1Corinthians 7:1-24 comments: marriage and divorce

7:1 ¶  Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2  Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. 3  Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. 4  The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. 5  Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. 6  But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. 7  For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. 8  I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. 9  But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

Here is a chapter based on Paul’s opinion regarding husbands and wives. He makes this abundantly clear, that this is his opinion, reminding the Corinthians that, like them, he also has God’s Spirit dwelling in him.

They have asked him a question by a letter and when we seek Godly counsel from Spirit-led elders we would do well to consider it.

But, importantly, we must remember that there are many things included in the Bible that are not direct commands from God though many fundamentalists would want them to be so. If you take verse 1 and try to apply it as doctrine you will get mandatory celibacy which is an absurdity when compared to God’s blessing throughout the Bible on marriage between a man and a woman. Other things that while in the Bible aren’t commands include;

Job 12:6  The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.

So, we understand that context is very important to understanding. Paul’s admonition here is wise and he sets it up by saying that it would be better if one’s energies were focused solely on Christ rather than the physical relationship between a man and a woman however….

It is clear here that when two people commit to each other in Christian marriage they are submitting their bodies to each other. To deny each other the affections associated with marriage is to defraud each other, to deny something that is rightfully each other’s.

Paul, in his opinion, suggests that those who aren’t married, like himself, would be better off to stay that way. But, in the end it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

    7:10 ¶  And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: 11  But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife. 12  But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. 13  And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. 14  For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. 15  But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace. 16  For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?

Now, Paul leaves his opinion and goes to a commandment from the Lord. Don’t leave your spouse. If you must then stay unmarried or be reconciled.

He then talks about those marriages where one person becomes a believer and one does not. If the unbeliever is content to live with the believer then they should stay together. The influence the believer can have on the unbelieving spouse is very important. But, if the unbeliever abandons their believing spouse the believer is not held to the ban on remarriage after divorce and this modifies his first statement.

Jesus made it clear that there was nothing that should break the marriage bond but adultery and to divorce someone for any other reason was to commit adultery and to cause one’s spouse to commit adultery. In the following in Jesus starts out dealing with the man’s adulterous thoughts.

Matthew 5:27 ¶  Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28  But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. 29  And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 30  And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 31  It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: 32  But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

   

Paul expands this to abandonment as a reason for divorce, added to adultery.

    7:17 ¶  But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches. 18  Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised. 19  Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God. 20  Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. 21  Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. 22  For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant. 23  Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men. 24  Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.

This has been used as an excuse in American history to justify slavery and to command slaves to not yearn for freedom and it has also been used to criticize those a hundred years ago who strove to, “rise above their station,” which is to say better their lot in life, but the context is part of the argument regarding marriage. It is not a justification for oppression or exploitation and accepting abuse helplessly from the powerful. The point is here don’t divorce your spouse because you became a Christian and they did not. This was apparently an issue in the early church.

There is no excuse for, when one is converted, to walk away from your family. You have a testimony there that is important. Don’t think you must change everything about your life. Be content where you are and serve God there. The way this argument is worded it tells us that we are not necessarily required to change our employment or relationships with others when we believe unless, of course, that employment or that relationship is a stumbling block to our servanthood to Christ. Serve God where you are when you were saved, if at all possible.

1Corinthians 6:12-20 comments: the temple of the Holy Ghost

6:12 ¶  All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. 13  Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. 14  And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power. 15  Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. 16  What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. 17  But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. 18  Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. 19  What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20  For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

While it is obvious here the connection between Paul’s admonition and the man he condemned who was sleeping with his father’s wife there is also a religious significance to this passage. Rising above Corinth is Acrocorinth, or Upper Corinth. It is the acropolis of ancient Corinth, a monolithic rock rising above.

Now the city of Corinth was known not only for the most expensive and skilled prostitutes in the Greek world but also the temple prostitution, common throughout the ancient world, of the cult of Aphrodite in her temple on Acrocorinth. Aphrodite, who was also Venus, Astarte, and Ishtar or the many other names listed in the Bible for her had, it is said, a thousand temple prostitutes with short hair or shaved heads servicing the devoutly religious pagan men of the city and pious visitors. We’ve already discussed how prevalent ritual prostitution, both hetero and homosexual, was in the ancient world. This is often disputed in scholarly circles with some saying that temple prostitution has been overemphasized. However, we have the context from the Old Testament of how prevalent the practice of ritual prostitution was.

Fornication, having sexual intercourse with someone who is not your lawful spouse in the eyes of the God of the Bible, is condemned by Him.

Here we have the Holy Spirit, through Paul, defining one of the earliest statements in the Bible.

Genesis 2:24  Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

To commit the act without the intent or the right to be united for life before God is the sin. Whether it be consorting with temple prostitutes or taking a family member, a friend, or stranger where there is no ability to commit or intent, to commit the act of “becoming one flesh” becomes a hollow abomination, a caricature, a parody of what God intended. American dating habits and practices make many Christians sitting in church pews serial fornicators.

Aphrodite had her temple. I’ve read that the second most exalted temple in ancient Babylon to Ishtar, goddess of immigrants and prostitutes and freedom, who sits in New York Harbor under the guise of Lady Liberty, a statue patterned after one to the Egyptian version of Ishtar, Isis, was called the “White House” or “Shining House”.

But the God of the Bible has His temple, the body of a Christian, which is not to be defiled.

Pagan gods were often said to dwell in a temple where devotees would go to worship and offer sacrifices. The God of the Bible dwells in the body of every believer. The Christian’s body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. We come together as the body of Christ to worship and to serve Him as that body. But we do not come to meet with the church to, “meet with God,” because if He is not already living inside each of us we are not His.

Romans 8:9  But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

Those who trust Christ as their Saviour in genuineness and truth have the Spirit of God and Christ dwelling in them.

Luke 17:20 ¶  And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: 21  Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Christ paid for us with His own blood. The Son of God purchased His church from God the Father, redeeming us by His death on the Cross for our sins.

Acts 20:28  Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

Revelation 5:9  And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;

How Do You Know God Exists? - sermon notes revised

I recently watched a comedy about a brilliant little boy who was destined to become a scientist and was an avowed atheist. He simply could not place belief in God within his framework of understanding reality. He had two misconceptions, though, or rather the writers of the comedy did. One, they did not understand what Christians believe and two, they expressed the false notion that science is never based on faith.

Before I get into that I want to point out a debate I watched on Youtube between the militant atheist science celebrity, Richard Dawkins, and a Catholic theologian when, after hearing Dawkins harangue against belief in God expressing what he thought was a description of God, the Catholic said something like, “This is difficult because I don’t believe in the God that he doesn’t believe in.” The atheist had shown that he had no understanding of who God is but only a popular mythology kind of view of an old man with a long beard sending thunderbolts, a sort of Zeus of Greek mythology. Dawkins didn’t say it just like that but it was clear he had no clue of the God of the Bible at all.

So it is with Hollywood writers who will have their characters say the Lord’s Prayer in place of asking a blessing on their food before a meal or in order to put people of faith down will have them say things that aren’t in the Bible but sound Biblical, phrases from old pop Christianity like, “the Lord helps those who help themselves,” as a justification for theft, or, “cleanliness is next to godliness,” to get a child to take a bath.

In this comedy about the genius little boy a preacher makes a statement something like this, “There is a 50-50 probability that God exists. So, I’ll take my chances.” The boy-genius raises his hand and tells the preacher he is confusing probability with chance. There is a 50-50 chance the little boy has a million dollars laying on his bed at home but there is absolutely no probability of it. He also insists he trusts science because it is based on facts.

Well, let me tell you about science. There is a kind of philosopher of science who is called an anti-realist. Now, why would they be called that? Well, for one, they look at something like the Higgs-Boson particle, the so-called God-particle that allows all things to have mass supposedly, and they might say to the theoretical scientists, and of course I’m making this up for my argument’s sake, “Hey, Sparky, the Higgs-Boson particle is valuable because it has the ability to explain something that really happens. It has explanatory power. But, there is absolutely no evidence it exists in reality. In fact, you’re just making it up to justify your worldview and your theories.” I would add, “without God,” but I doubt the anti-realist would care to hear that.

But, we’re not discussing whether the God-particle exists. We’re talking about God. There have been lots of arguments in history regarding God’s existence. There is everything from Pascal’s Wager, which is the one you hear preachers repeat all the time in made-up, as in fake or not-true never-happened, salvation stories they like to use. It goes like this in a shortened way. If I believe in God and He doesn’t exist I won’t know because I will cease to exist. If you don’t believe in God and He does exist, you’re fried.

There have been arguments from Aesthetics, Desire, Conscience, the Moral Argument, the Ontological Argument, and on and on for thousands of years. But, really, the argument for God’s existence breaks down to where we live. The most important proof of God’s existence is that there is something rather than nothing and since stuff doesn’t create itself it had to be created, and that’s where God comes in.

Now, I don’t believe in God because of this. My faith is based on my experience with Him and on the truth of what He has said in His book. Not only have I encountered a risen Saviour in prayer, Bible reading, answered prayer, and in the creation and reality around me but I completely trust His book containing His ministry of reconciling mankind to Himself. I have no doubts. God speaks to my heart through His book changing me without me hearing words in my ear but working on me from the inside in His special way.

You may not find me a credible witness. If I told you I had an Uncle Lloyd you might say, “maybe you did, maybe you didn’t.” You might think I was making Uncle Lloyd up. Well, let me tell you nobody could make my Uncle Lloyd up. But, typically, if a person says they have an uncle or a spouse or a close friend and go on to describe them the listener usually accepts that if they have no reason to doubt the truthfulness or sanity of the person.

However, with God it is totally different. Unbelievers become adamant, raving even, that you are a lunatic, or weak, or small-minded. They cannot accept that a perfectly rational scientist, businessman, or scholar of any type could believe in and love a God who has not revealed Himself to them.

So, let me try to start with some basics. These are things outside of our personal experience with God, a personal experience that no unbeliever can understand or accept unless God Himself touches their hearts.

Let’s take something as complex as life. The astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle was born in Yorkshire, England on June 24, 1915. He was conferred a master's degree from Cambridge in 1939 and then was elected Fellow, St. John's College, Cambridge in the same year. He worked his way to become a Professor of Astrophysics and Natural Philosophy in 1958. He was a leading contributor in the discovery of how the elements from lithium to iron are synthesized inside stars.

Professor N. Chandra Wickramasinghe was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on January 20, 1939, studied astrophysics at Cambridge, and was a student of Hoyle's. He received a Ph.D. in 1963 taught at Cambridge. He later became a Professor of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at the University College, Cardiff, Wales. He is an expert in the use of infrared astronomy to study interstellar matter.

These are no lightweights although Wickramasinghe has gone a little bonkers in the last few years. But, they both came to the logical atheist conclusion that life came from outer space. Why? Because it was impossible for it to have happened by random chance on earth, not in 15 billion years or a hundred billion years. Let me read you a quote published recently by Dr. Wick…

“Improbability of Life

The blueprint for all life from bacteria to plants to animals was discovered in the 1950s by Watson and Crick to reside in DNA – in particular in the precise arrangements of the nucleotides A,G,T,C that effectively code for proteins that in turn control cell function. In a series of books and articles published in collaboration with the late Sir Fred Hoyle, I have argued that highly specific arrangements needed for the operation of living cells cannot be understood as arising from random processes. For the simplest bacterium (Mycoplasma genitalium) the probability that its few hundred genes will be discovered by random shuffling of their amino acid components gives a figure of 1 in 10 to the 1000^th power or smaller. Hoyle and I have compared such horrendous improbabilities to the odds against a ‘tornado blowing through a junk yard leading to self-assembly of BOEING 707 airplane.’” [Chandra Wickramasinghe & Robert Bauval, Cosmic Womb: The Seeding of Planet Earth (Rochester, Vermont:Bear & Co., 2017), Kindle ed., chap. 1]

1 in 10 to the 1000^th? These types of scientists estimate there is only 10 to the 80^th power number of atoms in the universe. Saying that life came about by random processes is like me saying that I’m getting handsomer, wealthier, and smarter as I get older. You would just look at me and go, what? I’m joking, right? But, scientists who believe in spontaneous generation, I mean abiogenesis, or life by accident are serious.

So, proof that God exists, step one. Life could not have happened on earth by chance. It’s not mathematically conceivable, not by any stretch of your Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. Who imagination. But, what about it coming from somewhere else? That’s called panspermia and that’s what Dr. Wick believes in.

Well, NASA scientists Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, in their book, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, explained that it is also highly unlikely that life came from someplace else as this planet, located where it is, is the best and most likely place for life to exist and, in fact, probably could not exist anywhere else.

So, proof that God exists, step two. Life could not have happened anywhere but on earth. But, it couldn’t happen here by chance. So, something else, or someone else rather, must be happening.

Who could it be?

You know if they could have proven that life could have come together by random events on earth like Miller-Urey’s experiment tried to do and failed in the 1950s it would be astounding. But, you’d have to have nothing and then have something suddenly come into existence for it to simulate God without God. After all, Miller-Urey made something happen with the equipment and chemicals they introduced making themselves in the place of God. But, they did not create life and established conditions that evolutionists do not believe were present in their fantasy of early earth anyway. So, it worked as a publicity stunt but was not good science.

Then, there was Dr. Wimmer in the latter part of the twentieth century that supposedly made a virus out of synthetic DNA. Now he admitted in an interview that he did not create life as a virus isn’t alive, it can’t reproduce itself and needs a host, and he used synthetic DNA.

None of these experiments or any other created life or proved that it could be created by random processes without an intelligent mind involved.

So, now you have the gorilla in the living room. You have something as complex as life and you shouldn’t have it if there were no one to inject intelligence into it. Life isn’t possible without God.

You have the atheist or the doubter demanding, “How do you know God exists?” and you have your own testimony, if you have one, and you have this incontrovertible fact, “Because without God life could not exist.”

You see, we are not just alive. We are aware that we are alive. Science has a huge problem with conscious self-awareness. Step three to proving that God exists. I am.

It has been said repeatedly that consciousness is the window through which we understand. Science has failed to pinpoint the actual brain processes that are behind our awareness. Some neuroscientists and philosophers of science express a deep pessimism that we will ever find an explanation for consciousness. But we know. Every car mechanic or customer service rep, a farmer or bank teller can know what a neuroscientist does not know. We know where consciousness comes from, that function of our spirit.

Zechariah 12:1 ¶  The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.

Scientists say that a good theory, a theory that must supplant other theories, doesn’t have to answer every question. But it must answer more questions than its competitors. The belief in God answers far more questions than theoretical science can even come up with.

God is the greatest of all self-aware beings.

Exodus 3:14  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

He made us. He formed our bodies, our souls, and our spirits. In these verses are all three; body, spirit, and soul.

Genesis 2:7  And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

1Thessalonians 5:23  And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He uses our spirit to see us from the inside.

Proverbs 20:27  The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.

We are made self-aware and our soul is the seat of our self-identity and will and our spirit makes us aware of it, of God, and of all things. It is our understanding, our skills, our drives, our emotions, our yearnings.

It is sad that the atheist or doubter will question your testimony as to whether or not you are a credible witness for God’s existence. That was how I came to Christ, the mechanism He used, the testimony of others. I vacillated between atheism, happy to believe in any religion at all, and really, God just being irrelevant to my life or thinking. But, over time I saw the truth of Christianity in the lives of people around me.

No, it wasn’t because of someone screaming Bible verses at me on a street corner. It wasn’t from someone handing me a gospel tract. It was the testimony of Christians, filled with faith and goodness, relying completely on God for their very survival, trusting in Christ’s righteousness and not their own for eternal life. Their faith was real, and it took time but God impressed on me that reality until I accepted it myself and received Christ on March 19, 1986. It was a Wednesday evening I believe.

The question of whether or not God exists has been a subject of deep philosophical debate for thousands of years. But, even outside of our experience we know.

Psalm 19:1  The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

The proof of God’s existence is all around us. Without God’s existence no reality makes sense for very long.

Ask yourself, if there was no God, then why is there something rather than nothing? Why is something as complex as life here in this space of earth?  If God doesn’t exist why do I know that I am? Where did that come from, o’ wise one? How can we have this conversation?

The universe is finely tuned, so finely tuned that something as rare and fragile as life can live in it. Things like the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to the strength of gravity for a pair of protons, nuclear efficiency of fusion from hydrogen to helium, the density parameter, the cosmological constant, and a bunch of other intelligent sounding stuff make many scientists insist that the universe is just so and because of that you, me, and that little chipmunk you saw on your deck this morning can exist.

Other scientists invent all sorts of nonsensical things to counteract this belief. They will resurrect the multidimensions of the occult of the late 1800s which impacted theoretical physics then and say there is a multiverse, many universes where things are different and anything is possible. I might even be handsomer, wealthier, and smarter on one of them, in their imagination only of course.

But, the universe is fine-tuned. Now, how does something get tuned? Have you ever seen a radio tune itself? Never mind. In today’s world I suppose that is possible. But, at some point a person was involved; an engineer or someone to tune that radio. How do you think the universe was tuned so close and exact? Who did it? Who maintains it? We all know that if you leave your car in the driveway without maintaining it for thirty years the tires will rot and it will become undriveable. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that all things fall apart. Oh, and there is this;

Colossians 1:17  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

In previous Sunday School classes I presented some scientific studies that expressed alarm at the harmful mutations produced in each generation of people. One of them was entitled, “Contamination of the Genome by Very Slightly Deleterious Mutations: Why Have We Not Died 100 Times Over?” But, we’re here, our biology is preserved, life goes on and the planet is not yet cold and dead.

Again, I say ask yourself, if there was no God, then why is there something rather than nothing? Why is something as complex as life here in this space of earth?  If God doesn’t exist why do I know that I am? Why is the universe so finely tuned as to permit us to exist?

You know, our government has spent millions of dollars searching for extraterrestrials, life on other planets, even microbial. They will continue to do so but will probably never find it. The scientific community has a hunger, a lust, to overthrow God. They are searching for microbes and water on Mars.

In the Rosetta Mission they recently learned that water in space can be vastly different than water on earth so they feel confident in at least admitting that our water didn’t come from comets. But, they will keep searching, hoping to be able to drive the nail in the coffin for belief in the God of the Bible.

There are two other things that scream the truth of the existence of God. One is the very desperate desire to prove beyond all doubt that He does not. Let me read you part of the short religious history of man that God has provided in Romans.

Romans 1:19 ¶  Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

And in another context an ancient warning;

Isaiah 66:4  I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.

Remember what King David thought of atheists in about 1000 BC.

Psalm 14:1  « To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. » The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

Finally, evolutionary biologists admit an astounding thing. Belief in God, according to some of them, is hard-wired into the human brain. A neuroscientist and the author of several books, Andrew Newberg, wrote a book entitled Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. He is called a neurotheologist, studying how religious belief and prayer affect the brain.

On page 129 he wrote, “…evolution has adopted this machinery, and has favored the religious capabilities of the religious brain because religious belief and behaviors turn out to be good for us in profound and pragmatic ways.”

As evolutionists often do he refers to evolution as he does in other places with natural selection almost as a god in itself rather than just a process or a mechanism by which new species of dog, cat, or deer are produced by environmental stresses or opportunities or human cross-breeding efforts (remember as I pointed out in another talk that there are more than two dozen scientific definitions of species.) The fact is that all of the genetic information necessary for a creature to adapt to its environment are present within the creature’s DNA and no dog ever became a cat and no alligator ever became a trout. But, Newberg, like other of his ilk, refer to evolution as a sort of inert god who unfeelingly adopts and favors in the passage I quoted. In a preceding page he refers to natural selection as not tolerating something. So, it is almost humorous to see how these kinds of scientists use language, at the least, very interesting.

Susan Mazur, a science writer and journalist who doesn’t appear to be a fundamental Baptist (said in a tongue-in-cheek manner), wrote in her book The Altenberg 16: An Expose’ of the Evolution Industry that, “Evolutionary science is as much about posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying as it is about actual scientific theory.” (v)

In any event, this is not a sermon about comparative religions so we’ll leave the religion of evolution alone for now.

So, to summarize, if you want to look outside of your own experience for proof that God exists I suggest starting with life. There are many other topics we could talk about that prove or at least suggest His existence but let’s stick with the ones I’ve brought up.

One, there is something rather than nothing and since space dust did not create itself then something or someone did. Two, life could not have begun here on earth and probably not on some distant planet by chance. Some intelligent being had to create it. Three, self-awareness and consciousness imply a reality greater than the physical universe. Four, we are apparently “hard-wired” to believe in God. It is part of our make-up.

We believe in God because He has communed with our spirit so that we can. We experience Him in our prayer and in the answers to it, the way the Bible speaks to us, in the truth found in it, the way He molds and changes us by our reading and hearing it read, by the reality arounds us that is confirmed in the Bible, and by His miraculous intervention in our lives.

But, an unbeliever doesn’t have that privilege that we do. So, sometimes you have to think in order to give them something to think about.

In the end, though, these facts revealed through the Bible and common-sense must be accepted and understood without the arguments. No one ever came to Christ by an argument based on logic.

1Corinthians 1:18  For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

Tell them the truth as you know it from the Bible and pray that God will open their eyes for there is no other hope for salvation than God Himself opening someone’s eyes. It is not a numbers game like sales. If you hand out a hundred gospel tracts you’re not assured of getting a 2% return. They will only come to Christ, turn to Him, trust in His righteousness and not their own, if God speaks to their twisted, wicked heart like He did to your twisted, wicked heart, all arguments notwithstanding.

1Corinthians 6:9-11: you were like them but now you aren't

9 ¶  Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10  Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11  And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

Paul reminds the Corinthians that the unrighteous, those who reject Christ’s authority over them, shall not inherit the kingdom of God. He lists some character traits of the world and then reminds them that some of them once fell into those categories. But, now they have received Christ and are set apart for God’s purpose and are justified through Christ and by the Holy Spirit.

Fornication is linked with sexual sins which include adultery and even being just overtly sensual and sexual, something which our culture has long prided in their movie stars and pop singers.

Galatians 5:19  Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

We think of idolatry as worshipping false gods or having idols like a person’s job, or entertainment, or hobby. But, idolatry is also linked with sexual sins. We know from reading the Old Testament that there was a high sexual content to ancient religion. It is also linked by Paul with sexual sins like fornication.

Colossians 3:5 ¶  Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: 6  For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: 7  In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.

    

An obsession, rather than a healthy sexual appetite based on age, health, and marital condition, is idolatry.

Effeminate and abusers of themselves with mankind bear mention here. Paul has also discussed this issue in his summary of the religious history of the world.

Romans1:16 ¶  For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 17  For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. 18  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

    19 ¶  Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23  And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24  Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25  Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26  For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27  And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

In the ancient Greek and Roman world homosexual behavior was not frowned upon. There were homosexual rites in religion and the Roman male was free to engage with either men or women or even boys. The distinction was only in who was in the considered dominant position as a matter of status. I’ve read that there are no Latin words that translate specifically as homosexual or heterosexual. There are even writers like Juvenal and Martial who refer to male-male marriages. 

 Transgenderism was practiced by the effeminate priests of Cybele, as an example, who were even castrated as part of their devotion to and following of the god, Attis. This was written about by the poet, Catallus. So, this was the world in which Christianity was born as we have already discussed the intensely sexual aspects of ancient Near Eastern religion in previous commentaries. This is the world and the practices that Paul is condemning.

It must be understood that the word sodomite in the Old Testament is not merely a reference to someone engaged in sexual sin with a lover of the same sex but is a reference to a homosexual temple prostitute. In the ancient world bisexual behavior was common, often not frowned upon, and homosexual behavior, within social contexts was permitted and an important facet of much religious worship. The God who created us, throughout the Bible, limits sexual behavior to the relationship between husband and wife as male and female, in type Christ and His church.

None of these things Paul lists should be in the church. In fact, a full reading of Paul’s talk on the religious history of mankind reveals that certain behaviors flow from mankind elevating himself above God and glorifying the creature more than the Creator. To finish the passage in Romans;

1:28  And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29  Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30  Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31  Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32  Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Modern man is noteworthy in that he does not call his religion of Self, worshipping and glorifying himself, as a religion. But it is much the same as the ancient world. We have temples to Self in bars, nightclubs, academic conferences, sporting events, and Hollywood award presentations all lifting up man’s will and seeking to glorify what it means to be human rather than the God who created us. We worship the creature more than the Creator and we get what we, as a society and a civilization, deserve as evidenced by Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Paul here clearly condemns the effeminate and the abusers of themselves with mankind in the same context as a drunkard or an extortioner.

1Corinthians 6:1-8 comments: church members taking each other to court

6:1 ¶  Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? 2  Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? 3  Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? 4  If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. 5  I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? 6  But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. 7  Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? 8  Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.

Paul moves his argument from ordering them to expel a church member engaged in open, egregious sin from the congregation to lambasting them for taking each other to court. What a mess this church is.

Paul’s doctrine here is that it is better for Christians to allow themselves to be wronged by other Christians than to take their matters of this world, obviously legal matters, before secular judges. The Christian held in the lowest regard in the church is more qualified than a secular judge to determine matters between brothers and sisters. He condemns those who rob their brothers and sisters as well as those victims who take a brother to court over it.

This is part of the problem of living in a country where the government on all levels was thought to be an extension of the church, of God’s kingdom. To believe in one’s nation as a divine institution with a Constitution inspired by God, a destiny according to His purpose, and a belief that a thing is right simply because we do it and we are so in with God causes this error. The common belief in the 1800s among evangelical Christians was that America was the Redeemer Nation, the Saviour of the world acting in Christ’s place without Him physically present as Lincoln said when he called America, “the last, best hope of earth.” As such Christians gave all kinds of authority to the government even as the Johns Hopkins professor and mentor of President Woodrow Wilson, Richard Ely, defined a, “divine right of the state.”

Many of you think that a court decision, a jury verdict, or even an executive order of a president, as long as he is from your preferred party, is a right thing, a just thing, and a good thing. It is not, though, if church members take a matter that should be decided in church before unbelievers who either don’t even believe in God or regard Him as totally irrelevant to affairs of everyday life or if we seek protections from government rather than from God. Part of your idolatry is that you have placed a supposedly democratically elected government in the place of God, making most Christians not much better off than an atheist.

Better to allow oneself to be wronged than to take a matter between church members to secular court. Let the church make the judgment. Matters between believers in a church body should not be taken before a secular court.

On a side note, look at the statement in verse 3;

Know ye not that we shall judge angels?

The angels of our presence, are our representatives spiritually where our flesh is not, until we are united with a newly created body that will live forever in eternity with God.

Isa 63:9a  In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them:

Even now, our angels are seated with Christ in heaven awaiting the fulfillment of God’s will for us.

Ephesians 2:6  And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

Hebrews 12:22  But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 23  To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,

We await the redemption of our bodies transformed into something different than what they are now.

Romans 8:23  And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

We will be changed in an instant.

1Corinthians 15:52  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

1Thessalonians 4:16  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Our works will be judged for our true intentions and we will face Christ for what we have done or not done.

1Corinthians 3:13  Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

Romans 14:10  But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

2Corinthians 5:10  For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

This must occur when Christ returns to rule physically from earth.

Revelation 20:5  But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. 6  Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

And then we have judgments to make.

2Peter 2:4  For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;

Jude 1:6  And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

It would seem that our judging of angels is in relation to the judgment God makes at the end of history on all.

Revelation 20:11 ¶  And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. 12  And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. 13  And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. 14  And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. 15  And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

But, there are many opinions on these events and I only ask you, if you disagree with me, that you disagree based on your own study of the Scriptures rather than just parroting what your favorite Bible teacher said.