Selected Scriptures

September 15, 2019

Evening Service

Sean Higgins

Or, The Genus of Kuyperianism

We start a new series tonight, and it aims to cover everything. Well, there’s no way that these eight messages can actually cover everything, but we do want to build some wall-size mental shelves and maybe even put a few conceptual books on the shelves.

What is the main problem with the modern world? Sin, that is the cardinal answer. But which sin is the worst? It’s not greed, though that certainly messes with our economic lives and causes fights between the Haves and the HaveNots whether or not someone is a cultural Marxist. It’s not gender denial or homosexuality, though in Romans 1 that kind of sin demonstrates that a society is already a good way down the moving sidewalk of God’s abandoning wrath. The primary sin is not fatherly abdication, though that messes with families for generations. It’s not pride and political aspirations to rule over other men to their hurt (Ecclesiastes 8:9). It’s not murder, though 60-plus million babies murdered under government protection in this country shows our barbaric side, and murder has the additional complication of being terminal for the victim.

For honest optimists, these are very dark days, and when reasonable people look at the trajectory, it’s hard to be hopeful. Sins of various kinds are all around us. But none of the above may be the worst.

The main problem with the modern world is that we live as if God is irrelevant.

It’s true that there is a new viral strain of militant atheists who are making good money from their books and YouTube ads, ironically protected by Christian principles that prohibit killing blasphemers. There are some self-identified political conservatives who lament our cultural condition and call for a return to reason and virtue, but they can’t get to the source of reason or the reason for virtue beyond pragmatism; it works…better, or it seems like it did. And there are Christians who read their Bibles and who fly across the country to attend conferences with theological preaching, who have quiet times and take their kids to church. But all along the spectrum, from the angriest God-deniers to the most serious Bible-studiers, most of us don’t think about God most of the time for most of what we do.

I’ve said before that, looking back, this was the structural problem with my public schooling. I don’t remember ever hearing a teacher say that only stupid people believe in God, let alone hearing a teacher say that God was dead. But I also don’t remember ever hearing a teacher say that God deserves recognition for our brains and babies and books and biospheres and barns and banks and nations. No name, date, or place, no formula or element, ever belonged to God. No wonder nothing after graduation belonged to Him either.

Of course, the Bible gives the opposite account.

The earth is the LORD’s and the fulness thereof,

the world and those who dwell therein.

(Psalm 24:1)

For every beast of the forest is mine,

the cattle on a thousand hills,

I know all the birds of the hills,

and all that moves in the field is mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you,

for the world and its fullness are mine.

(Psalm 50:10-12)

Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. (1 Chronicles 29:12)

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. (Acts 17:26)

We ought to see God’s sovereignty in and through and over our lives so much that we don’t even need others to watch us work.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are servi[...]