Stone Tablets & Wooden Boxes | Sunday, February 13, 2022

Welcome to Cross Connection Church online! We are so grateful that you're joining us for service today. I'm Pastor Garrett, and we want to let you know that if you want to find out any information about Cross Connection Church and what we're doing, please check out our website at lifeinconnection.com. There, you will find more about us, what we're doing, and how you can be connected.

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I was lost, but He brought me into His love for me. Oh, His love for me! Yes, I am. Jesus died for me; yes, He died for me.

The other day, I was driving my two older kids somewhere. As we were driving along, they were jokingly singing a song in the car that I hadn't heard for quite a few years. They were singing the opening theme song to "Thomas the Tank Engine," or "Thomas and Friends." If you haven't had kids in the last 15 or so years, you probably don't know that song. "Thomas the Tank Engine" is a little children's show from Great Britain featuring a little tank engine with a face, and the characters talk and interact in various ways.

There are all these different characters, of course. There's Thomas, Gordon, Emily, Percy, Henry, and many others. The theme song talks about how Thomas is the cheeky one, Emily really knows her stuff, and Henry toots and huffs and puffs. I have no idea why they were singing this song while we were driving along, but it started me reminiscing, I guess you could say, about when our kids were smaller and that specific show. They probably watched every single episode that was available on Netflix at that time, over and over again. We knew all of the shows inside and out.

One of the characters is not a train but a human. He is the guy who runs the railroad, Sir Topham Hatt. He is always chastising the engines, especially Thomas, because they are causing chaos and confusion, or confusion and delay. He frequently talks about chaos and confusion as the problems they have caused.

With that theme song from "Thomas and Friends" stuck in my head, I found myself thinking about the fact that our society at this cultural moment is plagued by all kinds of chaos and confusion. It is rampant around us constantly, not just in the last couple of years and not just because of COVID. There is a lot of chaos and confusion in 21st-century Western culture.

I think that you would probably agree that we are living in a time of significant chaos and confusion. The chaotic events around us, along with the inconsistent and confusing narrative that we are constantly bombarded with through corporate news media and even social media, create a sense of confusion and chaos.

One of the people I follow on Twitter has been posting short video conversations—kind of interviews he has been holding with homeless individuals in San Francisco. We know that here in the state of California, especially in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, the homeless population has ballooned in the last several years. The effects and results of these issues are evident. As I watched one of his videos, I was struck by the confused and chaotic state of our society and the way many of our leaders in these municipalities are running their governments. It seems that the leadership is fueling the problems in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco. This is just one glimpse into the chaos and confusion of our culture, particularly regarding homelessness.

This is not the only issue. My daughters are in fourth and sixth grade, and they have told me several times about girls in their class who are confused about their identity and sexuality at such young ages. It is difficult for me to wrap my mind around the fact that this is a problem for kids who are 10 and 12 years old, who are wrestling with these complex issues.

Barna Research, a Christian research organization and polling agency similar to Gallup or Pew Research, recently released data showing that 4 in 10 individuals born in or after 2000—those we refer to as Generation Z—now identify as LGBTQ within our culture. Additionally, 30 percent of millennials, those born from 1980 to 2000, are also part of this demographic. As someone who is part of the very earliest of the millennials, I find these statistics concerning.

Christians who identify as Christian also identify as LGBTQ. I read an article this last week, and I found that I couldn't even read the entire article because it was pretty disturbing. The things that the author of this essay was saying were alarming. This article discussed the push in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Essentially, in the Western world, there has been a consistent push over the last several years to add the letter "P" to LGBTQ, with "P" standing for pedophilia.

There is a movement to consider pedophilia as a sexual identity that people are wrestling with and believe they are born with, suggesting that they cannot escape it. This is a pretty gnarly situation. The chaos and confusion at a leadership level regarding how to deal with issues like mental health, homelessness, and addiction are significant. The issues surrounding gender identity even extend down to elementary school ages, with discussions about adding pedophilia as a class within sexual identity or sexual orientation. These are real, confusing, and chaotic matters happening in our culture.

This doesn't even take into consideration all the other issues that are occurring. It was reported this last week that inflation has set a new record, reaching a 40-year high. The average worker in America has experienced about a $250 monthly increase in costs, and for many people, especially those buying fuel here in Southern California, it is likely much more. The economy is in a confusing and chaotic state. Some economists predict that three to four economic bubbles may burst within the next 36 months, which will have huge impacts and ramifications not just in the United States but throughout the entire world.

The debt in the United States has now crossed $30 trillion, which is 125 percent of the gross domestic product. When you factor in unfunded liabilities, the total rises to about $86.5 trillion. I haven't even begun to discuss geopolitical issues related to Asia, Russia, and the Middle East, or any of the matters concerning COVID and the political response to it.

We are currently witnessing populist uprisings in Canada and other parts of the nation and the world. I think you would probably acknowledge that we are living in confusing times. If you and I were to sit down and have a conversation, we could likely come up with a long list of chaotic and confusing issues.

In our culture, there are certain things that are considered off-limits to say. For instance, it is not acceptable to assert that male and female are binary realities or that sex and gender are determined by biology. Additionally, you are not supposed to claim that there are lifestyles that are right and others that are wrong, or that some lifestyles are normal while others are abnormal or aberrant.

Moreover, we see instances where mobs of thieves ransack retail stores during regular business hours, and security officials often stand by and watch, consigned to simply observe and report. Why are these things happening? I believe the simple answer is that we live in a broken and fallen world. Chaos and confusion are actually normative in such a world, especially when there is no governing standard.

For the better part of the last 60 to 70 years, we have experienced a systematic deconstruction of the governing standards in the Western world. The chaos and confusion plaguing our society are likely to continue and even increase over the next several years. This is the expected outcome, especially when viewed from a philosophical standpoint, of nihilistic post-modernism.

Post-modernism is the ruling philosophy of the day. It questions all of the overarching stories and meta-narratives of society, as well as propositional or objective truth claims. While the details of post-modern theory or philosophy may not be something you are entirely aware of, the ideas have permeated our culture.

Postmodernism has infected and affected every strata of Western life over the last 60 to 70 years, especially in the last 25 to 30 years. In her book, "Managing Image Collections," authored by Margaret Note, she writes these words: "The postmodern stance is one of doubtfulness, of trusting nothing at face value, of always looking behind the surface, of upsetting conventional wisdom."

As a philosophy, postmodernism rejects concepts of rationality, objectivity, and universal truth. Instead, it emphasizes the diversity of human experience and the multiplicity of perspectives. It questions traditional notions of truth and the concept that records can have only one possible meaning. In other words, what she is saying in her book is that nothing is ultimately right, wrong, true, good, beautiful, or abhorrent; everything is open to interpretation. Everybody's view of things is subjective. You can have your truth, and I can have my truth, and there is no standard of right, wrong, or truth.

I would suggest to you that the chaos and confusion of our times is the direct result of the influence of postmodern philosophy in our society. I first began studying this in the early 2000s when I read a book called "The Universe Next Door" by an author named James Sire. When I first read Sire's book, things in our world were not as chaotic and confusing as they are now. Some of the conclusions of those who were writing on the topic of postmodernism sounded like doom and gloom prophets predicting an insane apocalypse.

They were saying things that, at the time in the late 90s and early 2000s, you might have thought would overflow from the university and find their way into schools of education, businesses, and government. It seemed like that probably would not happen. Now, looking back, we realize that a lot of those things have come to pass in a big way. We are beginning to see much of what they spoke of and wrote about 25 to 30 years ago really starting to take hold of our culture. The result is chaos and confusion.

I would say that chaos and confusion, along with postmodernism, is a feature and not a bug. It is ultimately what you get down to when you look at the core of the philosophical mindset of postmodernism. Postmodernism has its grip on our society.

Culture has a grip on us in a way that we may not completely understand. The ultimate end of post-modernism seems to be a nihilistic meaninglessness. What does that even mean? It means that nothing has any value or meaning, and there is no ultimate purpose other than to exist. Even existence itself begins to be questioned by those wrestling with the core philosophical ideas of post-modernism.

You may not think that this is a significant issue, but the fact is that your younger siblings, some of your younger peers at work, and especially your children—if you have kids in grade school or high school—are being bombarded with this kind of thinking. This means that we are being taught to question everything and to be sure of nothing. We are told by our culture that you can't be sure of your identity. You can't be sure that you are a man just because you have the biological parts that males have. Similarly, you can't be sure that you are a woman because not all women menstruate, and not all women have a uterus.

Our culture is telling us that we have to question sex and sexuality. Some people are even led to believe that the world around us might actually be a simulation, and that we are not living in base reality. There may be more beyond this dimension, beyond this universe, than what we can see. You can't really be sure that anything actually exists.

This may sound completely absurd or insane to you, but these are the issues that people are wrestling with. You can read about these topics online, and you can have conversations with people in their late teens and twenties who are grappling with core philosophical questions related to identity, purpose, origin, destiny, and morality. All of this is being questioned, and as a result, we are living in a destabilized, confusing, and chaotic period of time. It seems that the chaos and confusion are only going to increase.

In our culture, the question arises for those of us who believe in objective truth and objective reality: Who are you to say that you are right and someone else is wrong? Who are you to say that north is north?

South is south. How do you know that this is the Northern Hemisphere and Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere? Perhaps the world as we know it is upside down, and you can't be sure of anything. Why are you so sure that this is a sphere that we live on? Have you seen it personally from space? Have you been able to see this? It might just be that we're living on a flat Earth.

All of these things may seem completely absurd and crazy to you, and in some respects, that's actually the point that post-modernism brings people to—a place of concluding that everything is absurd and everything is meaningless. These are the philosophical conundrums that people are wrestling with, and it is only becoming more and more difficult.

These are not only issues happening within philosophy departments and higher education, but they are also being spread through entertainment, social media, and in schools of education for kids in grade school. People are wrestling with these things, and there is just a ton of confusion and chaos. This thinking is even beginning to infect the hard sciences—things like science, technology, engineering, and math. The STEM fields are being affected by all this crazy post-modern absurd thinking.

Now, you may be wondering why I am talking about all of this and what it has to do with the Book of Deuteronomy, which is where we're going to be in just a moment—Deuteronomy chapter 10. I think that this has more to do with what we're going to see in the Scriptures today than you might realize.

Let me try to make the connection a little bit to what we're going to see in the text. If you have a Bible, you can open it to the very first book of the Bible, the very first chapter of the Bible. In Genesis chapter 1, we read this: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. So evening and morning were the first day."

These are the opening words of the meta-narrative of the Bible, the grand narrative of Scripture. I hope that you have read them or heard them before. It's probably the case that you have if you have been a part of Cross Connection Church for any length of time.

You certainly have heard these words before. This is God's revelation of Himself. Scripture is the self-revelation of God; He is revealing what He is like and what He likes—His nature and His will.

At the very opening words of Scripture, the most fundamental thing that God reveals about Himself is this: God is the Creator who brings order out of chaos. This is a really important point and perhaps one of the most fundamental things about God as He reveals Himself to us in Scripture. The earliest story that we have in the written record of humanity is the story of God bringing order out of chaos.

When God finished His creative work, as described in Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 through 31, what we call the six days of creation, the creation that at the very beginning was formless and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, was a chaotic mishmash of nothingness. God comes in and orders all of this formless, void, and dark chaos. After He is done ordering it during the six days of creation in Genesis chapter 1, He looks at everything that He had made and says, "Indeed, it is very good."

One of the first things that we learn about God as we open the Scriptures is that God is the Creator who brings order out of chaos. As I shared a few weeks ago when I was talking about the grand narrative of the Bible, the metanarrative of Scripture, the ordered creation of God, after it is done in Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2, is brought back into a place of chaos through sin, as described in Genesis chapter 3. The whole world falls under the curse of sin, and now we live in a world that is disordered and chaotic because of sin.

That's the world we live in—a fallen world. But as I said, God is the Creator who brings order out of chaos. This is part of His very nature; it's not just something that God does. It's not just that He creates things; by His very nature, He is the Creator, and He can't help but create and reorder things that have been brought to chaos. At the very beginning, the earth was without form and void, and God, by His very nature as a Creator who brings things to order, orders those things. Then everything is disrupted by sin and becomes disordered.

Sin—what does God do? Well, He comes back in to reorder things, and this is what we see throughout the Scriptures. This is the consistent story that plays out both in the Old and New Testament. Sin always brings chaos, and God, who is a Creator God, restores chaos to order. I think this is really good news because I believe you would agree that our world, and our culture specifically here in the West, is in the midst of, and sometimes on the verge of, even greater chaos and confusion.

When we look around the world, it is filled with all kinds of chaos and confusion. God is the one, the Bible says, who reorders chaos and confusion at a macro level throughout the entire world, but also at a very micro and local level in our own lives. He is able to take the chaos of our lives and bring about order, which is a beautiful and wonderful thing that we see in the salvation story. But we'll get to that eventually.

We don't actually like chaos; we want order, even if we can't seem to make order a reality in a fallen world. This is what's called entropy. If you've ever studied physics, you may have come across the first law of thermodynamics or the second law of thermodynamics, which talks about the law of entropy. Everything moves from a state of order to chaos. In a fallen world, entropy is a reality, and if left to itself, everything in this fallen world will devolve from order to chaos.

It's like if you go and clean up your kids' rooms, and everything is ordered and perfect. It does not take very long for entropy to take place and for everything to move from a state of order to chaos. But, as I said just a moment ago, God is the Creator who brings order out of chaos. This reality is a consistent point in the storyline of the Bible, especially as you follow it from the first book of the Bible, Genesis, through Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. God creates order, and sin brings disorder. We see this all around us continually.

The Bible is reporting on what we see as reality. God restores order through creation. He creates order at the beginning in Genesis chapter one, sin brings disorder in Genesis chapter three, and that sin continues to perpetuate and grow, causing more disorder. Then God, through the flood in Genesis chapters six, seven, eight, and nine, brings about a reformation, if you will, a restoration.

He is restoring once again. After He brings order, there is more disorder through sin in Genesis chapter 11 with the Tower of Babel. In the midst of this, God is always coming into the story to bring order out of chaos. We see Him do that when He calls Abram, or Abraham. We talked about that both last week and the week before. He is doing all of this through the narrative of the Book of Genesis, through the story of the Bible, through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All of this is God's work to restore that which is disordered and broken because of sin.

So, what is it that God always does to bring order out of chaos? Consistently in the storyline of the Bible, we read the words, "And God said." What is the action or the activity that God does to bring order out of chaos? He uses His Word. His Word is powerful. When we see the disorder and chaos of a formless, void, and dark world in Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, God speaks into that and says, "Let there be light." Then He speaks again, saying, "Let there be land," and "Let there be the sky," and all these different things. He is speaking into it with His voice. His voice has power, and He is able to bring about a reassembling of chaos into order.

The activity that brings about this ordering of chaos is always His voice. We can say it like this: the Word of God brings order out of chaos. God is a Creator who brings order out of chaos, and how does He do that? He speaks. The voice of God speaks order out of chaos.

In the New Testament, we see this idea illustrated by the Apostle John in the Gospel of John. The opening words of the Gospel of John say, "In the beginning was the Word." The word that is translated as "Word" there is the Greek word "Logos." "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." He, the Word, was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made.

So, what is it in the very beginning, Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 through 31, that is bringing about order out of chaos? It is the Word of God, the Logos of God, who ultimately we see in John chapter 1, verse 14, is Jesus. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The Gospel of John is essentially the culmination of God's ultimate plan of restoration.

Bringing order out of chaos, God sets the stage for the gospel by calling Israel out of the chaos of Egypt. He gives them His word, His law, at Mount Sinai. Immediately after they receive His law, Israel breaks it. This is what you study when you read Exodus chapters 19 and 20. God brings them out of chaos in Egypt by His word and by His power, and then He brings them to Mount Sinai. He gives them the law, and they break it.

So, He is reordering and restoring through His word, but they are breaking it. We see this back-and-forth dynamic throughout the Old Testament books of Exodus, Numbers, and so forth, where God is speaking, and His word is bringing order, but then sin brings chaos. They introduce more chaos through idolatry, yet God is always working by His word to bring order out of chaos.

We read all this to bring us to where we are today in Deuteronomy chapter 10. You may have been wondering how I would connect this back to Deuteronomy 10. Look at this: Deuteronomy chapter 10, verse 1. Moses is speaking here. He says, "At that time the Lord said to me, 'Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain, and make yourself an ark of wood.'"

He is instructed to make a box out of wood. God continues, "I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets," because God had given him the tablets of stone, the Ten Commandments, and the children of Israel broke them. Moses had broken them and cast them down; they were shattered. Now, there are new tablets. God says, "I want you to make two tablets of stone. I’m going to write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke, and you shall put them in the ark of wood."

So, Moses made an ark of acacia wood, hewed out two tablets of stone like the first, and went up to the mountain, having the two tablets in his hand. God wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten Commandments, which the Lord had spoken to him on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. The Lord gave the two tablets to Moses, and he turned and came down from the mountain. He put these tablets in the ark that he had made, and there they are, just as the Lord commanded him.

In this passage from Deuteronomy chapter 10, Moses is reminding the children of Israel of what had happened some 38 to 40 years prior when they first received the law from God, as described in Exodus chapters 19 and 20. When they first received the law of God, the children of Israel walked away from God and began committing idolatry again. Moses broke the first Ten Commandments, the first tablets of stone. Then he went back up on Mount Sinai, and God said, "Here, you're...".

God is going to make two new tablets of stone. He puts the Ten Commandments on these, and now Moses takes them back down to the children of Israel and places them in a box made of acacia wood, which is overlaid with gold. We call it the Ark of the Covenant. The law from God, the word from God that brings order out of chaos, is brought down to the people and placed into the Ark of the Covenant.

Now, what is God doing here? Why is this story important? What's the point of this whole picture, and why is Moses saying this? Why was this important for Israel? Does it have any significance for us living here 3,400 years after Israel?

Again, I go back to that first point I made a moment ago: God brings order out of chaos by His word. He wants to bring order out of chaos by His word, and here God is giving His word to His people, etched on stone and placed in this wooden box. This is a philosophical and theological concept that we have in this passage, and I would suggest that it is essentially true insofar as it is observably real. In other words, what do I mean? This is self-evidently true.

What is self-evidently true? There is no order without intelligible thought or word, the logos. This world is chaotic because of sin. There is no way to bring about order out of all the chaos without intelligible thought or logos being spoken into this. Humans have reordered or ordered a chaotic world about as much as they possibly could. I mean, look around the world that we have today; it's pretty amazing what humans have been able to do with the procreative power that God has given us.

We were created in God's image, so we have the capacity, the ability to create, procreate, and to assemble or order things out of all the disorder and chaos that we have in the world. How are we able to do that? We are able to do that by intelligible word or thought. We can communicate with one another, and as we communicate with our thoughts and words, we can work together to bring order out of chaos.

This is an amazing theological and philosophical concept given to us in the Scriptures. When post-modernists confuse language or subvert objective truth and reality, society will dissolve into confused chaos.

Quickly, one of the oldest stories of human literature illustrates this in Genesis chapter 11, in the story of the Tower of Babel. All the people had one language, and because they had one language, they could exchange thoughts and ideas, speak to each other, and communicate. They were able to do some pretty amazing things. However, when that language was confused or disrupted, the project they were working on fell apart into confusion.

So, what is it that is able to reorder chaos or bring order out of chaos? It is the Word; it is Logos; it is thought. What is God trying to do? The world is brought into chaos, disrupted by sin, and God is trying to restore it. God is the Creator who brings order out of chaos, and He is trying to restore that order.

To bring order out of chaos, God always speaks into the world with Logos, with His Word. He gives His Word to His people, etched on stone, in this passage known as the Ten Commandments. These commandments are meant to restore or bring about order out of chaos and help them maintain order in the midst of a chaotic world.

Why does God give them His Word written on stone? Why not on scrolls of papyrus? Moses and the children of Israel certainly had scrolls of papyrus, but God chose to etch His Word, His law, on stone. That which is etched in stone is set, steadfast, enduring, and unchangeable. It cannot be altered in any sort of way. This Word or law is meant to govern God's people, beginning in Deuteronomy chapter 10 and continuing as they enter the Promised Land. It is to be fixed, etched in stone.

Not only is it etched in stone, but notice that Moses places this Word into an acacia wooden box that is overlaid with gold. Eventually, this box, the Ark of the Covenant, is placed in the midst of a room within a room in the tabernacle and ultimately within the temple. This room, where the gold box with the law of God etched in stone was kept, is called the Holy of Holies. It was to be at the center of the camp of Israel, and eventually, it would be.

Central to everything that happened among the people of Israel is the name Israel, which means "governed by God." Those who are governed by God have the law of God etched in stone, in this gold box, in this room called the Holy of Holies, in this building called the Temple. It is in the central part of the nation, and that is what keeps them ordered in a chaotic world. All of this is symbolic, and I believe that all of this is important. God was going to govern His people by His written word, by the Logos, which, when they would obey it, would bring about and maintain order and result in blessing, as we will see as we continue through this story.

Israel could not venture in to possess the Promised Land. Moses is preparing them in Deuteronomy chapter 10 to go in and possess the Promised Land. They could not possess the Promised Land until they possessed God's law. They had to have God's law in the midst of them to keep them ordered and maintained. As we will see in the remainder of Deuteronomy and in the remainder of the story of the Old Testament, Israel, as a people and as a nation, would remain in the Promised Land, God's blessed Promised Land, as long as they maintained and held to God's law.

Of course, they didn't do that. Every time they drifted away from God's standard, from His law, they would slide into chaos. Then God would send them a prophet to call them back to the Word of God, back to the law of God, because it is the law of God, the objective standard of God's truth, the Logos of God, that helps society to be fixed, steadfast, and to receive God's blessing. They would drift away from keeping God's law and descend into chaos, and God would send them a prophet to bring them back to it. That really is the whole point of this story: to show us the importance of God's Word and God's law as we move from this stage here in Deuteronomy chapter 10.

So, look back at Deuteronomy chapter 10, beginning at verse 12. "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command to you today for your good." If you're one who underlines things in your Bible, underline those words: "for your good." God's Word is given to us for our good, and anytime that...

Israel in the Old Testament and we today, when we depart from the objective standard of truth—God's Word—chaos and confusion ensue. That's where we always end up when we drift away from God's Word.

You may object and say that not everybody has God's Word, not everybody has the Bible, and not everybody has the Ten Commandments. Yet, they still live in fairly ordered societies. There have been pretty ordered societies around the world that don't necessarily have the Bible or the Ten Commandments, and I would say that is true. This is true because every single person has somewhat of the law of God imprinted upon their heart. This is what Paul talks about in his letter to the Romans, specifically in Romans chapter 2.

Paul says in Romans 2, verse 14: "For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do things that are in the law, these, although not having a law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written on their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness between themselves, their thoughts accusing or else excusing them."

So, understand what the Apostle Paul is saying in this passage. He is saying that every single person around the world, created by God and in God's image, has a portion of God's law written upon their heart. This is what the author and thinker C.S. Lewis discusses in his great book, Mere Christianity. We all have God's law to some extent written upon our hearts, in the same way that the children of Israel had the law of God written upon stone.

Whether you have the law of God written upon stone or etched in your heart, because you are created in God's image, you have some form of God's law written upon your heart.

What happens when a people—any people—whether it's the children of Israel, who have the law of God on the stone tablets in the Ark in the temple surrounded by the priesthood, depart from God's law? What happens when people in other cultures, in Mesoamerica, Central America, or down in Africa, throughout the ages, or in Asia, depart from God's writ law written upon their hearts? What happens in a culture?

Paul talks about that in Romans chapter 1, in a large section. Listen to this in Romans 1, verse 18: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." What happens when people turn away from the truth of God?

God has written His word upon their hearts. By doing unrighteous things, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness because what may be known of God is manifest in them. God wrote His word upon their hearts, for God has shown it to them. Since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. The heavens declare the glory of God; the earth shows forth God's handiwork, as King David said in Psalm 19.

The invisible attributes of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even God's eternal power and Godhead, so that man is without excuse. Although humanity knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful. They became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, birds, four-footed animals, and creeping things.

Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. Even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise, men, leaving the natural use of a woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due.

Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do things which are not fitting. They were filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and evil-mindedness. They are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, and unmerciful.

They know the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death. Not only do they do the same, but they also approve of those who practice them.

What on earth is all of that about? What is the whole point of everything that Paul is saying in that passage? Simply this: chaos is the inevitable consequence of departing from God's law, whether it is God's law written upon tablets of stone and boxes of wood, like Israel had, or it is the law of God written upon our hearts within our conscience.

The children of Israel had the word of God; they had the commandments of God in written form on the tablets of stone, as well as the scrolls that they had received from Moses, handed down through the ages. They took good care of the word of God, but even those peoples and cultures that did not.

We do not have God's word written on tablets of stone or on scrolls; we have God's word upon our hearts. Whether it is written upon the tablets of our hearts or the tablets of stone, when we depart from God's law, which brings order and blessing, chaos is the inevitable consequence.

Here’s the litmus test for us: look around our culture right now. What do you see? See if you notice any of the things that Paul mentions in Romans chapter one: sexual immorality, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness, gossip, violence, pride, boasting, disobedience, untrustworthiness, and so on. All these different things indicate that chaos is the inevitable consequence of turning away from God's law. If you look around our culture right now, I suggest that you will see all of these things. They are indications that we have strayed from what is true and good.

Post-modernism has called into question everything that is objectively true, morally right, beautiful, and good. It claims that all of these things are subjective and should be questioned, rather than held to certainly. As a result, what are we seeing in our culture? We are witnessing a drift towards chaos.

If turning away from God's word, whether written upon our hearts or in the Scriptures, leads to chaos and confusion, what is the inevitable consequence of turning to His word? King David says in Psalm 1, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in God's law he meditates day and night. This person shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper."

I want to make it really clear as I begin to close today that you and I cannot make ourselves perfect or even make the world perfect by adhering to God's law. All of these things ultimately point to something far greater than God's written law.

God does bring about great blessings in our lives as we adhere to the Scriptures. While the law of God is not going to perfect us or this world, walking in God's law, as David says in Psalm 1, verses 1 through 3, results in blessing. You could say it like this: blessing and prosperity belong to those who walk in God's law. This can be proven from the Scriptures in a number of places, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. It is very clear that blessing and prosperity belong to those who walk in God's law.

You can define blessing and prosperity in different ways. The Bible has a definition for those concepts, which we will look at another time. Notice these words: Deuteronomy comes just before the book of Joshua, and Moses is preparing the children of Israel to go into the Promised Land, but he is not going to go with them. Joshua is going to be the one who carries them into the Promised Land.

Notice what God says to Joshua as he is getting ready to lead the people into the Promised Land. At the opening of Joshua, chapter 1, verse 6, God says to Joshua, "Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses, My servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid nor dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

I don't think that passage could be any clearer from God. The law of God will not perfect you before a holy God, nor will it bring about a perfect world. However, God blesses, prospers, and causes to have great success those who courageously walk in His law. This is very clear in this passage, and we will see it more as we go through the book of Deuteronomy.

The ultimate story of Scripture is that God, in Christ Jesus and by His Spirit, works in us to will and to do those things that are pleasing to Him, to walk in a way that is pleasing to Him through His law. The key is this: those who stay strong with God's Word.

And hide His word in their hearts; it will bring about a rejection of sin. The Scriptures say righteousness will exalt a nation. God blesses and prospers those with good success who courageously walk in His law.

At this moment, because our culture is so quickly going against what the Scriptures have to say and the philosophy and theology of Scripture, it is going to take courage for the people of God to walk in God's law. It will take courage for the people of God to stand upon the word of God and to be able to say that certain ways of thinking, certain actions, and certain plans in our culture are just wrong. They are not in line with the Scriptures; they are unrighteous. It will take courage for us to be able to say that is not how we ought to walk. We are to walk in a way that is pleasing to God, and righteousness will exalt a nation.

However, we are living in an incredible time of increasing chaos and confusion, which is the inevitable consequence of turning away from God's law. If we want to see things changed and transformed in any sort of way, where we see order and we see blessing, then it is going to take the people of God standing upon the word of God and living out the word of God in their own lives as God works in us to will and to do His good pleasure.

That is my hope and my prayer as we continue to go through the Scriptures together: that God would use His word to transform us, His people, by the renewing of our minds, so that we would begin to walk these things out. One of the dangers is when Christians try to use this to legislate morality to other people without using God's word to reform their own thinking, speaking, and actions in this world. What God wants to do with us is for us to walk by example, if you will, and to walk in His word so that other people will see us transformed and will see the blessing and the order that results from that.

My prayer is that God would do that because blessing and prosperity belong to those who walk in God's law. So, Father, I pray that You would speak these things to our hearts. Help us to hide Your word in our hearts and transform us so that we would be a light to a world that is in total chaos and confusion. Lord, help us to be conduits through which Your good news, Your gospel, and Your word flow to other people. Work in and through us, Your church, we pray. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

I am in my Father's house. Thank you for joining us for our broadcast today. That was an excellent message, and I pray that it really impacted you. We heard from the Holy Spirit.

If you'd like to find out more about Cross Connection Church, please visit our website at lifeinconnection.com. We would like to invite you to our in-person services at 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. here in Escondido, California. If you're around, you can make it to one of those services. We would love for you to be here live in person at 8:30 and 10:30. God bless you, and have a great week!

Hey, Cross Connection! Welcome to church this morning. I'm Pastor Garrett, and here at Cross Connection Church, we are all about living life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus Christ.

Part of the way that we can do that is through connect groups. If you are new or visiting here and you're hearing about connect groups for the first time, connect groups are basically a family gathering where we meet at...

People's homes have food, meals, and opportunities to pray for each other, talk, play games, and have a great time. Most importantly, it's about getting to know other people at our church. They have kind of become our little home fellowships here at Cross Connection Church. You can check those out on our website, where there's an interactive map available.

There are connect groups for everybody, covering all demographics and age groups. Everyone is welcome at every connect group, of course, but some connect groups have young kids, like mine and a few others, while some are for older folks. We love all the connect groups that we have and want to encourage you to get plugged in this morning.

Living life in connection with God and one another means that we need to actually be connected and engaged in fellowship and community. God designed us to live in community and fellowship with one another, and we encourage you to do that. Connect groups are a great place to start.

I hope you can head over to our website, if you haven't already, and check out a connect group near you. I know that you are going to be blessed.