Love Lines and Man Pleasing

R.C.

Sproul, Jr. The world expects Christians to conform, and as the world's morality changes, as they promote various ideologies, they expect us not simply to tolerate those views and practices, but to celebrate them. And that's not the command of Scripture. We're called to stand firm, not to compromise, not to be man pleasers, but we're to seek to please God. Welcome to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. The temptation to please the world, to be liked, is all around us. But we are to remain firm, and the Apostle Paul is bold in his defense of the Gospel in Galatians. Today, you'll hear a sermon that R.C. Sproul preached from Galatians, chapter 1, a chapter where Paul uses very strong language against those who would preach a false Gospel, and makes it very clear that he is not seeking the approval of man, but the approval of God.

Galatians firmly defends the Gospel against the error of legalism. Although we're only spending one week in Galatians, you can study it in depth when you request the hardcover edition of R.C. Sproul's commentary on Galatians.

It's available today only for your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Now to encourage us to stand firm and not to give in to the temptation to please people over God, here's Dr. Sproul with a sermon on Galatians 1, verse 10. I was teaching a senior-level class in philosophy at a particular university, and in that class I had thirty students, and of those thirty students, those who finished in the top fifty in that particular year's graduating class were all in that particular group.

This was the creme de la creme. And the subject of our study was the science of epistemology. Now the science of epistemology is the science of how we know whatever it is that we know. And the point of my lecture that day in discussion was not to be a debate about the concept of macroevolution, but I used that idea as an illustration for that which I was concerned about in that particular class. And so I began by taking a poll, and I asked the students, again there were thirty of them there, how many of you believe the idea of macroevolution, namely that all of life has come from a single cell?

Twenty-seven students raised their hands, and you do the math, that's ninety percent of the class. And I said, okay. I went to the blackboard, and I wrote on the board the numbers one through five. I said, we don't have time today to go into all of the ramifications of the concept of macroevolution, but what I'm interested here is for us to present at least five of the most compelling arguments by which you as students were persuaded of the truth of this particular viewpoint. And so I wrote number one, and I looked around the classroom, and I said, somebody please give me the arguments that have persuaded you for this theory. And one young fellow raised his hand and said that all of life is composed of the same basic substance, amino acids, proteins, and so on. And he went on to say that the argument that convinced him was that since all of life is made of the same substance, he said common substance means common source. And I thanked him for this.

This young man went on to become a medical doctor and then later a PhD in neuroscience at Harvard as a very bright fellow. And I pointed out to him that the idea of common substance means common source is a possible inference from the data, but not a necessary one. And after I explained it for just a few moments, he granted that, yes, that that was not a compelling argument in and of itself for evolution. I said, fine. Now let's go on to some others, the ones that were persuasive to the rest of the class.

And I went to number two, and there was this eerie silence and mystified and bewildered looks with which I was greeted. And I said, come on, somebody tell me what else has persuaded you of macroevolution? A student raised their hand and said, that's what I was taught in biology class in high school and in college. So I wrote down number two, that's what they were taught in high school and college. I said, now, what I was trying to get at was for you to tell me not where you learned this concept or from whom you've learned this concept, but what were the compelling arguments that you learned in high school and in college that convinced you of the truth of this action? But I said, OK, number two is that's what I learned in high school or college.

So let's go on to number three. Well, the long and the short of it, ladies and gentlemen, was there was no number three. There was no number four.

There was no number five. And from the perspective of epistemology, we were examining this, that for the most part, people are convinced by some authority that they trust and they believe in without examining the arguments in any kind of critical way. We call these love lines.

We call them love lines because we tend to trust people we love and people that we admire. And if they say something to us, even though they don't prove their assertion, nevertheless, we take it on faith. You'll see that the vast majority of people who are Baptists are Baptists because they grew up in a Baptist family, or the those that are Methodists grew up in a Methodist family. Those were Presbyterians. And we say, that's the way I was raised.

That's how I was born and reared. It was good enough for my father. It was good enough for my grandfather.

It's good enough for me. And if you're not Dutch, you're not much. And so we hold these truths to be self-evident that whatever we were taught by somebody we admired, a trusted teacher or parent, that becomes the final recourse of our proof. It was Socrates who once said, the unexamined life is not worth living.

And the problem that we have here is failing to examine those things that we hold with the greatest tenacity without really subjecting them to our own critical analysis. This is what Paul was facing here among the Galatians. He was astonished that they were so quickly removed from what Paul had taught them with respect to the gospel. And you recall what we've already seen here in the Apostle Statement that he was saying that if anybody preaches any other gospel than that which you've received from me, let him be cursed.

Let him be anatema, anathema. Now the question I asked is this, how is it possible that so many of these Galatians had been seduced by the Judaizing heresy which taught that in order to be saved, one has to maintain the ceremonial law of the Old Testament. How is it after hearing the beautiful gospel of Christ, the finished work that He has performed and His atoning death that is a death made once for all? Why would anybody move away from that glorious gospel?

Love lines. You can hear the discussions among the Galatians. Look, every year for 40 years I've gone to Jerusalem for Yom Kippur, for the Day of Atonement. I went through the precious rituals of sacrificing the bulls and the goats for my sins. And now this Apostle comes and tells us we don't have to do that anymore. Everything's changed that some person died once and for all in giving a perfect atonement.

No, no. I like this tradition. I like trusting in the rituals of my faith, celebrating the Passover.

Maybe Jesus thought it was nice in the upper room to change the liturgy of the Passover, but we've been doing this Passover the same way every year for centuries. My father did it. My grandfather did it. My great-grandfather did it.

And I'm going to continue to do it as well. These ceremonies, which were designed by God to point forward to the fulfillment of the person and work of Jesus Christ, once they were fulfilled in Him, the people didn't want to let them go. They want to still rest their confidence in the tradition, in the sacred rituals and ceremonies that they had performed for centuries.

For them, it was not finished by Jesus. There's an informal fallacy that we find constantly repeated in the world, in the press, on TV, and it's called the informal fallacy of the argumentum ad populum. Now that particular fallacy is what being translated is an argument to the populace or to the people. In simple terms, it's something like this, 60,000 Frenchmen can't be wrong. You determine truth, not simply by love lines, but if you don't know what the truth is, you take a poll. You count noses, and on the basis of the majority, you determine the truth. John Calvin made this comment, let us boldly despise the whole world.

Now did he mean by that that we should hate everybody in the world? Now what he was talking about, and he went on to explain it with his commentary on Galatians, is that he says that the ministers of the gospel, those who are entrusted to preach the Word of God must learn how to shut their eyes. We have a symbol in the judicial department of our federal government. That symbol is lady justice, with the sword, with the scales. But the thing that is so peculiar to the attire of lady justice is that she wears a blindfold.

Why does she wear a blindfold? She's following the sage advice that Calvin was talking about in the juridical arena, saying that justice must be blind. Justice must not be distributed on the basis of people in high places or in privileged places, but people are to have fairness according to the law, not according to influence and the weight of people in privilege.

But you know and I know that not just now and then, but all too often, lady justice peaks, checks out the polls, checks who's for her and who's against her. Even the justices of the Supreme Court are extremely influenced by popular opinion. How else can you possibly explain Roe v. Wade? How could you explain the Dred Scott decision, which will live in infamy? The error was that the most fundamental right of all, the right to life, was denied in Roe v. Wade because lady justice took off the blindfold and looked at the groups that were moving with such strong and vehement protests wanting their will. Luther made this comment that there is nothing more irritating, nothing more intolerable among human beings than those who condemn popular wisdom, power, and religion.

Here's what he's saying. Nothing is more irritating and intolerable to the status quo of the world, of the world's wisdom, of the world's power, of the world's strength than the Word of God. By nature, we despise it. By nature, we reject it.

And by nature, we vote against it. And so when Paul addresses this crucial issue of justification by faith alone, he asks the question, for am I still seeking the approval of man? That's my nature.

That's my history. When I was persecuting the church, when I was rushing from house to house and dragging Christians and putting them in prison and got my letters of authority to go to Damascus and continue that persecution, I did it at the applause of men who were saying, go for it, Paul, until the Son of God threw me from my horse and blinded me and said, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Not why are you persecuting my church, but why are you persecuting me?

I know you get the applause of men for doing it. I know that you hear the cheers in your ears, and you're able to peak, but you're attacking Christ. Paul said, am I still going to do that?

Am I still going to count noses in Galatia to see what the popular view is in that territory? Let me remind you of the history of the prophet Jeremiah, briefly recounted in the 20th chapter of his book where Jeremiah writes these words, Lord, You have deceived me. You've deceived me, and I am deceived. If there was ever a waste of ink, or whatever it was Jeremiah used to write these words, here it was. If there ever was a redundancy, it's found in these words when Jeremiah said, Lord, You've deceived me, and I am deceived. That's funny.

Really? I mean, if God deceived you, can you not be deceived? And then he goes on to say, You are stronger than I am, and you have prevailed. I fought, but I lost.

You beat me. He goes on to say, I've become a laughing stock all the day. When I go and try to fulfill the task that you gave to me when you consecrated me for my youth to be a prophet and to speak your word, this isn't what I signed up for. I didn't know that I would be subjected to public ridicule. I didn't know that every day I put on my prophet's garment that when I went into the public square, I would listen to the jeers and the boos of the people. Everyone, not just a few, everyone mocks me. And whenever I speak, I cry out the words that you told me to say, violence and destruction are coming. But the Word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and a derision all day long. And if I say, Well, I've had enough of this. I can't take it anymore. I didn't ask for this job. I'm going to turn in my prophet's card, stand in my resignation, and I will speak no more in His name.

But there was in my heart as it were a burning fire shot up in my bones, and I couldn't stop. I didn't want to speak. I didn't want to preach because I knew nobody wanted to listen to it. The biggest problem that Jeremiah faced in his day was the false prophets, and there were so many of them. Any time he would warn the people of Jerusalem of what was about to happen with the judgment of God, the false prophets would give a drowning chorus to shut him up, and they would say to the people, Don't listen to this maniac. Peace! Peace! When there was no peace. It was what Luther called a carnal peace, a fleshy peace, but the people had itchy ears. They didn't want to hear about anathema. They didn't want to hear about God's curse. They didn't want to hear about God's judgment.

They wanted good news, happy news, happy, clappy news. God's will is for you to be healthy and wealthy. God spoke to Jeremiah. He said, Jeremiah, let the prophet who has a dream, let him tell his dream. If the people want to hear it, let the false prophets preach all they want.

But that's not your concern. But let the Man of God preach the Word of God faithfully. And this is exactly what the Apostle Paul was not only trying to do but actually doing, and nobody liked it. And so he adds to the threat of the curse this question, rhetorical question, for am I now seeking the approval of man or the approval of God?

I don't know about you, but I like people to like me. You know, Paul told us elsewhere to try as much as within us as within our power to be at peace with all men, to try to get along with people. We're not supposed to go out of our way to be obnoxious, to add scandal to the gospel. There's plenty of scandal already built into the gospel. We don't need to add to it. We also are not allowed to subtract from it in order to please men.

That was R.C. Sproul preaching from Galatians 1, verse 10 on this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. If you'd like to continue your studies in Galatians, Dr. Sproul's verse-by-verse expositional commentary is available for a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.

This hardcover volume can aid you in Bible study or be used as part of your own devotional reading, perhaps even times of family worship. So request your copy and continue building your library of R.C. Sproul commentaries when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. This offer ends today and won't be repeated next Sunday. So visit renewingyourmind.org while there's still time. Next time, R.C. Sproul will be preaching from Mark's gospel and Peter's response to Jesus' question, who do you say that I am? So be sure to join us Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind.