The house of the wicked seeks a statist utopia; but as God's new humanity in Christ we are to build the house of God which will expand to the recreation of all things.
Scripture: Proverbs 14:9-12
Sermon Notes:
- Proverbs is an exposition of God's law for the life of the believer.
- Apologetics is the defense of the Christian worldview and way of life. It is needed first is inside the church, so that we may understand who we are and how we are to live.
- It is the Lord who establishes a family, or a dynasty by Wisdom (Psalm 127; Proverbs 24:3).
- God's wisdom is manifested fully and finally in Christ.
- The sons of the wicked follow Satan, seeking to re-create Eden on man's terms, but their counterfeit kingdom, or "utopia", can never exist. The end of it is folly and death. e.g., the Islamic caliphate seeks to impose sharia to create a world-wide utopia.
- Ideologies have consequences: around the world Christians are losing their lives because of an ideology.
- Christ's kingdom and salvation is the only hope for man; Christian faith seeks the peace and reconciliation of all things through Christ's atonement.
- Human flourishing is the primary concern of human beings. The wicked think they have a better kingdom vision than that of God. They seek a false unity in the city of man, promising to fulfill man's desire to be as gods.
- Rousseau was a utopian dreamer and a vile, selfish and hypocritical man, yet his ideas influenced much of the movements of communism, fascism, and humanism.
- The Bible is not utopian; we believe the future is established by God for His own kingdom and purposes.
- If we do not believe that God governs the future, then man must seek a source of salvation from a chaotic universe.
- Autonomous man in a materialist universe faces total chaos.
- Nobody is secure, so individuals must join the collective to secure, protect, and control the future.
- UN documents outlined the creation of a global humanist collective. This statist idol lays claim to all the attributes of the God it seeks to replace.
- The goal of these utopia ideologies is to be absorbed into one: man has to be restored to a total unity in his attempt to be like God.
- The teaching of churches and the Christian family is the primary opposition to the vision for a messianic state.
- Man's human qualities are blown up to cosmic proportions as the kingdom of man.
- In western society the utopian vision of social justice is portrayed as love for everyone and everything people do.
- Utopian doctrine seeks to equalize everything and to destroy all distinctions so that all may become one.
- Love and justice are seen as coercing people to conform to the utopian vision.
- Man sees himself as a source of law and salvation; total power is the requirement of the total utopia.
- The Bible portrays rebellious man as a usurper wanting to be like God (Cf. Genesis 3, 11).
- Though man's new Tower of Babel is intimidating in its power, the world of the future will be God's.
- Our task is not to create utopia, but to restore God's world back into His garden.
- We are to be God's vice reagents and to find our true humanity serving Christ.
- Every tribe, nation and tongue will be brought together in unity under Christ.
Application Questions
- What the place of apologetics in the church?
- What are the consequences of wrong ideas? What happens when the church mingles wrong ideas?
- What is the fruit of man's attempt to be like God?
- What is the modern doctrine of the western social order?
- How should we response to the power of utopian statism?
- What is the Christian vision of the future?