If it’s not about Jesus, it’s not about anything
(Motto of the Fountain of Life)
Invocation: Father God, in Jesus’ name we ask for
your blessing on this message, that it treats the subject with fairness and
respect and that it may contribute to the honor and glory of Jesus.
SPS: It
is twofold. 1) To explore the advantage
of the Jews. 2) To explore the
disadvantage of a world without them.
SCRIPTURES:
Romans 3:1-2: “What advantage then have the Jews? Or what profit is there of Circumcision? Much in every way: Chiefly because that unto them were committed
the oracles of God.”
1Corinthians 1:22: “…and the Greeks seek after wisdom.”
These two scriptures show two widely
different methods of gathering and processing knowledge. The Greeks sought elemental knowledge through
reason and observation. Here, knowledge
begins with man. In contrast the Jews perceived
that knowledge begins with God. They were
the recipients of special revelation through Abraham, Moses, and the
prophets. And that knowledge existed
centuries before Christ. Moreover,
through the diaspora of the Jews, that knowledge existed in nations and
cultures far removed from Palestine. And
that fact has tremendous importance.
Let’s explore how important.
A NEW
ANCIENT WORLD
The movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” staring
Jimmy Stewart is a story about a man who learned what the world would be like
had he never been born. Brethren, for the
sake of this message let us apply that literary device to ancient history and construct
a brand New Ancient World. Let’s consider
a world in which Abraham had never been born.
That removes Jacob and the Jews from ancient history. That removes Moses and John the Apostle; that
removes Genesis through Revelation; that removes Jesus and the promise of a Messiah. And since there is no Isaiah
nor John the Baptist there is no voice shouting in the wilderness “Make
straight the way of the Lord.” And this lack
of a voice removes from the world any explanation of what a Messiah is and why
one is needed.
In this Jacob-less world, lacking the
Oracles of God not one soul knows who or what God really is; in this New
Ancient World, God, if there is one, is so totally different, totally
transcendent from humanity that we cannot understand him or relate to him in
any way. Not one soul understands sin or
its consequences, and nobody is expecting or desiring a messiah because there
is no perceived need for one.
How would
this culture receive Jesus if he came to it?
He would not be Jewish because there are no Jews. He might be Egyptian or Syrian or Asian or
Indian or other. What would this world,
which does not know what God is, think of a man who claimed to be the Son of
God and preached about a Father God, a Kingdom and sin? What would they think if He worked miracles? Probably most would think Him insane and lock
Him away. Many would see His miracles
and sense power behind them; they would covet that power and try control Him to
their advantage and make Him king. No
one would understand His message. No one
would consider repentance, conversion, grace and salvation because these would
all be unfamiliar terms which were never taught before.
There would be nothing in the whole world to
prepare or to condition the culture to receive Him. He would be alienated from every group in the
world because no part of the world could relate to anything He taught. This alienation is not hostile; it does not
occur because of opposition to the message, it just occurs because there is
nothing familiar in His teachings.
There
is nothing to reject or accept because there is nothing to which the culture
can relate or compare it. Because there
was no “Voice in the wilderness” to alert and prepare the culture about Him, His
message would fall upon deaf disinterested ears.
How are men and women to understand this
New Ancient World? How do they answer
the universal question of “What am I?”
What is the purpose of my existence?” Ancient philosophers looked at their earth
and up into their sky and asked, “How did it all begin?” They reasoned by the familiar visible
evidence that a hand of power higher than man existed, but they could not know
who or what that power was. The ancient poets
answered these questions with mythologies and created the gods and heroes to
fill them. They created religions not
only to explain their myths but also to control both their gods and their
people.
What do you think brethren? Do you think there is a God? What is He like? Why is there evil? Try to answer these questions, but remember
for our exercise there is no Moses; no oracles; no Jews in the world. The question for each and every individual in
the New Ancient World becomes, “What do you think?” Dear reader use your own reason and
observations. Come up with your answer
and plan your life around it. But
remember that your answer is no more valid than anyone else’s. Look up into the night sky. How do you think it began? How did life begin? What will guide your universe? Cosmic
Force? Random Chance? Aliens?
THE PHILOSOPHERS
AND THE CIRCLE OF WISDOM
Without
Jacob in the world the philosophers sought after wisdom and categorized five universal
proofs from reason to discover the truth of the reality which surrounded them.
Wisdom of man reveals the necessity (non-contingency)
of something existing above and beyond the power of man. What that something is becomes the object of
endless philosophies; ever seeking, ever learning; never knowing. They pride themselves upon their use of
reason to guide them in this search.
They think that reason is a part of the soul, but they are not sure what
the soul is. Reason uses logic. Aristotle categorized the laws of logic. The laws of logic do not tell us what to
think, they tell us how to think or how to reason accurately. And they work in this bibleless world
too. They are:
1.
The law of non-contradiction. A cannot be B at the same time and place.
2.
The law of causality or cause and effect.
3.
The
basic reliability of the senses.
4.
The
analogical use of language. I love my
wife. I love my country. I love baseball, mom and apple pie. Many words such as love are partly alike and
partly different. They are similar but
not identical. We can therefore apply an
analogical understanding of a common word to the incomprehensible infinite things
and gain a limited understanding of them; such as “God is love.”
There also is the fact that in using our
best human reason and logic, we often make the wrong choice as though we were
irrational. A second fact is that when
operating irrationally, we may still make the correct choice as though we were
rational. This mutually inclusive
situation creates the circle of wisdom where the weakness is not in making the
wrong choice, the weakness is making any choice at all. That is because in this circle any choice or
concept of truth is flawed and uncertain.
In this New Ancient World the best humans can do it to guess that there
is an unknown something outside of creation that made everything.
MYTHOLOGIES: THE FANTSTIC AND THE EVIL
Without Israel in the world the idea of
God is a blank slate and is up for grabs.
In this New Ancient World no single poet’s mythology is more or less
valid in understanding God or creation than any other. They would be similar to those found in our
history books.
For example, the Norse
tradition, includes melting ice and a cow named Audhumina that licked ice,
which created gods who turned two logs into humans. The Hindu Satapatha Brahmana tradition reads,
“Verily, in the beginning this universe was water, nothing but a sea of
water. The waters desired, ‘How can we
be reproduced?’ They toiled, became heated
and produced a golden egg.”
The
tradition of Zarathustra taught that Ahura Mazhda created the universe, the
earth and all good and instructed men to till it. But he is only partially omnipotent because
Angra Mainyu, who is all death, counter-created evil and contests good. Many Native American religions claim that
they are literally, not figuratively, children of the Earth itself.
Mythology produced the Phoenician religion of
Jezebel of Zidon, which involved state sponsored religious prostitution of both
men and women. In that area of the Near
East with a sexually active religion population and no antibiotics, venereal
disease was widespread. Myths inspired
the religion of Amon and Moab, which offered the human sacrifice of living
children in hideous rituals to the fire God Molech.
THE
BEGINNING OF WISDOM
Mankind is created in the image and
likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). Thomas
Aquinas (1225 – 1274) puts it this way.
“God and man share a relationship (as we are his image-bearers), which
establishes the use of analogy as a way for finite man to speak about the
infinite God.” The ability to reason is
included in that image and likeness. And
thousands of years of human history show that human reason is generally
reliable despite its limitations as outlined above. Even those who doubt the existence of God
often pride themselves on their reasoning ability. I believe that reason and logic are integral
parts of the image and likeness of God.
Other proposed systems of knowledge must
deny one or all of these laws of reason and logic. The irony is that other systems use these
laws of reasoning to prove why they deviate from these same laws. By definition if a law of reason is denied,
that denial is itself unreasonable. A
denial of logic is itself illogical. Any
proof derived from those denials carries the seeds of unreasonableness and
illogic in it.
THE ORACLES OF
GOD
Theologian Karl Barth (1886 – 1968) demonstrates
that everything that we observe; the creation, heaven, earth and all that is in
them is not God and God is not the creation.
God is totally other from the creation.
Therefore creation is not the source of truth. One point to observe is that the bible
was not written to for or about engineers, biologists, historians,
mathematicians or theologians. And it
was not written by man to explain God.
It was written by God to people
made in His image and likeness, who were created with the ability to recognize
Him. It was written by God to remove
speculation about who and or what He is.
He revels Himself as Father and as loving God. These are not titles of God, they are the relational
and intimate functions of one person directed toward another. What does that mean? In my case it means that I’ve known and
speculated about God and Jesus for years. However, I knew about King Jesus the same way
I knew about General George Washington or about King George III - with academic
interest and detachment. Well brethren I
am a sinner, a failure and a fool. But because
of the Oracles of God I’ve begun to personally know Jesus as Savior, Sovereign,
and Friend.
The oracles of God illustrate that the
best man can do is reason from the creation upward and speculate about what is unseen. Consider that Aristotle’s thought has
influenced the course of civilizations for thousands of years, yet the best
truth this great mind could give is that there is an unknown something that put
all else into motion.
Compare his
writings to those of Nehemiah 9:6, “Thou art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven,
the heaven of heavens, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas,
and all that is therein, and thou preserves them all; and the host of heaven
worshippeth thee.”
Nehemiah speaks with
certainty; he speaks directly to a living entity; he knows God because God interacts
through the oracles and removes uncertainty.
Brethren read Genesis. You either will intuitively sense a vast
difference in scope and purpose from other traditions or you won’t. This intuition might be the initial working
of Faith or the direct calling of God. If
you cannot sense the difference, you will continue your search for truth elsewhere. Perhaps that search will end with a cosmic
cow or a god created in your image and likeness.
Genesis does not add uncertainty. The Oracles of God removes speculation. In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth. Here the unknowable reveals
Himself, not as a force or process of nature or an accident, but as a being
with purpose and power. The God of
Genesis introduces Himself as an omnipotent being who is non-contingent and self-sustaining. This knowledge is independent of science. The Oracles of God reveal Him to be personally
Lord and Sovereign, caring, good and consisting of Love. This knowledge is independent of
philosophy. And Genesis reveals more.
“By His Word it was created.” The “it”
is matter, gravity, electromagnetism, dark energy, Higgs boson particles, life,
you, me; everything. Without these oracles,
we must create myths and fables to explain what we see. Genesis says simply, “Hello child, I am He
whom you seek to know.”
CONCLUSION: Man reasons from the creation upward to
discover a silent God. The foundation of
man’s speculations is man. Whatever type
of god man discovers is corrupt with human imperfection. The oracles of God reach downward to reveal
God. The foundation of the Oracles is
God. The oracles reveal a God who is not
silent, but rather a God who is interactive and relational. The great value of the Jews is the great
glory granted to them by God. That glory
of the Jews resides in their being the point of contact chosen by God to speak
downward toward men to reveal Himself. His
oracles reveal to the Jews what is impossible for all the earth to know. Through the agency of the Jews His reality is
witnessed to the world. God speaks He
interacts and uncertainty and speculation are removed. That revelation continues forever and as the receivers
of the Oracles of God, the glory of the Jews continues forever.
The great glory of the Jews is summed up
in Hebrews 1:1-2: “God, who at sundry times and in divers
manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets. Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His
Son.” The tribes of Israel and the Jews
received all these truths about God from God.
Through them God speaks to man and removes the doubt and
uncertainty. And the greatest glory of the Jews is that
through them, Christ, who is the greatest revelation of God, came into the
world. And that glory lasts through
eternity.
Friends, for more information on the
mission and the glory of the Jews please see the Apostles’ Creed part 4 of 6 on
the Fountain of Life blog page.
Brethren may the grace and peace of God
our Father and Christ Jesus our Savior be with you all.
Rev. George Relic, Assistant Pastor
Fountain of Life
A congregation of Grace Communion
International
Washington, PA
