We have some time, of course, tonight to look into the word of God, and I would encourage you to turn in your Bible to Genesis Chapter 3, back to the beginning. Genesis 3, the origin and impact of sin; that is really the title for the whole chapter. We find ourselves tonight in Verses 17 to 19, the divine curse on the man.
Now modern civilization has come to an astonishing grasp of the physical world and all of its elements. I think all of us are fairly well staggered by the scientific advancement that we have seen in our lifetime. Science has achieved things that we never ever could have imagined. A few weeks before I came to be the Pastor here at Grace Church back in 1969, they had a guest preacher who preached a sermon entitled “Why Man Will Never Reach the Moon.” A few weeks later, he was proven wrong. I don’t think anybody stoned him over it, but he had no way that he could conceive that such a thing could happen. And now that seems like a small accomplishment in the complexities of space travel.
We have seen man figure out ways to unlock the genetic code; to study DNA and to repair DNA. We have seen man effectively work in cloning animals. His work in satellite communications staggers me; driving along plucking the right voice out of space on my little cell phone is still a wonder to me. Chemicals have been used in every imaginable way to provide a level of life, both in terms of comfort, as well as treatment medically. Industrialization has brought about manufacturing of things that are really astounding for us.
All of that simply to paint a bit of a picture in your mind that indicates to us that we have made staggering progress in our grasp of the elements of the physical world, and we seem to be moving at an incredibly rapid rate. Computerization is mind-boggling to all of us, and what is being achieved in little chips staggers the imagination.
Equally amazing to me is the absence of any understanding of spiritual reality. We haven’t gone anywhere at all. While there has been all of this amazing physical advancement, there has been virtually zero spiritual advancement. The natural world is in our grasp. We have been able to extract the wonders of creation in ways that generations before us would never even imagine, and I’m sure shall in the future unlock the mysteries of the physical world in ways that we now can’t even imagine. And while we have made these wondrous discoveries and come to astonishing and astounding capabilities with the physical world, the supernatural spiritual world is completely unknown to modern man. And with all of his physical advancements, he cannot resolve any of the issues of the human heart. He cannot solve any of the problems of the world, the troubles. He does not understand man; does not understand why he is the way he is and, therefore, he cannot explain, nor can he remedy his problems.
Things in the hearts of people are the way they are not because of evolution, not because of mutation, not because of bad education, not because of bad psychology or a lack of self-esteem. There is no natural explanation for the way things are and, consequently, man can’t understand why they’re the way they are because all he knows is the natural world. Making immense physical progress, he has made no spiritual progress at all. In fact, while he is advancing physically, he is declining spiritually. The fact of the matter is man is worse than he’s ever been spiritually. And man will never be able to solve his problems — his moral problems, his spiritual problems, the problem of evil, the problem of crime, the problem of dissatisfaction, disappointment, lack of fulfillment, shattered relationships, et cetera, et cetera, without a proper understanding of the problem. And we go back to what we’ve been saying all along in this series: Unless you have an accurate world view, unless you see things the way they really are, then you cannot solve the problem. The diagnosis is critical if you want the cure.
You can take all the secular educators of the world, you can take all the secular teachers of the world, you can get together all the erudite philosophers of the world and all of the professors, and all of the researchers and all of the writers and all of the psychologists and all the doctors of all sorts, and you can gather them all together, and they will not be able to diagnose man’s problem. And because they can’t diagnose it, they can’t cure it. No matter how well they grasp the intricacies and the mysteries of the physical realm, they are utterly oblivious to the realities of the spiritual one. There’s only really one way that they can turn if they want to understand the supernatural and to understand the spiritual, and that is they have to turn to us; the people who know the word of God. And they aren’t interested in doing that. They want us out of the public discourse. They want us out of the public dialogue. They do not want the Bible in the schools. They don’t want the Bible anywhere near the public discourse. They don’t want any information from Christians. People who believe the Bible threaten them. You can take all the criminologists, you can take all the behaviorists, all the child psychologists, gather them together, and they cannot understand why people are the way they are, and why they behave the way they behave. The only way you’ll ever know that is to turn to the Bible, because the Bible tells us why people are the way they are, why we are the way we are.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
