Published: August 3, 2023 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Pauline Studies 4 - The Church in the World - Part 3 | Scripture: Philippians 2:5-16
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father again we thank you for this time we thank you for this fellowship and we thank you for your word we ask that you would pour out your Holy Spirit a spirit of
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understanding Spirit of faith that we would not be conformed to this world but rather be transformed by the renewing of
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our minds our minds that we might be conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ the last Adam and we thank you that in him you have
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made us in His image and ask that you would as you have promised bring to Perfection the work that you have begun I pray that you would guide our conversation this evening our thoughts
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our questions our questions help us to understand the world in which we live we live that we might better understand how to live in that world
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we ask these things for the edification of the church for our building up in faith and For Your Glory Your Glory and we ask in Jesus name amen
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trivia quiz for people over 50. who remembers the this theme song those were the days
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All in the Family a show that is probably not even legal in syndication anymore the most Politically Incorrect show of the 1970s
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the 1970s but it opened up with the with the Archie and Edith singing both out of key this song Those Were the Days
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and I mentioned this last week or perhaps a week before that we do as Christians as we do as humans we do tend to wax nostalgic
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and really that it happens that at a fairly early age it's it's not an old fart disease it's something that that once you get it at least your 30s
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probably even mid to late 20s you start thinking how the things used to be the way things used to be and somehow we always imagine that they were better
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they weren't they weren't but in the church we don't generally wax nostalgic about our own life we tend to look back at some era in
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church history church history that we seem to think got it right and wish that that were our era that we would live in 17th century
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Puritan England or in the first century or some other time that we think that they just got it right they really loved the Lord they loved one another
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it's really a silly notion because if you read the letters of Paul especially the two to the to Corinth you realize that even having Apostles on the scene
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the scene didn't help didn't help you know there was a there was a mess and I mentioned when we talked about this last that if you read the writings of of any era including the patristic
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era anytime during the Middle Ages during the Reformation during the Puritan Era during the Elizabethan or the Victorian era whatever era
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you will hear the preachers lamenting the sorry and lacks condition of Christianity in their day and you'll hear them waxing nostalgic about some previous era when the spirit
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burned brighter and Believers were more on fire and more dedicated and more devoted and it's all bunk it's it's not truth it's a false picture of the past
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but it's also worse than that it's a form of escapism and it's a form of of rejecting Divine
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Providence because he has raised us up for just such a time as now how do we know that because we're alive now and we weren't alive then and we won't be alive in a
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hundred years okay when our descendants will wax nostalgic over our era okay so the idea those were the days is um
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is it's kind of common to The Human Condition we seem to have an aversion to the present the time in which we live is always the
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worst possible time and it happens even you know in our in the course of our life we we hear people talk about how bad it is
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people who ought to know better people who live through the 70s you know they ought to know better that we have a much better living standard
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living standard much cleaner air much cleaner water much better food better food just about everything is far better than in my parents or grandparents time
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in the church we lament how how awful it is how biblical literacy is is at an all-time low [Music] but biblical literacy was always at an
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all-time low because not because people can't read or couldn't read because people don't care the church has always been populated by
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probably a majority of those who really don't show any interest in their faith that causes a
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almost an existential problem every generation of the church how can how can people who don't care about the Bible how can they actually be saved have you ever wondered that
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I mean how how can all the people that profess to be Christian in the United States really be Christian and the United States be the way it is
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well we don't know only God knows all we can do is as Jesus said to Peter in respect to
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John and that is what does it matter to you whether he lives or dies you follow me okay we can't consider the past and we can't consider really the condition of the
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present but I mentioned last week the sons of issachar and I'm not going to go into great detail but just a passage in first Chronicles chapter 12
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verse 32 verse 32 and of the sons of issachar are men who understood the times with knowledge of what Israel should do their chiefs were 200 and their Kinsmen
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at their command okay man who understood the times and knew what Israel should do there is no elaboration on that that I can find
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can find before or after it's not said in fact commentary is not given on the other tribes just issachar just issachar and issachar is not one of the major
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tribes okay when you when you are you know Sunday school and you're asked to recite the 12 tribes you probably get uh Judah I hope and maybe Reuben and Levi you got to get Levi
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um or maybe Ephraim and manessa because they were twins but you know then you get down into the the sons of the concubines and or the maidservants whatever
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whatever you call them back then but um you know you get down into zebulun and issachar and Asher and Dan and you start using Asher and Donner and Blitzen and you know what you know how it goes
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all right it's all happened to you too pulling in Israeli Israelite slay after a while a while um so here's issachar men who understood
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the time and knew what Israel should do so what does that mean does that mean that issachar was always blessed throughout its generations with insight into the
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times and and knowledge as to what Israel should no it doesn't mean that at all in fact issachar was one of the tribes that abandoned the dynasty of of David
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and joined with the rebellious 10 tribes and was carried off into Assyria and Exile and basically lost except for those members of issachar as with all of the
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ten tribes that after jeroboam set up the two golden calves in the North they said no way and they migrated down to Judah so that within Judah all 12
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tribes were represented but clearly issachar did not understand the times at that time so what does this phrase mean
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it doesn't mean the universal wisdom that we passed down from Generation generation but what it has to mean even though we don't have any context or explanation
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it has to mean that they understood their times and because it wasn't their condition throughout their Generations I think we can surmise
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that the times that they understood at that time also didn't remain uniform and consistent as time went on
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times change times change but scripture does it and one of the problems with The Nostalgia that I was mentioning
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is that we want to apply the scriptures the way the way they were applied in 17th century
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England or during the Dutch Reformation or in Geneva under Calvin okay we pick a time when we think this is what I mean by they got it right
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that they applied the scriptures to their time in a way that worked now what that means that means is subject to to debate but John Knox
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whom I rarely quote and and will rarely quote but he he considered Geneva to be a perfect School of Christ
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okay um I there were many in Geneva who didn't think that it was thought they was pretty rigid and and um lacking in Grace but Knox thought that it was a perfect
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School of Christ okay let's imitate Geneva and that has been done or attempted many many times in the reformed tradition reformed tradition now I think the the situation of
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recognizing that God's Providence is sovereign is sovereign which means that the church in any age
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live that means that their interpretation and application of the Timeless scripture must understand the time in which they live that makes sense
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now I know that that that can also raise hackles because it sounds like we're going to modify the scripture to meet the time in which we live
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but that is not what I'm advocating in fact by calling scripture Timeless you know God said Lord the psalmist said Thy word O Lord
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is settled in heaven it is unchangeable its meaning is also unchangeable its purpose is unchangeable
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but that does not mean that the application of those unchangeable truths do not have to meet different contingencies in every generation they
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do one of the problems that I have with confessionalism is the attempt to apply answers and solutions to problems that are no longer facing our
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society if you read behind the confessions you read the history of the confessions you realize that they were hammered out in unique
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in unique ecclesiastical and also political environments and those who wrote those confessions were self-consciously addressing
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particular issues and questions same is true with using commentaries that commentaries tend to be in the culture in which they are written and
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they're going to address for example we're going to talk in our class at some point about this whole idea of wokeness and whatnot and whatnot you know that would not have been in this class even five years ago and
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hopefully will not in five years time but you find things in the commentaries that that are clearly I don't know what that's all about there's something going
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on some controversy within the church some teaching that is being held in anathema that I've never heard of and is no longer taught so context or historical context
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is unavoidable is unavoidable and the form of our interpretation and application of scripture will always be to some extent and I think a large
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extent determined by the context of our culture and our time Jenny
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right he did not he did not address every single group within Society the same way he in fact it was noted that he was a friend to Sinners publicans and and prostitutes but but he came down
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pretty hard on the scribes and the Pharisees so yeah he and that that's that's kind of a case in point although certainly he was applying and this was part of the controversy of his life he
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was applying the teaching of scripture in a way that had not been applied for two reasons one who he was but two but two when he was
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you know that the time in which he lived the time of visitation was unique was unique but the time of Isaiah was unique in the time of Micah in the time of post-exilic
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haggai and Zechariah these were unique times and even the prophecies seem to take that into account what they were what they were facing and certainly the history of what they were
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facing so I'm not saying that in any way we modify what the word says in fact that would be just essentially ecclesiastical suicide
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that's what the church has been doing has done throughout its ages and that is to acclimate or acculturate its message to the world around
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what I am saying is like the sons of issachar we ought to understand the times in which we live and oftentimes we spend so much time
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lamenting the Times Gone by that we never really stop to realize what kind of a world God placed us in
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and we asked the question the church in the world what is the church to be in the world the world well it's not supposed to be pining for some past era
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but rather should be as the sons of issachar understanding the times and knowing what Israel should do understanding the world in which we live and from that and the wisdom that we ask
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of God understanding what the church should do should do now when we do that we do find um this this French phrase that one of the
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few things I remember in French the more things change the more they stay the same this is a French commentary on the Book
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of Ecclesiastes okay nothing new Under the Sun and so you'll see in in the notes as I talk about the modern philosophical
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framework which we call now um stemming we're going to talk about that tonight stemming from the enlightenment of the 18th century
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I also say that Paul encountered these things too our culture is often called pluralist meaning we have a lot of different
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religions cultural traditions and mores all jumbled up in one Society the United States is called a Melting Pot but really we haven't I mean we haven't
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turned into a soup a homogeneous it's more like a stew where we have clumps of cultural uniqueness all within the
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same Society oftentimes within the same neighborhood now okay so but that's not different than the first century Roman Empire that's certainly not different than the city of Corinth
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which was a commercial Harbor and was polyglot it was multi-ethnic and so it was so was Rome okay so Paul lived
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in a pluralist world he also lived in a world that was almost uniformly theistic
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polytheistic pantheistic monotheistic pantheistic monotheistic but this is one place where we do our age differs significantly from Paul's and any other age up to the 19th century
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and that is for most of human history the word atheism was a capital crime it was not used
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because nobody was an atheist you were atheist of some sort but the idea that Society Human Society could live without acknowledgment of the
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Gods just never came into anybody or generally speaking never came into anybody's mind the closest were the epicureans but all they really did was kind of a hyper deist
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hyper deist moving the gods so far away from man that it was an effective atheism but they still acknowledge the Gods because social pressure demanded
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some form of of theism to hold Society together we don't have that anymore it is not only permissible it's even in
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many cases admirable to be an atheist and we're entering into a a generation
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where there's a certain first of all Pride of being an atheist but also it's becoming a reality
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there were those who denied the existence of God or of the Gods but what they were really saying was they were denying the imminence of any gods they were denying the influence of any Gods within the world
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of human society within the world around us and that's really how the enlightenment took it men like Voltaire and John Locke and Thomas Jefferson
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they didn't actually deny the existence of God or of Heaven they simply believed that the god the god did not participate in the Affairs of
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men that was epicureanism so even in the most Godless of the ancient philosophies there was still there were still Gods they're just way out there
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out there okay so it's an effective the atheism yes but now we have the real thing we have true bona fide philosophical epistemological atheism
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sovereign yes to be a theist you have to recognize that sovereignty and the power and the otherness what is science science is man is human rationality and yes they have
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exalted rationality I'm calling them atheists because that's what the word means God calls them fools the fool has said in his heart there is no God okay
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um so you know I don't want to I don't want to quibble over the terms is there ever such a thing as an atheist well no well no God has said eternity in the heart of every man right but he also
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it also speaks of consciences being seared and I think we're we've entered into a realm of Western Civilization where a
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large part of our society is truly decensorized cauterized decensorized cauterized to the notion of divine beings
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yes they have to have something money science something's in its place something will fill that vacuum but that that which fills that vacuum will be in their own minds themselves
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and their own understanding their own reason now it's not they're following like Lambs to the slaughter the the latest scientific or money
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making fad making fad okay we're all independent but we're independent together okay um so yeah we can you know we can we can argue over the meaning of that word but
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what it essentially means is a denial of the Divine of the otherness of the Divine something that no Human Society
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regardless of how powerful or civilized we would account it ever did ever did one writer says that the what modern Western Society is do is attempting
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something that has never been attempted before and that is to rebuild Human Society without a god
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sociologists we've never found anything quite like that we may not agree or even understand the divinities or the deities but after a while in studying their
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documents and whatnot we realized that they had a recognizable theism a hierarchy a hierarchy okay A a role a interaction between man
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and the gods that's what's being Christianity religion itself but primarily Christianity because it's taken place mostly in Western Europe and
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the United States and Canada Christianity has been privatized it has been personalized it is what it means to you
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and and that in fact is a direct descendant of direct air of the whole Zeitgeist the whole philosophy of the Enlightenment so we're going to talk
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about how do we get to where we are in trying to understand the world in which we live so it's our period is called
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s tonight now I mentioned this last week and this term is largely undefined and undefinable and yet that's part of its definition
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we're going to see that the results of the Enlightenment of the 18th century through the the other phenomena that took place primarily in the I'm sorry
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the 18th century in the 19th century the Industrial Revolution Scientific the the rise of evolution and that teaching
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has shattered and atomized standard human thought longer any word
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any word that really characterizes even a large minority of human society so we can't say oh they're platonists or they're Epicurean or they're stoic or
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they're Aristotelian we we can't use those labels anymore because they don't apply even within a single individual now
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you you can't really discern their philosophy of life what are they what do they think holds the universe together and this derives directly from the
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teaching of the Enlightenment the enlightenment is called the Age of Reason
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and it runs from about the middle of the 17th century um some people put it from 1648 from 1648 which was the end of the 30 Years War
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but also it was the major Treatise philosophical Treatise of Rene Descartes and then and then 1781 when Emmanuel Kant published his
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critique of pure reason so about 150 years of intense of intense philosophical musings and writings a
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time that included as I mentioned included Voltaire Benjamin Franklin uh didero it included Jean-Jacques Rousseau David Hume who was probably one of the
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first to actually Proclaim himself to be an atheist an atheist so a whole a number a number of philosophers who were emphasizing the
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uniqueness and the exaltation of human reason and we greatly benefited from them because what they were writing was a
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direct attack on the divine right of kings so these are the men whose influence motivated our founding fathers
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who read deeply in John Locke and in Rousseau and in Voltaire in fact they were alive at the same time and some of them actually met Franklin and Voltaire
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they read deeply into these philosophers from the European continent and those thoughts drove the the Rebellion against
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not just England not just King George but monarchy but monarchy okay you read the writings of Jefferson and Adams and Hamilton and and
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Washington you know you read the writings of these men you realize yeah the Stamp Act the the T you know whatever these were really just little matches that started a fire that was
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already smoldering already smoldering and and why many Americans applauded the French Revolution was they saw this as The Logical extension of the American Revolution and we're looking for the the
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putting off of all monarchs everywhere so this entire paradigm shift is going on and we've benefited greatly in our country we have a freedom that was
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inconceivable at the time and is still inconceivable to the vast majority of the human race so yeah we can we can look back at this
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and say thank you very much but it had a cost it had a cost to the cohesiveness of society it also had a cost in terms of the
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relationship of the church within Society in the 18th century the church was still very much part of society but by that
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time it had already been essentially co-opted by the political aspect of society and many of those who pushed strongest
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and earliest for breaking with Great Britain were themselves preachers and they were using the pulpit to preach the Revolution and they were also
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readers of these philosophs these um Enlightenment thinkers so the Age of Reason
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um David Wells is an interesting book I mentioned it last week and I do no place for truth but he says
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from an intellectual point of view the modern world began with the enlightenment with that project aimed at accounting for the whole of Life strictly within
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the bounds of natural reason that's kind of a nutshell of of the of the operating principle of the Enlightenment and that is as we look out
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into the world and as we look into ourselves as we read our Bibles or our newspapers we subject everything to reason
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to the human mind so what we have in the A's of reason
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going back to the atheism you know did did man make his mind to God yes but the mind of man can never be a god and no no man actually bowed down at an
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altar to worship his own mind so the vacuum had to be filled with something so as man removed God that vacuum was filled with human
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rationality human reason human reason so that is that is kind of the essence of the Enlightenment and really it in and of itself it is the
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historically It's the final resolution of a question that had been troubling theologians for ages and philosophers even before that but especially Christian theologians this is the final
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of the faith versus reason
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dichotomy Aquinas dealt with it earlier Anselm dealt with it and some said I I believe in order that I might understand Aquinas tried to bring reason and Faith
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together in a synthesis what was actually happening is reason was taking over and the more we thought we understood
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the world and you see this even now that you know the the movies about um uh the Coca-Cola bottle that falls out of an airplane you know and the natives think it's a
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god um the the stereotypical view of the Ancients as if they were superstitious bumpkins okay and didn't understand what Jesus
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himself said you understand the times and the seasons you you they were very scientific they determined the circumference of the globe you know they weren't idiots they built the pyramids okay so our ancestors were were not all
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ignorant cavemen ignorant cavemen just because they were pagan and polytheistic does not mean they were not in their own time and way very scientific very technical
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but to them the idea of a divorce between the gods and Human Society was simply inconceivable the idea that you could have a separation of church and state no one
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ever thunked that before okay because the King was the representative of God on Earth the gods okay in fact some name of a God is usually in the Name of the King
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and his coronation day was was a religious holiday religious holiday so uh and there was always a priesthood um so there was always an intimate
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relationship between the religion of the people and the people's life their political life their social life their family life family life well that that started to be
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disassembled in the 18th century even more so in the 19th century and then we in the 20th the 20th century is a remarkable Century
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uh filled with more dead from famine disease peschland's war and all other things that that mankind brought about than any other in fact
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I've read more people died in the 20th century on account of War than all previous centuries combined
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that has to have an effect on the world in which we live certainly it's had an effect on Europe maybe not so much an effect on the United States United States but we are Europe's descendants for the
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most part most part and what starts in Europe will eventually cross the Atlantic including the enlightenment philosophers of the 17th and 18th century their writings
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crossed the Atlantic and then they're they're soaked up by Americans so this idea that you know we resolve
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this by saying this is primary
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and this you know you might quote uh John the Baptist Faith must decrease that reason might increase
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so what they're it seems like what they're exalting is not human processes of logic because even saying that you know the king is a representative of God is totally making more logical
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but this based on reasoning from observation well not not exactly but very close
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uh you're you're doing what I'm about to do and that is there were other phenomenon epistemological phenomenon going on going on um what what you read in Voltaire
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is not really based on the empirical method it is still philosophy in fact the enlightenment philosophers were themselves Heirs of the Reformation
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and the Liberty that the Reformation brought to each individual from the church itself brought in the rebellion of those
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very same children against God against God so in the Reformation man European man was said was told you
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can think can think for yourself for yourself and that's what they did and when you think for yourself you do realize at least they did and they encourage one
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another so it's kind of a movement that feeds off of itself as it goes but their reasoning that there is
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nothing from Mere birth that sets one man above another and that if you trace and this is a mere history if you trace the lineage of the
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aristocracy you find that they usually began their time in the Sun by murder and pillage of some
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of some unprotected and unsuspecting land that they were strong enough to take over killing whatever tribal leaders were there and becoming themselves the elite
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that's how it all started and this would just read history you know how did the how did the Emperors go from one to another well one killed the one and he became emperor same with the Kings okay
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we have the War of the Roses you know we have the the Norman Conquest we have we have men who are called The Descendant of God or the representative God who've
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gained that position by killing other men and this is what the philosopher said this isn't right you're just The Heirs of murderers or brigands okay there's nothing special
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about you about you okay and then of course they had the history they're coming pretty much right after the 30 Years War which for that time was like World War One in the 20th
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century it was a war of utter devastation and no real solution or resolution okay and it lasted 30 years
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and Germany itself was just absolutely almost annihilated okay they had plagues they had you know so they had quite a bit of reason to question
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the status quo but they didn't necessarily do it by a scientific observation but what comes along at about the same time is the Scientific Revolution
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Francis Bacon okay the idea of the empirical method empirical method and this this just dovetails with the with the philosophy of the Enlightenment
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the philosophy in light of the Enlightenment says that the repository of knowledge is right up here in the human brain in our mind
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now that is an that is an immediate attack on the concept of Revelation okay so when we're talking about the rise of Reason Faith must decrease so
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what we're talking about is
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that we figure things out with our minds but again the philosophs were still philosophers and much of what they wrote would would read a lot like Plato or Aristotle or
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Augustine Christian philosophers or Pagan philosophers but at the same time we have a Revolution going on in science and science is moving from what once was
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called natural philosophy now science is just the Latin for knowledge scientia okay so the idea of science is is just that it's gaining
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knowledge of the world and the universe around us around us isn't it some of the reason we know we have what's the problem and call often liberal arts schools so now you have liberalized the
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will cause teaching theology so now you have liberals in a lot of other things well liberal in in the uh in the original meaning of the word now liberal is pejorative okay but liberal I
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think it's from the same Liber it's from the same root as Liberty um and liberal arts was was actually a good thing good thing because it opened up education to a vast
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faster wider uh segment of society the reason I think the reason we have liberal arts colleges now may be a reaction to reaction to the materialism of of the science
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schools we we we we started out in the liberal arts because that's really all there was we didn't really have an objective thing
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that we now call science science was a branch of philosophy called natural philosophy and the way science was done up until about the time of Francis Bacon the 16th
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century right 16th century um is you would you would develop your theories of how nature works based on your philosophy
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of how the universe works so your metaphysic dictated your physics and so that is a very
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subjective way of doing science now what that means is you know I use this example in teaching chemistry you know you've got the I'm teaching chemistry not art as you
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can see okay so you've got whatever it is you're studying in the microscope here that's a microscope all right looks like a plant okay looks like an apple
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yeah this is where faith comes in um so you you have the scientist and you have the object of his study now in natural philosophy
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the direction of of Discovery came first of all from the subject the scientist
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the scientist and his observation of nature was powerfully dictated by his philosophy of nature so one of the reasons why for so long we thought that
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the sun went around the earth now actual observation would show at least with the planets that they go up and they go back
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see retrograve movements of the planets has always been there right so if something's going around you then it goes around you right it goes through
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the sky the sky but the planets don't do that okay the moon does but then it changes shape and you know
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observation would have probably led to a heliocentric planetary system much sooner than it did
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but it couldn't because the philosophy that governed didn't allow it the word Adam
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which means on destroyable okay it means um it's the smallest possible
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thing was coined by Democritus a Greek philosopher in the fourth Century before Christ in the 300s
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was picked up again in the first century by lucretius by lucretius and wasn't picked up again until John Dalton in the 18th century because the zeitgeist
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did not allow it the concept of the universe being made up of particles that we can't see was ludicrous we knew that the Universe was made up of
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earth and water and fire and Air and the combinations of them right Okay so Okay so that even went into the medical terminology the four humors you know so
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we had this order this numerology there were the four points of the compass see everything was organized and then everything was analyzed through that organization
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that organization that's natural philosophy does that make sense and we've come to realize that it's not right now what is amazing is what they
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accomplished through this that they weren't bumbling idiots stumbling in the dark again they built the pyramids with this kind of wrong subjective natural philosophy but
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they're also created in the image of God so even though they have fallen their philosophy is not totally Off the Mark now well yeah I could but not yet not yet
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we're gonna take it slow so the Scientific Revolution basically changes the direction of the arrow and says that knowledge comes from the
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object not from the subject now we've never been able to 100 percent attain objectivity attain objectivity we all have
45:55
predispositions preconceptions predispositions preconceptions presuppositions that we probably don't even recognize even recognize making it impossible for us to see some things at least for Generations
46:06
and so things have been discovered that the discovery of which is not really understood for another two or three generations or one or two generations okay so we're never going to attain a
46:18
completely objective World okay I'm not even in our computers because they're programmed by human beings but the the idea of the Scientific Revolution is
46:29
observation not coming to something with a preconceived notion of how the universe is constructed but but by observing How the Universe now again they were doing the same thing
46:40
but their philosophy determined their Theory now the same thing is happening today with the philosophy of evolution
46:52
you have that philosophy and so everything you see fits in is interpreted by that mindset
47:06
so we're not really at all that different in age but when we couple it with the with the enlightenment we are further exalting human reason human reason now on top of this so we add we add to
47:19
the Age of Reason the Scientific
47:30
and we can talk about it today as a scientific revolution but it was a very long Revolution it didn't happen overnight um you know the the the famous story of
47:42
um The Physician who when he took over I think of head of surgery of some Eastern European Hospital European Hospital one of the first things he did was mandated that the Physicians and the
47:53
nurses wash their hands and all of a sudden the the incredibly High disgustingly High mortality rate among the patients dropped now they didn't quite understand germ
48:04
Theory but I think it was about the time of Louis Pasteur Mr they 19th century but he got fired okay what he was doing was was
48:17
considered um anathema to the rest of the medical community he was fired and lost his position see it wasn't immediately accepted look at this patients aren't dying this must be good no they fired him
48:30
okay so you know they they treat science today as if science has proven no science has never proven anything and is constantly disproving itself so you know
48:41
we have to understand the times and not fall into the traps that are set for us but nonetheless the Scientific Revolution looking back on it
48:51
we see an amazing development in human understanding of Nature and not only understanding but manipulation of nature so for example we can take
49:04
um the the advances made by the Ancients in herbal medicine and then we can now synthesize those the the key ingredients in our Farmers
49:18
Sciences okay so we can we can take germ Theory and and we can take DNA and we can clone and and the the advancement in scientific knowledge has has just been
49:30
phenomenal over the past 200 years enough to call it a revolution the same thing is true so what this does is this um
49:52
nature it gives man a sense of epistemological Destiny and superiority that we we can you know it is
50:04
it is amazing I don't know how many of you have ever read um Eric Larson's Isaac storm it's about the 1900 or 1908 I can never
50:16
remember the date but the Galveston hurricane and just absolutely devastating a hurricane that Galveston has never recovered Galveston was actually larger than Houston
50:27
than Houston and was was really in a position to to put Houston in the dust in terms of commercial growth after the hurricane Houston became Houston became the major city of Texas and not
50:42
but we didn't know was coming they didn't know it was coming now had they not been so prejudiced and had they listened to the Cuban meteorologists let me read this story
50:54
I'm giving away some of the punch line but you know having dealt with so many more hurricanes the human Cubans had developed a natural predictive system the behavior of animals for example of
51:06
Tides things like that they didn't have radar but now we have Doppler radar now we can not only see a hurricane we have satellites we have air aircraft we
51:17
can see a hurricane forming in the Atlantic and now we have computer models that tell us where it might go okay so yeah we've benefited a lot from the advancements of science
51:27
adding to this and this is kind of the the stepdaughter or at least the daughter of of the Scientific Revolution is the industrial
51:44
the steam engine um chemistry um chemistry and the advances especially in Germany of of chemical fertilizers Tim
52:10
all all technology everything that humans can do saw itself as an atheist we don't need God in any of this but he has a great the embodiment of his philosophy with
52:20
about Mankind will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest the last king is strangled from the
52:31
entrails of the last priest so this is kind this is like the French Revolution and that goes back to what Yuri commented you know we're never without a
52:43
god and reason became the god although reason can never be a God because it's our own reason but the monarchs the the monarchs and the priesthood they were the enemies of
52:53
the French Revolution they were they were to a large extent if you read the writings of our founding fathers they were very much against
53:04
Kings and Priests and would have essentially the same attitude as didero as to what to do with them okay and some of them like Thomas Jefferson were very explicit as to what
53:14
he would do with every last king and every last priest so the because the the king ruled by dictat and the priest ruled by manipulation and
53:26
lies they were enemies of the truth and they were oppressors of all mankind you you think about it and it's like yeah they pretty much have been and and not just Christian not just
53:39
European but if you look at the cultures of of antiquity the Emperors and the priests were the dominant classes of every society and
53:50
every society was kept underfoot and under thumb by these two classes well now scientists are our priests and and science is our new religion yes
54:01
um and whatever a scientist says is as is as if Revelation so yes we we're not again more things change the more things stay the same nonetheless we do have the
54:13
unique distinction of being the only Society in the history of mankind that is attempting to build itself without any reference to God or gods that is
54:26
especially important because we recognize all men to be created in the image of God so it's not just some arbitrary development of philosophy it is almost
54:37
the ultimate stage of human Rebellion against God against God that it was one thing to to falsify God
54:47
it is another thing to annihilate him and that has been the effort of the modern West now when I say you know I'm only talking about our culture the
54:59
Western World this is not the case everywhere in the world right
55:31
I'm glad the community you have to go to church so would you rather have the option to come to this church or have to go to some like high liturgy church that you were actually attracted that you
55:43
did well for anyone else I am not advocating for the for a moment a return to the pre-enlightenment world I am not
55:54
I've already said we have we have gained much much through the writings of these men through the work of the founders of our
56:04
country the framers of the Constitution um they were very unique men very few of them if any were Evangelical
56:16
Christians most of them were at best dias okay but nonetheless I nonetheless I I applaud their intellect their bravery
56:28
their bravery um and and our I'm very thankful for their for the results now my heritage uh Sicily well
56:40
Sicily has a Heritage of always being owned by someone okay now there was a time when the southern half of Italy and Sicily was called the kingdom of the two sicilies that was its day in the Sun
56:52
before it was overrun by the Normans and the no the French or so whoever the Germans then but the idea of Oppression is universal okay and all of us probably
57:04
most of us at least can trace Our Heritage to I'm going to say the Mediterranean world because we we do have the uh Egyptian but you know they had the Greeks then the Romans before
57:16
that the pharaohs of course so they're in the in the Middle Eastern World in Northeast Africa their history is is quite similar to much of Europe's
57:27
and that is the majority of the people oppressed by the minority of the rulers and the priests so I'm not advocating we go back to that for one moment um however I guess what I'm saying is
57:37
number one to be sons of issachar we need to understand the time in which we live and number two we need to understand especially as Americans that all that we've gained came at a cost
57:49
that's something that we don't even like as Americans to talk about how much does something cost or how much did it cost oh don't worry about it don't worry about it okay we're free we
58:02
have a great standard of living we have a wonderful country the Orioles are winning I mean it's like
58:15
well we paid a price for all of this and not understanding that we paid that price or what that price was that we paid leads us to recognize the ills of our society but
58:27
we're powerless to explain why or what to do about them and the Industrial Revolution which is as I said I think is a direct descendant of the Scientific Revolution
58:39
um within the Sciences you have the theoretical and the practical when I went to college the the only High School class that I really enjoyed was
58:51
chemistry had more to do with the teacher probably than anything but I really enjoyed chemistry so I went to college thinking that I would be a doctor because that's what you did you get chemistry degree and you go to med
59:02
school but hospitals made me sick so and I would never have been a good doctor but also the idea of staying in a laboratory day in and day out doing the
59:13
same experiment over and over again I was a poster child for ADHD before it was cool was cool I remember having a seventh grade math teacher who told me to go outside and Chase myself
59:23
Chase myself just com just I still have a tremendous amount of nervous energy so somebody told me about something I never knew of engineering engineering is just a practical
59:34
application of the theoretical science so instead of a chemist I became a chemical engineer chemical engineer okay which allowed me to get outside and go to the factory and you know do those
59:46
things so here's the theoretical here's the practical the practical applying what we're learning through objective science to to make our life
59:58
more productive more efficient but the problem with this is that while it increased our standard of living
1:00:09
of living it elevated um well I'll get to that in a moment the main problem of the Industrial
1:00:19
Revolution and it was it was probably not necessarily foreseen necessarily foreseen but prior to the Industrial Revolution everything that a village needed was
1:00:30
made pretty much in the village Now by necessity that meant the village didn't need much it didn't need much because it couldn't
1:00:40
get much get much therefore it didn't need what it didn't know about know about then we realized and and Adam Smith was kind of just uh recording in his Wealth
1:00:51
of Nations what he had observed he realized that if if you put a machine a water wheel water wheel you can now draw
1:01:02
metal and cut pins at the rate of 10 to 20 000 a day with only 12 workers whereas at home
1:01:13
the seamstress having to cut his own or her own the the tailor or whatever could make maybe 50 or 100. and he couldn't make any more because he
1:01:24
had so many other things he needed to be doing so the idea of of um of the greatest benefit what what can you do that you can do well
1:01:34
comparative advantage is what it was called well it did two things first of all it led to urbanization
1:01:47
taking people out of the country and off the farm now this is going to continue as the industrial revolution revolution grows it's now providing equipment like the cotton gin and the reaper the
1:01:57
McCormick Reaper McCormick Reaper it's now providing it's going to provide with the internal combustion engine is going to provide tractors so now more can be done by fewer people
1:02:08
which means more people don't have jobs so they go to the cities to work in the factories and the cities become
1:02:18
huge these huge these huge highly dense communities of humanity frequently from vastly different Heritage ethnicities religions all
1:02:32
pulled together into one region causing a phenomenon that was only known in places like Rome or maybe London any country there were countries who didn't
1:02:43
have any big cities but the leading countries would have maybe one maybe two and the rest of them were just Villages where everybody knew everybody everybody
1:02:54
was the same family same religion very homogeneous and very stable well no one ever used that word in describing any City in history
1:03:06
cities are not stable by Nature they are unstable they are volatile so that becomes now a progressively or increasingly major part
1:03:18
of western human culture is the city now if you were to look at a population density map of the United States you would see that the vast majority of
1:03:29
our population lives in a narrow strip of land from Washington up to Boston and from Los Angeles or San Diego Los Angeles San Francisco
1:03:40
they're they're just incredibly dead then around Chicago you got another really dense conglomeration of people and then the rest of the country is just kind of spread out and
1:03:51
the further west you go into the Midwest you know there's sometimes miles between Neighbors and the towns you drive through you blink you miss it you know okay that's the way every place used to
1:04:02
be so the industrial revolution has that effect of of breaking up families and creating
1:04:23
that is not met in a in a natural time-honored traditional way okay if you have the money then that need is going to be met by your Country Club okay by your dinner party dinner
1:04:35
societies if you don't have enough money it might be met by the bar okay it's it's going to be met but it's a false Fellowship a false community
1:04:47
um and it's it's predicated on falsehoods and not truth now this is a reality that actually presents a tremendous opportunity for the gospel
1:05:00
and for the church but we don't recognize it we don't recognize what has happened to humanity because of these things that have provided us with with such incredible benefits in our lives
1:05:11
but what this does is this and these two things together but especially this one gives us two new
1:05:22
um what's the word
1:05:41
these become the yardsticks progress is Our Hope Our Hope and efficiency is how we get there at the greatest profit okay and this again um this these concept the concept of
1:05:54
utilitarianism attributed to the British political philosopher Jeremy Bentham the idea that something is valued on the basis of its usefulness okay that leads into the the church's
1:06:08
modern Evangelistic Paradigm and that is if it works do it the same thing is true of how we order our worship what what draws the most
1:06:19
people in people in the ends are justified by the means okay is or so we we value progress and efficiency we have it
1:06:30
in our mind and we get this every few generations and then it gets blown apart and that is this idea of natural human progress this was the 19th century up until the
1:06:42
Great War World War One okay the 20th century didn't give us much hope for progress but then the Soviet Union fell and we fall right back into this idea that democracy and
1:06:55
Liberty and freedom is going to overflow the world as the waters cover the Sea and the United States is going to be the the preacher the missionary well that didn't work
1:07:05
okay 911 kind of brought that down okay but we do have this especially in the west and especially in the United States we have this almost an innate
1:07:16
optimism and trust that whatever represents progress is good and by making things more efficient we progress faster
1:07:28
progress faster and it benefits more people well it is true that economically that economically many more have benefited by the prosperity of the last 150 years than in
1:07:40
any other period in human history but there's also the nagging reality that much of modern Western economy is smoke and mirrors
1:07:52
that there is an incredible amount of debt a debt that vastly outnumbers the real value of the property held by companies and
1:08:06
individuals States and Nations but as long as we keep admiring the emperor's clothes emperor's clothes the party just keeps on playing
1:08:16
but if history teaches us anything there is a time when the party ends we are naive to think that we are in some type of
1:08:31
irreversible upward progression but that that we'll get into that but that's that's part of the Zeitgeist the
1:08:41
spirit of our age in the United States especially but this idea of ultimate victory over nature we think we will eradicate diseases we
1:08:51
will eradicate poverty we look at the condition of mankind and we think that if we pull our science together and put enough money in it we will eradicate this as a problem it is amazing that no
1:09:05
one in the in politics has talked about eradicating death eradicating death what they basically do is try to legislate it away through OSHA
1:09:15
through OSHA through the the FDA through all sorts of of different laws and regulations protecting ourselves from ourselves but we all still die
1:09:27
they can't eradicate that but that's that that's that idea of progress progress progress so what we end up with is actually a world
1:09:38
that is often termed Neo pagan and the idea of that is that we
1:09:48
that we we adjust our world and Life View we adjust our philosophy of life on the basis of the phenomenon we
1:10:01
encounter just as the Ancients would develop their theology it really wasn't but their idea of the Gods was derived from their understanding of
1:10:12
the natural world around them now science has given us a more intricate knowledge of that natural world natural world and so it has become as Abigail
1:10:24
mentioned that it has become the modern priesthood what does science tell us about this we just like our forebears just like the Ancients follow along
1:10:36
we just do what science tells us we do what makes for greatest efficiency we do what we think we elect those that we think will make our life better
1:10:47
than it was last year always upward always progressing that's the American Spirit
1:11:01
add to this now or maybe out of this elevation of human reason Scientific Revolution which focuses now on the object of our study nature the
1:11:11
material elements of the universe and then the the evident success that we've had in overcoming
1:11:21
nature both in the theoretical as well as the Practical elements we have we have made tremendous strides in subduing the earth if you just look at
1:11:32
agriculture for example fewer acres are farmed now than ever before in our history and yet we produce more food more food because of what
1:11:46
fertilizers genetic modification of plant seeds so that corn wheat whatever they have more grain more heads okay Vegetable Farms
1:11:57
that are that are um what do they call it hydrophonic or whatever they're planted and basically you can grow them anywhere now okay we turn deserts into agricultural wonderlands through
1:12:09
irrigation and we also develop through genetics we develop drought tolerant plants so that we don't have to water them as much so these these advancements
1:12:19
have have managed to we say we're going to have a war on poverty poverty is still with us but it is nothing like
1:12:31
even 100 150 years ago in the United States there there is a poverty line that is above the income level of two-thirds of the nations of
1:12:42
the world our poverty level is above their per capita income level of two-thirds of the nations of the world and in the United States there are very very very very very few people
1:12:54
who are living on the brink of starvation as the vast majority of people did throughout the ancient world and the Medieval World and the early modern
1:13:04
period that one crop failure one year's failure could lead to literal famine and starvation so yeah it's all good
1:13:14
the the quality of our food the quantity of our food the quality of our technology the affordability of all of this is just it's absolutely remarkable
1:13:25
when viewed in the light of History we now are able to do and possess things that only the wealthiest were allowed to do 50 and 100 years ago we can travel to
1:13:38
places that our our grandparents would have never conceived of going except in their dreams or books okay that's all great what did we give
1:13:50
well we gave up the community and we gave up the the unity within our cultural mind
1:14:02
of our human society and our society with God
1:14:14
when we move together into the cities it became fairly apparent though not necessarily consciously but over Generations it became apparent that if each segment
1:14:24
of that conglomeration maintained strictly its ethnic and religious identity religious identity there would be Warfare in the streets
1:14:35
and there was riots okay in New York in Boston in Baltimore in Detroit Chicago normally they were between different
1:14:47
uh discrete uh discrete ethnic groups for example myheritage at least in New York it was usually between the Italians and the polls they were
1:14:59
vying for the same jobs because they emigrated at roughly the same time they were all despised by the Irish okay so there was all of that well you know what a society can only do that so
1:15:12
long and after a while even in Ireland for example even in the Middle East after a while Arabs began to intermarry with the Jews
1:15:23
Irish Catholics with Irish Protestants the Lutheran marries an Italian my father my mother okay his family disowned him his aunts
1:15:35
and uncles did not speak to him for the rest of their lives as he married an Italian all right all right but then his children
1:15:46
we didn't even ask okay it wasn't even an issue it's not even an issue for for most Americans now how do we survive in this
1:15:58
pluralistic well by each one of us giving up giving up whatever it was that held our society together for Generation after generation
1:16:09
of after generation but in doing that we give up identity or at least that which was our identity
1:16:20
for many generations does that make sense you know we were identified by that that uh insular community
1:16:31
that was our cradle and our father's cradle and Grave our grandfather's cradle and Grave and now how many families are still living
1:16:42
within 50 miles of each other okay there's they're spread out all over the country often to the cities
1:17:06
we're not going to speak Russian anymore because we don't want to speak the language of the enemy and I like who cares to speak to the person whatever language they speak but they're in the middle of it you know
1:17:17
and so that's their reaction but what I what I'm saying is is that all of these forces have caused um this is what we've paid
1:17:28
we have given up the the glue that has held together Human Society in all different uh manifestations of it
1:17:39
for millennia and now we bind ourselves together through Athletics
1:17:49
through Athletics through business through business through again clubs or through drug abuse drug abuse we have taken the natural form of
1:18:02
community that no one ever questioned for the most part during the history of Europe up until the 19th century you would be born live and die within
1:18:13
usually 20 miles of your birthplace and you might travel to a big Village on Market but that would be it you never traveled outside your country
1:18:24
unless you were in the military that what no I'm not talking about results I'm
1:18:36
talking about the world in which we live okay I'm talking about I'm not saying that what we had was good or what we have is good what we had versus what we have is not a
1:18:49
value judgment it's just a statement this is where we are the vast majority of people that we meet are have been themselves atomized
1:19:00
they are no longer living anywhere near their parents or their grandparents their ethnicity is going to be Mongrel probably in the United States I'm not
1:19:12
passing a judgment on this it's just what happened what happened what it the results is a form of community with which our ancestors were familiar and stable for Generations is
1:19:27
gone that form of community is gone and what we have now is a is a community-less society community-less society seeking to form its own communities in
1:19:39
often illegitimate ways
1:19:52
always point out the huge difference just because of my connection to my physical yeah
1:20:12
they're seeking community okay now this is actually a tremendous opportunity for the church and I'm not again I'm not passing judgment this is just what has happened okay because of what has happened and
1:20:23
because of the need to not be killing your neighbor or being killed by your neighbor religion has played a progressively diminishing role in the lives of
1:20:35
Americans and that's true among Catholics as well as Protestants as Protestants and Jews and Jews okay all three groups major religions their religion as as an influence in
1:20:47
their daily life and their Community has diminished generation after generation for the last 200 years does that make
1:21:00
to the point where and we'll talk about this more next week none of this is benign none of this is harmless it all has value or demerit
1:21:14
the old style was very oppressive and stifled human thought and led to an ease of being oppressed by
1:21:25
the elite the elite I I don't want to go back to that world I read enough history to know I don't want to go back I don't want to go back to the 1970s or any time before that okay I'm not nostalgic I like the world
1:21:38
and the time in which I live but I also think it's important to recognize what we paid for that because we did pay we do not have we we
1:21:50
do not have that stability of community and what we have in its place is tremendous stress
1:22:02
fear because the world is not a stable place for us anymore the smallness of the world the ability the ability of seemingly backwards Middle Eastern
1:22:14
Muslim extremists to hijack a plane and bring down two huge Towers in New York City that is unnerving and through the Cold War the realization
1:22:26
that our enemy could end our life any day and we could end theirs and we could end the world in which we live through our nuclear
1:22:38
power that was destabilizing our lives are not and I'd be I'm talking not just Christians I'm talking about Western Civilization is not a stable
1:22:49
place anymore place anymore okay so drug abuse alcoholism psychiatric medicine and psychiatric therapy have become
1:23:00
multi-multi-multi-billion dollar multi-multi-multi-billion dollar Industries Why
1:23:12
now I would maintain that the center we once had once had was false was false but it was more stable it was a center whether it was family and family was
1:23:22
usually community and related okay I'm reading a biography of James Madison okay and she just listed all of the different families the randolphs Italia
1:23:33
pharaohs the pharaohs the um you know all these different they were cousins were cousins so when you went to Philadelphia as as James Madison and going to Congress you met your cousins
1:23:45
okay um and and so that even with the even at that time there was more even growing up in an italian-oriented family we knew our cousins
1:23:56
didn't care for them all that much but we knew them we don't really have that anymore so we have exchanged a community a human society that had a recognizable
1:24:10
centripetal force centripetal force to one that now has centrifugal force with no discernible Center
1:24:23
okay does that resonate with anyone anyone disagree with that I'm not saying it was good or bad okay okay but that means that means the world
1:24:34
in which we live is not the world in which our parents lived okay that's all I'm saying I'm not saying it's good or bad what I'm saying is
1:24:44
that we live in a time where Humanity in the west has lost that centripetal force of society of society how we respond to that
1:24:57
is important I think important to know why is our culture so angst ridden why is it so frenetic why is it so high
1:25:09
stress this is why okay this is this is not a process of passing judgment either on the past or the present it's simply a process of trying to understand our times that we
1:25:20
might know what Israel is to do the old form
1:25:31
seem to pop up and in this in this too which I find personally confusing from if I'm alone in that but religion
1:25:43
even so-called Christian religion pops up but up but it's Affinity base it isn't it isn't like they're being connected to something of the past so much as they are facing
1:25:55
are facing something to make them feel better same thing with family I mean the the late
1:26:07
a later childbirth and things like that suggested that even family is being chased more as an affinity than as anything else that resonated in the patent of where you're
1:26:17
going I it does this this this whole process has we don't have the time to to lecture on Emanuel Kant and his influence
1:26:28
but the idea that that reality is determined entirely through sensory perception which means that what is real is what I
1:26:39
think is real has created has created a universe full of little universes we each become our own Center
1:26:50
our own universe and and so yeah those things that that used to mean the the survival of our race are now
1:27:02
optional purely optional okay the things and I guess that's all I'm saying I'm not saying that everything was Rosy please don't misunderstand me the the old world was not Rosy infant mortality was
1:27:13
horrendous life expectancy was you know I'd be dead by now um not now I I love what we gain from all of this but our world isn't Rosy
1:27:23
either okay either okay at least some questions to church for some of the fastest growing they're the fastest growing
1:27:37
right and yes and Protestants are also leaving in droves back into the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox church because of the sense of stability
1:27:48
what I'm saying is if you're living in a world that has lost its Center you're still dealing with human beings that need a center okay we still need to fill that vacuum
1:27:59
that the atheist has taken away in God we need to fill that community that the industrial revolution has taken away and put into a polyglot City we still need
1:28:10
that okay but what's happening is that vast swans of humanity especially in the west are synthesizing they are creating
1:28:21
makeshift communities and makeshift meaning this is a tremendous opportunity for the true for the truth of Jesus Christ a tremendous opportunity for the
1:28:33
church because when we turn to Paul we will realize that the church is the new community of God and yet its Center in Jesus Christ is as
1:28:45
Paul calls it the truth as it is in Jesus Christ Jesus Christ so if we if we try to address the world in which we live as if it were the world
1:28:56
of the 17th century or the fifth century or whatever we're not sons of issachar but when we go out in the world we're often disoriented because there's
1:29:07
nothing to grab hold of you ever you ever notice that when there's nothing to grab hold well that's what I'm trying to explain I'm trying to explain why there's no longer anything to grab hold of is because we've
1:29:19
jettisoned all of those things whether good or bad but those things that we had in common in common and now we find we don't have anything in common with anybody
1:29:29
and so we go to social media where we can be friends with actually not contacting anyone but everything is kept positive because we're so angst
1:29:39
ridden and stressed out that we can't stand anybody disagreeing with us okay this is the world in which we live but it's not benign it is actively evil as
1:29:53
there always has been but we are we are to be aware of Satan's schemes and that's all I'm trying to do is say things have have stayed the same to a large extent but there is a
1:30:05
definite uniqueness in our society that Paul did not experience nor has any other generation up until the last 150 years Jenny
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against the world is against the principalities of Darkness I feel like I'm trying to I feel like Paul shifted our Focus
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when he said it's not like pre-industrial Revolution where you had Jews and gentiles it's the world shut up under damnation and the
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Kingdom right yeah it we have to have a Biblical perspective as we Face any generation and no generation and I started out with it no generation got it right so
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our generation is wicked and perverse as was Paul's was Paul's I'm simply saying that the wickedness and the perversion of our generation is in many respects unique and it is wisdom to recognize that
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well Prosperity yeah it doesn't give us more time to Prosperity has always given people time people time to think about and to write about and to act against or
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for what they perceive to be evils you mentioned growing our own food one of one of the reactions to the loss of community
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and the recognition of the atomization of society especially among Christians has been to to try to return to a pre-industrial agricultural and
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even even cloistered world that's the Nostalgia that I don't think is the right way I don't think going
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back to a time when we for example uh I'm running I'm out of time but
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I don't believe that we should that there is wisdom in throwing away the advances that we have gained providentially through the scientific and Industrial Revelation I don't want
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to give up the freedom that I owe in under God but I owe to the enlightenment philosophs okay to their
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writings and the impact that their writings had on men who who risk their fortunes and their lives to put aside a monarchy
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and to try to develop a republic okay that was great and and you know I don't want to give up the FDA even though I think they're often really overboard
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but you know um I I have three children that have lived to adulthood okay John Owen had
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11. and previous and they pre-deceased him he outlived them all I don't want to go back to that you see what I'm saying it's I don't want to go back to a pre-industrial pre-enlightenment world
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pre-enlightenment world because we have gained so much but it it's it's also not wise to not recognize what we lost while we were gaining okay and I'll close with that
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father we do ask that you would give us wisdom and cause us to to dig into your word because we know that your word is truth sanctify them Jesus said in truth your
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word is truth we pray that you would do this that you would indeed renew our minds help us to be the Sons and Daughters of issachar in
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our time to understand the times and to know what the