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Good Enough? Pt. 1
Presenter: Larry Kirkpatrick
Location: Mentone Seventh-day Adventist Church, California USA
Delivery: 2006-10-01 22:00Z
Publication: GreatControversy.org 2006-10-01 22:00Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.greatcontroversy.org/gco/ser/kir-enough.php
Social Construct or Reality?
There are hundreds of different religious options. Jewish, Muslim, and Christian groups abound. There are even New Age and other flavors of belief. Who wants to be a believer? Apparently quite a few. But the religious cafeteria offers many different meals. You, in this congregation, are here, so most of you have chosen the Christian checkbox. In its subcategories, you have chosen Seventh-day Adventist. So I want to to ask you: is this religion good enough for you? For your children?
What is religion? Some teach that religion is merely an idea which appears natural and obvious to those accepting it, but which in reality is just an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society. Religion is just something that happens, that fills a “gap“ in the human experience.
In a way, even that irreligious idea makes a certain sense, or, at least, it is one kind of answer. It gives apparent order to the mystery that surrounds the human experience. In the social construct idea there is no place for the divine. There is no intervention from beyond, certainly no God standing above history, interjecting, no moral right or wrong, cause or effect.
This is a five dollar bill, US currency. We all agree that it is worth five dollars. So does the IRS. But to a person who does not know English in the outskirts of Chongjin, North Korea, it may be more of a curiosity. For it to be worth five dollars, we must agree to agree that it will be worth five dollars.
Anotehr example is a game like checkers or chess. We may not know each other’s language, but if we know the rules of the game, we can play the game with each other, because we have a mutual understanding of what those rules are.
Some are saying today that religion is a mere social construction like the five dollar bill or chess, that religion is a socially constructed phenomenon and that it is important only because society has until now simply granted it a possibly unwarranted currency. If this is true, then, given enough time, society may change what widely-held theories it holds. One day it may determine that the ideas we have shared about religion are false. Is that all that religion is? A set of propositions on paper?
Consider the question from another angle. Different religions almost universally ascribe to the human species an innate need to worship. This idea may not be provable. But it is undeniable that our history offers humanity as a race which has never shown a lack of religious propensity. Men have, as far back as we can trace, hastened to bow down to that which they considered greater than themselves.
Is there an evidence beyond the alleged social construction? The Bible does not set out to offer airtight arguments in favor of God’s existence. Yet it does affirm God’s existence (Genesis 1:1). Nature testifies in the wonderful details of the human creation (Psalm 8:3-5) and of the Creator’s handiwork (Psalm 19:1-6). The creation itself holds a sufficiently clear testimony about the Creator that men are left without excuse (Romans 1:19, 20).
Indeed, the human appreciation for definite morality is yet another testimony of the God who made man (Romans 2:14, 15). He inhabits all of the world He made (1 Kings 8:27; Jeremiah 23:24).
The world in which we live offers us sufficient evidence to believe. The fact that He limits His intervention in the world shows that its present moral order is not fully reflective of His moral order (Ecclesiastes 12:14; Hebrews 9:28; 1 Timothy 5:24). According to His own Scriptures, He has temporarily suspended some cause and effect relationships (Ezra 9:13; Romans 2:2-8), even while He promises a day of moral perfection.
Yes, God has given us evidence that He exists, that there is a right and a wrong, and that the world as we now experience it, filled with not only good but also with evil, is not the way it will run for very much longer. After permitting the conflict between good and evil run its course, God will remake His world. A tested creation will continue into eternity in righteousness.
Benefits of Your Religion?
What does your religion do for you? Does it provide you with just enough sedation to live in a world that seems to be walled in by chaos? Just enough spiritual talk to lead you to feel relaxed before God? Just enough assurance so that you go on living day to day in that sickening mixture of the world and of sin you know so well?
Or, does your religion present you with an unambiguous picture of war in which you yourself are the battlefield? What does God demand of you? Religion is mostly a degenerated to a set of traditions. The Bible is not against tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15) but it does warn against man-made traditions (Matthew 15:9). Many Christians take for granted the first part of 1 John 1:9 which says that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”
It is true that simple confession is important. We should confess to God plainly what we have done. But notice that God is not only faithful in how He forgives, but He is just. In other words, this verse does not promise that whatever we do God will forgive it and that is the end of it. What it actually promises is that God will operate in a way that is truthful, fair, and consistent. He will hear our confession. He will be faithful and just with reference to our confession.
But confession is not just admission. In the Bible, a confession is more than a statement of fact. A confession like this is an admission that we have behaved in ways that are outside of God’s ways. A confession means a trust in God’s faithfulness and justness. You see, a confession like this is also a plea for God to change us.
Too many Christians have a serious disconnect between the so-called Old Testament and the so-called New Testament. But more recent Scripture is founded upon earlier Scripture. So the Hebrew Scriptures are extremely meaningful to us. And we must not read 1 John 1:9 apart from Proverbs 28:13.
He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.
The man seeking to cover his sins, hide them, minimize them, will not prosper. Nor is he here promised mercy. But he who confesses and forsakes them, he shall have mercy. Here we have both ideas together: admitting our sin, owning it, and forsaking it, leaving it behind. Just a few hundred years ago Christians commonly talked this way. The word then in use was “repentance.“ That word is too old fashioned for some today. Then it usually meant not only a sorrow for sin but also a turning away from it. Our sorrow for sin must be accompanied with a desire that God would create in us a clean heart (Psalm 51:10). Think about it. Just what are we doing if we are going to God for forgiveness but we do not actually desire for Him to clean our heart? In such a case, all you are really wanting is to cover your sins. You will not prosper.
To forsake means to leave behind. Too often we come to God but we have one hand in His world and the other hand in our barrel of self-indulgences. This is not the way of God’s kingdom.
All this brings us back to the last part of 1 John 1:9. For it not only promises that “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Just as confession in the way that God means confession in 1 John 1:9 stands for both admitting the sin and also for forsaking it, forgiving stands for both receiving the mercy of pardon and also the mercy of cleansing. How much cleansing? Cleansing from all unrighteousness. If we would receive all His mercy then we must accept not only forgiveness but cleansing.
Unimportant?
Many who check the Christian checkbox are taught that sin is relatively unimportant. It is assumed that one will sin and that all that Heaven expects is that we do our best. But true religion is not about our doing our best. It is about our allowing God to do His best. It is about cooperating with the planet-Maker. The real deal is all about God changing human hearts. There is a battle, there is actual, personal change. This life is the battlefield. That’s true religion.
How important is it to overcome sin? Consider some promises from the last book of the Bible:
To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God (Revelation 2:7).
He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death (Revelation 2:11).
He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels (Revelation 3:5).
To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne (Revelation 3:21).
These all speak of life, death, or overcoming. Through God’s power received into the life, we are enabled to overcome.
Much more could be said. There is hardly a book in the New Testament that is not filled with urgent talk about overcoming. This is no coincidence. There is more to Christianity than the Christ on the external cross; there is self to be crucified on the internal cross. And while this does not mean we are earning our salvation, it remains a necessary element of true belief.
The Christian checkbox affirms that there is right, there is wrong, and we are held accountable for the right. The experience of life is not just a script we are trapped in like wind-up toys running through our paces.
The Christian experience is about transformation. God’s purpose is to change people through Jesus.
Conclusion
We may conclude as follows. Religion is more than a mere social construction. Evidence from the human experience and from nature testifies that there is a Creator, and that the evil now seen in the world is but temporary. Belief systems tend to smooth themselves down until they feature non-transformative traditions. But God’s true religion offers, indeed, requires, transformation. God’s plan is to remake people, to populate His universe with free beings who choose righteousness freely.
If your religion does not change you for the better, it isn’t good enough for Jesus and it isn’t good enough for you. You can choose to change the stuff your life is made out of. You can choose the divine option. Your heritage is as a member of a race designed in God’s image, in His likeness (Genesis 1:26). He longs to bring that image to its intended shine—something neither you nor I can do alone. Why spend your life on that which is not bread? GCO
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