Gooding, David: 2 - True Values in Education

And now we move on to our first chapter, uh, of the book, which I have entitled True Values in Education. I ask you to look now to the table of contents that I supplied you with, and to notice section Two on that table, titled Thought Flow, and you will find there how in the first five chapters of the book, you will repeatedly come across ideas of value. In chapter one, much is made of the golden vessels that Nebuchadnezzar took out of the house of the Lord. In chapter two, the Gentile em- empires are spoken of not as wild beasts, as they are in chapter seven. In chapter two, they are represented by valuable metals, gold and silver and brass and iron. It's a question of comparative values. In chapter three, Nebuchadnezzar sets up an image. It is a golden image because it was meant to represent the thing that to Nebuchadnezzar was the most important thing in his life, and that is his empire, the state. A golden image, if you please. We're thinking of values. In chapter four, we read of Babylon and its marvelous splendor, built by Nebuchadnezzar for the glory of his majesty. It was a riot of architectural joy and delight, of artistry and imagery and bas reliefs and hanging gardens and goodness knows what else. An artist's absolute paradise, he made it, and he made it for the glory of his majesty. We are thinking about life's values. And in chapter five of the book, we shall read the story of Belshazzar, who was having what for him was a marvelously valuable time. He didn't go to high art and architecture. I think that was beyond his brains. His idea of life's values was to have a real big dinner, what the Americans call a knife and fork dinner, ha, with a banquet and the earls and the lords and their pearls and their sapphires and their jewels. Oh, and the food caught on blur, wasn't it? It was magnificent. This is what life is about, so says Belshazzar. And more than that, says he, I'll tell you what the supreme value of life is. And he ordered the golden vessels to be taken that came from the house of the Lord and to be brought, and he drank out of them. Saying in no uncertain terms what he regarded as life's supreme values. Live for yourself, man. Me, myself, my pleasure, my interests. This is the supreme value in life. As for God and the gods, let them go hang. We must be prepared, therefore, to notice now in these chapters, Daniel will be discussing with us questions of value in ri- life and getting our values right. And in chapter one he chooses to record an incident that asks us to think about values in education. That is such an important part of life, is it not, ladies and gentlemen? Where our children are taught a great deal of their value system. It's important that we get our values in education right. Now, Daniel, that comes before us in this book is an easily recognizable type. One of those expatriate Jews that, ever since the exile in Babylon, have been in evidence throughout Europe and further afield as well. Expatriate Jews living in a Gentile country, but rising to eminent position in that country. How easily recognizable a type it has been, particularly in Europe. Leaders in music and art and education and science and philosophy and commerce. In all the fields of human activity, any one of us could name off the cuff a half a dozen Jews that have been eminent in Gentile society, and as a whole, Jews have contributed all out of proportion to the civilization of the West. Daniel was an early example of that kind of Jew, and the remarkable thing is that we should notice from his writing that being carried away to live in this Gentile society, he maintained his piety, good man, as he rose high in the civil service, three times a day, nonetheless, he bowed his knee to pray. A man who, in spite of great promotion, retained his piety. Would that all Christian men and women did likewise. But what is even more remarkable, he not only maintained his piety, he maintained his faith, his particular faith. Daniel was brought up to believe that the Jewish nation of which he was a member was a distinct nation, specially chosen of God to carry a special role in history, in the purposes of God. And that one day God would set up his, uh, kingdom through that nation, the Jews, through the Messiah that should come of that nation, would the age of peace be brought in. He really believed that, for that's what he was taught in his youth. The remarkable thing is that having suffered the siege and then the destruction of Jerusalem, and now forced to live in Gentile society, he went on believing it. Can you imagine how his fellow high-ranking civil servants pulled his leg from time to time? Poor. Daniel, uh, you hold some funny views, don't you? You think that your nation is the special nation beloved of God? Some love, I suspect. Jerusalem isn't doing too well these days, is he really? Ah. And you are the nation that's going to bring in the great age of peace. Come, come, come, Daniel, you haven't discovered computers yet, have you? And look what we're doing in, in Babylon. How can you s- really believe that, Daniel, still? Remarkable thing is he did maintain his faith. There have been Christian men and women in that circumstance that haven't. Brought up to believe the divine prophecies of Holy Scripture and the second coming of Christ, they get out into the world, they get into high position, they manage to, um, mm, maintain their piety, their prayer meeting, and their daily right reading. But when it comes to a conviction about the purposes of God in history and the second coming of Christ, they've virtually given it up. Daniel, therefore, stands before us as a very vivid example of a man who really kept on believing, uh, uh, in the, uh, purpose of God in history, the prophetic program. And he went on believing it despite the shock that Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed. It actually happened. Before it happened, there were a lot of false prophets that said that God would never let it happen. Why not? Why? Because, you see, they believed that God actually dwelt in that temple in Jerusalem. The God of heaven, the sole true God of heaven dwelt in that temple at Jerusalem. That was their testimony to the Gentiles. All you other Gentiles worship gods, idols, mere forces of nature. Ours is the true God of heaven. He dwells in this temple. This is his city. The kings of Judah are his viceroys. God surely will never let the Gentiles come and destroy it. And God did precisely that. He let the Gentiles come and destroy it. And God did precisely that. He let the Gentiles come and destroy it. There's the Babylonian Chronicle for the year uh six hundred and five to five hundred and ninety four. It tells us of Nebuchadnezzar's doings and how eventually, uh, he came, uh, uh, he appointed Zedekiah as king of Judah after the capture of Jerusalem in sixteenth of March five hundred and ninety BC and remove the removal of the Judeans to exile in Babylon. Daniel was taken in a slightly earlier campaign, but there is the point, it actually happened. And, uh, Daniel chapter one reminds us that when, uh, Nebuchadnezzar came and took away the captives, he also took away golden vessels out of the house of the Lord. Now, I haven't got a picture of Nebuchadnezzar doing it, I wasn't there, uh, but here is a picture of an earlier empire, the Assyrians, after one of their victories, and there they are, do you see, carrying the, uh, gods away. Yeah, the gods, unfortunate gods. There's one sitting behind that chair, and another here, looks like a lady, and this one very distinctly like a lady. I think this is a gentleman god. You'll see. Ha ha. There are the Assyrians taking away the gods. What were they saying by that? They were saying, one, that their gods had defeated the gods of the country they'd just conquered. Two, that the gods of the country which had been conquered had now consented that his people that worshipped him should be taken away to captivity. When Nebuchadnezzar came against Jerusalem and entered the temple, he didn't find any image, of course. I don't suspect Nebuchadnezzar realized why that was. He was a poor old idolatry himself. So, not being able to take an image, he took, uh, the vessels and marched them off. Notice how carefully he used them. They were the vessels of a god. So when he got to Babylon, he put them in the house of his gods. He wanted to be very respectable. Yes, Jehovah, Yahweh was a god. But then Nebuchadnezzar would have held that Nebuchadnezzar's god, Marduk, had overcome the god of the Jews, Jehovah. And he, uh, took the vessels to remind the Israelites that that was so. Well, what do you say to it all? It must have been a colossal shock to the Jews, mustn't it? That a heathen Gentile been allowed to come and destroy the very temple of God itself in Jerusalem. How can your faith survive that kind of thing? What was the significance then of, of that, uh, defeat, the destruction of Jerusalem. I'll get it right one day. I should need Mr. Heseltine to help me. The significance of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple. Well, according to Nebuchadnezzar, as I have said, his god had defeated the god of the Jews, for Nebuchadnezzar was an old idolater, and gods to him were simply deifications of the forces of nature. What do you suppose the destruction of Jerusalem, uh, and the significance of it would be, according to Master Mikhail Gorbachev? I haven't asked him, so I can't guarantee that this is what he would say. I rather suspect it would be if you said, tell me, Master Gorbachev, what is the significance that Nebuchadnezzar bashed up the temple in Jerusalem around about five hundred and ninety BC, and Mikael would do a broad grin and say, well, you see, all religion is superstition. There was nothing in the claim at all anyway. There is no God of heaven. These Jews thinking that the God of heaven dwelt in their temple, that was all nonsense, and they found out it was nonsense and found out the hard way it was nonsense. Of course, Gorbachev has got his own ideas. All religion is superstition. What, uh, determines history is two things. The biggest army wins, that's what it is. And secondly, Gorbachev would hold that there are certain laws of history. So he's a bit of an idolater himself, isn't he? There are certain laws of history that will bring in the great age of peace for which commoners strive. Their philosophy, therefore, is absolutely counter to what we find in Old Testament. And here were the Jews in exile. How could they still go on believing that the God of heaven existed and had chosen Israel to be his people, and that there was a future for Israel, and through Israel the Messiah would come and the messianic kingdom be brought in. Well, I have put there also what Daniel would have thought about it. How did he view it? What maintained his faith? First of all, his belief that God is the God of morality. That unlike the heathen gods, which were prepared to support you so long as you paid them their offerings, a nice fat bullock now and again, and kept their priests going with a handsome donation to the funds, and it didn't really matter how you behaved. The Israelite prophet said that God, the God of heaven that was chosen Israel, was the true God because he was interested in morality, and therefore, if the Gentiles sinned, he would chastise them, but if Israel sinned, God would chastise them even more severely than he chastised the Gentiles. So said Amos. And oh, what a comment centuries of history have been on that. This special nation and their special sufferings down the years, no excuse for Gentile anti-Semitism, but their own prophets tell you that their severe sufferings are because their God is the true God. You can have a temple with its sacrifices, but as Jeremiah said, don't you put your faith in a temple at Jerusalem? For, says Jeremiah, in the name of God, you turn the temple into a den of robbers, and that being so, God is prepared to let it be destroyed. And our Lord Jesus said the same thing in his day. It's written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, and you have turned it into a den of thieves. The time is coming, he says, when the Gentiles will attack Jerusalem. They shall not leave one stone upon another, not even of that holy temple. What does that show? That, uh, the Jews claim that they are God's chosen people is not true? No, it shows the opposite. It shows that the God they worship is utterly distinct from the imaginations of the immoral heathen gods. The God they bear witness to is a God of supreme morality and righteousness, that when Israel sins, they will be dealt with the more severely. Then, uh, Jeremiah would have found great comfort in prophecies such as you find in Ezekiel thirty nine twenty five to twenty eight, where God through Ezekiel says that one day Israel will be restored to her land. Why so? Well, says God, I'm going to do it not because the Jews are deserving. I'm going to do it for my own name's sake. Why is that? Well, says God, you see, my whole name has been called in question. The very fact that heathen nations worshiping heathen gods have come up and destroyed Jerusalem city, seems to suggest that Israel's claim that the supreme God dwelt in that temple, and Israel are his people, it seems to suggest that that is false. Actually, says God, I caused them to go into captivity because of their sin. The Gentiles don't believe that. They think they defeated the Jews because the Gentiles were superior in armaments and so forth. That's what Gorbachev thinks. I'm going to bring the Jews back into their land, says God, to prove it before all the world. That that original claim was true, that Israel's God was the true God of heaven, who sent them into captivity because of their sin and will bring them back again to demonstrate that he stands behind them, and he has a plan and purpose for history. It was in that kind of faith, buttressed by these prophets, that Daniel eventually went into his exile, there to live, carrying on life and serving God in his present providential government, but lo- longing and looking for the day when God would restore the kingdom to Israel and vindicate not merely Israel, but vindicate the name of God itself. And so it was that when Daniel got down to, uh, Babylon, he was presently brought before a selection board and chosen from among the captives for a university course in language, literature, uh, uh, and economics, and so forth, politics. For Daniel was very bright, and so were his three friends, uh, so the story goes. They all got first class degrees and came out top of the lists, uh, in finals in the Babylonian university dedicated to His Majesty Nebuchadnezzar. It was in that context of education that Daniel and his colleagues first made their protest against the Gentile way of life. Notice, please, it was not against education as such. Daniel didn't say, I'm not going to have anything to do with you, uh, Babylonians because your, uh, society is so, uh, idolatrous. Some city to find yourself in, wasn't it? As a young gentleman from Jerusalem, must have made Jerusalem look like a tiny little village in the outback, like Ocker and Clocher and Five Mile Town. Babylon was an enormous modern city with the very latest architecture, you'll see, and, uh, to be brought up the street, so to speak, uh, now see it, I'm afraid, in ruins, a little bit restored by the archaeologists. And And you you can't see from where you sit, on these great pillars are, uh, relief decorations of animals that have a great deal to do with their concepts in art, their concepts of the universe, their concepts of religion and of the gods. And as Daniel would have been brought along, perhaps down this most impressive street into the major city, overwhelming to a man brought up in a little city like Jerusalem. You imagine finding yourself, uh, my younger friends, the first night in college with all the other, uh, students, huh? And now the food is put on the table, and you discover it's come from, uh, Nebuchadnezzar himself, and the food is tainted, as you believe. What are you going to do? Oh, I reckon he went hot and cold and felt sick and couldn't touch the food. Now, should he eat it? What would old Jeremiah say if he found out, and the folks say at home if it, oh dear. Or perhaps he could eat it, and I mean he didn't believe in idols anyway, so ah, ah. What should he do? It took an enormous amount of courage to stand for the laws of God as he understood them in that context of education. Food laws. You might imagine the ragging he got from his fellow students, and you don't believe that old stuff now, do you? That there's something wrong with pig? Dear, dear, dear. I mean, that is primitive. Grow up, man. But then, why did he choose, uh, uh, to to, um, uh, make his protest about these food laws? What did the food laws stand for anyway? At first sight, it might seem to to us that it's a little bit trivial, that he should have objected to, on this matter of unclean food. Daniel chapter one does not tell us explicitly what the objections were, but as we look through Old Testament to New Testament, there were three areas in which food could become unclean, according to the Jew. The one was the distinction we find in Leviticus eleven forty one to forty four, the distinction between clean and unclean animals. To eat unclean animals was to eat unclean food, and so God forbade it. Why did he forbid it? Some people have said it was in the interests of hygiene. Pigs in those days weren't very suitable to eat because of primitive hygiene. Well, there may be some truth in it, but it is to be noticed that when our Lord came, he cancelled those food laws. And one Timothy four repeats the idea. Now everything is to be received if it be received with thanksgiving. So our Lord cancelled the food laws. Tell me, was that because pigs had become more hygienic? Or that they had deep freezers and refrigerators. So it was now safe to eat pig, whereas it hadn't been before. I rather think not, don't you? So it may have been something to do with hygiene, much more likely to have been symbolic, as Leviticus itself says, you mustn't eat unclean food. Why not? Because I, the Lord, am holy, and you are to be holy too. Israel's holiness was to match the holiness of God. And therefore, as a symbolic way of saying it, they were forbidden certain animals that were said to be unclean and abominations. That the physical rule should teach them the deeper lessons by way of symbols, and you will find in Jewish literature that they perceived that was so. And the command to abstain from certain animals called unclean was seen by them as a lesson teaching them that some ways of satisfying our appetites are unclean and an abomination to the Lord, not just our physical appetites, but our moral and spiritual and psychological appetites. The world is full of abominable things that are served up for people's delight and, uh, and, and entertainment. You don't have to look too long at our modern TV, do you, to see what would be meant. God was calling Israel to holiness of appetite. As distinct from appetites allowed to go on abominable and unclean food. Secondly, it was symbolic, as we see from the New Testament in Acts chapter ten. The food laws had a, had the practical effect of separating Jew from Gentile. That is precisely what they were meant to do as well. To mark out Israel as a special people. To put it on their heads that they were not to become lost amongst the Gentiles, just like the Gentiles. They were a special people with a special calling and a special role in history through. Through them the Messiah was to come. They must keep distinct. God kept them distinct by those food laws until the Messiah came. Then there was no longer need for those food laws, and Messiah cancelled them. And Acts ten says that now all men in that sense are equal. Daniel would have, uh, kept the food laws for those two reasons. What they said about healthy appetite as distinct from unclean food, what they said about the specialness of Israel, not to be lost amongst the Gentiles, as though Israel were no different from anybody else. In the second place, they were forbidden to eat blood because blood was a ceremonial token. Leviticus seventeen: I have Given it to you upon the altar, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. By reason of the life. The whole matter of atonement, of redemption, is one of life's most sacred things. To Israel, the cost of redemption was symbolized in the blood of an animal, through which the animal laid down its life. I know that for us it is a just a pointer to the blood of Christ with its supreme reality of value. But in those ancient times, to the Jew, even the symbol was sacred and stood for life's most sacred things. It was not therefore to be cheapened by people eating it simply for their own personal enjoyment, like an ordinary meal. Symbols are the values of redemption. And finally, they must not eat food offered to idols, because that was a spiritual question, a question of loyalty to God. And that is the side of the question that the revelation, uh, takes up, where our Lord speaks to his churches and rebukes them, that they have some people there that say it's all right to eat food offered to idols. They teach my servants to do so and to commit fornication. Daniel, therefore, objected to the king's food at considerable risk. Now, I repeat that Daniel chapter one makes the point that it wasn't because he was anti-intellectual. He took the exams. He got a first class. He wasn't against education as such, but he was going to stand as a good Jew for healthy standards and principles and values in education. And must we not too? How much there is that goes by literature and film and entertainment that confounds human value. Feeding the populace unclean things that defile the mind in the name of literature, and so long as it's literature, it's supposed to be okay. How much literature, how much popular entertainment there is for people's satisfaction that makes light of redemption and blasphemes the very name of Christ and the sacred things of the gospel. Oh, some of Radio Four shows are terrible. We must stand in literature to see that the sacred things of life are not abused. And here too, with the, uh, distinction between Israel and the nations, you will say those food laws are gone now. Yes, and in one sense all men are equal and there's no respect of persons with God, but there still is a difference between a Christian and a non-Christian, you know. And nowadays there are those that would say, no, there isn't really. Christianity and Buddhism and Mohammedanism, they're all the same thing really. No, they're not. And they're seen to be not, in particular by the prophetic program that it is through Israel that the Messiah came. And there is none other name given under heaven whereby you must be saved. And we Christians must stand for it in education. The uniqueness of Christ and God's plan of salvation through him. The eternal difference between a man or woman born again and those that are not. And finally, here too, on the matter of idolatry. I needn't warn you about crude modern examples of idolatry, such as Freemasons, where in their lodges they go through all sorts of ceremonies and symbols based on old ancient idolatry. I have occasionally heard of Christian men who think it's all right to be members of the Freemasons in order to prosecute their business the more effectively. Gentlemen, the Lord won't have it. It is a compromise with the sovereign loyalty of God and of his son. But more to the point, uh, that other pervasive element of idolatry through Gentile society. And I refer you to what Paul says in Romans chapter one of the effects of idolatry. First of all, intellectually, that men going to idolatry, professing themselves to be wise, they become fools. For they take the supreme God, who is the creator of all things and the creator of our intellects, who gives our intellects their ultimate validity, and they liken him to some mindless pers- impersonal force of nature. The thing is obviously intellectual nonsense. How can the source of all things, and of our intellect in particular, be less than human, be less rational than we are, be utterly mindless? Yet there are eminent people teaching great systems of science nowadays in the name of education that hold that the ultimate source of your intellect, my good sir, is simply some mindless bit of energy. We need to stand against it. We need to stand in the name of intellect, not in the name of anti-intellectualism. We need to stand against idolatry, says Romans chapter one, in the name of morality, healthy morality. For when men give up the idea of God, then by God's providential government, their moral judgment goes, and they approve of all sorts of sexual aberrations that demean mankind. Life's values come to an appalling low and filthy state. I don't need to rub in the lesson, do I? If we would be Daniels in our day and generation, yes, waiting for the coming of God's Son from heaven, yet we must make our testimony heard here in this life. Nowhere more importantly than in the realm of education and the way we bring up our children and train our undergraduates, that we bring them up in the fear of the true God and all the health and holiness and intellectual validity that follows from faith in him. I'm gradually improving. If you come next February, I shall be keeping to time. I'm only ten minutes over the hour.