Recovering the Christian Mind

First Baptist Church of Naples

R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

We get not only to sing, not only to say, but we get to believe that it is well with my soul and only because of Christ. Only in Christ, only by Christ. And I greet you today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is wonderful to be here at the First Baptist Church of Naples. Wonderful to be here with my dear friend, your pastor, Dr. Hayes Wicker. Uh, the older I get that seems to move forward rather rapidly. Uh, the more I know that one of the greatest gifts God has given me are the friends, uh, that he has allowed me to have. And the longer I live, the more I treasure long, faithful friends. And, uh, the more I rejoice in what I see God doing through my friends. I can remember preaching at the First Baptist Church of Naples when you are in a very different place.

And it just leads me to rejoice to see what the Lord is doing amongst you. Every time I come here, I’m aware of the fact this is a church in motion, the right kind of motion. There’s all kind of bad kind of motion. Liberal Protestant denominations are in motion in decline. Growing churches need new parking lots and new buildings, new opportunities. Growing churches have the kinds of challenges I see when I come to the First Baptist Church of Naples. I just want you to know how thankful I am for you and for your great commission vision, not only around the world, but right here in Naples. I’m thankful for the fact that when, uh, when I’m with you, you are always eager for the next chapter in the life of this church. And I pray the Lord’s blessings with you. I’m so thankful to be with those of you who are here in the, the worship center and also those who are worshiping in the chapel this morning.

It’s a privilege to be able to worship the one true in living. God. It’s so much a privilege that we actually have to be invited to do so. And in Christ, we are invited to do this so much that we are actually told that we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. That’s what we’re doing. I don’t know what you, what you said when you were getting ready this morning. Are you getting ready to assemble ourselves together? For some of you that’s a little more complicated than for others. We, we, we, uh, assemble ourselves together. Whether we’ve got to get a bunch of kids dressed and in the car, or whether we’ve just got to make sure that we’re here, we can’t not be here. Isn’t that the way it is? There are people all over Naples doing something else this hour sour, but we wouldn’t do anything else but this. And here we are. And, and then you say, well, why is that so? Well, you say, well, it’s because we get together, together with fellow believers. It’s because we get by invitation to worship the true and living God. But we also get to turn to his word. And I’m going to invite you to do that right now to turn with me to Romans chapter 11.

We’re gonna turn to Romans chapter 11 and begin reading in verses 33 and following. And then the first two verses of the next chapter, chapter 12, I’m going to ask that you would stand in honor of the reading of God’s word by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul writes, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways for who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor, or who has first given a gift to him that it might be repaid for from him and through him, and to him are all things to him be glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Let’s pray. Our Father, we are so thankful for your word, every word within your word. We are thankful for your word from genesis to revelation. We’re particularly thankful this hour for this word found in the book of Romans. We pray that even as we read it and study it and ponder it and preach it, the Holy Spirit will be applying this word to our hearts, to conform us to the image of Christ. We pray this in the name of Christ. Amen. Please be seated.

So the assignment given to me this morning is, uh, to speak of the recovery of the Christian mind. Now, just about every word there is loaded, uh, the recovery of the Christian mind. Well, we speak of first of all, recovering and that only makes sense that there’s something that has been lost. And so we’re acknowledging there is a problem and it’s the loss of something that should never have been lost. You don’t recover something that was worth losing, you recover something you can’t do without. And then the definite article, which is also interesting because we live in a time in which people wanna argue that any number of worldviews will work, any number of ways of thinking will work. You, you, you know, he can have his Christian worldview and she can have her Christian worldview. But we’re speaking of the Christian worldview, which is to say that in the scripture there is a worldview that is revealed in God’s inherent and infallible word.

And that is the view of the world. That is the view of life. That is the, the view of truth and meaning. Morality, we are to seek. And then recovering the Christian mind, oh my goodness, you know, there are, there are those who so depreciate the life of the mind that they will redefine Christianity as a feeling. Now, I just wanna tell you, this is a persistent temptation. It’s a temptation that sometimes comes disguised in some very attractive language in the language of a form of pietism that comes to us and says, you don’t need to worry so much about doctrine. You don’t need to worry so much about truth. You don’t need to argue about theology. All you need to do is have Jesus in your heart. All you need to do is, is have the warm feeling that comes from the indwelling Christ.

All you have to do is develop and nurture a relationship with Christ. And it comes down to feeling. Now, there are two problems with that. The first problem is this, God did make us thinking and feeling creatures. But the problem is our, we’re either gonna discipline our thinking by our feelings, or we’re gonna discipline our feelings by our thinking. And the biblical model makes very clear that if we discipline our thinking by our feelings, we are doomed. We’ve got to discipline our feelings by our thinking. And that thinking has to be guided by scripture. There is a Christian mind, and the Christian is to develop the mind. And Christians have to think. And not only that, we have to think as Christians, but this is a conversation that we’re having now in the year 2018, that wouldn’t have been so pressing amongst Christians just to say, 200 years ago, or even 100 years ago, or even maybe 100 months ago. What do I mean by that? We only really talk about developing the Christian mind when we have to.

I use the word worldview. 50 years ago this year, a man, very influential in my life, uh, wrote his most influential book. I was a teenager when he wrote it. No, that’s not true. I’m not that old. <laugh>. Excuse me. I was eight when he wrote it. I was a teenager when I read it. Those are two very different things. But, uh, his name was Francis Schafer. And in, uh, 1968, he wrote a book entitled Escape From Reason. It was, it was one of the first books that introduced American Christians into thinking about worldview. Why did he do it? 19 68, 50 year anniversary in 2018, 1968 was one of the greatest years of foment and, uh, of revolution in the western world. You may remember some of what happened in 1968. You had, uh, revolutions on the campuses of European universities. Paris became a center of revolution.

You had unrest and American universities, you had almost a breaking apart of American culture. You had rival worldviews. It would eventually, for instance, uh, uh, uh, become absolutely encapsulated in the sexual revolution. And, uh, everything else that would follow. Uh, we need to remember this week, the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the 45th lamentable anniversary of one of the worst days in American history when the US Supreme Court legalized abortion 1968. And what would immediately follow? Why is that so important? It’s important because Christians all of a sudden understood, there are people around us who do not think like us. Christians had to come to the quick conclusion. Now, wait just a minute. If you can justify killing an unborn human being, if you can justify overthrowing 20 centuries of biblical sexual morality in the West, if you can, if you can justify overthrowing the very notion of truth, then we are in a very different intellectual environment.

Aristotle spoke of the fish in the parable, very famous. His point was this, if you want to know what being wet is like, don’t ask a fish. That’s all he knows. He doesn’t even know he’s wet. Well, that’s kind of the way it was for Christians just growing up in a world when most people thought like Christians. And, and why was that? So it wasn’t because everyone was a Christian, but it was because everyone at least thought in major terms that were consistent with Christianity. And the question comes, why? Why? Because there was no other available worldview. A worldview, a comprehensive way of, of thinking of the world in which you, you define truth and reality and, and, and morality and meaning. Every one of us operates on the basis of a worldview. It’s so invisible to most of us that we don’t even have to think about it.

It simply is the way we think. And so a headline passes and we think the way we think. If you understand someone’s worldview, you can predict exactly how they’re going to think about big issues. But the fact is that most Christians didn’t have to struggle with big issues of meaning and truth and morality for most of their lifetimes. I think in my grandparents, I’m a Florida native, and, uh, actually for many generations back, and I think about growing up in central Florida and then in South Florida as a child and a teenager, I, I can remember that I, I actually knew a time when I don’t, I don’t think my grandparents even had the sense that what we have to debate every day would be possibly debatable. I I, I made a mistake one time with my grandfather. Uh, I believe very much in God’s gift to the extended family.

I had two wonderful sets of grandparents. I got to spend so much time with them there. I could ride. It was like Mayberry. I could ride my bicycle from one grandparent’s house to the other grandparents’ house. I knew which one was making cookies, what time of the day, which one I, I, I knew when to beware with my grandparents, <laugh>. I was, uh, I was actually at, at one of my sets of grandparents’ house when Paul Harvey was given the news. I was 13 years old, like 1972. Paul Harvey used the word homosexual, never heard of it before. So here’s my mistake. I had the sense to wait until after lunch, but I, I went up to my grandfather and I said, granddaddy, what does homosexual mean? And my grandfather did not answer the question. He simply looked at me and said, you’ll need to talk to your father about that <laugh>.

Alright, well, whatever it was, it’s bigger than granddaddy wants to talk about. And frankly, he could have told me anything, and I would’ve walked around and gone back to whatever I was doing. But I lived in a world in which a 13-year-old never heard the word before. And his grandfather wasn’t even gonna tell you what it’s about. My guarantee my grandfather went on and he could not imagine a world in which the US Supreme Court would’ve legalized same sex marriage. And, and you have to realize that in a seven year period, we can document this. In a seven year period, Americans went from believing as a vast majority, that same-sex marriage should not be legal to believing that it should be legal. Now change happens in the way people think, but nothing can explain in the United States how in seven years, a majority shifted on an issue of that fundamental significance.

I mean, it’s not like human beings just recently came up with marriage as the union of a man and a woman, in which case we could simply decide, okay, we came up with it, then we can revise it. We’re talking about the most basic institution of human life. We’re talking about the first two chapters of the first book of the Bible. We’re talking about an institution that every single civilization has found its way to, throughout all of human history that we’ve just decided we’re going to revise. Now, that issue is not the point of my message today. The point of my message today is we’ve got to think. And, and let me offer you an a, another imperative, especially as we’ve been talking a bit and praying for Christian education. If you’re 75, you’re not very much on the line on these issues.

And, uh, if you’re my age, I have to contend with these issues in the public square and with the national, international media all the time. But most people my age don’t really have to deal with this as much. You can let somebody else do that, or at least you think. But if you’re 18 years old, this entire world lands on your shoulders. I i, if you’re 25 years old, there is no way you can get through a week without having to discuss all of these issues. And the question is, is that young person going to think and live as a Christian according to the Bible? And what kind of fortitude is that going to take? What kind of biblical strength is that going to take? How much Bible is that going to take? How much Christian truth is that going to take? And the answer is a lot, an enormous amount of truth, an enormous confidence in that truth there nothing less hangs in the balance right now as to whether or not there will be Christian faithfulness in this United States in just a matter of years.

How do we recover the Christian mind? Well, first of all, we turn to scripture. We looked to Romans chapter 11, beginning in verse 33. Those last verses of Romans chapter 11 are interesting because they are a, they are a doxology. And there a song of praise to God. Paul speaks of the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. Now, notice how much of this is intellectual God’s omniscience, his perfect knowledge, his perfect wisdom, how unsearchable are his judgments and inscrutable his ways. That’s just to say there is no way that we can escape from our dependence upon God’s wisdom. We’re we’re absolutely dependent upon God’s wisdom. God’s revealed wisdom in scripture, the erit infallible word of God. Without this, we would be lost. His ways are inscrutable.

I can still remember hearing a very prominent American preacher get wound up on this word. And, uh, I was a young man, young preacher, and I’d gone to hear this preacher, I wanted to hear this preacher preach. And he preached and he used the word inscrutable. And uh, like I say, he got wound up preacher sometimes do. He simply looked out at the congregation and said, don’t try to screw the inscrutable <laugh>. Now that actually is horrible English. It makes no sense. But when he said it, it made perfect sense. Do not try to screw the inscrutable. You, you we don’t have the ability to screw <laugh>. Uh, God is inscrutable. I like the way a old African American preacher one time said, you can summarize this verse by saying your arms are too short. Two bucks with God. We are entirely dependent upon God. He’s the omniscient, omnipotent, sovereign one.

His judgments are beyond our understanding. And then Paul goes back to the Old Testament to ask the same questions for who has known the mind of the Lord, who has been his counselor. That means his, his advisor. Wherever you find a, a, a human leader, wherever you find a president or a prime minister or a CEO, you find advisors. When you get to heaven, there are no advisors around the throne of God. He’s not dependent upon any advice. No one’s been his counselor or who has first given a gift to him that it might be repaid. Uh, God’s not in debt to anyone. That’s an important thing for us to remember by the way. We can sometimes do something and, and we think, well, we really accomplished something. God’s really in our debt for this, not hardly.

Uh, and then look at this last verse. And, and, and this is the most important verse of all verse 36. It’s the theme verse of the Christian mind. It’s the, it it, it’s the most important verse of the Christian worldview. Paul says, for from him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. I was greatly inspired as a teenager by a church in the community where I was, uh, where I was then growing up in South Florida. The, the church was a very large church. And on the side of the church, it had the church’s motto set into concrete. That’s the way, making sure no one changes the motto <laugh>. And the motto of the church was excellence in all things and all things for God’s glory. And you know, that last part is so crucially important. The very reason for our existence, the reason for the existence of every Adam and molecule of the universe is to glorify God.

That’s the only reason anything exists. It’s the only reason we exist. It’s the only reason we are alive right now. It’s the only reason Christ is tarried from his second coming. It’s the, it’s the only reason why God glorifies himself in the church is the only reason why anything happens or anything is known, is because for from him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. This week, the New York Times ran a headline story saying that physicists are frustrated at fundamental physics. I said, I love it. I just, that’s, that’s my headline, hope of the week. <laugh> physicists are frustrated by fundamental physics. Okay? And now this, lemme tell you what that story was about, is the fact that physicists are now holding to two theories. One, the classical physical model and one quantum physics. I know you’re saying this is this is Sunday morning worship.

Yeah, but this is good <laugh>. So you got physicists who are holding simultaneously to fundamental physics and to quantum physics. The problem is they’re contradictory, but the evidence seems to be overwhelming for fundamental physics. And it seems to be, they say overwhelming for quantum physics and they’re saying opposite things. So physicists are having a hard time holding all this together. Well, you know, one of the things they’re looking for is what’s called the unified field theory of the universe. I love that too. And you just love physicists say, what’s the goal of your life to define the unified field theory of the universe? What do they mean by that? We want to find what one physicist calls the theory of everything. I wanna know that theory. It’s the theory of everything. I wanna understand everything I wanna know the one theory that explains everything. Lemme tell you the one truth that explains everything I’ll give.

I wanna call my local physics department and say, Hey, you know, I can cut you right to the unified field theory. It’s called the unified field truth. And, and, and it’s found in Romans chapter 11, verse 36. For from him and through him and to him are all things who me? Glory forever. God is the explanation for all things, and all things exist because of him. They’re from him and all things are held together even now through him. Paul tells us in Colossians that it’s Christ who is actually holding all things together as he’s preeminent over all things and all things are to him. They’re the, the destiny of everything. The destiny of everyone is in the hands of an omnipotent holy, just God. All things are from him and through him and to him, thus to him be glory forever. Amen. Well, then we get to Romans chapter 12.

And remember that when the New Testament was written, the chapter and verse divisions weren’t there. Now it’s not a problem that they’re there because if they weren’t there, I’d have a hard time telling you where to turn. So it’s a helpful thing that a printer in the 16th century put in the, uh, chapter in verse divisions. That’s a good thing, but it’s, it’s, it’s not a good thing. If we think that Paul was thinking this way, we need to read the letter as Paul would write a letter. And here’s the problem. Look at Romans chapter 12 verse one, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, this is the English standard version. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I appeal to you, therefore. Now here’s the, here’s the problem. You don’t begin a conversation with, therefore just try it.

I speak to married couples. If you woke up this morning, sat down to breakfast, and one of you looked at the other and said, therefore, that means that the argument last night is now being picked up over toast. That, that, that’s what that means, therefore, only makes sense if something came before it. Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century Baptist preacher, put it this way. He, he said, whenever you in scripture, you see the word, therefore you need to ask the question, what’s the therefore, therefore, therefore, the therefore, what’s the therefore, therefore? And what the therefore is, therefore is to say, look back at what was just said and understand that what’s going to be said follows it necessarily follows it logically follows on the basis of the fact that from him and through him and to him, are all things to whom be glory forever.

The apostle Paul says, on that basis, then I appeal to you by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Now, we could spend months right there in Romans chapter 12 verse one, what it means to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. It’s one of the most revolutionary ideas in the New Testament because as you know, the Old Testament, every single sacrifice died. There was no such notion of a living sacrifice in the Old Testament. But even as the sacrifice of death came to an end in the ultimate sacrifice, which was the sacrifice sufficient for our sin, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as our substitutionary savior. That’s why the, the veil in the temple was wr there’s no more sacrifice of death. But that doesn’t mean sacrifice is over.

It means that the Christian life isn’t about a sacrifice of death in the death of our bodies. It means that in the Christian life, the sacrifices we present ourselves as wholly owned by the redeemer, we belong to Christ. And, and thus we are living sacrifices as if we’re dead to ourselves and alive to Christ. But what would that look like? That’s where we get to verse two. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect mind the renewal of your mind elsewhere. Paul will describe this. In fact, uh, numerous biblical authors will portray the problem this way. They will say that once your minds were captive before Christ, your minds were captive. One of the ways scripture describes it is captive to the, uh, to the elementary thoughts of the universe, captive to wrong ways of thinking, captive to not only wrong ways of thinking, but ungodly ways of thinking captive to dangerous and sinful ways of thinking to become a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ of necessity is to learn the mind of Christ.

And, and to have as disciples and understanding that our discipleship is not limited to what we do. It begins in how we think. The Bible makes very clear as a man think within his heart, so is he, in other words, thought precedes action. Eventually our actions are traceable. Back to our thoughts. Christian faithfulness requires a Christian mind.

That’s a really daunting notion. Harry Blay Meyer’s writing especially to Christian University students back at the midpoint of the 20th century. So we’re talking about a generation ago now. He said that the, the problem in the west speaking western civilization of the Christian mind is that there isn’t much of one. That’s the problem where Christians define Christian faithfulness only in terms of action, or where Christians define Christian faithfulness only in terms of feeling. We basically disarm ourselves intellectually. We disarm ourselves when it comes to truth. We disarm ourselves when it comes to faithfulness. And that comes with horrifying consequences. That’s why there’s so many people who think they’re Christians who don’t think as Christians. That’s why there, there’s so many Christians who seem to be, as the scripture says, tossed about by every wind of doctrine. They simply, we don’t know where to turn. They, they’ve never developed the Christian mind.

Well, here we have a very fundamental assumption, and that is that the Christian mind begins in the knowledge of God. That’s the most important thing we can understand. The Christian mind begins in the wisdom of God. The Christian mind is not about developing a Christian wisdom. It is about instead knowing and obeying teaching and preaching the wisdom of God. Now, that would mean that we would have to figure out where that wisdom is, but that’s where the answer comes to us immediately. It’s in the word of God. The reason why God has given us his word is because he doesn’t leave us in the dark about the wisdom that he wants us to know. That’s why Christians should have the instinct to love the scripture and study the scripture and, and, and, and teach and preach the scripture and, and, and to turn to the scriptures, to, to want a s scriptural mind to understand that unless the scripture takes residence in us, unless we, we read the word and study the word and meditate upon the word and memorize the word, we’re in big trouble.

Remember the psalmist said thy word, have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee the Christian mind. That that mind must be recovered is a comprehensive understanding of reality. And I hope just even thinking about it this morning gives you confidence. There’s no question that could be thrown to the Christian that we can’t answer on the basis of the knowledge of God. There’s no issue the world can throw to us that we cannot think through on the basis of what’s revealed in scripture. There is, there’s nothing that can come to us in the headlines. There’s nothing that can come to us in the dorm conversation. Nothing that come can come to us in the classroom. Nothing that can come to us in a conversation with neighbors. No issue that can come before Congress or for the PTA that we can’t handle.

But only if we seek the wisdom of God as found in scripture. Now, that means we must affirm all of scripture. All 66 books of scripture is the iner and fallible word of God, the verbally inspired word of God. So if there’s any question about the authority of scripture, then we’re already in big trouble. If, in other words, if, if, if, if you have a question about whether or not scripture is the word of God, then you’ve already got a big problem. Because if, if the scripture is not God’s word, if the scripture is in some way, faulty is God’s word, if the scripture is in some way incomplete is God’s word, then we’re lost. Because I wanna look at you this morning and say, you look very bright and intelligent, but if this is up to you, we’re doomed.

And, uh, and I say that in the mirror as well, our wisdom isn’t gonna get us very far. Our wisdom is not only incomplete, our wisdom could be based upon untruth. We’re absolutely dependent upon the word of God. And thankfully, God’s given us a word that’s absolutely dependable. One of the ways we honor God with a scriptural mind is recognizing that understanding what the scripture lays out as the fundamental reality is easier than we might think. Scripture’s not just a set of propositions, it’s not just a set of truths. It’s not just a bag of doctrines, it’s a story. And, uh, God made us story narrative creatures, by the way, we can’t even say who we are without recourse to a story. I was born here, I moved there, I was raised by, I, I went to, uh, we, we we are narrative creatures. We, we want to hear stories from the time we are tiny and we never get away from stories.

And scripture is one giant story. Now I know it has 66 books, but I want you to think with me this morning, the scripture really has four chapters, four chapters, four major movements. If you understand this, you’ll understand what the Christian worldview, the Christian mind looks like. And it, it also corresponds to the fact that every worldview has to answer four questions. Inevitably, every human being has to have four questions answered, otherwise we can’t even operate. The four questions are these, why is there something rather than nothing? Question one, which is the question, why does anything exist? Where’d it come from? You can’t operate in life without some assumption of an answer to that question. The second question is this, what’s gone wrong? Okay? Because you don’t have to live very long until you recognize that things are not as they should be. Things are not as they should be in the world of tsunamis and hurricanes, you know, I say hurricanes and, uh, earthquakes and mudslides.

I mean the poor people of California, my goodness, it’s almost like this, the entire judgment of God in one state, just with all the geophysical things and weather related things that are going on, then you look around the world, there is never a time when there’s not something horrible happening just in terms of the experience of people around the world. And it’s not just what we call natural evil, the hurricanes and the tsunamis and the ticks and the spiders and the, you name it, viruses. It’s, uh, it’s also moral evil. And then that’s harder for us because we, we, we have to explain why people do horrible, horrible things.

And then of course, sometimes we have to look in the mirror and ask why we have done horrible, horrible things. In Romans chapter seven, the apostle Paul says, one of the greatest questions of his life is why he does what he does. The third question is, is there any hope? And we’re gonna live our lives based upon whether or not we think there is a hope for rescue from what’s gone wrong. Now, we know that the, the answer to that question is yes, because of Christ, because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The fourth question is, where’s all this going? We, we all have to have some answer to that. We, we need that answered at the personal level with death and our mortality ever around us. When we go to a funeral, when we contemplate our own death, when we, we just know that this life is not eternal. It has an end. What comes next? And then of all of history and of all that exists, the cosmos, we have to answer not only where did it come from, we have to answer where is it going? This is where the storyline of scripture really helps us. That first question, why is there something rather than nothing? Where will we turn in scripture to answer that question? Well, how about Genesis chapter one verse one word, one <laugh>. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And then of course, there’s the entire narrative given to us of even the sequence of creation and how God created it.

And then in scripture, we’re given the purpose of creation he created for his own glory. What’s affirmed there? Right there in that last verse of Romans chapter 11, God created the world for his own glory. It’s, it’s the theater of his glory. It’s a, it, it it’s the entire cosmos of his glory. Some of you are, uh, are old enough to remember as I remember Carl Sagan and his, uh, PBS tele televangelism program called Cosmos <laugh>. Now, I, I know that he didn’t think it was televangelism in terms of evangelism, but he was trying to convert people to a worldview. And you may remember that trying to explain the cosmos, he began and ended that series by coming out and saying, the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. That’s a comprehensive statement. It it actually, whether he recognized it or not, it is his attempt at an exact refutation of Romans chapter 11, verse 36.

Just put those two sentences beside each other, Carl Sagan saying, the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be <laugh>. And then Romans, that last verse of chapter 11 for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be glory forever. Amen. That those are two stark alternative worldviews right there. And you have to understand that those are the two stark alternative worldviews, given the origin and the meaning of the cosmos. We’re surrounded by people who believe or think they believe that the entire cosmos is an accident. Just the other night I was with, uh, some wonderful Christians and, uh, they had a teenage daughter who, uh, was in the midst of a school conversation about evolution. And evolution is the, is the storyline of the cosmos, is all that is or ever was or ever will be creation’s the storyline of, in the beginning God created heavens and the earth. And this young Christian woman, a teenage young woman, asked me, she said, how in the world can I, she said, all we get to do in class is ask a question. And she said, what kind of question can I ask? And I said, well, here’s the question I would ask. Is evolution capable of explaining why a mother loves her infant?

And is that all there is to it? Now, why did I suggest that question? It’s because this, if you follow an evolutionary worldview just in terms of the actual theory of evolution, then there is no supernatural. Everything is natural, everything is explainable by some kind in terms of human experience and in biology and biological life by some survival mechanism. So the evolutionists would have to say, then mother loves her child because evolution depends on it. The only, there is no supernatural reality. There, there is, there is no consciousness outside of our brain. There’s, it’s, it is just a matter of organism seeking to reproduce and to raise their young until they can reproduce according to evolution. But I don’t think there’s a single mother on the planet who believes that’s all there is to it.

And, and, and by the way, given how, how tough it is to raise a child, how time consuming it is to, to take care of an infant, let’s, let’s hope most mothers don’t think it’s all just an evolutionary mechanism. No, there’s something between the mother and the child that can only be described as love and, and, and it is not just something that is an evolutionary adaptive mechanism. It it simply fails the test of reality. Evolution can’t sustain morality. It can’t, it can’t argue for any right or wrong. All you can have are things that either add to or detract from the progress of evolution and the, the, the meaning in life. What, what can the meaning of life be? And Richard Dawkins, one of the most famous of the new atheists one, one of the high priests of evolutionary theory, he said very honestly, it took Darwin to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

What do you mean by that? He meant by that, that it took evolution for them to have some answer other than in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And those two worldviews, those two starting places are gonna have in two very different places on morality, on meaning, everything. That second question, what’s gone wrong? Well, how soon does the scripture get to what’s gone wrong? Three chapters in what’s gone wrong. An indispensable three letter word called sin in the historical event, we know was the fall when human beings rebelled against God. When they answered the question, half God said, has God really said with not the answer of faith, but the answer of faithlessness? And so here’s what’s, here’s what’s interesting. Everybody knows something’s gone wrong. The, the, the entire therapeutic universe is based upon the fact an industry is based upon the fact that something’s gone wrong. Everybody knows that something’s gone wrong. Even those parents who don’t think anything’s wrong with their infant discovered something’s gone wrong about age two. <laugh>,

Something’s gone wrong. Something’s gone wrong in us. And you know it, and I know it. And, and, and when we reach the, uh, the age of adolescents and able to think about ourselves as abstract ourselves, we realize we’re a puzzle to ourselves. There’s something broken. And not only that, there, there, there, there’s something broken in us that leads to death. The wages of sin is death. Something so wrong in us, we can’t rescue ourselves from it. And sin explains what’s gone wrong in the universe. Sin explains what’s gone wrong in me. Sin explains what’s gone wrong in the society and, and sin becomes a reason. So when we see something has gone wrong, when when someone asks a question, how could someone do that? We say it’s the horrifying, tenacious, deadly power of sin. You know, without sin, you gotta explain that the problem is something that happened to us.

It’s something outside of us. It’s a complex, it’s a syndrome. It’s a psychosis. I know the language is always changing, but the but the fundamental logic is still there. When the scripture says the problem is something in us, the problem is us. Is there any hope? Well, that’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. And here’s where we need to recognize every worldly philosophy is some way to try to say there’s hope, but it never gets to hope because they have to, humanism has to ground the hope and the humanity that turns out to be the problem. Every idolatry is an attempt to create hope out of a dead thing. This is why in the Bible, the gospel of Jesus Christ is called the only sure uncertain hope. Why? It’s because you can bet your life for eternity that God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him might not perish, but have everlasting life.

There’s only one rescue, and that’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. Finally, where’s all this headed? Well, I I, I love, I love the way the secular mind tries to answer the question, where’s all this headed? By the way, it basically comes down to a, you know, it, you know enough physics to know this. You could actually say it if you dared. All this is going into a great black hole. Being is collapsing into non being. The cosmos will be depleted of energy and it will simply cease to be the, the star that gives light will become a death star. Now, I just wanna say, how do you go on vacation? If you really believe that <laugh> seriously, how do you say? Well, it’s true. The entire cosmos is being sucked into a great vortex of non matter and non being, and we’re all gonna end up in a black hole in which something is gonna turn back into nothing, nothing. Having turned into something according to evolution. Now something’s gonna turn into nothing. What’s for lunch, <laugh>?

I mean, why would you do anything great? Why would you aspire to anything if it’s all just gonna be nothing? Now here’s, here’s the Christian worldview. It says that this life is just a preparation for the life that is to come. That the creation that we know now marked by sin is actually gonna be replaced with a new heaven and a new earth. That that Christ is going to reign eternally with his saints. That means you and me. If you’re a Christian, that means you’re gonna reign with Christ for eternity. It means that everything we know in this life is good, is gonna be infinitely better in the life to come. Don’t think of heaven as sitting on a cloud playing a harp that’s a totally unbiblical that that’s on the ceiling of some palace somewhere that’s not in scripture. In scripture, we’re gonna be totally absorbed, being totally deployed, doing everything we want to do to the glory of God. Every God glorifying thing we’re gonna get to do every good thing we know on earth. Being redeemed will be infinitely better and eternal. Just, just, just imagine being able to do something that’s good and it never goes away. There are no mos in heaven. There is no rust in heaven. There’s a kingdom that is coming and it’s so good. And God is so just that every eye is going to be dry and every tear is going to be wiped away.

We’ve got to recover the Christian mind or there will be no Christians. The Christian gospel cannot be sustained. You’re not gonna have gospel preaching churches. If they’re not Christian thinking churches and the generation to come. We’re gonna see a wipe out of young Christians who arrive on university and college campuses or of that matter, just during conversations with their peers or for that matter, are just receiving the, the, the entertainment that comes from Hollywood. And they’re gonna be completely wiped out because if they are not thinking as Christians, do not delude yourselves into thinking they, they will live as Christians. That’s how important this is. Thanks be to God. He tells us where to find the Christian mind and he tells us how to think as a Christian and we will never outgrow the growth in the Christian mind to which we are called. Let’s pray together.

Father, we are so thankful that you loved us enough to tell us the truth about ourselves and the world about meaning and morality. And Father, we thank you for the imperative of the Christian mind. We are thankful that from you and through you and to your all things. And Father, we pray most importantly that there be anyone here this morning who does not know Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord, they would come to know that is the first thing. They must know that there are a sinner who needs Christ and all who believe in Christ will be saved. Father, we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.