Idol – Technology, Part 1

Technology is born out of God's created purpose for mankind. But Dr. Tony Evans says there's a problem when we place our creations in front of our Creator. The moment technology becomes your master, you got too many bosses in the house. This is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans, author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative.

God is Creator, and we're created in His image, which makes it logical that we, too, create. But Dr. Evans warns there's a hidden threat in the shiny new things we build. Let's join him as he exposes a seldom-discussed danger inherent in modern technology. One of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century was the sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912. The Titanic left England and made her maiden voyage across the Atlantic on her way to the United States of America. It was the most advanced vessel of its kind ever crafted or created. And the world watched as this technological advancement was getting ready to demonstrate how wonderfully crafted it had been. Stepping onto the boat was the craftsman of the Titanic, and when he stood on her deck, he uttered these words, not even God can sink this ship.

Little did he realize that an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean would bring this technological marvel to naught. When technology is disconnected from God, or when technology tries to be God, it has set itself up to be judged by God. Technology is part of our world, and it ought to be. When God created the world and set man and woman in it, He gave them the responsibility to rule over His creation in Genesis chapter 1 verse 26, and He said, and I'm going to bless their rule, He told Adam to take the raw material of creation and develop it, cultivate it, and mine out its potential. Technology is simply taking the raw material that God placed in His creation, cultivating it, developing it, so that through it mankind can accomplish more than it could accomplish without it.

Technology, broadly defined, is anything created and developed by humankind that helps us to reach beyond to be able to do without it. God is a creator. Man has been created in the image of God, so mankind has been created by the creator to create.

In fact, every individual here should have on some level a creator's mindset, because you were created by the creator to create. We don't create the same thing, we don't create different things at the same level, but the reason that there are children and youth here is because the genius of creation was embedded in our humanity, and so creation is part of the creator's goal. Technology is humankind creating from the raw material of creation handed over to us by the creator to create from it that which will move humanity forward. And so in science, education, communication, entertainment, and on and on we've seen technological miracles over the centuries continue to get better and better and better and better and better, making life easier and convenient and we can do what we do the way we do it with the speed it's done, because technology through the creative genius God has granted to mankind has facilitated our capacity to do that.

The United States is very unique, because the creations that have benefited the world by and large have come from Western culture led over the last couple of hundred years by the US, and there's a biblical reason for that. See, when God created mankind, he gave mankind freedom from every tree of the garden you may freely eat, and then he told Adam, now I want you to use your freedom to develop stuff, to cultivate. So there is a direct correlation between freedom and technological development, and since the United States was built on the principle of freedom, flawed as it was, but still built on that premise, it has been able to cultivate and develop technology at warp speed as has never been done before in human history, because the degree that you could experience technological development is to the degree that people would be free and released to express the created genius, not being oppressed by illegitimate government forces, but to express that creative potential and benefit from what they create, because the beauty of freedom is that not only am I free to do it, but I'm free to benefit from what I did. And so all of that became an engine based on God's creative purpose, which is why you always want to promote freedom, because you always want to promote development, and I want to be free to develop. So technology is born out of God's created purpose for mankind.

He gave Adam the seeds and he says, now grow the garden. He was to use what God gave in order to expand it, not only for his home, but he was to expand it to the whole world, because technology is designed not for personal use only, but to be a benefit for broader usages, and that is why you and I have so many of the technological tools that we possess today. So technology is legitimate.

It is legitimate as long as it stays attached to God. The moment what we create gets disconnected from God or seeks to trump God, it now becomes an idol. And once it becomes an idol, it now becomes the enemy of God. So no matter how good the tech device happens to be, and no matter what realm the tech device happens to be in, if it gets disconnected from or tries to overrule, it has now become the enemy of God, because all idols are enemies of God.

Technology in whatever form it takes was always designed to be a tool that serves, not a master that dictates. So the moment technology becomes your master, you've got too many bosses in the house. The moment that the technology tells you what to do, and you're not instructing it. When the television and the 800 channels say, you better not turn me off. When the phone says, you better not put me down.

When the texting says, you better not stop. When the computer says, you better look at this, and it becomes your master. It has now become your idol, and once it becomes your idol, it has become God's enemy. Technology is legitimate. It is necessary, and it is how the Creator created the world to work.

Seated before me is genius. It's genius because you are created in the image of God. Our intake of knowledge and understanding and education and information is simply to enhance our skill to develop what God has given us the opportunity and privileges to develop.

They were never meant to rip us from the God who gave us the capacity based on his creative genius to be creators attached to him. So I wanted to establish as we begin the legitimacy of technology that gives us cars that can drive themselves. It gives us traffic lights, electricity, credit cards, phones, alarm systems, and we go on and on. We don't use washboards anymore because we have washing machines. That's technology that's made life easier. A lady said to me one day, boy, you know, the lady in Proverbs 31 had maids. Well, she did have maids, but you got maids that she didn't have that made cook. You got a stove, electric stove, washing machine.

But, you know, we've got things that technology has developed that makes many things obsolete. So it's legitimate, and you ought to be maximizing your creative genius. You ought to be telling your children to maximize their creative genius attached to God, not separated from God, because they were created to create. When Dr. Evans continues our message in a moment, he'll tell us historically what mankind, blessed with the ability to develop and create, did next. Stay with us. Politics, money, gender, race, these are just some of the idols we worship in America when we elevate them above the place of Jesus in our lives. But you can break free and live the Christ-centered, kingdom-focused life that God calls you to. We want to help you do that with two powerful resources from Dr. Tony Evans, his brand-new message series called American Idols, and his popular book, America, Turning a Nation to God. Now is the time for God's people to stand together. Go to tonyevans.org today to get both resources. For a limited time, we're bundling all eight full-length messages from Tony's American Idol series on both CD and digital download, along with his popular book, America, Turning a Nation to God. Both of these important resources are yours with our thanks when you make a contribution to help keep Tony's messages coming to this station and others like it around the world. Visit tonyevans.org right away to get the details and take advantage of this special offer before time runs out. The alternative is a 100% listener supported broadcast, so we depend completely on you to keep this important work going. Again, that's tonyevans.org, or call our Resource Center at 1-800-832-9000.

It never closes, so there's no need to wait. That's 1-800-800-3222. I'll repeat that information again after part two of today's lesson. Now, having established that man was created to enjoy and develop creation under God and alongside of God, not in replacement of God, we come to Genesis 11. We're told that the whole earth used the same language and the same words.

They were on the same page with their communication. They journeyed east. In the book of Genesis, to journey east is to journey away from God. You see, God had given an instruction in chapter 9 verse 1 for the world to spread out and become separate nations. God established that they were to separate.

They decided we're not going to do that. They said we're going to settle in Shinar and we're going to stay together different than what God told us to do. So they said to one another, so the people started talking to the people, come, verse 3, and let's develop technology to disobey God. What we're going to do is we're going to make bricks, burn them thoroughly, use bricks for stones, use tar for mortar.

Okay? We're going to take the raw material created by God, we're going to use it to build something to do opposite to what God told us to do. We don't like what God says, but we got technology and we're going to pull this technology together, bricks to stones, we're going to use mortar and tar, put it together, and we're going to do what we want to do.

Let us. God said him, but we're going to deal with us. This is not the first use of technology in the Bible. When God told Noah in chapter 6 of Genesis to build the boat, he gave him technological discussions, the length, the height, the tools that you ought to use, how you ought to formulate it. All that was technology because it had never rained before. And this is a boat that's never been built before like this that can hold all of these animals and all of that. So he had to get instruction from God of how to use what God created to build the ark in order to save his family and two of every animal creature that God had created.

So God is in the hooking stuff up that weren't together to put them together so they can do something different than what they started with because technology takes raw material and creates new things out of it. So that's what they decide to do with what God says. They say, come on now, let's do what we want to do, and they tell you what they want to do in verse 4.

Stay with me here. What we're going to do is we're going to build ourselves a city. Let me start with the word ourselves because they say, let us. We're going to do this for us. Now I know God told us what he wanted us to do for him, but we ain't doing stuff for him.

We're doing this stuff for us. We are going to, for us, build a city. Now heretofore, these were nomads.

These were people who roamed the land. They said, no, we're not doing that no more. We're certainly not going to separate and build other independent nations. We're going to build our own capital cities. This is the city that would be the capital, the capital of mankind. We're going to build this city that will be the center of man's definition for himself because we choose not, I'll prove it in a moment, we choose no longer to be defined by God. We want to be defined by us. So we're going to come up, we're going to take God's raw material, we're going to build technology that will establish a whole urban center, a whole city where we will define ourselves and we will determine what we want, when we want it, what we have, how we'll get it.

We will not answer to anyone. We're going to build a humanistic empire. Humanism is man, man-centered. We don't want theism, God- centered. We want ourselves, let us. Humanism, that's man-centered.

We want to build a man-centered society. However, we're going to put, verse 4 says, in this man-centered society using the technology we've built with the raw materials that God created, and we're also going to put here a tower, it says. A tower, better known as a ziggurat, is a huge facility in the middle of the city and they says it will reach into the heavens. So we're going to have religion because it's going into the heavens. So we're building society, city, in the middle of it is going to be this religious symbol, a tower, and we're going to take technology and it's going to be the bomb, because this thing is going to go higher and higher and higher and higher and higher. This thing is going to pierce the clouds and it's going to get into the heavens. I mean, this thing is going to be a skyscraper like you have never seen before.

Okay, watch what's happening there. It's not God coming down telling us, it's that we ourselves are starting with us and we're going up there to inform Him. We're not starting with God coming down, we start with man going up through building up. We're going to build our own construction business, and in this construction business we're building a city and we're building a religious symbol to man, because it's us apart from God. We're going to use technology and we're going to keep God out.

I don't know if you know it or not, but that's what's happening today. Technology is increasingly being developed independently of God, approved independently of God, legalized independently of God, utilized independently of God, but still with enough religion to make it sound okay. We're going to be independent of God, but we're going to have our little religious symbol to make it look like.

But it's going to start with man, it's not going to start with God. It's going to start with not theology, the study of God, it's going to start with homocracy, the study of man. So when your children who are seated here or your teenagers, if they go to public school, to a large degree they will be taught technology in homocracy, not technology with theocracy. That's why they're going to be taught evolution, the fairytale for adults.

They're going to be taught evolution because they're going to be taught, you can understand through our technological microscopes, you can understand through our technological devices we send up to space, you can understand through 21st century scientific philosophy, theory, and scientific analysis, you will be able to understand the evolutionary fact, no longer the evolutionary theory. They're going to use technology to try to convince your children in many places that there is no God. Technology will be used to tell your children that they can decide that themselves, that that doesn't have to be decided from a divine source. I think that we're going to build this ourselves and you can, you can, it's your thing, do what you want to do.

Be who you want to be because, because we're going to give you support, medical technology. We're going to, we're going to use technology to drive you from God using the stuff God made. So technology, as wonderful as it is, is being stripped away from its creator because there is no technology that has ever been developed that didn't have to borrow from what God created.

All technology has to start with the creation of God, but because mankind did not want dependence, they wanted to lift up the significance of mankind, of human thought, human ability, human braggadociousness. They wanted to brag about what man could do using God's stuff to do it. Whenever you use the creation to define you, rather than the creator to define you, you have become an idolater, according to Romans 1. It says because they took the creation and ignored the creator. That's idolatry.

And so as a result, mankind was rebelling against God, independent of God, misusing God, in order to replace God while still keeping His name. Dr. Tony Evans, with a cautionary lesson from his teaching series called American Idols. As I mentioned earlier, for a limited time, you can get all eight messages in this important collection with our thanks, along with a copy of his popular book, America, Turning a Nation to God, when you make a contribution to support the ministry of the Urban Alternative. As always, details are waiting for you at TonyEvans.org, or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222, where team members are standing by to help with your requests day and night. That's 1-800-800-3222.

We used to think that worshipping idols was something that only primitive cultures would do, but as we've been learning, American idols are more than just contestants on a TV show. Dr. Evans will continue our exploration of this important subject tomorrow. Be sure to join us. The alternative with Dr. Tony Evans is brought to you by the Urban Alternative and is made possible by the generous contributions of listeners like you.