Gooding, David: 1 - Is Anything Absolutely Wrong?

And the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. To launch us on our discussion this evening, I would like first to read a passage from the New Testament. It comes from the letter to the Romans. If you have a Bible within reach, you may care to look at it. It comes in the second half of the Bible, the New Testament, and in my edition at least, it is page one thousand one hundred and thirty two. What it would be in your edition, I have no idea whatsoever. But if you haven't a Bible with you, never mind, just sit back, and I will try to read the passage distinctly. This is the, uh, written by the Christian apostle Paul, and he writes to his Christian friends in Rome. There had been a Christian church in Rome now for some, uh, few years, begun in the beginnings by those who heard the gospel preached on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem and had been converted to faith in Christ and had taken the gospel back to the capital city of the empire. Paul, as far as we know, had never been there, but he writes to them hoping eventually to visit them. This is chapter two of his letter, beginning there at verse one. Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who do such things. Do you suppose, oh man, you who judge those that do such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance. But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. And then passing on to verse twelve, for all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. For they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. On the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. God help us to understand and take due warning from his word. Tonight I want to discuss with you something that I believe you experience in common with every man and woman on the globe. I want to talk to you about our inner sense of right and wrong. What we call our moral sense. We all have it, of course. Suppose a friend of you, tr- of yours treats you shabbily, and when that friend comes to you, you say, look here, old chap, this is not fair, what you've done. He will probably reply, won't he? Oh, it is fair. And he'll try to convince you that what he's done is fair. But if he were to reply to you, fair? What do you mean by the term fair? I don't know what you mean. You'd think it very odd, wouldn't you? For that sense of fairness is built into us right from babyhood almost, isn't it? Here are two infants playing, you see, and one is four and one is six. and six-year-old steals the toy from four-year-old, you see, and there is a bit of an argument, um, and just as mum comes in to see what the row is about, four-year-old is delivering a powerful slap upon the face of his six-year-old brother, you see. And mother, who, if you only knew her favorite is the six-year-old, uh, she's not going to stand for this affront upon her six-year-old, and she snatches the cho- the toy away and delivers four-year-old a harangue. She might even, contrary to the government, give him a slap. Who knows, do you see? And when mother exits the room, four-year-old through his tears is heard to say, and isn't fair. He started it. Interesting, that isn't it? Where did four-year-old get an idea from that this world is going to be fair anyway? But there we have it. I'm going to suggest to you it is an inbuilt thing, like the ability to learn and speak a language is an inbuilt thing. Of course, if we come to things more serious, suppose a friend of yours, you discover, has lied to you. Now, the next time you meet her, you give her, as we say, a piece of your mind, don't you? We say, you've lied to me. We feel very resentful, don't we? At being treated like it. Of course, your friend will reply that it wasn't really a lie, and this, that, and other. But what would you say if your friend replied, yes, of course I lied, I always lie. What would you say to that? You would say that's utterly perverse, isn't it? Because if everybody lied, nobody would trust anybody. It is the fact that because people normally tell the truth, that liars are able to get advantage for the time being. Isn't that so? And when we find we've been lied against, we can feel very resentful. It isn't just a sort of a taste that we have, this moral sense within us, is it? You know, I like beans, you don't like beans. I like yogurt, you don't like yogurt, as a matter of taste. But this inner moral sense built into our hearts, it's not a matter of taste, is it? When we sense that that has been offended, we get indignant. Then, of course, there's another side to it. We not only accuse people, but from time to time we excuse them, don't we? Oh, some television company or other, who knows who, were running a series of phone-in competitions, you see. I don't know, you had to pay so much or something, and they were making a lot of money out of it, but people phoned in to answer questions and thought they were going to get a prize. And it's come to light that of the last, uh, so long, of course, the whole thing has been stitched up. The television company themselves had already decided it and uh, and closed the offers down and made out people had applied and had won already when they hadn't won. And the thing was a lie. Oh yes, but then, here come the excuses, don't they? Of course, but then you can understand it because the people in charge of the program, they had to keep their jobs, you know, they had to keep the numbers coming up, and they must make money out of it and all this. Yes. We not only accuse, but sometimes we excuse, don't we? Why do we excuse? Because, you see, if there were no moral law, if there were no standard, you wouldn't need to excuse anybody, would you? Nothing to be excused for. It is because, so I suggest to you now, that in our hearts there is this basic moral sense of right and wrong that leads us to protest when other people do wrong, and very often to try and excuse ourselves when we do wrong. Where does that moral sense come from? The passage of the Bible that we have just read says that moral sense is inbuilt into human beings, by our creator, no less. And the very fact that we accuse others or excuse them is evidence before God that when we do wrong and others do wrong, we are able to recognize it is wrong and admit it is wrong. And that means that when eventually God holds us to account, we shall have been witnesses against ourselves that we have done wrong knowingly. You know, the old Greek philosopher Socrates, he developed a notion in his head that nobody does wrong, ever does wrong willingly and knowingly. He thought that people did wrong because they thought that they benefited from doing wrong, and therefore it was a good thing to do. And he said they didn't realize that anybody who does wrong to somebody else does damage to himself. So he concluded that nobody does wrong knowing it, and the cure for wrongdoing is to educate people into what is right. But the later philosopher, the great Aristotle, s- he, when he considered it, he said, no, that's not right. We, all of us, he says, do wrong sometimes, knowing it is wrong. I should have to confess I have. And you see, this passage that we read tells us that this moral sense we have is given us by God. That there are therefore certain things that we know. Things that we cannot not know. Things that we know are wrong. Let's cite a few, shall we? Let's think of the incident that Dostoevsky records in one of his novels of a Russian soldier, you see, and a little baby was held up in front of him, and he pointed his rifle at it, and the little baby cooed and smiled as babies will, and just as the baby was smiling, he pulled the trigger and shot the child's brains out. Wrong? Wrong. We don't have to be told it's wrong, do we? And if we ourselves were on trial and somebody tried to bribe the judge to bring in a verdict favoring the other party, we could see that was wrong at once, couldn't we? Don't want to be told. Similarly, stealing is wrong. There is no nation on earth where stealing is taken as okay. And stealing somebody else's wife is wrong. And treating the name of God lightly is wrong. The BBC Radio Four comedies constantly do it, don't they? We know it's wrong. Because God has put the law in our hearts. It's a very interesting book. I don't know if you've ever read it, but it's by Professor Budziszewski. It has the interesting title, What We Can't Not Know. And he is pressing home what the Bible here says, that we have the law of God written on our hearts, and we know certain things are wrong, and say what we will to try and cover it up, we know that it is wrong. This passage that we read is very serious, is it not? Because it tells us that one day God will judge the secrets of men before his final judgment. And when that happens, we shall be without excuse, says this passage. For we we have laid the evidence against ourselves. If a man appears before that judgment, and God says, you did such and such, and you knew it was wrong. The man tries to say he didn't know it was wrong. God will play back the man's inner thoughts to him. God has the records, you know, and show the man in the position where knowing it was wrong, he made the choice and he did. Every time we do something wrong, says the New Testament, knowing it is wrong, it's like signing with our own hand an admission of guilt. You know how it used to be in Tesco's or anywhere else. You go to superior places there, do you? Well, never mind. Um, and and all it used to be before you had PIN numbers, when you gave them the card, then you had to sign a bit of paper with your own hand that you were in debt to this thing, you see. Using that metaphor, God says that the decisions we have made are our own autograph, our own signature on what we have done, and God will bring it into his judgment. Well, of course, I don't know how it's, how it affects you, but I know a tremendous lot of people, uh, that if I were to repeat this in their presence would almost laugh at me and say, oh, nonsense. You don't believe any of that stuff anymore. You don't believe in God anyway. way. So all this talk of a final judgment, that's antiquated superstition, you'll see. There is no God. Well, where then do we get these moral laws from that we find in our hearts? Say they we we get them from, well, we get them from our parents, of course, uh, they uh, or we get them from our teachers at school. They are simply the authorities, and when we grow up, we can neglect those authorities if we want to. There's nothing more than that in it. Oh, but wait a moment. Let me ask you how you learn mathematics. You, you went to school, and they taught you by m- one means or another, two plus two equals four. Yeah? And at first you agreed to that because the teacher said so, and you were suitably rewarded if you got the sum right, you see. You believed it because teacher said so. But that phase soon passed, didn't you? Why do you believe it now that two and two make four? Because teacher said so? Of course not, you say. Well, why? Well, I saw it for myself, you say. Yes, indeed you did. For we're dealing here with the laws of mathematics. And though at first we got them through the teacher or parents or somebody, we come to see that the teacher didn't invent the laws. The laws of mathematics exist. And if you ask eighteen-year-old, year old, uh, what is the, uh, square root of nine, he won't say four and a half, he'll say three. And If you say, how do you know, he won't reply, because teacher told me. He'll say, well, it's obvious, can't you see it? The laws of mathematics are not invented by parents or teachers, are they now? And the learned mathematician at Oxford, Sir Roger Penrose, the great famous mathematician who did the mathematics on the black hole, tells us openly, he believes that mathematicians don't invent those laws, they discover them. Those laws belong to the way that the Creator has made our universe. So it's no excuse to say that, uh, these, uh, laws were taught us by our, our parents or school teachers. The mathematical laws are written into the whole universe by its creator. So with these moral laws. But all right, you don't believe there's a God. Have you really thought through what that implies about human behavior? Let me cite you one famous example of an atheist who spends an enormous amount of energy these days in trying to tell the world there is no God and expressing his disgust aben- a- against everybody who dares to believe there is one. Professor Dawkins of Oxford, professor of the public understanding of science. Listen to him. He doesn't believe in God. So what is our position in this, on this world and in this universe? He says that human beings are controlled by their DNA. All right. He says, in a world run by DNA, some people are going to get lucky. Some people are going to, uh, uh, be very unlucky. And there's no ca- explaining it or accounting for it. That's just how things are. DNA does not care, Tuffins, about anybody. There's no rhyme nor reason in it, says he. DNA does not care. Do you feel that's right? Get rid of God. Get rid of the author and authority behind moral law, and see Master Dawkins, what he says are the implications of it. Oh, but I must be fair to him. Elsewhere he writes that, of course, a man or a woman were nothing more than our genes. See? We're nothing but genes. Oh. Well, if that's so, genes make us do some very funny things sometimes, don't they? Well, Hitler's genes made him do some very funny things. What about that then, we ask him? He says we have to learn to rebel against our gene. Well, that's talking nonsense, because if I'm nothing but genes, what part of me is there left that could rebel against the genes when every part of me is made by the genes? What logical nonsense some people speak, don't they? Yes, but perhaps you say that's an extreme example. But other people are not extreme in that sense, and surely we can be good without God. We don't have to believe in God in order to be good. Yes? How would that be then? Well, you say, life in society is like a game, you know. You're going to play a game of football, you meet together with everybody, and you decide what the rules are, don't you? And as long as everybody keeps the rules, then the game goes on very nicely. But it's the society that has made the rules. They don't come down from God, not the rules of football don't. Do you see? And if society try, uh, uh, decides in the end to change the rules, they're perfectly free to change the rules. And if you decide you don't want to play football, you want to play rugby, well, then you change the rules again. You see, they say that's how it is, you see. It's society that makes up the rules. They don't come from God, and we can be good and behave well without God. But it is the fact that agreement amongst people in societies has yielded us a lot of benefits, hasn't it? We ourselves enjoy comparative peace and prosperity in the province because people are able to come together and decide what the rules shall be. It's not the final answer, is it? Suppose the society in question turned out to be Hitler's, and what he did to Germany. Was that okay because the vast majority of Germans went along with him? When it comes to the basic value of life, what is a human life worth? Who decides it? Wouldn't be so good, would it, if Stalin decided it? Or in pursuance of his political theories, he murdered millions. The plea that we can be good without God because we can rely on society. After the experience of the last century and the beginning of this is an excuse that wears very, very thin. Let me take it to the extreme. If there's no God... Well, let me suggest to you a little thought experiment, if I may. May I do that? I want you in your mind to think up the, the pre- uh, the situation. You and I are going to visit the people in the concentration camps under Hitler. Yeah? That'll be a terrible experience. And as we arrive, the people with what little strength they've got left are trying to tell us, what are you doing for us? We want justice, Justice, do Duzi. see. We We're want on justice. justice. What would you say to them? I should have to say, I'm sorry, I wish there was something I could do for you, but I cannot, and you're not going to get justice. You'll soon be dead. But my dear friend, there is a God in heaven. A God who cares for justice. And this life doesn't end all. There is to be a final judgment, when God will put right earth's wrongs. And in light of that, let me tell you that God's own son visited Earth and died for you, that you might be forgiven of your personal sins and enjoy heaven with God eternally. Ah, but now you're an atheist. You don't believe there's a God. All right, you come and talk to the people. What will you say? Justice? Well, you're not going to get justice. Not in this life. They say, but terr- that's terrible. We were brought up to think that the world is just, and justice was real. And you'll say, oh well, you better grow up. You're not going to get justice in this life, nor in the life to come, because you don't believe there's a life to come. And the multi-millions that have suffered injustice in the world's history are utterly without hope. Is that what you really believe? Oh, but in talking like I'm talking now, I cannot forget the recent fashion that is taught in our schools. And if you senior people haven't heard of it, well, in one sense, never mind, but you should mind. Because this is what is being taught, not so much in our science departments, but in the departments of English and literature. The technical name for it is postmodernism. And therefore, your children, if they are taught literature in the school, are liable to be taught postmodernist attitudes, and that means this: they are taught that given any one book, there is no correct interpretation of it. There could be a thousand different interpretations of it. You have an interpretation? Okay, that's all right for you. I have a different interpretation, absolutely the opposite of yours. And postmodernism says, that's all right for me too. There is no ultimate truth. There is no ultimate justice. That's what your kids are being taught nowadays in many in English departments in the schools. And you can perhaps see at once the effect it has on some of them, that when you take a Bible to them and say, see what the Bible says, they will reply, but that's your opinion. I hold a different opinion, and you mustn't say I'm wrong, and I won't say you're wrong. For we've all got to be tolerant of people. We mustn't say anybody else is wrong. About three years ago, a friend brought a young man to see me. Gracious of him to come, I know. A young man in his teens had professed to be a Christian. He had, in fact, gone out on Christian missionary work. But after that, he'd gone to Oxford and read, um, courses in philosophy and this, that, and other. And when he came to see me, he told me he believed nothing. He said, you see, all values are socially determined, meaning that where we get our values from is simply our society decides this is good, so we accept it is good because the society says it's good. If another society says it's bad, well, that's their view. You can't say they're wrong, and they can't say you're wrong. So I sat there and listened to him, you see. So I said, all values are determined by your society, and you mustn't say that any of them is wrong. That's how it is, he says. I said, well, what about cannibalism then? If you go to one of these countries and they practice cannibalism, what would you say about that? Perfectly okay, says he. So if another co- country ha- hails murder is okay? That's okay, is it? That is being taught in the name of tolerant. You must be tolerant. You mustn't say anybody is wrong. It's a funny doctrine, isn't it? And when they talk to me like that, I, I, I quote them Pol Pot of Cambodia. You remember Pol Pot? Perhaps you've forgotten him. He was a man, he didn't like intellectuals, do you see? And anybody that wore a pair of glasses, he thought was an intellectual. And so, because he didn't like them, he was, I'm afraid, exceedingly intolerant of them. He eliminated the lot. Some nearly a million people eliminated because he didn't like them. So now I ask my, uh, postmodernist friend, I must be tolerant, I mustn't be intolerant, I mustn't say anybody is wrong. So I suppose I mustn't say Pol Pot was wrong. Is that how it is? He was vastly intolerant, but I must say with him it was okay. But that's nonsense, you say. And I've observed that those who preach postmodernism of that sort, they don't live it out. You get one of them now, and he goes down to the bank. He's put in ten thousand pounds into the bank, into his savings account and special stocks and shares and things in the bank, and goes down and expects, um, there to be, uh, ten thousand there, according to the normal laws of, uh, arithmetic and and business ethics, you see. But the bank manager, when he comes out, says, I'm sorry, according to your way of accounting, yes, you should have now ten thousand pound plus interest, but you see, we here have a different form of accounting and business principles, you see, and actually, according to our system, you not only don't have the ten thousand pounds, but you're in our debt for services to another one thousand five hundred. And the postmodernist says what? Well, I wouldn't say you're wrong, sir. You have a different same s- system of accountancy? Well, okay, I I wouldn't be intolerant and say you're wrong. Is that what he says? No, he doesn't, of course. He doesn't live out in daily life what he professes when it comes to general morality. But of course, if you say, why do people get convinced by such theories. And one of the reasons is, surely, that the alternative for many people is scary, and they feel it tyrannical. For if there's a God, and it is he that puts the moral judgment in our hearts, and if it be true that he's going to call us before him to give account, then of course it makes people naturally uncomfortable, to say the least, and to hope it were not so. In my professional life, I used to teach the ancient Greek philosophers, and particularly the natural philosophers. Have every admiration for them. They were the first people in Europe to ask how this universe is made and how it works. And 3 or four hundred years before Christ, some of them invented the atomic theory. That was some going, wasn't it? By sheer power of thought to discern that this universe is made up of atoms so small that you can't cut them, so they thought. Well, of course, the atomic theory has moved on since then. We know atoms can be split, but that original idea, dating back to two or three or four centuries BC, was brilliant, wasn't it? As a physical theory. Now, later on, there was a Roman poet, his name was Lucretius, and he came across this theory as it was interpreted by a Greek philosopher called Epicurus, do you see? And Epicurus' idea was that the main purpose of life is pleasure. Of course, that appealed to Lucretius, appeals to many people, doesn't it? Do you have a main purpose in life, ma'am? A really main purpose? What are you aiming at? When the Greeks thought about these things, they said, you know, if you're going to have a real main purpose in life, it must be an end in itself and not merely a means to another end. You say, what on earth do you mean by that? Well, let me illustrate it. You say, sir, you've got to work very hard at your work. Oh yes? What for? Well, you say I need a salary. Oh, really? You do? Why do you need a salary? You say, well, I've got some teenagers growing up, and I want to educate them. That's why I need the money. I want them to go eventually to the university and get a degree. You do? Whatever for? Well, so that they can get a good job and get a lot of money. Well, what for? Well, they'll need a house, won't they? And they're going to get married and have children, and and they want to send their children to university to to, I see, to get money and a good job so that they can have children and pay for them to go to university so that they can get a good job and earn a lot of money. Wait a minute. We're going round in circles, aren't we? To be satisfying, a goal in life has to be an end in itself, not sought for other purposes. So said the Greeks. Epicurus said that the end to be aimed at in life was pleasure. Would that be yours? The sole end in life is pleasure? Well, keep well, my good sir. You're liable to find a lot of pain and unpleasantness as life goes on. Is that all pleasure? Even the more thoughtful Greeks despised it. The main purpose in life, I think some of you would say, if I gave you the chance, God is my purpose in life. To serve, to know, and to enjoy God, my creator, is my supreme purpose in life. Anyway, to come back to Lord Lucretius the Roman first. He liked this atomic theory. He liked the notion that the main thing in life was pleasure. And he tells us why particularly he liked this theory. He says, you see, it teaches us this, that when a man dies, the atoms of his body and soul come adrift, and that's the end of him. There is no uh la- life after death. There is no judgment, says he. That's why he liked the theory. But there is going to be a judgment. And that is where the Christian gospel is so relevant, isn't it? To people that are struggling with life, in the sense that we have done wrong and knowingly done wrong. And the sense that God, if there be a God as there is, will call us one day to judgment. It is that that makes us wish sometimes that there was no God. And life ends everything. Oh, but friend, listen to the gospel. Here is its tremendous relevance that lets us face the realities of life, of sin and guilt and fear of the future. It says this, as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment. An appointment that cannot be missed, of course. So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. Marvelous gospel that confronts us human beings in our moral struggles and our moral predicament, and doesn't begin to say that sin doesn't matter, forget it. But says that sin matters so much that God in his mercy gave his own dear son to bear and suffer and pay the penalty of our human sin and pay its judgment, that God may be seen to be just, as he simultaneously pardons us for what Christ has done. That's glorious gospel, isn't it? That is what our Lord said. To his contemporaries, startling though it was, he says, did you know God the Father doesn't judge anybody, has committed all judgment to the Son, to me. Say Christ, I am the judge. And if ever we stand before God's ultimate throne and final judgment, the judge will be Christ, the one who died at Calvary. Listen to what the judge says to those who now, in true repentance and faith, receive him as their savior. Listen to what he says. He that hears my word and believes on him that sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed over from death to life. The gift of forgiveness, of acceptance with God, of peace with God, and eternal security given us through Christ. Magnificent that, isn't it? What would you say if you could be assured that you knew what the verdict was going to be on your life on the day of judgment? You say nobody can be sure of that. Well, they can. Because the judge himself is present this very moment, unseen, of course, in this very room. And he says to each one of us, I'm going to be the judge. Here are my terms. I died for you. I bore the penalty of sin and of the broken law. The penalty that should have been yours. But God so loved this world, he gave me his son to die at Calvary, to bear that penalty, to pay the penalty, that all who trust me may be forgiven and have eternal life and the assurance they will never come into condemnation. You say, how can I be sure? Well, by receiving and believing the one who's going to be the judge. You'll see there's no appeal against his judgment, for he is the final judge. And if he says it, it is certain. You say that sounds too good to be true. Well, it depends how you take it. Does not mean, of course, that if today I come face to face with the judge and repent of my sin and own I need salvation, and I put my faith in him, he assures me there's no condemnation. That does not mean that now I can go and live as I please. For when I receive him as savior, I also receive him as Lord and invite him into my life, for him now to take his direction and to lead and control me, and by his grace to train me and, if need be, discipline me, that he might develop within me a godly way of life, pleasing to God. But there is his offer. There's going to be a judgment. But as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sin of many. There is our hope. You and I, fellow sinners, there is our hope from the God of justice himself in the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, that we might be justified, put in the clear, forgiven, made right with God, and ready for whenever it shall happen that we transfer from this life to eternity. So let us put aside all prevarication, all false hopes, and come and make sure we come this night to the judge, who will be the final judge, and be sure that we have been reconciled to him. Shall we pray? Our Father, we live in a world that grows more and more bewildered. As modern theories that deny thee are sown and bring forth an ever increasing harvest in the minds of many people, and in the younger generation in particular. We therefore pray thy blessing on thy word tonight. And those of us who have already known thee many years, help us to grasp what the present situation is, that we might help our younger generation who are struggling with a modern world of unbelief, supposedly built upon fall- on science, falsely so called. And Lord, if any of us are not yet ready to meet thee, have not that certainty in our hearts of acceptance with God, we thank thee for the Savior who stands, stands ready to receive us. We pray that this night all of us, without exception, may come running to him and receive from him the gift of eternal life and forgiveness and eternal peace with God. Hear us at our evening prayers, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.