The Reign of Mother Nature

Our worship of God is not based on what others the world will not worship you, but we're here today, Father, to say we will worship you, for you are blessed forever and ever. When mankind is given over to its sin, one of the consequences is a misconception about nature and man's place in it. God gave us this earth to sustain us and for us to enjoy and manage. However, people often elevate nature in unbiblical ways. The Apostle Paul brings out an interesting truth in Romans 1-25. The very world that scientists and scholars are claiming to be divine and the mother of all is actually pointing us to the true divinity. In other words, the very thing men today increasingly worship as God is imploring us to worship the true God. How does nature do this?

Stay tuned to find out. I had the privilege of addressing the graduates of a nearby Christian school, and as I prepared that baccalaureate speech, which I turned into a sermon, I don't do speeches, it struck me again how far our country has fallen from the faith of its fathers. Newsweek magazine revealed as much in a recent WorldView article entitled The Character of Our Campuses. The author wrote of her concern about these graduates who were super achievers, quote, yet have little interest in developing moral character.

It's always interesting to hear a secular author write in a secular journal about this kind of thing. She contrasted this graduating class with the class of the early 20th century and wrote these words, those students were relatively unconcerned with academic achievement, but went to great lengths to instill character. We, on the other hand, place enormous emphasis on achievement, but are tongue tied when it comes to what makes a virtuous life. The author went on to quote John Hibben, the former president of Princeton University, as he addressed the graduating class of 1913. Hibben said to that class, the world commands you to take your place and fight the fight in the name of honor and chivalry against the powers of organized evil and commercialized vice, against the poverty, disease and death which follow in the wake of sin, against all the innumerable forces which are working to destroy the image of God in man and unleash the passions of the beast. Two generations since that speech have brought about the rise and display and approval of those passions of the beast, have they not, and the digression and the loss of the image of God in man. The apostle Paul virtually prophesied under inspiration that this would occur in Romans chapter one when he said that whenever mankind refuses to honor and to thank God, they wander around in spiritual darkness, filling their minds with all sorts of speculations that do not satisfy the human heart and do not give human existence, dignity and meaning. He said in verse 25, they exchanged the truth of God for the lie. Now we have taken note of several of these lies. They all emanate from the original lie, do they not, that assaulted the character of God and diluted the power of his word when Satan whispered to Eve in effect, did God really say something to you?

And did he really mean what he said? Oh, surely if you ate that fruit, would God be so trivial as to cause you to die? No, you eat that fruit, you will not die. So they ate the fruit and they what?

They began to die. She was deceived and so was Adam. Jesus Christ said of Satan in John 844, whenever he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Several lies that are predominant in our culture today that are so obvious to see. We began talking about those.

Let me briefly review. One is the lie that truth is a personal creation that is personal. Relative truth is truth that is truth for you. Doesn't necessarily have to be right or truth for anybody else. As long as you believe it, especially when it comes to spiritual matters, then we're all right.

You can believe it. The lie of relative truth is now the sand upon which our culture attempts to stand and is confused when it can't stand. Another popular deception is that salvation is universal. That is everybody's going to heaven. That seems to be at least one absolute truth most agree on. People want to believe anything they want to believe. They want to behave any way they want to behave and then get to the end of life, die and go to some form of paradise. So just about everybody believes in some sort of immortal bliss, though they differ on how to get there and what it is. Another lie that follows closely behind that one is the lie that judgment is nonexistent.

And we need that one, right? So that you can believe whatever you want to believe and I can believe whatever I want to believe. And ultimately we all go to paradise.

So there cannot be any form of judgment. If that is true, then Jesus Christ was deceived. For he said, broad is the path that leads to destruction and many there be that find it.

And narrow is the path that leads to life and few there be that find it. Matthew 7, 13, the apostle John was also deceived, as he wrote in the Book of Revelation, those fearful words. And if anyone's name was not found written in the Lamb's Book of Life, they were cast into the lake of fire.

Revelation 2015. How do you get into the Lamb's Book of Life? You get into the Lamb's Book of Life by coming to the Lamb, who is Jesus Christ, John's Gospel informs us. If you do not come to him in repentance and confession, you had better hope that Jesus Christ was deceived. You had better hope that the apostle John was deceived.

You had better hope that they were both wrong or there is a terrible future for you. Another lie is that man evolved. We'll address that a little later again in this sermon. Finally, we noted the lie that God is uninvolved in his creation. Yet the Bible, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, teaches that God is so involved, so involved that he took on the form of man. He was born the God man, the second person of this triune God, became intimately involved and then died on a cross. You can't get any more involved than childbirth and crucifixion. He has not waved goodbye to the universe.

He is infinitely caring and interested and sovereign. Well, what happens when man believes the lie? Here are the consequences. Number one, man rejects a personal, loving, forgiving God. Number two, mankind replaces God with other objects of worship. The sexual addict, the drug addict longed for that high and that experience because they do not long after God. The materialist does not long after God and so he longs after things.

The proud person does not long after God and so he longs after power and prestige and popularity. Ladies and gentlemen, if I could put it as simply as possible, it would be this. The human heart was created to crave. And if it does not crave God and the things of God, it will crave someone else or something else.

Furthermore, third, mankind abandons the only basis for morality. If you evolve, then you're just an animal. And if you're an animal, you can do what other animals do, like the lyrics of number 17 on Billboard's top 200 album chart, a song that repeated over and over and over again. You and me, quote, ain't nothing but mammals. So let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel. I have read that MTV regularly aired the video, that song which featured band members dressed as monkeys simulating sexual acts with one another.

The band said it was all a joke. The song, however, relied on this wink and nudge assumption that man, as Darwinianists believe, is just another animal. And whatever behavior seems natural and normative for animals could be natural and normative for human beings as well. We're just evolved a little further along the food chain. A new paperback for children ages 9 to 12 is called The Beast in You, which attempts to relate human characteristics back to our animal predecessors full of cartoons.

I have read the book, Gushes, that fingernails are proof that we once had claws, that goosebumps are proof that we once had fur. The trouble is even evolutionists are recognizing that their theory undercuts morality and they're troubled by the loss of morality. Then you have others like Robert Wright who believe it's time that we got over our human tendency and rid ourselves of any restrictions of the tendency to morality. He writes in his book, The Moral Animal, these words, there is definitely no reason to assume that existing moral codes reflect some higher truth apprehended via divine inspiration. Instead he writes this, morality is merely an idea that evolved in the human mind as a tool for increasing reproductive success.

Whatever gets our genes into the next generation then is morally right. He goes on to postulate, then both men and women are biologically programmed to be unfaithful to their spouses. Wanderlust is an innate part of our minds, thus lifelong monogamous devotion just isn't natural. Wouldn't he make a wonderful husband?

Princeton's president was right all the way back in 1913. Whenever you abandon the revelation of God himself and his moral direction within that revelation called the Bible, whenever you abandon that you unleash the passions of the beast. There is no longer moral restraint, you lose moral boundaries, you wander in all sorts of perverse and destructive behavior. There are consequences to rejecting God and his word. The fourth one is this, mankind gives away his personal God-given nobility. Now follow this carefully since God is the one who told us of our infinite value and since God is the one who defined our special place within creation, since we learned that from the Bible, when God is rejected, when the Bible is ignored, the rejection is followed by the loss of everything that God tells us about ourselves.

So we could believe that we're just another animal. What does the Bible say? Turn to Genesis chapter 1 and let's look again at the record of scripture.

Let's start back in verse 24. Genesis 1 24, then God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind and the cattle after their kind and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind and God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

Did you catch that? Let them rule over all of this. Verse 27 and God created man in his own image in the image of God. He created him male and female. He created them and God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Now, according to God's creative plan, then Adam and Eve are, in effect, king and queen over the planet and all of the animal kingdom. Adam and Eve were told to subdue the earth.

The Hebrew word subdue, kabass, could be rendered to tread down, to bring into bondage, to control, to order. Furthermore, in chapter 2, God gives man the role of caring for creation. The word caring, somer, means to keep, to preserve.

You could translate it to cultivate. God has delegated then the care and the cultivation and the management of the planet as well as the rule of man over all the animal kingdom. But when God's word is rejected, when God's order is denied, not only does mankind lose his place of dignity and honor, but there's another consequence, a fifth one. Mankind loses the value of human life in favor of animal life. In other words, man either rules nature or he is ruled by nature. He either exercises his God-given sovereignty over the natural world or he loses his perspective in the midst of his speculations and ultimately just becomes another member of the food chain. God made him to be the ruler.

He instead is ruled. And here's how it happens. If people are really just animals, then animals are what? People.

Someone might say, well, what's wrong with that? To believe that human beings are worth more than animals and have a special place in creation. Well, that's nothing more than arrogance and pride, right? Well, apart from God's word, apart from what we learn in this created order and scheme of things and what he teaches about creation, it could be arrogance.

It could be something that we created simply because we're able to walk upright and make guns and build fences and so we're just a little smarter a little further along the line. People are animals. Animals are people.

Peter Singer, the evolutionist at Princeton University, which is interesting to me that he is now at the university where this man I mentioned earlier in 1913 once spoke to his class. But he calls the creationist views speciesism. That is, it's just another form of racism to not give animals equal rights with human beings.

We're just racists. He was quoted in the National Review as saying this, insofar as animals feel pleasure and pain and are capable of enjoyment and suffering, they have legitimate interests that must be given equal weight with those of human beings. Now, how do we know which animals feel pain and enjoyment? How do we know those ants that I recently poisoned out in my yard didn't feel extreme pain as they died? How do we know that? Well, anyhow, he says if they can feel pleasure and pain, then they should be given equal weight.

So I guess I should make room in the house. Well, he also went on to say a chimpanzee, a dog or pig will have a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater capacity for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant or someone in a state of advanced senility. Thus, the life of a human infant with irreversible brain damage is no more valuable than the lives of animals. He's actually following the logical progression of his belief that comes from Darwinian evolution.

This philosophy, by the way, is rampant in our culture today. Animals are being treated more and more like human beings all the time. In fact, one of the fastest growing segments within law is what's called pet law or animal law. I've had the opportunity to talk with an attorney on a couple of occasions about this and it is startling to see what has happened and I have been clipping articles from magazines and journals and newspapers and I can only give you a few but I have a file stuffed with illustrations.

Let me read to you a few. USA article said this. There is a growing movement that asks courts to abandon centuries of precedent and treat pets not as property or livestock but as something akin to humans. In courts across the United States, there are signs that pet law is awakening. In the past four years, juries in six states have awarded large judgments to pet owners.

Twelve law schools, now including Georgetown and Harvard, offer courses in animal law. Perhaps most significantly, courts have begun to allow owners of damaged or destroyed pets to sue not only for the animal's cash value, which is typical, but also for loss of companionship and their own pain and suffering as if the deceased pet, and I'm quoting, had been their child or spouse. Like Kay Corvo, the article went on to say, who won a suit against an animal hospital that had switched the remains of her late dog with those of a cat.

The error was discovered during her pet's open casket funeral. She sued for emotional distress and won. Since medieval times, courts have considered animals to be property. To be chattel is the medieval word in legal terms. Owners whose animals were harmed were limited to recovering, only the cost of replacing the animal.

Not now. Today, World Magazine says a national network of animal rights lawyers are pushing the envelope until, quote, we succeed, Joyce Tilchler said, the founder of this network, in presenting a case in which the animal is the plaintiff. World Magazine reported also a Lowell, Massachusetts, judge who became the first jurist in that state and the dog owner to sue for the emotional distress of the animal. The owner had watched as the dog was roughed up by a neighbor's dog and sued, claiming emotional distress on his dog and won the settlement.

The envelope is really being pressed, says Richard Cupp, a professor at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California. Right now, there's still kind of a giggle factor when you're talking about emotional distress for pets, he says, but as more and more cases are filed, we will be giggling less and paying more. Here's the logical outgrowth of the evolutionist philosophy that refuses God's created order and the dignity of mankind. People can treat people like animals, but you need to treat animals like people. In Tennessee, a pet owner can now sue up to 4,000 for the wrongful death of a pet. Recently, in Southern California, a judge awarded a woman $27,000 for suffering brought to her dog. Not death, but suffering as a result of the dog's botched dental repairs. Americans are spending more than $11 billion a year on pet health care.

Would you let that sink in? $11 billion a year on cats, dogs. Boulder, Colorado just changed their legal language so the pet owners are no longer called owners, but guardians. I got a dog. I want you to know I like animals.

Okay, don't misunderstand any of this sermon here. I've got a dog. In fact, we're going to have two dogs. We have a neighbor that has a basset hound and they don't want it anymore and our dog is half basset and my kids have been worked over fairly well and we're going to have two. I like them. I took my dog to the vet some time ago.

I believe that every dog ought to have rabies shots. I do believe that. And when I was there filling out the forms, you know, I'm the mother or father. I notice on the application and I don't want to preach to this dear girl.

She doesn't know anything about what I'm studying lately. And then she asked me, she said, and what is your dog's last name? I said, my last name is Davey.

And she just kind of, you know, wrote it down. And I really wanted, you know, my dog does not have a last name. My dog's last name is not Davey. It doesn't have our heritage. It doesn't take responsibility for that name.

It can run the neighborhood. I don't care. I'm not going to lose my pastoral office because of how my dog acts. It's a dog.

It is not a Davey. Amen? Amen. Thank you. How many of you think I ought to stay with one dog?

Amen? Well, if animals are worth the same as people, then you should be doing what literally tens of thousands of Americans are now finding it easier to do. We have animals being given organ transplants and chemotherapy. They are taken on vacation.

They are buried in cemetery lots. What does the Bible say? Well, one thing it does say is that we are to rule and we are to rule with kindness. There are many passages in the Old Testament that talk of kindness to animals. But what about intrinsic value?

That's the issue. Is that dog or cat worth the same as a person? Does it have equal weight?

Does it have equal rights? Well, Jesus Christ, on a couple of occasions, was preaching to his audience. And he delivered in that Sermon on the Mount these words in Matthew 10.

He said, Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow. They do not reap.

They do not gather into barns. And yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? Now, the point he was making had nothing to do with the point that I'm making, because in his culture, they knew a human being was worth more than an animal. He was simply telling them, Look, if God takes care of his created order and they don't worry about it, then certainly he will take care of you, because aren't you worth more than them? To our culture, we need to emphasize that last phrase.

You are worth more. You have more intrinsic value to God than an animal. Furthermore, a few chapters later, the religious leaders were trying to stop Jesus from healing a man with a withered hand. It was on the Sabbath day. They were all upset because he was declaring the man to be healed and hadn't performed yet, but he was headed there and they knew that. And so they got on to him saying that he was breaking the Sabbath. And he said to them, in effect, Listen, if on the Sabbath day one of your sheep falls into a pit, you know that you would go and take that sheep out of that pit. Then he said this phrase of how much more value then is a man than a sheep. And then he said, Be healed. See, man has greater value, intrinsic value.

And we'll talk a little bit more about how we know that to be true. But for those who disregard the words of Christ, there are consequences. There are inverted values. There is the loss of human dignity. There is the loss of foundational morality as men and women do not know why they can't act like animals and why animals can't be treated like people. There's one more step downward in this spiral digression as mankind rejects the word of God. Romans chapter 1 verse 25 said the rebellious man disregards the Creator and worships and serves the creature instead.

Well, here's number six. Mankind becomes bound to meet the needs of nature rather than meeting the needs of mankind. It's just one step further.

But now we care more about animals than we do about humans. God has created all there is. He sustains all there is. He owns all there is. And even though the world refuses to acknowledge Him, it denies Him, it refuses to worship the wonderful Creator God the believer does just what Paul does at the end of verse 25. Paul is going through this litany and it's like he stops and he says, Oh, I just got to say something positive.

I got to say something good and wonderful and something of our Lord. And so he ends it by saying the Creator who is blessed forever and ever. Amen. The world denies God, but God is blessed forever and ever. So we, like Paul, say the world dishonors and ignores and shuns and hates you. Oh, God, but you are blessed forever and forever. The world will not worship you, but we're here today, Father, to say we will worship you for you are blessed forever and ever.

Amen. Thank you, Stephen, and thank you, friends, for listening today. This is Wisdom for the Heart with pastor and author Stephen Davey.

The lesson you just heard is called The Reign of Mother Nature and is part of our current series called The Banquet Table of Consequences. I want to invite you to get a resource that we have available. But first, I'll tell you about an exciting training opportunity. How would your life be impacted if you set aside one year to study God's word, experience authentic community, grow in discipleship, study in Israel, and earn your master's degree in theological studies? In addition to being our daily Bible teacher, Stephen is also the founder and president of Shepherds Theological Seminary. Brand new this fall is the launch of Shepherds Institute. This unique one-year program offers a life-changing opportunity to all believers, no matter your career. Shepherds Institute invites you to invest one year of your life to equip yourself for the rest of your life. You can learn more about this program at shepherds.edu.

Now, as I mentioned, we have a resource, and I want to make sure you've heard about it. It's called Heart to Heart magazine. Heart to Heart is a resource that gives you a daily devotional guide, articles to equip you in your walk with Christ, and information about our ministry. Next month, Stephen deals with the topic of friendship.

He looks at ways to build solid friendships and traits that will destroy friendships. If you don't receive Heart to Heart magazine, we'd like to send you the next three issues for you to read and enjoy as our gift to you. Give us a call at 866-48-BIBLE or 866-482-4253. We'll take down the information we need to send this to you, and we'll get you the next three issues. I'm Scott Wiley, and for Stephen and the Wisdom Team, thanks for listening. .