Watch a little television, or read a magazine, or scroll through social media. You'll quickly spot modern-day idols: beauty, and sex, and power, anything money can buy. Today on Truth for Life we'll learn why these things can never satisfy the deepest longings of the heart. but God can. Alastair Begg is teaching from Isaiah chapter 45 along with Acts chapter 17.
In pantheism, since God is everything. That means logically that God is not only moral good, But God is also moral evil. Because God is everything. Therefore good and evil are God. And as a result of that, there is no hope then of evil being overcome.
And I think, and I would want to be very guarded in saying this. That this is one of the reasons that so many of the faces of the people that I saw. are as gloomy as they are. are as unresponsive as they appear to be. I'm not talking about Christian believers now, where the joy of the Lord is their strength.
I'm talking just about moving amongst the masses of humanity. I may be completely wrong. But I'm not sure that I am. And I think it lies in this. That when you believe that all of the sin that you have accrued you cannot be relieved of.
That your only hope is in reincarnation. That when you are reincarnated, you sin inevitably again.
So you're stuck all over again.
So you know you're going to have to be reincarnated again. And all of that dreadful emptiness and all of that dreadful pessimism and all of that dreadful horribleness you see speaks volumes in a culture.
So that let's take a disabled child. Let's take a man who limps down the street. Why does he limp down the street according to Hinduism? Because of sin in his past. That's why he has been incarnated in this way.
Now what he needs to do is do a better job. In the hope that in his next incarnation, He may somehow or another be able to be freed from all of these things. In direct contrast. God the Creator. cannot be contained.
Cannot be brought down to a manageable size, cannot be manipulated into a form expressive of our own designs. Let me just say in passing. The current mythology abroad in America. which says That the great religions of the world Agree. on the essentials.
and disagree On the non-essentials is exactly a mythology. It is not true. The idea of the wheel. Whereby all of the different points of religion on the wheel find themselves in the same center, can only be true in relationship to the notion that every religion is interested in peace, every religion is interested in love, and so on. But when you allow the religion to say what it is, then the disagreement is vast.
So Judaism says that Jesus Christ is not the Messiah. Christianity says Jesus is the Messiah. We cannot both be right. Hinduism says that God has been incarnated many, many times and in multiple forms. Christianity says that the incarnation was a unique, unrepeatable event.
We cannot both be right. Islam says that the only possibility of heaven is by making sure that the scales weigh in our direction. Christianity says you can never make the scales weigh in your direction. And that is why the story of Christianity is the story that is emblazoned in a cross with someone doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Pantheism says God is everything.
Christianity says God is the Creator. distinct from his creation.
Now characteristically I spent too long on that, so I will now catch up. Secondly, God is introduced as sustainer. Sustainer verse twenty five. He's not served by human hands as if He needed anything, because He's the one who gives all men life and breath and everything else. The sustainer of life is in no need of sustenance.
That's why Jesus was able to say to the disciples, Look at the birds, your heavenly father feeds them. Or, if God clows the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is cast into the oven, why don't He look after you? Why? Because He's the sustainer of life. The synovial fluid that is necessary for us to keep our joints going so that we don't become horrible athritics is the provision of God.
It drains away, you get arthritis. And were it not for God in His mercy, Either our eyes would have been stuck open and we could never blink again, or in the night they would have been stuck shut and we could never open them again. Why do they open this morning? Because God is the sustainer of life. Why am I able to put sentences together?
Because God has sustained my mental faculties thus far. You see how vastly different this is? From an approach to Christianity that just says, you know, I met Jesus and I think it would be really nice if you met him as well. The people are saying, well, that's a very interesting concept, but how does it fit in the big scheme of things? What do you know about God?
Well, I'll tell you. He's the creator. He's the sustainer of life. Thirdly, he's the ruler of the nations. Verse 26.
From one man he made every nation of men. There's something to take back to your anthropology professor. History and geography are under the control of God. The Indian mutiny came about as a result of mutinous Indians. Every bloodshed in the history of humanity is as a result of man's warped sinfulness.
But man's warped sinfulness does not take a sovereign God by surprise because He even sweeps into His purposes the sinful nature of man thereby assuming and creating His prerogative over all the affairs of the nations. That's a wonderful thought. God As the ruler of the nations. Desires that men and women would seek for him and would reach out for him. You'll see that in the text, verse 27.
He's put everybody in these places where they should live. And he's done that so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him. What a merciful God. He has put you in a certain place at a certain time. In a moment in history.
In the hope that you might seek him. And then you might reach out for him. That you might find him. He's not playing hide and seek with you. He's not far from every one of us, as one of the poets has said.
So, why is it that he feels so far away? Is it because he has taken the phone off the hook? No, it is because our sin separates us from God.
So instead of worshiping God as the creator and sustainer of life, as the ruler of the nations, we worship gods of our own creation. Idols. substitutes for God. Fourthly, He is introduced to his readers as father. We are his offspring, he says in verse 29.
The point that he's making here is that we are all made in the image of God. We share that in humanity. No matter whether we're in the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern Hemisphere. No matter whether we speak Spanish or Urdu or Hindu or English or whatever it might be. We're all made in the image of God.
He's not talking here about that. Transaction by grace, whereby we become God's children through faith in God's Son. He's talking here simply in terms of humanity. And his point is straightforward.
So look in the mirror, he says. Think about things. Think about the sense of oughtness that you have. Where you say You shouldn't do that. Or There will be punishment for that.
Think about that, he says. And you will realize that the reason you say those things is because you are a moral being. Because you were made with a sense of right and wrong. And when you think about that, It is absurd then To create many gods, substitute gods. whereby we endeavor to localize God or to dethrone God.
Well, it's far more attractive, isn't it, to have a little God represented by a little thing, a little elephant or whatever it is. You can carry it around with you. You can set it up. You can move it from room to room. Take your God with you as you go.
Localized, dethroned, and entirely made in the image that you designed. But it's not the God who created the universe, it's not the God who sustained your life, it's not the God who rules the nations, it's not the God who's the Father of humanity, and it is not, finally, the God who is the judge of all the earth. Because you will notice he's introduced as judge. For he has said a day, verse 31, when he will judge the world with justice. In other words, all the wrongs will be put right.
That sense of outrage that we feel when we look at something that is unresolved, when you see a court case that has so clearly gone wrong. Anyone in their right mind knows that justice wasn't served. And the injustices that are represented in humanity, that cry out from the fields of the workers and cry out from behind bedroom doors and so on, will one day be put to rights. God has already intervened in the person of His Son Jesus. And he now announces that there is a judgment day.
That is fixed. That will be fair. And that is absolutely final. Oh, says somebody, but you shouldn't mention that. People don't like the thought of judgment.
And why can't you make it a nicer sort of thing where we don't have a judgment? Loved ones, we've got to have a judgment. Think about it. You know there has to be a judgment. You know somebody has to deal with Hitler.
You know somebody has to deal with a Paul Part regime. You know that these things have to be addressed. And if God were to address evil now, tonight, how many of us would be alive in the morning? None of us. Because in banishing evil, he would banish every single one of us.
It is his kindness and his forbearance that announce his judgment. You're going to have to face me, he says. And I'm telling you now. And I am commanding you. All men Everywhere.
To repent. To turn from your own silly little idols and to worship me, the Creator. The sustainer. The ruler. The Father.
The judge. And ultimately a congregation like this divides itself. Not in terms of economics. Not in terms of the routine demographics of suburban American cities. But it ultimately divides itself in relationship to this question.
Have I then bowed down before the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Do I worship him? in this way.
Now let me finish. It is this large picture. It is this Big view. which helps us with our quest for fulfillment. For fulfillment.
I want to suggest to you that it is only when we realize that we were made by God. and that we were made for God, that we find anything big enough to live for. Anything big enough to satisfy our intellectual quests. Anything significant enough to reach in and deal with our emotional longings. Anything comprehensive enough to tackle the best of our human endeavors.
Substitute gods cannot provide fulfillment. Do not provide fulfillment. Nor do substitute gods Provide Freedom. Freedom. And yet that's the myth, isn't it?
If you will worship one of these little substitute gods, You will be free. No, you won't. If you've tried it, you know. You will be demeaned. And you will be enslaved.
Oh, you say, well, this is terrific. I wish you. Did you preach this to the Hindu people? It sounds wonderful for them. I mean, you've told me that they have hundreds of gods.
It must be terrific. What a super message. I see what you're doing now. You didn't have a message for us, so you just decided to use one of your Hindu messages. No, no, not for a moment.
This is entirely for us. They never breathed a word of this over there. No, because my friend said to me, He said, You see, we have hundreds of gods, we have thousands of gods in Hinduism. I said, Hey, welcome to the universe. Come to America, we have hundreds of gods as well.
We have hundreds of substitute gods. We have hundreds of idols. And those idols in America demean and enslave. Worship sex and it will destroy you. Worship alcohol and it will enslave you.
Worship stuff and it will eat you. Worship your family, and you will collapse under the burden of unfulfilled expectations. Worship any substitute God, and you will find that it cannot satisfy. There's not a vacation that can deal with it. There's not a piece of music that can do it.
There is nothing that can handle it. That's why C.S. Lewis talks about the dream of a place I've never been, the scent of a flower I've never smelled, the melody line of a piece of music that I have never heard. And he says, When you go back to something that meant so much to you, when you get there, it isn't there. And that's because it wasn't there when it was there.
It was what that represented to you. And what that represented to you had to do with intellectual and emotional and endeavoring longings of the heart, which can only finally find their answer in the God who is Creator, Sustainer, Ruler, Father, and Judge.
Now on the front of the bulletin it says, what am I thankful for? This is what I'm thankful for this year. I'm glad I got it over with because I can never think of what I'm thankful for when you get around the table. Horribly embarrassing it is. And everybody turns to think of, well, I'm thankful for better things than you're thankful for.
It's a horrible sense, a horrible sense of one-upmanship. Just absolutely, absolutely useless.
So here's what you can say.
Well, I'm thankful. I am thankful for God. For God. And God means something. I'm thankful that he is my creator.
That I am not the product of plankton soup. That I am not junk, 'cause God, He don't make no junk. I am thankful that he is creator. I am thankful that he is sustainer. That I have lived for 56 years in relatively good health, that God has provided food for me to eat and clothes for me to wear and friends with whom to enjoy the journey of life.
I am thankful, thirdly, that he is ruler over the nations of the world, including the United States of America. That he is sovereign over all of the political affairs. Therefore, I need not stay awake at night. I need not agitate. I need not worry.
I may as safely go to sleep on a triple seven Boeing going across Afghanistan in the awareness that the pilot has got it under control as I may sleep in my bed at night knowing that God who rules the nations has everything under his care. I'm thankful for that. Fourthly, I'm thankful that he is the father of humanity, that he has made us as human beings that can enjoy one another in all kinds of cultures, in all kinds of places. And more distinctly, I'm thankful that he is the father of all who have come to trust in his Son Jesus by his grace and by his favor. And finally, I am glad that he is the judge of all the earth and he will do absolutely right.
that I don't have the responsibility of fixing everything. Because I don't know enough to fix. But I know that this God, who is absolutely fair, who is wonderfully compassionate, who is fearful, and who is awesome as judge. Like a lion. is also like a lamb.
When we come And embrace Him. C S Lewis. And uh Is it the silver chair? has this wonderful encounter between Jill And the lion. Of course, the lion uh represents Jesus.
Jill is thirsty. She spies a stream It's not far away, but she doesn't run into it and throw her face into the refreshment that it provides. Instead, she freezes because she sees right there at the stream there is a lion resting in the sun, and it is impossible for her to get to the stream without dealing with a lion. And then the dialogue that C. S.
Lewis gave us is as follows. Are you not thirsty? said the lion. I'm dying of thirst, said Jill. Then drink, said the lion.
May I? Could I? Would you mind going away while I do? said Jill. The lion answered, This only by a look and a very low growl.
And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. Will you promise Not to not to do anything to me if I come? said Jill. I make no promise, said the liar.
Jill was so thirsty now that without noticing it, she'd come a step nearer. Do you? Do you It grows. She said. I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms, said the lion.
It didn't say this as if it were boasting. Nor as if it were sorry, Nor as if it were angry. It just said it. I daren't come and drink, said Jill. Then you will die of thirst, said the lion.
Oh, dear, said Joe. coming another step nearer. I suppose I must go and look for another stream then. There is No other stream. said the lion.
And the myth. of our syncretistic culture this morning. Is that you've stepped in here? to an environment That if you're wondering about things is suspect to you immediately. Because contemporary thought It says the only person you have to really be afraid of The only view you have to really step back from.
Is the view That purports to be true. Because after all, we've already concluded, haven't we? That there is no one stream. from which people need to drink. See what a great lie it is?
See how dark and demonic it is? See how stupid it is? for Americans to float around with cameras. taking pictures of all of that. See how unbelievable it is?
For sensible men and women, to expose their minds to that darkness. In spas And books. And gyms all across our country. You're sensible people. I'm sure you'll think this out.
Yeah. Yeah. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alastair Begg.
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When life gets turned upside down, it's easy to ask the question: where is God in this? Tomorrow we'll learn how we can find assurance in His Word. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.
