Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 09 May 2010
When I started into this series, I had no idea what I was in for! I’ve been surprised that it’s taken three sermons to cover ethics – after all, good is good and bad is bad, right? God says what is good and bad, and that should settle it for us,
o but so often we either don’t know what God says about things,
o or we are not willing to go with what God has said on the matter!
At the end of the last sermon I left off in the middle of describing one of the problems of ethics, and that is the problem of calling things bad that God has not called bad. It’s not o.k. to call good Evil -
o even if everyone else is doing it,
o even if you would really like to legalistically add rules to expand on God’s rules, and
o even if something painful has happened and you would really like to take over the role of God and call Him evil.
§ Job’s haunting question to his wife bears consideration, “Shall I accept good things from God and not bad things?” (Job 2:10).
§ David also stated, “It is good to me that I have been afflicted, in order that I learn Your statutes.” (Psalm 119:71).
2. One more insidious form of calling good evil is Antinomianism (anti=against + nomos=law): the denial that any outside law should be imposed upon us.
a. I have already pointed out some problems earlier with Secular libertarianism, a form of antinomianism which says we should get rid of all the laws and let everybody do what they want. I don’t see a need to pursue this farther.
b. However, in Christian circles, there are also some people who argue that God no longer has a law code and that we shouldn’t either. I’ve heard Christians actually argue that the 10 commandments are no longer binding. Why? They quote scriptures like:
i. “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not like the old covenant… I will write my law on their inward parts…” (Jer. 31:31-33)
ii. “We’re no longer under law but under Grace” (Rom 6:15b)
c. In his book on Biblical Ethics, Robertson McQuilken answers this misunderstanding well. He states: “[I]t is important to emphasize that the New Testament uses the term “law” to refer to:
1) the moral requirements of God (Rom 2:14-15, 4:15, 7:2-22, 8:3-7, 13:8-10, 1 Cor 7:19, Gal 3:13, 5:14, 6:2, 1 Tim 1:8, Heb 8:10ff, 10:16, James 1:25, 4:11),
2) the Mosaic system of regulations (John 1:17, Rom 5:13 & 20, Gal 3:17-23, 4:4-5 &21, 1 Cor 9:20), and
3) the figurative use of the law referring to obedience to the Mosaic law as a means of salvation. (Rom 3:20 “…by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified… for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” See also: Gal 2:6 &21, Gal 3:2-18, Phil 3:9)
4) [as well as others]
McQuilken continued, “Because ‘law’ is used in many different ways and often with several meanings overlapping, it is important to be sure from the context which meaning was intended by the author. Otherwise we shall be applying a teaching concerning the law that does not actually apply. For example, if we speak of being free from the law and use this to refer to the moral law of God when in fact Scripture is referring to the condemnation resulting from the law or the Old Testament system of sacrifices, we are making a great error.[1]”
d. We might further break the law of Moses down into three components:
i. Ceremonial Law – The Ceremonial law would be those laws regarding offering sacrifices and governing the rituals at the temple in the Old Testament.
§ These ceremonial laws have been superseded by the things Jesus instituted as our great High Priest.
§ The whole book of Hebrews tells us that these things were “shadows” of what we would experience in the New Covenant.
§ For instance, we no longer offer sacrifices, and we no longer have the presence of God localized in a particular temple.
§ However, there are many important principles which can be gleaned from the ceremonial law, such as the importance of reading God’s word and singing and praying in worship services, the importance of confessing sin and being cleansed of sin before God, as well as little things like whether or not it’s o.k. to have artwork in church. Those are all in the ceremonial law.
ii. Civil Law is the next category. Civil law has to do with the government of people. It includes the rules given to kings and judges to follow in governing the nation of Israel.
§ Civil law would include things like how to judge an accidental murder vs. an intentional murder, or what to do if a dead body is found and nobody seems to know who the murderer is. That can all be found in the civil laws of the Bible.
§ There are, of course many instances in the Bible where believers worked in the context of a civil government that was not based on God’s law – Daniel the prophet and Paul the Apostle, for example. Yet God did not condemn them for working within the context of the Persian or Roman government.
§ Instead these men of God did what they could to affirm what was right in those governments (Rom 13), and they did what they could to reform those things that they recognized as out of line with God’s principles of civil justice. (For instance, Paul used his rights as a Roman citizen to keep himself from being flogged without a trial, and he appealed his case to Rome when it was apparent that local politics were obstructing his freedom of speech.).
iii. Moral Law is the third category.
§ This would basically be the 10 commandments: Do not steal; Do not worship the wrong god, Honor your parents, etc.
§ These things define right and wrong behavior for all people at all times and are not limited to Israel.
iv. Let me note, however, that these three categories of Abrogated Ceremonial law, Non-binding Civil law, and Universally-binding Moral law are not in separate categories in the Old Testament – they’re not in separate lists.
§ They’re all mixed up together, and many of them are inter-related so closely that it is difficult to actually take the laws of the Old Testament and figure out what category each one goes into.
§ For instance, murder crosses all three categories because it is a moral evil, yet the civil ruler has the authority to go to war or to exercise the death sentence on a murderer, and it was the shedding of Jesus’ blood that fulfilled the conditions of the ceremonial law for forgiveness of sin.
§ So, although I think the categories of Ceremonial, Civil, and Moral law are useful for thinking about the Old Testament laws, they don’t answer all of our questions. The law is just something we have to meditate on so that we grow in wisdom over a lifetime.
e. Towards the end of the “not under law but under grace” passage in Romans, we find this remarkable statement, “…the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and righteous, and good.” (Rom 7:12, cf. 1 Tim. 1:8, Psalm 19:7, 119:1) What God calls good, we should not call evil; there is nothing wrong with the 10 commandments!
f. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with all the rest of the law either.
i. Nowhere does the Bible tell us that any of its laws are bad.
ii. Granted, the law does not save us and there are certainly ceremonies that the New Testament writers declared have passed away with the coming of Jesus,
iii. but, as Paul wrote to Timothy, “all scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching” (2 Tim 3:16), and Paul was especially talking about the Old Testament.
iv. Even the civil laws of the Old Testament are profitable for training in righteousness, that’s what God has said. To call them bad is to forsake Biblical ethics, and go back to man deciding what is good and bad.
v. For instance, the requirement that everyone in society rest on the seventh day is good.
§ In the French revolution, the secular humanistic thinkers tried to re-make laws to rebel against God.
§ Included in their mad dash to make man-made law, they created a calendar system based on ten-day weeks.
§ Productivity would go up, they claimed, as the old system of church laws was abolished.
§ Well, productivity didn’t go up; it went down, because workers were not getting enough rest. God made people to need one day in seven to rest. (The calendar also didn’t work because it ignored the God-given cycles of the moon that we call months, putting the French out of synch with the natural order of creation too.) The decimal calendar had to be abandoned.
§ When you try to make your own laws in defiance of God’s law, it creates more problems.
vi. “What? Are you saying we should go back to stoning children like the O.T. law says?”
§
Well, I don’t
imagine that I can come up with a better way of organizing civil society than
God can, so let’s look at that law. It’s in Deuteronomy 21:18-21:
“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son that will not obey the voice
of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chasten him, will not
heed them, then his father and his mother should grab him… and they shall say
unto the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he
will not obey our voice. He is a glutton, and a drunkard.’ And all the men of
his city shall stone him to death...”
§ Note that this is not a child, he is old enough to be an alcoholic and to establish residence in “his city” as opposed to his parent’s city.
§ Note also that this son has been a long time in rebellion: He has been exhorted and disciplined by his parents until they have given up on him.
§ Next, note that it is the parents who are to bring the son before the elders. The parents – the people who would naturally love him the most – are going to be slower than anyone else in reaching the conclusion that their son should receive capital punishment.
§ Finally note that there is one more safeguard against exasperated parents giving a son up rashly, for the elders of the city are to judge the case and make the final decision of whether the rebellious son should be stoned to death, because they are the ones to do the stoning.
§ Now, if you are willing to admit that the wages of sin is death – especially hardened rebellion against authority, extreme selfishness, and drunkenness which endangers the lives of others, then you could consider that this law is full of good safeguards. It is not bad after all.
vii. Time doesn’t permit further investigation into the wisdom of the rest of the O.T. law:
§ the sanitary measures God commanded such as washing hands (Lev. 15:11) and not eating meat that has been sitting out unrefrigerated for three days or more (Lev. 7:18).
§ or the justice of the requirement that a conviction of a crime must not be merely by the testimony of only one witness (Deut 17:6), or the justice of the requirement that more damages be paid for an ox that has had a history of goring others and the owner hasn’t taken extra precautions about than be paid for an ox that has gored another for the first time (Ex. 21:36).
§ or the fairness of forbidding dishonest weights and measures (Prov. 20:10) and of requiring truth-telling (Zech. 8:16),
§ God’s laws are good!
viii. So, am I saying that we need to scrap the U.S. government and substitute it with the book of Deuteronomy? No. But I am saying that anyone who takes a position in the government of our city, county, state, and federal government should:
§ submit themselves to God as the ultimate decider of what is right and wrong,
§ read the O.T. laws over and over so that they have a growing grasp of the way God thinks and the principles in the Bible by which to decide the best ways of governing (Deut 17:18),
§ implement those principles by repealing laws which call evil Good and good Evil – as God defines good and evil, and by enacting and enforcing laws which call good Good and evil Evil as God defines good and evil in the Bible.
ix. “But you can’t legislate morality!” I’ve heard people say.
§ Well, if you’ve been following what I’m saying, you’ll see that there is no such thing as a law without a religiously-ethical basis. All law is fundamentally rooted in the likes or dislikes of someone who acts as deity.
§ Somebody’s ethical standards are going to be implemented when it comes to making laws for any community.
§ The question should not be, “How can we keep law secular?” Rather the question should be, “Whose standards of right and wrong will be used to decide good laws from bad ones?”
3. Isaiah 5:20 warns us, “Woe to those who say to evil, ‘Good!’ and to good, ‘Evil!’ setting darkness for light and light for darkness, setting bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe those who are wise in their eyes and in front of their faces consider themselves intelligent… 24. Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes stubble and flame withers the dry grass, their root will be like rottenness, and their flower will go up like dust, for they have rejected the law of Jehovah of Hosts, and the word of the Holy One of Israel they have despised.”
So the first problem is calling things evil which God does not call evil. This compromise may be due to peer pressure or due to your own rebellious heart against your God, or it may be due to a misunderstanding of what the Bible says about God’s law, but regardless, it is inconsistent with what you claim to believe. God alone can decide what is evil, and we must stand behind His decisions, not adding to them or taking away from them. Now, let’s look at the opposite problem:
1. Prov. 8:13a “The fear of Jehovah is to hate evil”
2. We have a tendency to fail to recognize as evil what God calls evil.
3. In God’s perspective, the problems with this world are not a result of His inability to stop bad things from happening, the problems are because we humans want to rebel against Him and make ourselves out to be gods. In other words, the problem is not God, the problem is our sin.
4. Isaiah 41:7 “The craftsman strengthens the goldsmith, and he who smooths with the hammer, him who strikes the anvil, saying of the soldering, ‘It is good,’ and they strengthen it with nails so that it cannot totter.” In Isaiah’s day, they looked at an idol and said, “It is good!” But it is not o.k. to call an idol Good.
5. Hananiah, Mischael, and Azariah (aka Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) believed this: It is not o.k. to call an idol good. But these guys lived in Persia, where the king was believed to be god over all gods. And since it is a function of deity to decide right from wrong, those Persian kings made up laws for the whole nation to follow. One time, the king of Persia told everyone to bow down to an image that looked like him. Did Hananiah, Mischael, and Azariah obey that law? Why not? Because it contradicted God’s law which says not to worship any other god besides the LORD! They refused to bow to that idol and call that morally evil law Good. They were willing to call evil Evil, even if it meant they would lose their jobs - even if it meant they would be thrown into the fiery furnace. They refused to bow and declare that idol good.
6. Today we have many opportunities to call evil Evil in the face of a culture which calls so many evil things good: For instance, God calls homosexuality evil:
a. Lev 18:22 “Do not lie with a man, as lying with a woman; this is an abomination” (cf. Lev. 20:13, Rom. 1:27).
b. This, of course, is not acceptable to say in our post-modern American culture - it might offend somebody. But whether or not it offends is not so much the point as making a faithful explanation of what our God hates and loves.
c. Kindly warning those who are doing what God hates while inviting them in to what God loves is what we Christians are called to do. This is very different from being hateful and rude and mean.
d. Not speaking up against wrong is also wrong. Being tolerant of evil is not essentially different from practicing evil (Ps. 49:13, Rom 1:32). We must call evil Evil and stop being hypocrites when it comes to ethics.
7. Some people are confused because they think that since they agree with God that things like the Holocaust are bad, that God thinks they are wrong for the same reason that we humans think they are wrong.
a. People might think the Holocaust was bad because one group of humans was trying to wipe another race of humans off the map, whereas that is not the reason God would say the Holocaust was bad, seeing as He actually commanded Joshua to wipe out entire races of people.
b. There are probably many sins wrapped up in the Holocaust, for which we could Biblically say it was bad, including hating good, man-worship, oppression of the poor, and murder.
c. But just because Secular Humanists and Christians agree that something is bad does not mean they have the same reason for calling it bad. We as Christians need to be consistent in explaining why evil is evil – things are not evil simply because they are socially unacceptable or simply because life is harmed; they are evil because God says they are evil.
8. We also find the temptation to compromise when it comes to political candidates, supporting a candidate whom we believe to be the lesser of two evils. If a candidate is doing anything that violates God’s principles, then it is part of righteousness to expose that evil and call it evil.
9. The role of the O.T. priests was to tell the people what God’s laws were, and we should do the same.
a. Deut. 31:9-11 “Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests… and unto all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, ‘At the end of every seven years… you must read this law before all Israel in their hearing.’”
b. In 1 Pet. 2:9, Christians are called “a kingdom of priests… that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light”
c. The Westminster Confession of Faith even states that one of the things church synods and councils can do is to give “advice, for satisfaction of conscience [to] … the civil magistrate.” (31:5) It’s our job to tell the world what God says is right and wrong.
d. Telemachus was a Christian during the time of the Roman empire when people would go to the Colliseum and watch gladiators fight and kill each other for entertainment. Telemachus went to the coliseum himself and was horrified at what he saw. He got so upset that he jumped down into the arena and ran up to the gladiators, yelling, “For God’s sake, stop it!” The gladiators promptly killed Telemachus, but when the emperor heard what had happened, he decreed an end to the gladiator fights. You see, the emperor at the time was a Christian, but he lacked the resolve to bring an end to the sport of watching men kill each other. The courageous act of Telemachus gave the emperor the courage to call evil Evil.
e. Could God be calling you to be a modern-day Telemachus who calls evil Evil and imparts courage to people in our government with the political authority to stop and punish evil?
10. This leads me to a final point concerning law. Earlier, I alluded to Hananaiah, Mischael, and Azariah’s refusal to bow down to the idol of the king of Persia. Although we as Christians normally should do all we can to honor, support, and obey our governing authorities, there are times when we must violate a man-made law in order to obey God’s law.
a. The principle behind civil disobedience is that God is the only one who can truly decide what is right and wrong, so if humans enact a law that commands us to do what is evil in God’s sight or a law which commands us not to do what is good in God’s sight, we believe that God’s law is higher than man’s law, and that God’s law must be obeyed rather than man’s law in such cases.
b. This was the case in the Apostle’s time when Peter and John were arrested and commanded by their authorities to stop preaching about Jesus. Peter told the rulers, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29), and he kept on preaching Jesus, even though it was against the law.
c. Breaking the law is not something to take lightly. It should be unusual. If we can at all give the benefit of the doubt to our government, we should comply with the laws of the land.
d. And furthermore, if we decide to violate a law out of conscience, we must be willing to suffer the punishment for breaking the law even though we believe it is an immoral or unjust law. Hananiah, Mischael, and Azariah told their king that even if God did not deliver them –even if they got burned alive in the fiery furnace, they would still not worship any God but Jehovah (Dan 3:18). The king had decreed the death sentence, and these men of God decided they were willing to die in order to obey God’s law. This kind of resolve thrilled God’s heart, and He delivered them, proving to the world that the authority of God was greater than the authority of the King of Persia.
1. Man is not good; God is.
a. Psalm 58:1-2 “Do you… speak righteousness? Do you judge uprightly, you sons of men? No, in heart you work wickedness...” Man is not basically good and cannot accurately tell good from evil.
b. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, is good.
In Mark 10:18 Jesus said, “…No one is good except one – that is God”
c. We must therefore look to God and grow in the knowledge
of His law,
submitting to His word on what is good and evil, and
implementing His standards in our spheres of influence.
d. This will include refusing to follow the crowd, explaining God’s standards of right and wrong, and may even include disobeying bad man-made laws.
2. The supreme good is the happiness and pleasure of God.
a. If you’re a humanist, then your god is yourself and you
would consider your pleasure and happiness to be the supreme good therefore
recreation is the most important thing.
Corliss Lamont, in his book Philosophy of Humanism, says that as long as
man “pursues activities that are healthy, socially useful, and in accordance
with reason, pleasure will generally accompany them; and happiness, the supreme
good, will be the eventual result.”[2]
b. The position of Biblical Christianity is that Jesus is God, and His happiness and pleasure is the highest good, therefore worshipping Him is the most important thing.
3. This submission to the God of the Bible will result in good behavior.
a. This behavior, is a matter of the heart, not of mere outward performance. John Murray, in his ethics book entitled Principles of Conduct, reminds us that, “If we are thinking of the notes of biblical piety, none is more characteristic than the fear of the Lord.[3]”
b. The Apostle Peter was particularly concerned that Christians live their everyday lives in an ethical manner: 2 Pet. 3:10-13 “ But the day of the Lord will come as a thief, in the which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what kind of people ought you to be in all holy behavior and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which the burning heavens will be dissolved, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? But, according to His promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells!” (See also 1 Pet 3:2, 13-16, and James 3:13-18)