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So this, ladies and gentlemen, as you've just heard, is the last of this series of lectures that have been going on through the past week. And since it is the last, I would like publicly to express my gratitude and thanks to the organizers of this series of lectures for their gracious invitation to come and be among you. And to thank all of you who have persevered with great powers of endurance and have come along each evening to attend the lectures and, uh, made it so easy for me, uh, by your, uh, evident interest and enthusiasm.
I nearly got round to thanking, uh, to to thanking you, uh, for allowing me to go on so long on each lecture, but that would be an exaggeration, I think. You should know that your complaints in that regard, uh, you may well have voiced them to the organizers, but in self-defense, I point out that they didn't relay your criticisms to me. That, uh, was kind of them, but normally lectures in this place do not so abuse the patience of those who attend. So don't be discouraged by the length of the lectures that you have attended in this last week. Don't be discouraged from coming to other series where the lecturer will behave more modestly.
Now, this evening, for our last occasion, I would like to preface my remarks by eventually reading to you the historical account of the way the Christian gospel first came to the ancient city of Athens. It was brought by Paul the Apostle, and the record of it is to be found in Luke's history called the Acts of the Apostles. In the first century of, uh, AD, of course, it is true to say that Athens as a city was no longer the place that once it had been. It had lost something of the glory and the majesty of the days, three hundred to four hundred years before then, the days of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, and the whole ferment of philosophy and natural science that then reigned supreme.
From, uh, Pythagoras in the West to the Ionian philosophers in the East. They were great days of glory that contributed indelibly to the on march of natural science in the whole of Europe and eventually in the whole of the world, and also a philosophical thought, largely the invention of the Greeks of that period. But still, in the days when the gospel first came, the Christian gospel first came to Athens, Athens was still what you might call a university city, with various schools of philosophy represented, and it was a city, therefore, to which wealthy people around the Roman Empire would send their sons in the hopes of giving them a good culture and education.
It was to that city that Paul came, and for a week, in the manner of Athenians, he talked and gossiped the gospel to anybody he could find in the famous agora at Athens. Among his listeners, from time to time, were certain philosophers. Luke names them as some Stoics, and others were Epicureans, and they found Paul's teaching novel, as is understandable, and strange. Of course, the, uh, Christians themselves knew that their gospel would sound not only strange, but, um, uh, foolish indeed.
To tell a learned Greek philosopher that the salvation of the world depended on the crucifixion of a man from Nazareth would seem to a Greek exceedingly foolish. How could it possibly be true? Paul preached it, of course, nonetheless, and preached it knowing it would be seem foolish in this kind of a climate, but preached it because he knew it was true. And along with the death of Jesus Christ as the savior of the world for the sins of the world, he preached also the historical fact, the recent historical fact in those days, of the resurrection of Christ.
Anyway, it took the interest of some of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, and they invited him to, to their place and in- and asked him to hold forth and expound the Christian gospel in somewhat more detail. I would like then to preface my remarks by reading what he actually said to that learned community. If you want to look at it or take the reference, it's the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament in chapter seventeen. And I read from verse, uh, 20, uh, uh, uh, twenty two onwards. My translation is rather an old translation now.
You must forgive me for that, you moderns, because I am also ancient, you'll see. Verse twenty two then of Acts seventeen. And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, ye men of Athens, in all things I perceive that you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, to an unknown god. What therefore you worship in ignorance, this set I forth to you. The God that made the world and all things therein, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.
Neither is he served by men's hands, as though he needed anything. Seeing he himself giveth to all life and breath and all things. And he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek God, if happily they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as certain even of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring.
Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like gold or silver or stone graven by art and cunning of man. The times of ignorance, therefore, God overlooked, but now he commands men that they should all everywhere repent, inasmuch as he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained, whereof he has given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
Thus far, Paul to the Epicureans and the Stoics. And I, for one, confess immediately that these ancient philosophers, Epicureans and Stoics, along with the others, compel my admiration. For this reason, there were men who were not prepared just to idle their way through life, just to wander aimlessly through life. Surrounded, of course, by the spectacle of the heavens, as we are ourselves. They long to know how it all came about and how it worked.
And then not only to know how the universe around works, what it's made of, but what should be our goal as men and women in this world. They pose the question, is there some purpose? What should be our main objective in life? What should we actually seek? In other words, they were not prepared to freewheel through life and just end up any old where. The great thinker Aristotle had said that if we and decide what is the chief good in life, what we ought to be aiming at of all other things, you see?
He has it at the idea that whatever it was must be what he called an end in itself, something you seek for its own sake, and not simply as a means for some other thing. That is a piece of wisdom that we do well to heed. For instance, suppose I come along to some good man, you'll say in his thirties or forties, and I say, oh boy, you do really tous the life out of yourself, don't you, in your business life? Wow, how hard you work. Why do you do it?
Well, he says, I have to do it to get money. Oh, I see, I see. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. A- a- and why do you need the money? Well, he says, I've got a boy, uh, and two daughters, you see, and they'll soon be university age, and I've got to support them, let alone the mortgage on the house and all the rest of the things, and keeping my wife. No small matter. Eh, do you see, uh, uh, uh, uh, I have to get the money, you see, so I want to send my children to university. I say, I see, yes, you need the money to get the children to the university. And why do they need to go to university? Oh, well, uh, you won't get a good job unless you get a good qualification. Oh, I see. So you need to make the money to send them to the university so that they can get the qualifications to get a good job.
Tell me, why would they need a good job? Well, he says, don't be so silly, to get some money. Well, I say, what for? To send their children to university so they can get qualifications and a good job and get some money. Wait a minute. Seems to me we're going round in circles, aren't we? What is the point? Yeah, get the qualifications by all means and make as much money as you can. What's the point of it all in the end? What's the end and object? And I say these men compel my admiration because they seriously ask themselves, what is life's main business and objective?
The Epicureans said that the main object in life was pleasure. They didn't mean by that self-indulgence, getting drunk every weekend or anything stupid like that. For they counted those things not to be pleasures because they gave you such terrible hangovers, uh, uh, uh, and disease of the liver and goodness knows what else. No, by pleasure they meant the quiet life. They tended to withdraw from the hustle and bustle of life as they could, and aim to lead a placid life without too much emotional disturbance. And they produce, produced some very kindly, gracious characters, did the Epicureans. The Stoics, on the other hand, were made of sterner stuff.
They denounced the Epicureans as pleasure-loving people, fancy putting such an incidental thing as pleasure as the main objective in life. Hm. Perhaps we need a few more Stoics nowadays, don't we? Because if I'm any true observer of things, there are some people that would give that same reply. The main aim of life, pleasure, and if it feels good and is enjoyable, that's enough justification for it. The Stoics said, no, can't just be that, surely. This amazing universe and all that's in it. You'll see. They spent a lot of thought, and some of their insights are very interesting, you'll see.
Still interesting. To know how things work. They saw this universe was designed by some rational power, and they decided that the main goal in life ought to be to live in accordance with the rational principle that is so evident in the way the universe works. And other philosophers held different views, do you see? Paul came to talk to these men. He knew what they believed. And if you are acquainted with their philosophies, you will see that in the course of his address, he gently touches on some of the main points of their beliefs.
But he knew them to be men, to be philosophers, who, for all their tremendous learning and thinking, ultimately had no hope in this life. The Epicureans didn't. For their physical theory, the Epicureans had embraced the atomic theory. And as a teacher of Greek all my life, my chest heaves in pride. It was the Greeks, three to four hundred years before Christ, who invented the atomic theory. Atomic theory is not a new theory.
The refinements are, but the atomic theory itself is a very ancient theory. And it was marvelous in those days that they hit upon the idea that the whole of the universe is composed of atoms, as they call them, bits of stuff that can't be split. Nowadays we have split the atom, haven't we? But then we come down to fundamental quarks inside it that perhaps can't be split. They had this theory, therefore the atomic theory, invented by Leucippus and Democritus. But then they inclined to take it to this, uh, uh, uh, to this, uh, uh, conclusion. They said that a man or a woman is just made up of atoms.
They have a body and they have a soul, but both body and soul are made of atoms. And when they die, it's caused because the atoms all come apart, you see. The atoms of the body, the atoms of the soul. There's nothing left. The atoms go into the gr- into the ground, they get into the grass, the cows eat the grass, and where are the atoms now? And anybody like Paul who came along and preached the resurrection of the body, they thought them a little bit sub-intelligent. How could God resurrect a body and a soul when they'd all come to bits and pieces and were in the grass and in the cows and goodness knows where, do you see?
I see. So they held the view that there's nothing after this life. And some people like that view. There's a Roman poet, I may have mentioned him the other night, his name was Lucretius. He wrote five books on the atomic theory of poetry, if you please. To say, so excited were people in those days about these wonderful discoveries. And at the beginning of his work, he tells the public why he finds the atomic theory so encouraging. Says, heed, you see, it delivers you from fearing that there might be a judgment after death.
If when you die, all the atoms come to bits, and that's the end of you, you don't have to fear that after death you will be brought before God to be judged. And that was very honest, I always think, of of Lucretius to have confessed that in his poetry. I imagine that are many people still who find the atomic theory comfortable and comforting, because they would like to believe that when we die, that's the end of everything, and that there is no final judgment.
Well, what does that mean? It means that there is no hope beyond death either. Therefore, there is no hope for the individual. They would say, but if you had a jolly good time in life, you're like somebody who's invited to a banquet. Eat up, my good woman. Enjoy yourself. Then have the grace to retire gracefully and say, I've had enough, and go to let the new generation come. That sounded well to them. I want to ask, what about the people for whom life has not been a banquet?
What about them? Life has been full of sorrow and sadness, injustice and oppression, multi-millions of people down the centuries. And is it true that death is just the end? Life here was a misery, and there's no hope beyond? Certainly it must be said that Epicureans had no ultimate hope for the individual. What about the Stoics? They were sternly stuff. They said it was evident, looking at the universe, that there was an intelligence behind the universe, and that the universe works according to reason.
They therefore endeavored to live rationally, not living impulsively, not simply being driven by their emotions, but trying to live according to the rationality that they perceived in the universe. They held, indeed, that because the universe is rationally constructed, that this world, therefore, is the best of all possible worlds. They didn't believe in God. To them, the reason behind the universe, the rationality, was merely part of the stuff of the universe. Because they thought it was rational, then this world must be the best of all possible worlds.
You shouldn't complain. If you saw, for instance, a child accidentally slipping into the river, it will be rational of you to try to rescue the child. But if, in spite of your attempt to rescue it, the child drowned, you shouldn't grieve over it. You must now admit that it was part of the destiny fixed by the rationality behind the universe that the child should die that way. If you saw six million Jews being gassed by Hitler, rationally then you could try to save them. But if your efforts to save them were useless, and six million were gassed, then according to Stoic philosophy, you had to admit that that was for the best.
They had no hope either, beyond the grave. Fancy asking millions and millions who have known terror and starvation and whatnot to believe that this world is the best of all possible worlds. It isn't, is it? They had no hope. And here was Paul, the Christian gospeler, coming to preach to people like this, very thoughtful people, to preach to them the real living God of heaven, our creator.
He first speaks complimentary to them. I perceive, he says, you're very religious. Though he hastens to distinguish the Christian gospel from all the pagan superstition with their endless idols and temples and so forth and so on. Because sometimes this kind, this form of religion is very difficult for rational thinking people to take on board. It seems to them to be very superstitious, as indeed it is. So very soon he distinguishes the Christian gospel from that kind of religion, but he proceeds to make certain major points, and for a while now I want to think about some of them.
Gentlemen, said he, we ought not to think, surely, that God is like these images around your city, images of gods, statues to Zeus or Aphrodite or whatnot, carved by men from stone or in metal or what have you. God isn't like that. First of all, of course, God himself forbids us, doesn't he, to try and make images of himself. We cannot reduce the invisible Almighty to any physical material object.
But there's a deeper point, isn't there? For he says, you can't, can we? You oughtn't to think that God is like these stone images. Why not? Because we are his offspring, says Paul. We are his creatures. That bit of stone, that marble, that golden image is impersonal. It's not a person, is it? Yet we human beings know it in our very bones that we are persons. Yes? It's no good talking to a tree.
Well, Prince Charles think it is, but, uh, uh, normally people think it's no good talking to a tree. There's nobody at home, is there? There's no person there. We are persons, aren't we? And we find it comparatively easy to recognize a person when we see one. And it's a marvelous thing, isn't it, that when we look up out into great space, sometimes we get overawed, but we've no need to. You take the sun up in the sky, enormous, gigantic body, though a small thing in the universe, it is granted, but gigantic, you see.
And my little brain, so small, and yet, you know, without exaggeration, even my brain, let alone yours, is more significant than the sun up in the sky, isn't it now? Of course it is. We know how the sun works, thanks to the scientists. The sun doesn't know how we work. I know the sun is there. Sun doesn't know I'm here. Might shine a bit more if it did, but we'll see. The sun, mighty great thing, all it is is so much gas.
Why, the little baby's brain is more significant than that. You see, we don't measure significance by size, do we? Take a load of hay here, very bulky, and one diamond here, very small. And which is the more valuable? Size is not a measure of significance. We may feel ourselves insignificant as we look about the great galaxies in space, but they're all of gas and rock and atomic furnaces and things. They're not personal. And it is the great burden of much of the Old Testament to persuade people, not superstitiously, to bow down to the sun god and the moon god.
It's, it's, uh, it, it, it is too derogatory. It is insulting to the human personality. God who made us wants us to stand up on our two feet, realize our human personality. We are more significant than the mere stuff of the universe. If that is so, I think you can see it so. Put ten thousand suns together, they wouldn't have the significance of your brain. I only guess. And if it's so, something follows.
We oughtn't to make think God is like stone or, should we? Because if we are persons, our creator is no less than personal. He's not just a force. He's not just rationality. We are made in his image, says scripture. God is most certainly personal. A personal God. More than person, perhaps, but not certainly not less. And herein is the wonder of the Christian gospel.
It is so insistent, like the Old Testament is. Don't grovel before this universe. Don't go and read your lucky stars and imagine that they control you. Stand up on your legs to the honor and dignity of being a human being made in the image of the Creator. But some people find it difficult to think, don't they, that God Creator is personal. One of my colleagues in Queens, from time to time we would have lunch together, and we would fall to talking about things.
And he would say to me, David, he himself being a mathematical physicist of some eminence, yes, I have to admit, there must be an intelligence behind the universe. But not personal, says he. Can't believe that intelligence is personal. My good friend is like the Stoics, you see, that thought the intelligence part of the stuff of the universe. I said, why not personal? Oh, he said, look at the, look at the suffering in the, in the world. Because I'm not talking about man's inhumanity to man, that's man's fault, but what about the landslides and the earthquakes and the volcanoes and all that kind of thing.
How can I possibly believe in a personal creator who's supposed to be almighty and all powerful and all loving, that would create a universe like this in which so many people suffer? The matter has been impressed upon us recently, hasn't it, by the earthquakes in India and in El Salvador. What is the answer to it? If there's a God in heaven, why do people suffer so many bad things? Now, ladies and gentlemen, I don't suppose I have tonight the final answer, for these things are not just intellectual puzzles, are they?
When somebody is hurting on the inside, then just intellectual arguments are not enough to soothe the pain, are they? But when my friends talk to me like that and because of all the suffering in the world. Then my first reaction to that will be, all right, I admit to you I have a problem. How can I carry on believing in a God that's all powerful and all loving when he allows such catastrophes, such pain?
And I say, friend, well, let's get rid of the problem. Let's suppose now there is no God. That will solve the problem, won't it? Then I quickly add, that won't get rid of the pain, will it? Ladies and gentlemen, I say it with all sympathy, I trust. You get rid of God because you have suffered so much in your life. Oh, be careful, friend. Get rid of God, you may get rid of an intellectual difficulty. You won't get rid of the pain that way, will you? Now, indeed, you'll make the pain ten thousand times worse.
Why is that? Well, because if there is an Almighty God, as indeed there is, we have this great ground for hope. Whereas we cannot understand or explain everything, yet we have hope that God will bring good out of the evil. And they who know God through Jesus Christ our Lord will talk like this. We know this earthly suffering, which is for a little while, can under God work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
Can we find any other considerations that might help us? Yes, surely we can. Not all pain is bad, is it? If you get your finger in the, uh, where it shouldn't be and you catch it in the bacon chopper, you, you feel a smart and you withdraw your hand, merciful provision of God. But if you felt no pain, like lepers, you'd leave the hand there till it was chopped to mincemeat. You, sir, may you never have it, but you feel, uh, pains in your chest. A very good warning. You see your doctor, don't you? The pain is a warning, which, if you don't heed, could lead to a heart attack.
We also notice how pain develops character. Which would you think was the more attractive car- car- character? Here, this bright thing of seventeen years old who isn't concerned anything more than the rouge on her lips and the color and form of her hairstyle, or the good girl that's training to be a nurse in the cancer ward. With all that that means of self-sacrifice and diligence on her part, you say her, her helping folks who are suffering will form in her a character. Recognize that, don't we? There are some people who will go out fifteen at a time, uh, to meet another fifteen from the other side in the game of rugby, knowing jolly well they're going to get hurt.
And if you ask them, why on earth do you get hurt? They say, well, it's worth it for the game, of course. Oh, I see. That you think they're a little bit beside a hundred percent. But let's take bigger things. What a marvelous story has it been? Man's development of the planet. God encouraged it right from the very start, of course. Think of the things that we have discovered. Take electricity, for instance. How we benefit from electricity in a thousand and one different ways. And yet, the discovery and development of electricity has cost a lot of lives, hasn't it?
What is your honest opinion about it? That people ought never to have tried to discover electricity? Or would you say, yes, it has cost human sacrifice, but it's been worth it. Wouldn't you hold it's worth it? If the project is big enough, left to ourselves, we would say, then it's worth quite a lot of suffering. I get that picture from the New Testament to itself. If we ask God, but why have you made a world anyway? He will tell you what the scheme is.
And pray let us listen again, because the scrits- the scheme is so magnificent and wonderful, that once you see it, we will agree that it's worth all the pain. The scheme is that God should eventually, so the Bible says, have what he calls children, children of God. Only we must not be confused. Some people will tell you that all human beings are children of God. What they mean is God, as a faithful creator, treats them in fatherly fashion. Yes, that is true. But in the technical sense of the New Testament, let it not shock you, but not all people are children of God.
We are all creatures of God, all equally creatures, all equally valuable to him. He made us, but he made us as creatures. But he made us, says the Bible, as creatures and put us on this temporary planet for a few years each generation, that while we live on this planet, we might have the opportunity of becoming children of God. You say, what's the difference between a, a child of God and a creature of God?
Well, a creature is a person that God created. Uh, like a, a sculptor might create a statue. And you know, as far as I'm concerned, God made me through my parents and so forth. He didn't ask my permission, did he? Did he anybody ask your permission? Would you like to be born? Nobody asked my permission. God did it of his own sovereign choice. He made us as his creatures without consulting us. Made a planet to put us on. Made us creatures, not only with physical and intellectual life, but ability for moral quality and moral decisions, and gave us free will without asking our permission, because that was the necessary start.
God had to start there. But the next stage that he offers, that we become children of God, that's a different process. Let me quote you the verse in the Bible that describes it so well. Our blessed Lord, Son of God incarnate. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But says the Bible, to as many as received him, to them he gave the authority to become children of God, even to those that believed on his name, who were begotten, not of the will of the flesh, but of God.
Do you see the different process? A sculptor with an image might make a beautiful, lifelike statue of Goliath or something. That's one process. He made it. When the sculptor gets married and he has a child, doesn't make that, does he? He begets that and transmits to the child his own very life. That's the marvelous scheme that God has. Why he's brought you, why he's brought me onto this planet and gone to the trouble of having a planet. It's only a temporary thing, as anybody will tell you.
But an opportunity for this next stage, born creatures of God, the possibility of being born again, as the Bible puts it, now to be begotten by God, for God to transmit to us his own very life, so that we become children of God. That's the exciting thing about the Bible. This is, well, I nearly said the true evolution, but it ain't evolution, is it? But this is God's purpose. Progress, ah, who shall measure the vast progress? Born creatures. With the opportunity to become children of God.
It is such an exciting thing. That I should think we all could do with pausing for five seconds in our innermost hearts at this very moment, and say, if that is the scheme, well, certainly I've been born a creature of God into this world, but, but, have I ne- yet got hold of the next bit? Have I become a child of God? Have I been born of God, begotten of God? Do I have the very life of God, eternal life as the Bible describes it?
That is the thing. And in spite of the temporariness and the suffering of this temporary world, all out of joint, partly because of man's sin, partly because it was never intended as anything but temporary. In spite of it, they who have known this becoming children of God, with all the eternal potential and glory that is implied therein, will tell you straight how, in spite of all the physical pain, it is well worth it. And I tell you something more.
It isn't just that God sat up in his heaven with this scheme to have children, made a planet and put us on it, knowing that we would suffer a great deal, but couldn't care less as long as he got his purpose fulfilled. Isn't that way wrong? I tell you the staggering news that to get us to get the project, achieve it, and we become children of God, God himself, in the person of his son, came down to our world and suffered more than any of us, more than all of us put together, that he might deliver us from the bondage, the guilt that chained us to the past, that we might be forgiven.
For the wages of sin is death. Wages had to be paid out. And the marvelous story of the gospel is this, that the very creator of the planet, when we were rebellious creatures and gone our own way and couldn't care less about God, came to seek us, not only to find us, but to suffer the penalty of sin, that we might be saved. Personal God then. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.
The argument is he that spared not his own son and delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? A personal God. And then Paul added, you'll see, God has set the bounds of our habitation, if so be that we should feel after him. The word is you'd use of a blind man trying to grope his way, perhaps. God expects us to, to feel after him, you know. Ma'am, if you found every Friday when you went out to the supermarket, and when you came back, there was a bunch of the most beautiful flowers on your dining room table.
You wondered who on earth had put them there. Perhaps it was February the fourteenth or something, so you didn't bother too much. But you began to find that every Friday it happened, bunch of different colored flowers every week. Wouldn't you try to find out who put them there? Would you say I don't care, it's insignificant? Oh, but my good friends, pray think of the ten thousand and wonderful, wonderful things that every day we enjoy. Our food, our A landscape.
Friends and family. And every other good, uh, lovely thing that you enjoy. God says, and I've given them you, that you should start seeking, asking who gave them me, and why does he give me these wonderful things? That is a command of Bible, actually. Seek the Lord. And if you'll allow me in this lecture to be a bit of a preacher, we're not to do like Stoics did, just sit there and wait for fate, and so if it's going to be, it will be.
The Stoics are fatalists. The Christian gospel isn't fatalist. It says there is something you can do about it. You want to find God? Seek him. And if you seek him, Christ guarantees that you'll find him. The New Testament tells of a man by the name of Zacchaeus, very wealthy, somewhat himself with a heart to know who this Jesus was. So, hearing he was to come that way, he climbed up into a sycamore tree where he thought the leaves would hide him, just to see this Jesus. And to his amazement and shock, when Jesus came to the bottom of the tree, he stopped still and looking up into the tree, he said, Zacchaeus, come down.
And Zacchaeus peered down through the leaves, he was looking into the very eyes of God. Here's a man trying to seek his creator, and here's the creator come right to where he was, knew him, knew everything about him, knew his very name, and had come to seek and to save that which is lost. We are to seek him. Not to seek him is, to say the very least, outrageous ingratitude on the part of a creature. Though, Paul added, he's not very far from any one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.
And that is true. As we sit and stand here this evening, God is right next to you, around you. It isn't he who's a far off. If you feel yourself a far off, it's you that's a far off, not he. Don't say who shall ascend up into heaven, you've no need, or who shall descend into the abyss. The word is near you. In your mouth and in your heart, says Paul, that if thou shall confess Jesus as Lord and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shall be saved.
Yes, and then Paul adds another lovely thing. He says, you know, God being the, uh, creator of the whole universe, is not served by man's hand as though he needed anything. He owns everything anyway. You parents have told me sometimes, some parents have, how their little toddler bought dad a birthday present. Do you see? He got his pocket money and bought dad a birthday present, some sort of ju- uh, jug he found in, in uh, Wise Buys or something, colored rather, rather brightly, do you see?
And gave it, wasn't the youngster pleased? He bought dad a present. He forgot for the moment, of course, it was dad's money he was buying it with. We want to be grateful to God and show our gratitude and, so to speak, make him a present, well, lovely. But we mustn't get the wrong idea in our heads. We cannot buy salvation, you know. We cannot buy acceptance with God. We cannot buy forgiveness. We cannot buy eternal life. God, ladies and gentlemen, is not in business, doesn't sell things. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
What kind of a monster would God be if he first of all made us without our permission and then set us impossible standards that we had to attain to by our own effort, and if we failed, we should be lost forever. God isn't that kind of God. Knowing and foreseeing all our failures, he's devised a salvation that is utterly free. By grace have you been saved, says Paul to the Christians, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
It is true that in the mind of so many people, religion has made them think that salvation is on the terms we struggle to do our very best and improve. That we can't know whether we've improved enough until the final judgment. And so we have to live our lives in uncertainty. That's a slander upon the Creator, you know. Our blessed Lord, with all his divine authority, informs us that we can have eternal life now, forgiveness now, acceptance with God now.
How can we have it now? Because it is offered us as a gift. Through simple faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord. And then Paul says, now therefore is a time when we must start repenting. For there's been such a very big change in history. There were centuries before Christ came. The final judgment could never have been then, for the great sacrifice for sin had not yet been offered. But now Christ has come, says Paul, has died and risen again.
The next step. He will judge the world, will God, in righteousness through that man whom he has ordained, whereof he's given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead. How does that strike you? The assurance, the absolute certainty that there's going to come a day of judgment. Do you find that a gloomy topic that you'd rather not think about? Many people do, of course. But then if you go back to the Old Testament and to the Psalms, for instance, you'll find that people took a very different view.
They said, for instance, Psalm um ninety four, ninety six, the Lord is coming to judge the world in righteousness. Hooray! Hallelujah, he's coming to judge. Clap your hands, says the psalmist, to the trees, if they could hear, and to the mountains and the hills and the rivers. Marvelous good news. There's going to be a day of judgment. And God is coming to put things right. I confess there's a half of my heart that joins with them. Marvelous! Doesn't yours? Would you have the world go on like it's going on now forever?
Don't you want sin and crime to be punished. What sane man or woman could want sin to go on utterly unpunished? And not only the Hitlers and the Stalins and the Pol Pots to get away with murder, millions of murders, but all the cheating in lesser circles, and all the hurt. You wanted to go on forever like it. What kind of a person would you be?
What kind of morality would be yours if you don't want sin to be judged and put a stop to. Ah, but there's another side to it, isn't there? We don't mind the ca- the state prosecuting crime. It's a different thing with sin, isn't it? Because when we think of sin, crime is an offense against the state. We'd like to see the criminals locked up. But sin? That's an offense against God. And the truth is, we have all sinned.
When God rises up to judge, there can't be any favorites, can there? It's not just the outrageous sinners like Hitler that would be judged, but all who have sinned. That dampens some spe- some people's enthusiasm for the final judgment, doesn't it? And what is the answer? The answer is to be found in our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, the just, for us the unjust, that he might bring us to God, to be found in the Lamb of God, who by his sacrifice bears away the sin of the world.
Let's listen once again to the entreaties of God our Maker. For God was in Christ, not imputing unto the world their, uh, lawless iniquities, but he made him to be sin for us, him who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Therefore, says scripture, all therefore be reconciled to God. He's a personal God. He knows us, each one, knows our record, and as a creator is loyal to us, his creatures, so loyal that rather than we perish, he would give his son to die for us.
Seek him, says Paul, you shall find him. Call on the name of the Lord, and you shall be saved. And let our final word be the assurance from Jesus Christ himself. Verily, verily I say to you, believe me when I tell you this, he who hears my word and believes on him that sent me has, already has eternal life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life.
So may God use his word to enrich our minds, but then to reach our hearts, to touch our conscience, and to provoke our faith, lest we should miss what is life's supreme purpose, that as creatures we might come to know God, and receiving Christ as our Lord and Redeemer, we might receive him, and from being simply creatures, become children of God.
Well, we come to the last question time, and you may possibly be relieved to hear there is only one question. It's a profoundly philosophical question, but there we are. I will do my best. It reads as follows: The Stoics taught discipline. The Epicureans taught pleasure. Does Christianity exclude or incorporate these two concepts. Well, if we take the English words as they stand, there is a fairly easy answer to it.
Pleasure, if you follow the King James Version, the Authorized Version, the Psalm says, at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore, do you see? So, yeah, Christianity includes the idea of pleasure, surely. And as for discipline, in the Stoic sense, self-control, of course, Christianity preaches it very strongly. Part of the fruit of the spirit is self-control, and we are to develop self-control. Eh, eh, that is the sense, of course, in which, uh, Stoicism would talk about, uh, discipline.
We talk about discipline also in the sense that God disciplines us. Now, different people sense a different emotional meaning in the word discipline. For some people, it is simply painful chastisement, but it's a general word used in the New Testament for, uh, parents educating a child, training a child. It needn't be, uh, of the half a dozen of the best on the posterior kind, do you see, but general, uh, training. Though on times, uh, yes, discipline of the more painful sort is necessary.
So discipline in that sense is taught that God, uh, Hebrews chapter twelve says it, God as our Father from time to time needs to discipline us, and sometimes that discipline is painful and not pleasant for the time being, but we're assured that he does it for our good, that we might be partakers of his holiness. So my answer, my short answer would be yes, both these things are i- incorporated in Christianity. That said, one should notice first the Epicureans taught, uh, uh, pleasure. Do remember what they meant by that.
They weren't talking about self-indulgence. For pleasure has a varied meaning in modern language, doesn't it? And we talk about pleasure-seeking crowds who are making pleasure their god, and very often it's the grosser forms of self-indulgence. The Epicureans didn't teach that. They warned against that kind of thing because of its, uh, backlash, you'll see. They, uh, refer- preferred to retire from the hustle and bustle of life, and many of them, having the money, were able to do it. They met in a garden, and they were very gracious people, and so forth and so on.
Pleasure being the absence of anxiety and emotional upset and storm and everything else, leading a tranquil life. That was their goal. Now, uh, Christians are not called upon to run away from the world like the Epicureans were. And secondly, we surely are not meant to treat pleasure as our main objective, not even in our Christian and spiritual experience. If we make pleasure our main objective, then it is liable to mislead us sorely.
Our main objective, uh, objective should be serving God and believing his word, you see. Uh, and let the pleasure come as a side product, so to speak. If you go for pleasure, in the end it will elude you. If you go for serving God, there will be a lot of pleasure on the side, where there'll be a lot of sacrifice and pain and struggle on the other side. But pleasure is a very bad God if you make it a God. I am tempted... shall I yield to temptation? Well, perhaps this is my last night, so you need never invite me again.
But pleasure it will. There came a time when, uh, Isaac was due to bless his son, you'll see. And he was, uh, determined to bless his elder son, Esau, you'll see, and not his younger son, Jacob. Now, God had told Rebekah, their mother, that the elder should serve the younger. The younger was to have precedence. Whether she had told Jacob that, I don't know. Uh, you'll say, anyway, Jacob was determined to bless Esau.
And he came to the critical point in his life, now an old, old lad was, uh, Isaac. His eyes were dim and he couldn't see. So he got ready, he was going to get himself ready and in the right mood to pass on the blessing. That was a very, very important thing, of course, for the patriarch of the house to pass on the blessing officially. So to get himself in the right mood, he said to Esau, now please take your bow and arrow and go and find me venison, such as my soul loveth, you see. He was going to enjoy this venison, you see. That would put him in the right mood, you know, after dinner, uh, lovely food, lovely feeling, and then he would bless Esau, you see.
Whereas the word of God had said that, uh, blessing should go to Jacob, really. Well, anyway, uh, Esau went off to find this venison, you see. His mother Rebecca was of the crafty kind, and she heard what her husband had told Esau, so she put a scheme to Jacob because Jacob was her favorite, and she had to kill a goat, and she would, um, make it into a beautiful meal and titivate it up, you know, like ladies can sometimes. They can make p- pork seem to be venison of the best kind.
Well, anyway, she was going to titivate this up, do you see? And she told Jacob to take the skin with all its hairs and put it on the nape of his neck and on the back of his hands, you see. And uh, and to take this dish in to old uh, Isaac, and his eyes were dim, and deceive him into blessing Jacob. So in came Jacob, and in Isaac said, who are you? And he said, I'm Esau. Oh? You don't sound like Esau, said he. Are you sure you're Esau?
Oh, yes, I'm Esau, says he. Ah. So he said, come near, that I may feel you. So he felt him. You're, you're hairy, like Esau. Mm. So he said, uh, oh, come here, let me smell you. Yes, he said, the smell is of the field that the Lord has blessed. Mm. So he tasted of the venison. Lovely stuff, he said. He was going by his senses, wasn't he?
Instead of going by the word of God, he was being led by his senses and his sensations. His eyes were dim, so he couldn't see, so he couldn't trust their evidence, do you see? Uh, he felt the hands. He felt that was absolutely solid. It wasn't. He was deceived. He heard the voice, didn't seem to be Esau's voice. Instead of trusting his ears and his sound, he said, come near, let me smell you.
That's a funny, funny criterion, isn't it? To smell a man when he's been out hunting and say, this is the blessing of the Lord. Going by his senses instead of by the word of God, and was deceived. Even the food he ate wasn't venison, it's sort of a Chinese takeaway thing. You see, if you go simply by your sensations, and that pleasure in that sense, they can deceive you. Better to go for God's word and let the pleasure or whatever come as a side issue.
That is very important in our spiritual individual experience and is in our church experience. It is right that we enjoy ourselves singing the praise of God. God give us heart to sing, uh, uh, ever more praise, but just to work up emotions, instead of letting the word come and the word have its effect of joy, or if need be, of repentance and sorrow. If we go by emotions and pleasure in that sense, it can deceive us. We're better to go by God's word. Yes?
The Epicureans made pleasure the chief goal, you see, whereas we're called upon to serve the Lord, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And of course, you can't do that without God blessing you, and uh, eventually pleasures galore in this life and eternal pleasures in the life to come. Yeah? My one little criticism of Stoics, of course, with their discipline, it became inhuman. You'll see. If a man lost his favorite daughter and his wife, he wasn't supposed to grieve.
He had to say to himself that, uh, the universal rationality has allowed it, it must be best. So if he found himself grieving, he would rebuke himself. He mustn't grieve. He must agree with the rationality behind the world. And some people have thought that that was the s- is the same as Christianity. For Christians will say, all things work together for good to them that love God. But there is a world of difference between Stoicism and Christianity. We do not say that this world is the best world in its present state that ever could be. And we're allowed to grieve when our loved ones part from us.
We sorrow, says Paul, not as others that have no, no hope, of course, but we sorrow. We don't serve a God who is feelingless. Some Christians have had it and taught it for centuries that God is what they call impassible, meaning that he is impossible for God to suffer. He doesn't feel anything, you see. Well, they got that not from the Bible, they got that from Aristotle's philosophy, and it isn't true. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But listen to him talking to Israel and putting up with Israel's folly and disobedience.
He says, I'm pressed under you, like a farmer's wagon is pressed under its sheaves at harvest time. In all their afflictions, he was afflicted. This is talking of Almighty God. God is not some unfeeling person. You see, that is to be remembered. And to suppose that when his dear, uh, beloved son was suffering at Calvary, God felt no sorrow nor pain. Would be an extraordinary thing to say, would it not? So in all our afflictions, he too is afflicted.
Yes, we trust him that even the grievous things and the painful things, God will work all things together for good. But when his own son stood outside the grave of Lazarus, and they took away the stone, and he saw and smelled the ghastly results of death, repugnant to deity, of course, he's the living God. He wept, did he not? That's a marvelous thing. We Christians are not called to be stoics and always keep the stiff upper lip and pretend that we don't sorrow and blame ourselves if we do find ourselves grieving.
There's a world of difference between Christianity and stoicism. Good. I can't believe it. Is is that is the la- oh no, I thought I I was mistaken. Just one more question. Well, that's a very easy one to answer. It runs, when are you coming back again? The answer is, as soon as possible.
