Dr Greg Bahnsen - Loving God With All Your Mind: Personal and Public Applications (Part 5)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonsen Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

I suppose you can see that the Evil One did not want you to pick up on this last lecture, right? First of all, you have to come back and listen to a philosophical lecture, which is tough enough in itself, but listen to it with a full stomach after lunch, and then, of course, having the heat up too high. Any of you who didn't fall off into your afternoon nap, I commend you for being real soldiers. You're the kind of people we need here. And those of you who had a tough time resisting, I hope that this last lecture won't be as tough. You have surmounted the hard material. There had to be one lecture where you were really depressed and forced to think hard. And I do want you to think in this last one, but I don't expect that you're going to find it as difficult to follow as what we've been talking about. Let me see if I can put everything we've done together this day into a summary format and then make application of it. My concern, as you saw at the beginning of the day, is that Christians have not been thoughtful about the need to obey God with their minds and. And the way that they think. And that's a failure of Christian love. It's a failure of Christian devotion to not discipline our thinking so that we think God's thoughts after him and please him in our mental life as well as in the life of our, excuse me, of our bodies or our mouths or whatever it may be. We need to be people who have a different set of priorities, people who pursue wisdom, who want transformed thinking. And that means we have to surmount the obstacles of biblical ignorance and our laziness and other sorts of things. But in particular, I said, if we're going to love God with all of our minds, we must not become adulteresses in our thinking. And we become adulteresses when we love the world and we've been made captive by the presuppositions of worldly thinking. That led us in our second lecture then, to talk about the nature of worldviews and. And how all beliefs are ultimately clustered together and tied to ultimate presuppositional commitments having to do with the nature of reality and how we know what we know and how we should live our lives. That there are different worldviews, and the Christian's worldview is tied to the word of God, is built upon the rock of what Jesus says. Not upon the shifting sands of human opinion. We said that the worldview of the unbeliever and the worldview of the Christian are in principle antithetical to each other. They are going to collide at every point. Now, because unbelievers are deceiving themselves, suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. They are able to come to some truths in this world. They are able to be successful in some ways in this world. However, all along they are developing. And what they are professing are worldviews and philosophies that oppose the faith. And you need to be on your guard against them. That you not think as the world thinks. You must engage in worldview analysis. We saw that in the Bible, the way the Apostle Paul dealt with the philosophers at Athens, the way in which evangelism calls for people to change their entire lifestyle. We must think in terms of worldviews as well. And then I said, thirdly, there's value to our studying non Christian worldviews in the same way there's value to doctors studying disease. We study disease so that we won't become sick. Or to the degree that we've been infected, we know how to fight the sickness. We study disease so that we can help other people be healed. And I gave you a long lecture that you just came out of through a long, hot time here this afternoon. A lecture going over the diseased thinking of this world with its internal tensions between authority on the one hand and rational detail on the other. The different schools of thought, monism and dualism and atomism and skepticism, just to give you a taste of the internal problems that are there, and the dialectic between authority and rational detail in each one of them, between freedom and determinism, or whatever it may be. All of these non Christian worldviews have their internal problems. But of course, the greatest problem with the non Christian worldview is that it stands over against the living and true God whom you profess to follow, whom you wish to love with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and I trust today, with all of your mind as well. The reason you need to know something about non Christian worldviews is not just as a doctor who studies disease to promote health, but you don't want to be made sick by them. The reason why I am willing to come and spend a long day with you and to wear the suit in a hot auditorium and so forth, is because I feel like a parent who tells his child. Those of you who have children, you know the tendency when they're young We've gone into a public place and you find a half finished sucker sitting on a table, and your child's tendency is to go over there and pick it up and put it in his mouth, right? Do your children do that? My children did that. And what do we do? We go, oh, no, don't touch that. You know, when you try to teach them, they don't understand at the time. Just looks like something sweet or nice to put in their mouth at the time. You want to tell them you don't know what people have done with that sucker. You know, what kind of diseases may be on that thing. Don't put that in your mouth. Now we understand that and we have something of the aesthetic response that's appropriate too. Think about putting a sucker that you find in a park in your mouth. You know, you don't want to do that, but Christians do it intellectually all the time. They walk through this world and they pick up the most diseased pieces of non Christian thinking and put it right into their mouth or their mind, if you will. And don't even think about what they're imbibing. They just lick it, lick it, lick it. And then later get sick, spiritually sick, intellectually. And they wonder why. And then we look at our churches and we say, why are our churches full of people that are theologically and ethically and intellectually and spiritually sick? Well, it's because they haven't worried about what they've been eating, what they've been imbibing, what they've been thinking about. They haven't thought about that first lecture that you heard today about loving God with all their mind. They haven't been concerned to think about those things which are proper and true and those things which reflect the thinking of God himself. If we are going to love God with all of our minds, we must learn to discern good from evil. And to do that, to be very simple about it, you must learn to live in terms of a Christian worldview in everything that you do. This means you no longer turn on Oprah Winfrey or Phil Donahue and watch that and just take it all in. Licking the sucker, not caring what kind of diseased thinking you're being exposed to. Now, I might talk to you about whether you're wasting your time to watch such junky programs in the first place, but that isn't my point. I mean, every once in a while I pick them up too, just because I feel like I've got to have something to aggravate me so I can go out in the world. And no, I'm teasing you. Yeah, I watch it to see some of the silly things that people say and use the illustrations and all that. But when you are watching those kind of TV programs or, and this is the sad thing you don't realize there's really not much difference between what you see there and the evening news. It's just the way it's packaged. It looks more sophisticated when the evening news does it. But you have a point of view being given to you in the evening news. Did you realize that? Do you worry about that? Do you ever stop to say, oh, I wonder where this sucker has been before you put it in your mouth? If you're going to love God with all of your mind, you're going to become more discerning about good and evil. You're going to ask, what's the source of this opinion? What are the consequences that follow from this opinion? How does this compare to the purity of God's word? So I'd like to make a couple of applications this afternoon about loving God with all of our minds. First of all, personal applications and then secondly, some public applications to what we've been studying together in the area of personal applications. Let me begin by having you look at one Peter, 1:15 there. Peter says, but like as he who called you is holy. Be yourselves also holy in all manner of living. If you love God with all of your mind, then that is going to be a prerequisite to you obeying this command that you be holy in all manner of living. God expects you to be holy in terms of your church life, and God expects you to be holy in terms of your devotional life on a daily basis. And certainly God expects you to be holy in terms of the way you live before your family, the Christian lifestyle that you have within your family. However, God expects much more than that. He expects you to be holy in everything that you do, in the way that you look upon economic issues, in the way that you spend your money, in the way that you educate your children in the kind of art that you are interested in, in the way that you evaluate it, and your view of politics and your social relationships and your vocations and everything that you do. Peter says, be holy. What does holy mean? Well, you can translate it in different ways, but it certainly involves this idea being distinct, being set apart from the ordinary, being consecrated to the service of God, being pure rather than defiled, being righteous rather than worldly. Peter says, in everything that you do, like the one who called you is holy you be set aside, you be set apart to his service in everything that you do in all manner of living. And so the first personal application that I would give you to loving God with all of your mind and thinking in terms of worldview analysis is that you must become self conscious about your presuppositions. You must become self conscious, that is, you must stop and think, what is it that I think is most true? What are my ultimate standards? What is my view of knowledge, my view of reality, my view of ethics? The sad fact is that most people in this world, even those who are college graduates, most people in this world do not think through the things that they believe. They just take things for granted, people. Francis Schaeffer put it this way once, and I kind of like it. He said, people don't so much choose their presuppositions as they catch their presuppositions, as someone catches the measles. And that's very true. We live in an environment where there's a certain politically correct point of view and we just kind of catch that political correctness. You know that you go to a church now, I'm not saying that what you believe in your church is wrong, but my guess is that most people, and just about any number of churches, even those that I would endorse in terms of my theological distinctness, most people have not thought through their theology. They have not become self conscious, they've just kind of caught what's going around. But if you love God with all of your mind, you must become self conscious about those things that you hold most dear and those things that you believe. Proverbs 1:7 tells us that the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord. You must honor God at the outset of your thinking. Are your presuppositions, ones which show reverence for God and for His Word. There are people who tell us that in our apologetical approach, that is in our strategy for defending the faith, there are certain things that we take for granted as fundamentals along with the unbelieving world. And then having agreed with the unbelieving world about certain truths that we exist, that we know things through observation that we shouldn't kill each other, certain basic things we take for granted. On that platform, we try to reason to the conclusion that God exists and hope that the unbeliever will go with us. Isn't that shameful? As the Bible tells us, God is not at the end of the reasoning process. Where is God? He's at the beginning of the reasoning process. Knowledge begins with the Fear of the Lord. It doesn't end with the fear of the Lord. It isn't as though knowledge finally takes us to the conclusion, oh, I guess I should stand in reverence of God, that the Bible says to know anything, you must begin with reverence for God. The Hebrew word is rosh, meaning head, the head of knowledge. The first point, starting point, if you want to put it that way of knowledge is fearing the Lord. And that's why Christians cannot be playing the game that they are neutral in their presuppositions. Your fundamental convictions about life must stand in awe of, in reverence of God, the faith, fear of the Lord. First, personal application that I would make to you. And if you take nothing else away today, I hope it's this, that you go home and think about what you believe and ask whether at the very foundation of all your thinking you have started with the fear of the Lord. Secondly, all that you do and say, all of your thinking must be governed by and corrected by God's Word, not by human tradition and worldly thinking. The psalmist says in Psalm 119, thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. It's God's word that guides us and shows us the way. And so our philosophy of life, the way in which we evaluate things in our society, the way in which we make decisions, what we do in our lives, we what we believe, what attitudes we have, what plans we make, what affections we have, our philosophy of life is going to be governed by the light of God's Word. It shows us the way. And when worldly philosophy comes along and says, hey, you can't believe that, or boy, that doesn't fit into our traditions, or you sure look like a fool if you do those sorts of things. You must be committed to do what God tells you to do and not worry about what the world says. You must be self conscious about your presuppositions and be willing to be governed by God's Word in all that you do. And that leads me thirdly to tell you, you must take God as your ultimate authority rather than having a gallop pole mentality. Now, it so happens that Dr. Bonson holds to some theological distinctives and some ethical distinctives that people in the Christian church find controversial. And I'm not here to whine and say, oh, you know, woe is me. I'm glad that God has allowed me to believe these things. I think that they're true to His Word and I want them to be true to His Word. And I think Christians of goodwill who will follow these instructions will more rather than less come to agree with these sorts of things. But it always gets me. Not so much that people oppose me personally, but it always brings me down and discourages me when I see the gallop pole mentality being used against my distinctives. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. I can say this with all sincerity, examining my heart. I don't mind when somebody stands up and opens the Bible and says, well, I don't think what you're saying comports with this verse here. What would you say about that? That doesn't disturb me. But when people say, oh, we could never do that in our society, I want to say what's so surprising. In the early church, when the Christians came, people complained. They're here to turn the world upside down. And if my theology, if it's true to God's word, turns the world upside down, so be it. I don't care what the Gallup poll teaches me about the most basic convictions of American society. Give any example. Those of you who here last night. There are some people who say, if you oppose the public school system, you're anti American. Which I say, so be it. I'm anti American. If that's what America stands for. Shame on America, you see, because in the end, let God be true, though all men are liars. If the Gallup poll showed that 99.999% of Americans disagreed with me, but I was heart and soul convinced that God's word taught something that, then I'd have to say, then all of you are liars because God is not going to be untrue. And you must develop that. Don't you dare think that's going to come natural. You know, it sounds good. You know, we hear sermons about Martin Luther who can stand and say, you know, here I stand, I can do no other, and so forth. We'd all like to believe. Yeah, we're like Martin Luther. Well, are you? Or would you compromise under the pressure that somebody said, you know, there are some real experts who say that you're wrong. Well, we all have to be teachable. We all have to be open to correction. But I want to be corrected if I'm going to be corrected out of the word of God, not out of some expert's opinion, not out of what the statistics tell me about my society and its practices and traditions. Moreover, the word of God must be our ultimate authority over against observation and experience. There's this wonderful passage in Romans, the fourth chapter, that tells Us something about the nature of Abraham's faith. I'd like you to turn to that with me. Romans 4:18 tells us about Abraham, who in hope believed against hope to the end that he might become a father of many nations. According to that which had been spoken, so shall thy seed be. What a dynamite verse. Because, you see, God had appeared to Abraham in his old age and said, abraham, you're going to be the father of many nations. Now, how did Abraham respond to them? Abraham's 100 years old. His wife Sarah is 90, and on top of it, she's barren. And God says, but you're going to have a child. In fact, you are going to become the father of many nations. Now, what would Abraham have done if he would have gone to the gynecologist of his day? If he had gone to the sex therapist of his day and said, now what do you think I am an old man? My wife's old, she is barren. Much chance that we are going to have a baby. What would he have been told? The world would have said, no way, Joseph. It ain't going to happen. And so, against hope, against anything from an empirical, observational, or, if you will, scientific standpoint, the Bible says against hope. He in hope believed that he might become the father of many nations. According to what? According to what the world said, according to what observation would tell him, according to what human tradition would let him believe. No, according to what had been spoken by God. Abraham took the word of God and pitted it against the authority of the experts. And he said, I believe what God says. And that's the mentality you must have. In Luke, the 16th chapter, Jesus tells us the story of the rich man and Lazarus. And to be real quick about this, you know that the rich man lived in utter disregard of Lazarus and his misery. Lazarus is a poor man who's at the gate of the rich man. The dogs lick his sores and so forth, and they both die on the same day. The rich man goes to Hades and is in torment in the flames of hell. And Lazarus goes to Abraham's bosom where he is enjoying the delight of God's presence and provision. And the rich man in Hades looks and sees the delight of Lazarus. And he cries out to Abraham, let me go back and warn my brothers that they not come to this place of torment. And Abraham dismisses it. Of course, Abraham here is the spokesman for God in the illustration. Abraham or God dismisses this. He says, no, they have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear the Scriptures. And here's what the rich man says, and it's the mistaken thinking of just about every unbeliever in this world and sadly, even many apologists in the Christian church. No Father Abraham. But if a miracle took place, if someone rose from the dead, and then they would believe, isn't that amazing? Don't you know Jesus is referring to what's going to take place when he rises from the dead? When Jesus rose from the dead, did that convince the Romans and the Jewish leaders to follow him? You know what the Bible says? They paid the soldiers to lie about it. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm not an unbeliever, so I can't get into their skin or into their mind and think this through. But I can't, even from an unbelieving standpoint, imagine that. What good does it do to pay people to lie about somebody who has power over death? I mean, does that make any sense? And yet they do that. And so in the story, you'll notice that Abraham says, no. Even if someone rises from the dead, if they won't hear Moses and the prophets, if they won't hear God's word, then observation and miracles are not going to change anything. And our tendency is to think, oh, no, if God would do a miracle for this unbeliever, then he would automatically change his point of view. I had an interesting thing happen when I debated an atheist by the name of Gordon Stein a few years ago at the University of California in Irvine. And I don't want to be commercial about this, but if you'd like to hear that debate, I think that there are some copies on the table and you can get it from our tape ministry if there aren't. But in this debate we have some time for cross examination. This atheist essentially told me that if God performed some kind of a miracle, then there would be evidence for him and he'd be willing to believe. For instance, he said, if this podium were to elevate, I think he said, 10ft off the ground or something like that, and stay suspended for a certain period of time, then he would believe. And I don't know if this surprises you or not, but when he got done, I said, no, you wouldn't. I don't think that would change your mind at all. Because if that podium elevated, your first inclination would be to say, somehow Dr. Bonson rigged it. He's tricking me. Or you would say, well, in the end, there's something strange in the natural world that we haven't understood yet that accounts for this. I've known people, not a lot, but I've known people, scholars who would say, well in theory I could accept that Jesus rose from the dead. We don't know how that took place, but if we had more information we could study it scientifically and figure out why it is that some cadavers resuscitate. You see, when someone rises from the dead, that doesn't change the thinking of the unbeliever. It's not observation that is ultimately authoritative according to the word of God. If it were, Abraham would never have believed he'd have a baby. It's not observation that's going to change people's minds according to Jesus speaking in Luke 16, but it's the word of God that must be our ultimate authority. We must take God as our authority and say, if everybody disagrees with it, tough, I'm going to be faithful to him. Fourthly, if you are self conscious about your presuppositions and if you're governed by God's word and take it to be the ultimate authority over against the Gallup Pole, over against experience and observation, then you must apply your Christianity to every area of life from this day forth. I hope that you will never be satisfied to say, well, I'm a fairly good Christian when it comes to the life of my congregation. I go to the fellowship dinners and I engage in the evangelistic crusades and I try to help out in the worship services in one way or another. And so my Christianity is full orbed. I'm not against the life of the church. Someone was asking me at the break about that. People who teach the sorts of things that I teach sometimes get the bum rap that we're against the church or we're against evangelism. And that's just pure slander. I don't know any nice way to put is just not true. People who believe the theological distinctives that I believe are committed to the life of the church. I'm a pastor of a Presbyterian church. My study center, unlike many others, is under the control of a Presbyterian session because I believe in being a good churchman and being faithful. I believe people should go to church and worship God, take the sacraments. I believe you need to take the gospel to your neighbors. I believe in evangelism, but I also believe you're to be holy in all manner of life and so you're to think about the arts and the entertainments as a Christian should think you're to pursue your particular vocation, be you a doctor or a plumber, whatever. As a Christian doctor or plumber. I believe that you ought to think politically as a Christian and to vote as a Christian and to spend your money as a Christian. You need to apply Christianity to everything you do. Or as 2nd Corinthians 10:5 says, Bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Because Colossians 2,3 says that all the treasures of wisdom, knowledge are deposited in Him. Jesus is the key to medical success. Did you know that? Have you ever thought about that? I praise God that I've had two open heart surgeries, an emergency stomach surgery with a bleeding ulcer, and so forth. And my life was at, you know, at risk and the doctors were able to save me. But, you know, I'm thankful for the doctor's skill that if it weren't for what Jesus does in controlling this universe, those doctors could not have done it. Jesus is the depository of all medical wisdom and knowledge, all knowledge about physics, all knowledge about technological matters in our society, economic matters, political matters, artistic matters, educational matters, whatever it may be. Jesus is the source of our wisdom in all things. And so you must stop thinking like the table of contents of Time magazine. What am I getting at there? Have you ever looked at Time magazine? When I go places to speak, that's when I get caught up on my Time magazine reading on the airplane. You know, it's amazing to me, in Time magazine you see Life cut up in the table of contents into all these different areas, right? You have sports and politics and international relations and education and economics and whatever else it may be. And then if you look down there, aren't we always flattered as Christians every once in a while? There's religion too. Isn't that great? Here's the secular magazine that covers all things and covers religion too. What an insult. I mean, if you have to have a magazine, maybe you have to do it that way. But don't you dare look at life like the table of contents of Time magazine. There's my artistic thinking, there's my educational thinking, there's my thinking about the family and politics and my thinking about religion. Where, you see, your Christianity is not a slice of life. Christianity is life and it's all of life. So that in all manner of living, you need to be holy, you need to be obedient, you need to love God with your mind, practically. What is this going to mean for you? Three things. It's going to mean that you need to become more diligent in your daily study and prayer life. By the way, I might just say in passing, those of us who are Reconstructionists are not supposed to say those sorts of things, right? We don't believe in piety. Let me tell you something. If you're not a pious Christian, you're not going to be a transforming Christian. The reason why I think we've gotten that bum rap is because we talk about these other things and then people sometimes say, oh well, you're not committed to the daily life of being a pious Christian who reads his Bible and prays. Well, I'm here to tell you if you don't daily read your Bible and pray, you're a weak, wimpish Christian. And I can't expect that you're going to go out and transform your area of thinking, your area, you know, your vocation or what you, what influence you have in society because you haven't even transformed your own life. What do you do with your extra time? Have you ever thought, I'm going to buy this book on theology, this book on Christian ethics, this book on biblical study, and I'm going to make time to read it. You know, the sad thing is, and I'll say this about myself because I don't think that I can self righteously stand above you and condemn you here. I have these problems too. If I were not engaged this weekend in this conference, you can be very sure that whatever duties I had at home, I would have carved out time this afternoon to watch the football game because I enjoy that. And by the way, I don't think in and of itself that's sinful, but I would have made time for it. But it bothers me that though I can do that to watch a football game, I sometimes can't make time to read this book that I think is important. You have that problem too. And when all said and done before God, we have to stand condemned and say, I don't have the right priorities. God, I can find time for my pleasures, but I don't find time for you. You must daily study your Bible and daily pray. Don't ever get the idea that knowing God with your mind is just a matter of amassing intellectual facts, theological content, you know, stuffing your head with all the Bible knowledge that you can. That's not knowing God. On the other hand, you can't know God without the facts. You see how the evil one likes to tear up the Christian life. There are two forms of temptation that I believe Satan uses in this regard. The one is to think that you can know God and be a strong Christian without studying theology. That is, you can know God in this emotional way, but your Mind doesn't have to be engaged, doesn't have to know the truth and follow him. But you see, there's an equal but opposite error, and that is that you know God as long as you've studied the Bible, but your life hasn't been transformed by it. Friend of mine used an illustration recently about the need for us to. To have the Holy Spirit transform our lives. And he took into the pulpit a long extension cord with the light at the end, you know, with the light bulb, you know, plugged into the socket. And he took the other end of the. Of the cord and he gave it to somebody who happened to be a handyman in the congregation, somebody who knew all about electricity, how to repair homes and so forth. And he said, now I want you to think about electricity, and we'll see if this light goes on. What was the point of that illustration? All the knowledge in the world about electricity is not going to get the light on unless it's plugged into the electricity. And all the knowledge in the world that you have theologically, you can answer on a piece of paper. All your knowledge about the work of the Holy Spirit and redemption doesn't mean a thing if you're not plugged in. You must daily read your Bible, daily pray. Because if we are not transformed people in our individual lives, we cannot expect to see all areas of life transformed to the glory of God. The second thing, in a sense, I've already touched on this, but the second thing is you must become people who are adept at the meat of the Word and not just the milk of the word. Hebrews, the fifth chapter, says, @ a time when you should be teachers, you have need for somebody to explain again the rudimentary principles of Christianity to you. You have not become exercised in the word of God, and that's why you cannot discern good and evil. It's not just enough that you daily study and pray. That is crucial, but you need to be those who will go on to the meat of the Word. My guess is that many of you have run into these devotional tracts and daily booklet. I mean, monthly booklets that are distributed, you know, your daily bread and things like that, where you have a little paragraph or two paragraph, devotional thought, some simple, you know, devotional idea with a Bible verse to read. I'm not here to ridicule that, because I'll tell you, I have a much higher view of somebody who does at least that much regularly than somebody who every once in a while picks up. Charles Hodges Systematic theology can spout off A few theological niceties, but the truth of the matter is you need to get far beyond these monthly devotional booklets. You need to eventually bite into the porterhouse of God's Word and stop sucking up the pablum. You need to become serious about studying theology. Theology is not simply for pastors in the church, of course, in our day and age, if you were to do an evaluation, you might wonder whether even pastors care about theology anymore. But I'm committed to theology. I think it's important. There is a pattern of sound words to use the Apostle Paul's language. He says it is a health giving pattern of sound words. It's healthy doctrine and teaching and you need to get your teeth into it. You need to grow up in the Lord. You need to stop being those who are such to have to have the ABCs explained to you over and over again. You need to move on to the meat of the Word. Thirdly, in terms of following out the development of a Christian worldview, you need to realize that the Word of God, the truth of God, is intended to sanctify you. I've already talked about how you need to pray. You need to be plugged into the power of the Spirit, if you will, in addition to reading your Bibles. But you need to, after you've read the Scripture, change your life. John 17:17 we referred to this earlier today and I'd like to repeat it again. John 17:17 Jesus is praying for you in the garden of Gethsemane before he will go to his trial. And finally the cross. And he prays to His Father and He says, sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. You study the word of truth that God has given you in the Scripture. You need to know that Jesus is praying, that that will sanctify you, will change your life, make you distinctive, make you consecrated to his service and obedience, so that in all manner of living, as Peter says, you will be holy. Well, as I said, the application of loving God with all of our minds must begin with personal reformation. Becoming self conscious about our presuppositions, being governed by God's word, taking it as our ultimate authority and applying it to every area of life. However, it would be wrong if we thought that loving God with all of our minds could be restricted to the individual. It must begin with the individual. It cannot be restricted to the individual. Please turn in your Bibles to Proverbs, the eighth chapter. Actually, we could read a good portion of the entire book of Proverbs to make this point, but I'M going to choose just one passage for illustrative purposes, and I'm going to read verses 6 to 21 of this chapter. Proverbs 8, beginning at the sixth verse here. For I will speak excellent things in the opening of my lips shall be right things, for my mouth shall utter truth, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness. There is nothing crooked or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understandeth and write to them that find, receive my instruction, and not silver and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies. And all the things that may be desired are not to be compared unto it. I, Wisdom, have made prudence my dwelling, and find out knowledge and discretion. The fear of Jehovah is to hate evil pride and arrogancy, and the evil way and the perverse mouth do I hate. Counsel is mine, and sound knowledge I am understanding. I have might by me kings reign, and princes decree, justice by me princes rule, and nobles even all the judges of the earth. I love them that love me. And those that seek me diligently shall find me. Riches and honor are with me, yea, durable wealth and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold, and my revenue than choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness in the midst of the paths of justice, that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance, and that I may fill their treasuries. I love the Book of Proverbs. In fact, I have four years worth of preaching on the Book of Proverbs that you can get from our tape ministry. There is so much here. When I finished, it actually took me five years with certain, you know, interludes with other preaching series there. But when I finished after five years, I told my congregation after the last sermon, I said, I feel like I've only scratched the surface. Now we can go back with this introduction and start studying. And I mean, I wasn't saying that just for rhetorical effect. There is so much here, and I want to look at the whole book. But let's just look at this one passage that we have before us. Notice the broad relevance of God's word of wisdom. Here it is God speaking, personified as Wisdom. I, Wisdom, do the following. Those of us who come to God and hear His Word, who gain wisdom from him should see the very broad relevance of what he teaches us. First of all, notice this, that according to the Book of Proverbs, we should hold to the inerrancy of God's word. Do you see that? God says in verse 8, all the words of my mouth are in righteousness. Verse 7, for my mouth shall utter truth. There is nothing crooked or perverse in what God says. When God speaks, he speaks the truth. I hope that you take that for granted. My guess is people who would come to an all day seminar like this, at least from a teacher like Dr. Bonson probably already believe this. But you need to know that our churches need to be reformed. And I firmly believe that the huge, the biggest crack that we have in the wall of theology in the evangelical church today is a questioning of the full truthfulness of God's Word. You cannot think that God is wise when you believe you're smart enough to correct what he has to say. Is that such a subtlety? Can't we understand that the only way in which the human mind could ever correct what God says in the Scriptures is if the human mind has discovered and knows better than what God himself has said. And yet the Bible would teach us that the human mind never takes authority over what the Scripture says. Regardless of what the Scriptures speak to, the human mind does not stand in authority over it and cannot correct it. Who's been God's counselor that he should correct him? Well, since God cannot be corrected, then whatever the Bible says must be seen as authoritative. But you know how people tried to get around that to say, oh yes, well, whatever the Bible says in religious things is authoritative. But of course we don't have to hold to the authority of the Bible when it comes to history or science or any of those sorts of things. But you see, every word that God speaks is tried. Every word that God speaks is pure. He says, I only speak the truth. And so if you say, well, God got it right when it comes to redemption, but he certainly doesn't understand principles of society or politics or economics or family life or whatever it may be, then you are standing in authority over God's Word. The first public application then of loving God with all of our minds is to see to it that our churches are committed to the full authority and inerrancy of God's Word. Do you know whether your church is, whether the elders in your congregation are committed to this, whether your pastor believes that? Are they willing to pay the price of being ridiculed by the world because they hold to the doctrine of creation, to the history of the Old Testament, to the miracles of Jesus and to all the ethical instruction we find there? Are they embarrassed by the holy wars of the Old Testament? You need to look into these matters, because if you don't go to a church that proclaims the whole counsel of God with confidence that God makes no mistakes, then you're not in a church that loves God with all of its mind. In fact, you're in a church that somehow believes that it can correct God and stand in authority over him. Notice as well that the Book of Proverbs, chapter 8, tells us that nothing can give satisfaction to human desire like God's Word. When we talk to people in terms of what they are living for, even when we talk to Christians about their heart's desire, we need to be people who promote the idea that knowing God is the only thing that ultimately satisfies the heart's desire. God, speaking as personified wisdom in this chapter tells us, receive my instruction and not silver and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared unto it. You need to promote not only the Christian worldview that people would come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior and have eternal life, but you need to promote it in its fullness that people would know, having become Christians, the only way to have their heart's desire in this world, the only way to be satisfied, is to live ultimately for God and under the authority of His Word. When Paul in the Book of Corinthians deals with what we call the carnal Christian problem, do you think that was something restricted to the first century? I dare say it is not. Just this week, my son came to me talking about one of his friends who professes to be a Christian. And my son was very concerned for him because every once in a while his friend will do things which are sinful. And my son will say, well, now, why do you do that? You know, as Christians, we're not to act that way. And the comeback is, yeah, but I have become a Christian, and once saved, always saved. And I'm really proud of my son for being concerned for his friend. To have that kind of weak theology that says I can live a fleshly life and still think that I'm going to go to heaven to be a carnal type of Christian. My friend told him, you know, my father once preached a sermon in which he said, the doctrine of once saved, always saved is right out of the pit of hell. Now, that may make you wonder about that. You say, Dr. Boston, don't you believe in eternal security? I sure do. For those that are secure. You see all the exhortations of scripture tell us don't you arrogantly presume in self confidence that you have this security if you refuse to follow the Savior. For the one who perseveres to the end shall be saved. I do believe those who are truly saved will always be saved. But I don't believe those who profess to be saved are all saved. Some of them are just the seed that landed on the rocky, shallow ground that sprouts up for a short time and then dies off. And so we need to promote in our churches the inerrancy of the Scripture as the final authority for our teaching ministry. And we need to promote among our Christian friends the idea that they cannot be happy in this world, they cannot gain their heart's desire if they don't live their life under the authority of God's word. That is more valuable than rubies, more valuable than gold. It is. And everything that the hearts desire, everything that the heart desires is nothing in comparison to the wisdom God gives us. Yes, I know that means you're going to get a reputation for being obsessed with God's word. Praise God. You could do much worse. The application of loving God with all of your mind cannot be restricted to the individual. You must want to please God in everything. And that means you must go to a church that pleases God, a church that preaches the whole counsel of God, that believes in the inerrancy of Scripture. You need to, in your congregation, among your Christian relations, promote the full subscription and obedience to God's word if we're going to be happy. But you must also apply your love of God with all your mind to the use of money, education, your vocation, politics, the arts, to put it very simply. You've got to get rid of any sacred secular dichotomy in your thinking. A lot of people hear that lingo and they know that, oh yeah, we're not supposed to have that sort of thing. And yet we go right on living that way, as though some things that we do in this world are to be seen, sacred, you know, obedient to God and other things. They're secular. They really make no difference in terms of religious values. But the fact of the matter is that if we love God with all of our mind now everything is sanctified to him, and every thought is made captive to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so you must go to a church that holds to the inerrancy of Scripture. You must fellowship with Christians who don't want to be carnal Christians, but those who are going to have their heart's desire found in the wisdom that is communicated in God's word. And a church that preaches, as I said, the whole counsel of God, the Bible, from COVID to cover, and then applies what the Bible says to matters that don't seem religious in our day. In our day, religion is supposed to be something that's very private, you know, that's just caught up in the way that you think or the way that you pray or the way that you worship God within the walls of your church. But you must go to a church that preaches all that the Bible says. And, you know, the Bible speaks about things that don't seem, in our day, religious. The Bible talks about family relations. It talks about economics and education. It talks about art and science. It talks about how to be a good neighbor. It talks about how society is to be governed. Sadly, in our day and age, fundamentalism has become a modern monasticism. Fundamentalists who pride themselves, we hold to the inerrancy of scripture, do not preach the whole Bible. My guess is, in your experience, if you'll examine it, how many times have you heard sermons on the Old Testament that weren't sermons about eschatology, the return of Jesus Christ, or a sermon out of the book of Psalms having to do with praising God? Do we preach through the Old Testament? No, we generally ignore the Old Testament. We don't preach from COVID to cover. And even in the New Testament, we wouldn't dare preach what God's word has to say when it comes to, say, some political initiative that's coming up. You know, I'm not promoting any particular organization that opposes abortion when I say this, but, you know, Operation Rescue people are right on target when they criticize the church. And compromising pastors who refuse to take a public stand because it would be controversial. Well, for crying out loud, if you can't take a stand for the life of the innocent unborn baby, then I don't know what you're good for at all. If that moral issue doesn't just motivate you, you know, to stand against your culture. We have fundamentalist churches who say, no separation of church and state. We don't want to get into this kind of thing. Fundamentalist churches who won't talk about what has happened in the Supreme Court of the United States of America. That's politics. Fundamentalist churches who won't tell Christians that the zoning laws of your society are going to be used to squeeze out the church. And if you don't know about that, come to Southern California. I'll explain. Explain to you how it's been happening for 20 years there. But you see, we're not supposed to think about those sorts of things. You know, the best we get out of fundamentalist churches sometimes as well, you know, we don't smoke and we don't chew and we don't go with the girls that do. That's our challenge to society. Well, it's worthless. The first place is not even right. Most of that's not even tied to the scriptures. It's tied to a cultural understanding what it is to live a Christian life. You must, if you love God with all of your heart, soul and mind, insist that your church preach the whole counsel of God, the Bible, from COVID to cover, and then apply it, not monastically, just to the private affairs of the Christian, but apply it culturally and broadly to everything. For the Bible does not teach that Christ is against culture. That idea leads us to think it's perfectly alright to long for the rapture. We know this culture. Jesus is against culture anyway. So just get us out of this mucky situation and the sooner the better. Lord Jesus, the Bible teaches that Christ transforms culture. And if you love God with all of your mind, if every thought is taken captive through the obedience of Christ, then your church must preach a transforming gospel. Not a narrow gospel, not a slice of life gospel, but a gospel that says this is life, life eternal and life abundant. Now notice from Proverbs 8 that politics cannot be separated from Christianity. Excuse me, it can be separated from Christianity, but it cannot be separated from religion. Think about that. You cannot separate politics from religion, you can separate it from Christianity. And when you do so, and that's what Christians are convinced to do, the separation of church and state polemics is don't bring your Christianity into the political arena. You don't want religion interfering with politics. Well, I'm going to tell you something. If Christian religion doesn't interfere with politics, is going to be some other religion that does. So In Proverbs the eighth chapter, God says in verse 15, by me kings reign and princes decree justice. By me princes rule and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. The wisdom that God gives in his word, that we're to preach from COVID to cover the whole council of God, that wisdom even has political instruction in it. Does that shock you? That scare you? That surprise you? God doesn't say Israelite kings are supposed to listen to my law. He says all the judges of the earth. And you know why? Because God created all things and all men are accountable to him as their Creator. And God doesn't have a double standard of justice. What God lays down in his law for Israel to direct their civil affairs was justice, as God, the universal ruler of mankind, sees justice. And therefore that standard applies to all cultures and to all nations. And the book of Proverbs proves that all the judges of the earth are to look to God for wisdom. And where do they get that wisdom? Turn with me to Deuteronomy, the fourth chapter, Deuteronomy 4. Beginning with the fifth verse, Moses says, behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, even as Jehovah my God commanded me, that you should do in the midst of the land, whether you go in to possess it. Keep therefore, and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the people that shall hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. And what great nation is there that hath statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day? When God laid down his law to direct the civil affairs, the social affairs, the family affairs, the economic affairs of Israel, that law was a standard, it was a wisdom that all the nations were to look at and say, boy, that's what we ought to do. And the book of Proverbs presents God as wisdom speaking. And he says, by me all the judges of the earth are to rule Israel was to set forth the law of God, and to live the law of God in such a way that the nations round about would honor the wisdom of God's law, the justice and righteousness of God's statutes, and do it. We as Christians must not be timid about the fact that loving God with all of our minds therefore means a Christian political option. We must apply our Christianity to political affairs, because the book of Proverbs tells us that the judges and kings of the earth are to rule according to him. Psalm, the second chapter, would teach us the same thing. If you look at Psalm 2, and we only have time here to consider the end of it, we read now, and this is verse 10. Now therefore be wise, O ye kings. Have you noticed the continuity there? Wisdom in Proverbs says, kings are to rule according to it. Moses says, the law of God is your wisdom in the sight of the nations. The Psalmist says, therefore be wise, O ye kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. And what is wisdom? Teach them to do. Serve Jehovah with fear and rejoice with trembling, ye judges of the earth. That's more than the theocracy of Israel. All who rule among men must be Wise then, and serve Jehovah with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all they that take refuge in him. The Bible teaches us that God has delivered wisdom for every area of life, including politics. But it's not just politics. Proverbs 8 shows us that the wisdom of God is beneficial in terms of economic instruments instruction too. Again, time is short, so let me just look at the last verse of our reading. Verse 21. Wisdom says that I may cause those that love me to inherit substance. The word substance there means wealth. To inherit wealth and that I may fill their treasuries. An interesting thing that's been going on in the Christian church for over a decade now. There has been a kind of teaching about economics that I consider guilt manipulation. A teaching that tells Christians you ought not to be capitalists who go out and try to be prosperous in this world, that it's wrong for you to have more than other people have. Well, if it's wrong, why then does God offer it to us? Why then does God say, I promise to fill your treasuries and I will have you inherit wealth? God tells us that if we are diligent and obedient to his word, we should expect expect that things will go better, not worse for us in this world. Now, I'm not one of those, you know, health and prosperity guys who says, hey, name it and claim it, visualize it, it's yours. None of that kind of pagan superstitious nonsense, but I certainly do believe in the providence of God. I believe that God governs history and he does it for the benefit of righteousness, God doesn't long term reward unrighteousness. He rewards righteousness. And though there are individual exceptions and none of us can claim to stand before God, and so you have to make me a wealthy rich man. The fact is, in my family and through the generations, we will do better than those who are drug addicts and those who won't get up and go to work in the morning and all the rest. Those who are obedient to the lifestyle of the Christian should expect that wealth will move in their direction, not away from them. And frankly, I am tired of people teaching the very opposite point of view in the name of Christianity and compassion and charity. Now, I don't believe that God promises us wealth so that we can all enjoy our pleasures and just ignore people. I think the wealth of the righteous is stored up that we might advance the kingdom of God that we might help those who are in need and in so doing bring them to the kingdom of God and demonstrate the grace of go God hope to see their salvation. I don't think the wealth is there just for selfish, greedy purposes, but God does promise it. And God tells us how to use our money. God tells us about borrowing and lending. God tells us about principles of co signing for loans and all these sorts of things. But how much do you know about that? Maybe some of you have read some books and so you do feel you're a leg up on on the others. But the fact is there is so much here that the church has not been paying attention to for well over 200 years. We're all terribly ignorant about the principles of economics as the Bible teaches it. I don't agree with everybody who claims to be teaching Christian economics, but I certainly agree with the program that there is a Christian approach to economics and a Christian approach to politics, a Christian approach to counseling. There's a Christian understanding of the work of the church, and I haven't touched on everything this afternoon that I might. But I do hope that I've given you and inspired you with a vision of change and transformation and reformation. A reformation that begins with you individually, your daily piety, coming to the meat of the Word, being sanctified by that experience and calling you to see that you cannot restrict the influence of Christianity and holiness just to you as an individual, it must come out to your relationship to other Christians, to your church life and the kind of church you go to, to your political life, your economic life, your family life, everything that you do, as I've said before, and I'll end with this, if you love God with all of your mind, as I've been exhorting you to do today, not only will you call the unbelieving world to move away from foolishness to the truth and wisdom of God, to move away from the ways of death to the ways of life. But you yourself will exemplify, individually and corporately and publicly, that Christianity is not just a slice of life for you, but it is life itself. Jesus said In John the 10th chapter, I've come to give them life and to give it to them more abundantly. And I pray that you will enjoy that abundance of life in loving God with all that's in.

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