people of God. And we sought to express that structure in terms of the symptoms. We sought to express in a simple statement that the great indicatives of the gospel are the foundation of the imperatives of the gospel. To state it differently, it is because of that which God has done for us in Christ and by the gift of the Holy Spirit

1:18 that he requires of us a certain pattern of behavior and expects that in the strength of the Spirit, out of the gift of the Holy Spirit, we may be able to do the same thing. And we sought to express that structure in terms of the simple statement that the great indicatives of the gospel are the foundation of the imperatives of the gospel. And we sought to express that structure in terms of the simple statement that the Bible sets before us the patterns of behavior required of the people of God. It was necessary to lay a very solid foundation made of the blocks of the truths of Romans 12, 1 and 2 if we are to build a truly biblical perspective of how we are to conduct ourselves in these areas that we've called crucial issues. Male-female identity, roles, relationships, a biblical concept of work and labor, etc. And so we spent a couple...

2:28 We spent a couple of weeks examining Romans 12, 1 and 2, and the summary of that text would be this, that the great goal envisioned by the apostle is that the Christians at Rome would discover in their own experience the will of God. That is, the will of God's precepts, that thing which is good, acceptable, and perfect, and the path to that proving or discovering of the will of God is the path of presentation, I beseech you by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, the path of non-conformation, be not conformed to this age. There must be a flushing out of the thought patterns that we've imbibed from the world and that still seek to invade, as it were, the inner sanctuary of our minds and hearts. Be not conformed to this world. But thirdly, be transformed. Transformed, continually transformed, by the renewing of your mind, then and only then will we prove the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God.

Introducing the Three-Fold Biblical Framework for Thinking

3:40 Now, with those perspectives beneath us as what we might call the foundation blocks of the framework within which we must move and think in establishing a biblical mindset on these crucial issues, what I want us to do today, today is to erect the framing that rests down upon that foundation. In other words, we're not going to take up yet male and female roles and identities, which will be our first subject. You say, well, Pastor, let's get on with it. No, we must construct our house properly, and you will see, though you may be a little antsy and impatient, you will see the wisdom of this down the road as again and again and again we will not only come back to the perspective of the Lord, but also of the Andrews. of Romans 12, 1 and 2, but we will come back to this framework that, God willing, we'll establish this morning. I hope we have enough time to establish it, but because I don't want to do straight lecturing, we may, in our discussion and guided discussion, fall short of accomplishing that goal. Now, if we are to think biblically, if we are to reject the thinking of this age, we must come to the place where it becomes as natural as breathing to think within a three-fold

5:06 sphere of reference, and I'm going to state these things in the first person, because I want all of us to hear these words over and over until they kind of filter in and I hope take deep root in our hearts. And these are what we might call the framework for addressing these crucial issues of practical Christian experience. If Romans 12, 1 and 2 contains the epitome of the biblical foundation, God's indicatives are the basis of his imperatives, then built upon that foundation is this fundamental biblical framework. Let me state what it is, then we'll get into the scriptures and hopefully we'll draw out from you the bare bones, if I should stick with the house. The basic two-by-fours and two-by-tens that form that framework. We're going to discover together that if we are to refuse the thinking of this age, if we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, then we must learn to think reflexively in these terms. I am dependent upon the will of God for my existence.

6:27 I am dependent upon the word. I am dependent upon the word of God for my directives, and I am dependent upon the grace of God for my performance.

6:38 I am dependent upon the will of God for my existence. When we start addressing the question, who am I? The answer is I am either a man or a woman. What does it mean to be a man, to be a woman?

6:52 What precisely is there in male and femaleness according to the word of God? Well, it all comes back. It all comes back to this consideration that I am dependent upon the will of God for my existence, and if I'm to know what I'm to be and do in that existence, I'm dependent upon the word of God for my directive, and having seen the directive, I am equally dependent upon the grace and power of God for my performance. So let's start with number one.

Dependence on God's Will for Existence: The Creation Account

7:26 I am dependent upon the will of God for my existence. And let's turn to Genesis chapter one. And here there will be some dovetailing, I trust, with the things that Pastor Bob has been giving you out of the opening chapters of Genesis.

7:46 With eloquent simplicity, and yet with a profundity that staggers us when we read it, the first words of God's special revelation are these, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now notice, there is not a statement that in the beginning God was lonely and therefore God created. In the beginning God was unfulfilled and was conscious of some personal need and that, no, in the beginning, God, and the moment you say the word God, there should come to our minds. Complete self-sufficiency, complete self-complacency, no fulfillment, no unmet needs in himself, there is enough in God to meet every need of God. And because that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the mystery of the eternal existence of the triune God, there was everything. In the Godhead, to fully satisfy itself.

9:10 So if you've picked up along the way any stupid notion that God created because he was lonely, God created because he was antsy and needed something to do to fulfill needs in himself, that is the thinking of the world. Be not conformed to this world. Don't think of God in those terms. The Bible, in its opening statement, forbids us to think in those terms.

9:35 In the beginning, God, in all the self-sufficiency and self-containment and glory of his person, this God created the heavens and the earth. And then we have a record of the great epochs, the great days of creation, and it culminates in the creation of man in chapter 1 and verse 26. Please turn there.

10:08 And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. And God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him, male and female, created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, verse 29, and God said, behold, I have given you, and then, verse 31, and God saw everything he made, and behold, it was very good. Now, in the light of this text, we ask the question, to what do we owe our existence? To our existence. Men, women, boys, or girls, to what do we owe the existence of the naked trees that are out there pointing heavenward this morning?

11:21 To what do we owe the existence of all reality about us, with us, and within us? And the answer of Genesis chapter 1 is, we owe it all to the free, sovereign, divine prerogative to God. And to what do we owe the existence of the sin of sin? To the free, sovereign, divine prerogative to God, to the free, sovereign, divine prerogative to God.

Adam and Eve's Original Mindset: God's Will as the Source of All

11:44 So if you can picture Adam and Eve standing in the garden, the moment after they were created, I told the men in the academy, I usually draw women like this, but Eve had no skirt for a while anyway. But to distinguish between male and female, I'll do it that way. That's very fresh in my mind, that happened on Friday. Now, as they stood in the garden, when they came from the creative hand and activity of God and looked at one another, looked at everything in the world about them, whether it was the trees or a nice babbling little brook that made its way off into the distance, or whether it was birds splitting the air with their wings, or whether it was a little worm crawling on the ground, they were to look at everything they saw in each other, in themselves, if they looked over into that stream at a quiet place and saw their own faces, and if Adam asked Eve, Eve, where did all this come from, what would her answer be? You tell me.

12:50 What should her answer have been?

12:55 Someone?

12:56 Raise a hand and we'll recognize you.

13:00 All right, Cliff? God made all things. And if Eve were to say to Adam, Adam, why is your nose shaped the way it is?

13:12 If Adam was thinking, and we know his thinking was not at all distorted before the fall, he would have immediately answered, what? God made it. My nose is this way because God made it this way. Why is the tree shaped like that?

13:26 Because God designed that it should be shaped that way. Why does the tree stand this way and not this way? Because that's the way God made it. In other words, Adam and Eve, in their first conscious interaction with the world without them, the world between them, and the world within them, had a mindset.

13:48 In which they could not and would not think in any other category but this. I and all around me is utterly dependent upon the will of God for its existence. We are what we are because God willed to make us this way. The world is what it is because God willed to make it that way.

14:14 And that seems like a very fundamental and simple perspective. However. Unless that perspective percolates, as it were, through every cell of our conscious thought with regard to ourselves and the world and things, we are never going to attain what Romans 12, 1 and 2 say we are to attain. We will never discover and prove in our own experience the will of God, the good, the acceptable, and the perfect, unless we start with this fundamental part of the framework of all biblical ethics, namely, I am dependent upon the will of God for my existence.

Eternal Dependence: Worship in Revelation 4

14:57 Now, that emphasis is carried right through, even into heaven, so that for all eternity, that will be our perspective as well. I want you to turn to Revelation chapter 4.

15:15 Revelation chapter 4 and verses 9. Through 11. And when the living creatures, which are probably representative of all the created order, when the living creatures shall give glory and honor and thanks to him that sits on the throne, to him that lives forever and ever, the four and twenty elders, probably representative of all the church, of all the redeemed of God of all ages, the four and twenty elders shall fall down before him that sits on the throne. and shall worship him that lives forever and ever and shall cast their crowns before the throne saying Worthy art thou our Lord and our God to receive the glory and the honor and the power for thou didst create all things and because of thy will they were and were created. These creatures nearest the throne in the glory of the immediate presence of God in heaven itself

16:38 pierce no deeper into the mystery of why things are what they are than we do sitting here this morning. Because of thy will they were and were created. They view all reality God accepted as the glory of God. As the expression of the free sovereign will of God to make things and to make them as they are.

God's Imminent Sustenance: Refuting Deism

17:12 And having created unlike the deist. If someone asks you what is a deist? Well he's someone who believes God created all things but having created them he walked away to leave them to work themselves out under their own inherent powers and laws and principles. The same way.

17:30 I wound up my alarm clock last night. My little travel clock. I was so tired I didn't trust my little beeper on my watch. And I wound up my little travel clock and then I left it to work out its cycles of minutes and hours until the appointed time when it would trigger the alarm under the power inherent in that spring which I had put in by the energy of my arm and my fingers.

17:58 The energy of my arm and fingers. The energy of my fingers was transferred to the spring and then I left it for that spring unattended. I didn't get up every three seconds and say how you doing spring? Give me a little encouragement.

18:11 That our boy spring. Go right along now. I left it to work itself out under its own inherent power. Now a deist is basically someone who says God created and wound up the clock of the universe and then he walked away.

18:26 And now he just lets it operate under the power that he wants. He inherently placed in it in creation. That's a deist. Well we are not deists.

Christ as Sustainer: Colossians 1 and Acts 17

18:36 We are theists who believe that God not only created all things but he presently, actively and I'm going to use this word imminently sustains and orders and governs all things. And there are several passages that clearly teach this and I want us to look at them together. First of all Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1.

19:06 Speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ Paul writes Colossians 1 and I begin reading with verse 14 In whom, that is in Christ we have our redemption the forgiveness of our sins who is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation. That does not mean he was the first thing born when God created. The firstborn is the rightful heir. And it's in that sense that the word is used here.

19:42 The rightful heir of all creation. Why? For in him were all things created. If everything that is a thing was created by him he's not a thing that was created.

19:55 And the Jehovah's Witnesses know that so if you had a New World Bible you know how you'd find it reading here? All other things were created by him. They put in the word other. It's not there in the Greek.

20:07 They knew the force of this. You and I are things in that sense. We are created realities. He is the uncreated reality.

20:17 And in him all things were created. In the heavens and upon the earth things visible, things invisible. There are things, substantial realities that are not visible to the human eye. You see, the Bible knows nothing of a materialistic view that the only reality is what you can see and touch and feel and eat and smell.

20:37 There are things visible. Pulpits, microphones, Bibles, people. There are things invisible. Angels, spirits, demons, the power of God, the Holy Spirit, things invisible.

20:55 Whether thrones or dominions, principalities or powers, all things have been created through him and unto him. He is before all things, therefore not a thing himself. And in him all things, the next word, consist. And that word consist means, as the marginal reading has it, are held together.

21:18 Christ is the cohesive element in the entirety of the created order. What is it that keeps the atom with all of that potential energy self-contained, functioning as it does? What is it that keeps the planets and the galaxies with all of the tremendous energy? What keeps them all in place?

21:44 Jesus Christ by the present activity of his power. In him all things hold together presently. And then I use the word imminent. There is an imminent activity of God in his world.

22:02 Acts 17. He doesn't do it as some kind of a distant administrator who simply pushes some buttons and then he's gone. And then he's gone. And then he's gone.

22:12 And then he's gone. And then he's gone. And then he's gone. And then he's gone.

22:12 And then he's gone. And then he's gone. And then he's gone. And then he's gone.

22:13 And then he's gone. And then he's gone. And then he's gone. He controls his operation from a distance.

22:17 But Acts 17.24 and 25, the God that made the world and all things therein, he being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, neither is he served by men's hands as though he needs anything. Now look at the next part of the verse. Seeing he himself, and what's the next word?

22:42 Giveth. Present tense verb. Now that's one of the problems. We need a modern, non-Elizabethan English translation, but we're going to lose so much.

22:53 That's one of the things I feel that tension. In certain ways, when you see the E-T-H, you immediately say present tense. He gives. And we can say that in contemporary English, but there are other things that don't come through quite as clearly.

23:08 But he gives right now. He gives by a present, imminent activity of his own sovereign will and power. He gives to all life and breath and all things. Now we are not pantheists who say all is God and God is all.

23:31 And God is the sum total of all things. That's a pantheist. Pan, all, theist, God. All is ultimately a part of God and God is the sum total of all things.

23:40 No. We are theists who believe that God is separate from everything he made. Everything comes into existence by his being according to his will. But we are not theists.

23:53 He has not then gone off to some distant place in his universe to let the spring that received energy by his creative activity run the clock. But he is presently active. And though the Bible teaches there is a peculiar place of his dwelling, the scriptural, it also says he fills heaven and earth. David says, Whither shall I flee from thy presence?

24:19 If I send up into heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in hell, you're there. If I jump on the first rays of the sun as it breaks over the horizon and shoots out hundreds of miles into the ocean. If I, say, he says, if I get upon the wings of the morning, that's probably the imagery.

24:37 He said, even there, thy hand shall lead me, thy right hand shall hold me. If I, say, surely the darkness shall hide me, the darkness and the light are both alike to you. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. I said, I can't conceive of it, and yet I believe it.

24:53 I believe what my mind cannot comprehend. I rejoice in my heart at that reality. So God is present. He is imminent.

25:03 If you want further commentary, read Psalm 104 sometime this afternoon, where even the creation of the grass that will sprout, spring up in the spring, it doesn't just happen. It says God sends forth His Spirit to cause even the natural cycles of nature. God is imminent in His creation. You say, Pastor Martin, what in the world does that have to do with what I am as a woman, what I am as a man?

The Contrary Perspective: Evolution's Impact on Thinking

25:32 How do I think about work? It has everything to do with it. Because there has been a contrary perspective which has dominated Western thought for a hundred years. And what is that contrary perspective?

25:44 Someone want to tell me?

25:47 Raise a hand, and I'll recognize you. What is that contrary perspective? Yes, Charlie?

25:54 The fact that we're independent? I wasn't thinking so much of that. Mr. Dixon?

26:00 Evolution. Evolution. The whole concept that this present world, including everything that is in it, is what it is only because of time, time, time, time, time, plus space, plus chance, operating randomly upon some matter. And when you ask, where did that original little glob of matter come from, then you get the evolutionist's very antsy.

26:30 Well, it just was there.

26:34 That's right. And though some may want to trace it back, ultimately, you come to the place where you say,

26:42 have you seen Sound of Music? Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever did. Well, there's a good bit of little theology in that.

26:50 Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever did. Now, the other part of it is bad. That's Romanism, where she's rejoicing that now God has given her the desire of her heart in the man that she fell in love with, and she says, I must have done something good.

27:06 Now, that's heresy. But when she says nothing comes from nothing, so there you've got truth and heresy backed up one to another. So, the evolutionist just sort of antsily says, well, just take my word. Whether it was in the pool of slime, or whether it was some little spot, something was there, and that was operated upon time plus pace plus chance, and we are what we are.

27:34 So, when you look at a world of things and of people, whether you look at the world within, my mind, my appetites, my sexual capacities and urges, my physical appetites and urges, my relationships, my relationships to others, the whole matter of work and how to relate to God's creation, all of these things, if you really believe that you are nothing but that which is the product of time plus space plus chance acting on some initial glob of who knows what, then you see that radically affects your whole perspective on the totality of life. And furthermore, it means that nothing has any kind of stability or permanence or absoluteness to it. Everything is in a state of flux. For what is today's truth about who I am may be tomorrow's error because we are in a constant state, you see, of changing under these inexorable pressures of time plus space plus chance and the forces operating upon us. And there is no way to develop a Christian mindset about the most practical issues of life unless, by the grace of God,

29:02 Romans 12 is true of us with regard to this whole issue. Be not conformed to this age. This age thinks and judges and concludes and pronounces and acts and reacts all within an assumed framework of evolution. Evolutionary perspective.

29:23 Now, I'm not saying that every individual is an articulate evolutionist who could defend his position so-called scientifically. I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying is that the fundamental mindset is that God and creation are not essential factors to answer the practical questions of life. If you're concerned about the theological questions, the life to come, heaven or hell, the existence of the soul, then you may need to bring some concept of God in.

29:57 But with regard to sexual standards and marriage and family, you don't need God for those things. And dear people, all of us, to one degree or another, have breathed that air that has pushed God clean out of his universe and substituted the true living creator sustaining God with this idol who's comprised of time, plus space, plus chance, plus a little glob.

Rejecting Evolutionary Mindset for Biblical Identity

30:29 And if you don't realize that and ask God to begin to make you sensitive to how much perhaps that perspective has entered, you will not make much progress in the obedience of Romans 12. Your heart may be filled with a sense of wonder at God's grace. And your posture may be, Lord, I'm yours. I offer myself up, a living sacrifice, seeking by your grace, knowingly and deliberately, to be set apart unto you from sin and the world.

31:04 But if you don't go the next step and say, but Lord, I'm determined not to be conformed to this present age, but be transformed by the renewing of my mind. Lord, teach me to think in every single relationship, in every single concern, I am dependent upon the will of God for my existence. I am a created reality. Therefore, it is my creator who designed me, who gave me the various appetites and capacities and inclinations and abilities that I have.

31:43 And to that creator, I must look for the answer to the question, how am I to relate to this aspect of myself, to my wife, my children, my work, and the world about me?

31:59 You see, if there is no essential, essential difference between you, your dog, and the lima beans you eat this afternoon, no essential difference, only some accidental differences in the evolutionary process, we're in big bad shape. Because if you think there's no essential difference between you and a bowl of beans, then you may start treating yourself and others like a bowl of beans. That's right. Take the leftovers and throw them in the garbage.

32:29 You think there's any connection between the wholesale murder of babies in wombs and the bowl of beans view? Of course there is. And its common root is this cursed, rotten, hellish, demonic doctrine of evolution.

32:48 Got a few extra beans left over? Chuck them away. So you got a little field tissue that shouldn't be there? Chuck it away.

32:57 And you can treat a human being in a womb like leftover life.

33:04 There at the root of it, at least much of the root of it, is this horrible, horrible, pseudo-scientific dogma of evolution. And if you want to know what it is at its roots, just read Romans 1. It is a pseudo-sophisticated expression as they did not want to retain God in their knowledge. They became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened.

33:30 And out of a foolish heart and a vain imagination, coupled to the so-called modern scientific technology, comes the doctrine of evolution.

33:41 And it's pseudo-scientific. But its roots is man's efforts to rid himself of the implications of being God's creature. So, dear people, we must have as the framework within which we think that consciousness, that constant recognition, I am dependent upon the will of God for my...

34:06 existence. It is not up to me to decide what am I and how am I to conduct myself as a woman because it wasn't my original idea to make something called a woman generically or this woman particularly. God made me. And therefore, he who designed me to be a woman alone has the right to tell me the intention of his design.

34:32 Who is it that conceived of the concept of a male, a man? It was God. He made them male and female. And therefore, I cannot know what true manliness is by watching the beer ads.

34:49 Now, that's not how you learn what a man is.

34:55 Having your shirt open to your navel, swigging down some bud light while your eyes leer at women as though they were animals in heat. Macho! No. Sinful.

35:12 Horrible reflection of God. What does that have to do with being an image bearer of God? Absolutely nothing. You see, we must come back again and again, again and again, again and again, this concept, I'm dependent upon the will of God for my existence as a man, as a woman.

Jesus and Paul's Method: Returning to Creation for Practical Issues

35:36 And then we'll carry it right through everything. And you're going to find that with every one of these issues, we're going to keep going back to the doctrine of creation. And we're going to do so because it's exactly what Jesus did and the apostles did. When Jesus is dealing with the thorny question of marriage, where does divorce fit into marriage?

35:54 What did he do? In Matthew 19, he says, have you not read that in the beginning? He took them right back to creation. That's what Jesus did.

36:02 Paul is dealing with a thorny problem in the church at Corinth where women were throwing off the external, visible signs of their proper God-given role in subjection to men. And Paul's going to address that thing. But you know where he takes them? Back to creation.

36:20 Went back to Genesis 2, the very order of creation, and constructs a whole theology on the fact that the man was not made for the woman, but the woman was made for the man.

36:36 And then he takes a fact of biology to cut the man down off his high horse after he's read that and said, oh boy, that's a woman made for me. And that means I can use what's made for me. He says, uh-uh. But the man is not without the woman.

36:51 Every man living except Adam came through a woman's womb. How can you demean that without which you'd have no existence? You couldn't strut if you weren't here.

37:05 That's right. So you take the simple fact of biology. You all came through a woman's womb. You owe a tremendous debt to womanhood.

37:15 Don't demean them. You see the beautiful...

37:18 And all this back to Christ. And the way God designed it, we should get here. God could have ordered it so that he made us up in heaven and had storks drop us in diapers down the chimney. I mean, God could have done that.

37:31 Couldn't he? God can do anything.

37:36 But he made us so that no man can ever get too cocky when he reads a woman made for the man. Yeah, but the man is not without the woman.

37:50 Creation. Right back to the doctrine of creation. You come into the question of the doctrine of the church. Why should there be male leadership?

37:59 I mean, enough's enough. We women have been oppressed for too long. And it's right that in certain areas men have oppressed women. They have.

38:08 They've been guilty of wicked, foul, rotten, godless oppression of women. Oppressing image bearers of God. That's right. But it's also true that women have oppressed and resisted constituted male authority.

38:25 But ultimately, how are we going to decide the issue? Who should lead in Christ's church? Well, the answer is, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2. We go back to 1 Timothy 2.

38:33 We go back to creation. And when he's sorting out the whole matter of God's will for the churches, for the ages to come, giving directions to Timothy, and he says, I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over a man. Where does he get his authority to state things so categorically and clearly? He goes right back to creation and says, for the man was created first.

38:58 Then the woman, and in the very primacy of the order of creation, is a theology of leadership and one of following. One of hierarchical structure, if I may use that term. And it's embedded right in creation. So you see, dear people, in making this emphasis, I'm not building up the doctrine of creation into something beyond what the scripture does.

39:23 And we must think in that category if we're to think biblically about these things. These great issues. So, when you find a man who says, ah, but look, Pastor, you know, when God mixed me together in my mother's womb and was selecting the elements of the gene pool, he just put me together, a laid-back, passive guy. But he made my wife.

39:42 Man, oh man, she could run a corporation with 3,000 employees and, I mean, she's a go-getter. So she's the dominant one. So let her lead. What's wrong with that?

39:54 What's wrong is you're denying what you are as an image-bearer of God. For according to 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 11, a man shares the image of God in some ways that a woman does not. And it's peculiarly in the area of the exercise of authority. So for you to cop out because your temperament is not aggressive is to deny your created identity.

40:21 And to deny your created identity is to clench your fist in the face of God and say, God, I don't like the way you arrange things.

The Fall and Original Goodness: A Crucial Distinction

40:30 See how the implications go in all kinds of directions. And I said, I was afraid, we wouldn't get to all three of them. But now I want to at least open it up for questions. Pastor Nichols has a comment to make.

40:40 Or two. Or three. Yes.

40:45 Well. Can I just say this because I realize that time has gone anyway. Yeah.

40:51 Yes. Perhaps it would be good to open up a little bit the idea that really grows out of this that God saw everything that he made and he pulled that was very good. Mm. Because the whole question of sinfulness, where it came from,

41:15 the fact of our sinfulness rooted in the fall, not in the original creation, is also part of that foundation you're speaking about. Mm. You could consider it as a separate topic, but really it's part of the doctrine of the original creation. Mm.

41:34 Good. Why don't you just open that? Because this is an area that Pastor Nichols teaches in the academy and it's, and I'm more than glad for you to just underscore a couple of those things, Pastor Nichols. All right?

41:48 It's just that, take for example that very question of authority in the church. The apostle has another thing to say there with reference to the foundation of it beyond simply the fact that Adam was first formed and then Eve. He goes on to say, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in this transgression. So he says, the whole question, you know, the fall of man and human sinfulness also has something to do with the way we approach the very practical questions of life.

42:20 Mm. The fact that matter is not inherently evil has an awful lot to say about the way we approach right and wrong and good and evil and questions about ethics and morals,

42:37 particularly a whole matter of asceticism, the idea that you can be holy by denying legitimate bodily needs for sleep and for food. That the celibate state is more holy. The question of the fact that celibacy is more holy than marriage is these various forms of asceticism which have grown out of the idea that even as matter was always here, so evil also was always here. Or the idea that matter is inherently evil.

43:10 The whole question of self-justification was proven in a book as well. The idea that, well, we're really not responsible for what we do because God made me this way. As though evil is part of the original creation when in reality it is not.

43:27 Yes, here's, if we can put it on the board, that at the end of Genesis 1 and 2, all that God made was very good. Yes. And there were certain ethical norms that have undergone some radical disruption as well as continuity after the intrusion of sin. And certain things have come in with the event of sin that influence what is right, what is wrong.

43:54 And evolution also completely rejects this idea of something originally made in a wonderful, good, perfect state and then a radical event of a fall into a ruinous condition. Instead, evolution's idea is everything is always getting better. Yes. Everything is better.

44:14 So now we're wiser than then we're in the middle of the world. We're in the, quote, stone ages or whatever. They used to, you know, marriage had its origin in a cave with clubs and all this business and now we're much more sophisticated. We're more morally attuned to what ought to be.

44:30 This whole idea that if it's what's newer is necessarily better and superior, morally advanced, is a rejection of the fall as well. Yes. Whereas the Bible teaches us all that he made was very good. Then a horrible, tragic thing entered and got so bad that in a very short time God blotted out the whole then existing world.

44:54 Now what does that do to your evolutionary so-called science that assumes in carbon dating and all the rest that everything that we can observe here has always been from the time the first spark started. Leaves no room for the cataclysm of the fall of the fall and the equally or even greater greater cataclysm event of the flood. There's no place in an evolutionary view of so-called science. Well, I thought science dealt with what it can observe.

45:24 Observable data. Well, all they do is observe something here and then reason backward to infinity. Well, unless you're God and you're there, you've got no reason telling us and the God who was there has told us that some things happened that involved the breaking up of the deep, the fountains of the deep and all of the rest and that this very world came under the curse of God. Cursed is the ground for your sake.

45:48 So there are factors there that cannot be accounted for apart from these other events. Very, very vital. And then if we may close on this note, you see, with regard to the institution of marriage, Paul in Timothy says that it's a doctrine of demons that says because sin is entered and sin has made the marriage institution vulnerable to its influence, therefore, the best way to be holy is to chuck the institution itself. Excuse me, Chuck.

46:20 To throw out.

46:23 I've got to learn to use a different verb for throwing something out. All right. All right. Seriously now, it's a doctrine of demons that forbids to marry that says the way of holiness is celibacy because sin is so radically affected the whole matter of our sexuality in the institution of marriage.

46:45 The way to holiness is to throw out. That institution. Whereas we know just the opposite is true because of the factors of redemptive grace that we'll take under our third heading, marriage has been elevated to the place where it is now. The most accurate, glorious picture of the most wonderful redemptive reality, the relationship of Christ to his church.

Homework: The Necessity of Verbal Directives

47:11 And God, as it were, has taken it up out of the horrible rubble into which sin had thrown it and has nobled in endlessness and nobled that institution. So I appreciate that additional factor. Now let me just ask you a question, give you a little homework assignment just to read through, not in great detail, but as it were, speed read through Genesis 1, 2 and chapter 3 up to verse 15 sometime this week and get the raw materials for building our second part of the frame. I am dependent upon the word of God for my directives.

47:47 I am dependent upon my directives. And I want you to read with this question in mind. Is the necessity for verbal directives a result of the fall? Because man fell, he no longer had an enlightened mind, he had a darkened mind.

48:02 Is the necessity for verbal directives from God a result of the fall? Or are verbal directives a part of our creaturehood even in an unfallen state? All right? So you think about that as you read.

48:17 Come prepared to discuss your conclusion next week. All right? Let's pray together.

48:29 Our Father, we are so thankful this morning that we find great delight in echoing that confession of the creatures and the elders about the throne to worship you as the God who has exercised his will in creating all things. Thank you for bringing us away from the idol of blindness and the devil and the devil and the devil and the devil and the devil and the devil and the devil and the devil to reject those idols that would have damned us. And you have turned us to yourself, the living and the true God, and to your beloved Son, our Savior and Lord, even Jesus of Nazareth. And, O Lord, we ask as we seek to set up a biblical framework for thinking on ethical and practical issues that you will write these books and these biblical perspectives upon the fleshly tables of our hearts. Flush out all of the world's influence and inscribe your word upon us, we pray. In Jesus' name, Amen.