John Lennox Explains IDOLATRY Like You've Never Heard BEFORE! (Origins, Abraham, Modern Idols)

[00:00:00]But, we can stand back from this and be encouraged that a flawed men and women like the three great patriarchs and Abraham in particular can learn to trust God, then there's some hope for the rest of us.

[00:00:18]Ladies and gentlemen, the biggest issue we face, >> [snorts] >> the biggest pressure on us, is to undermine our confidence in God and His word.

[00:00:29]That's number one.

[00:00:31]And the enemy will do anything he can to trip you up morally, but he'll do everything he can to undermine your confidence in the word of God and His truth.

[00:00:43]That's why we have vast reams of history of Abraham and the patriarchs, because the key issue for them, in the midst of all the other issues of family and so on, the key issue was, "Am I going to trust God?"

[00:01:03]And that will be the challenge to my heart and to yours.

[00:01:08]>> Idolatry, especially in our modern world, can manifest in our lives in a variety of different ways.

[00:01:14]In essence, idolatry is the elevation of anything, a concept, an object, a person, or even a deity to a status above our love for God.

[00:01:25]It can be literally anything from wealth to societal status to sports or material pursuits, anything that gets priority in our minds and as a result our lives over God.

[00:01:37]But in the ancient Near East, idolatry was something far less subtle. The ancient concept of idolatry was literal worship of other deities and divine beings, possibly because of the temporal proximity to the creation of the universe, which placed the people of that era closer to the raw materials of God's creation. The very first example of idolatry is the infamous passage in Genesis 3, which takes place in the Garden of Eden.

[00:02:03]The serpent's deception is elevated above God's command to not eat of the forbidden fruit, and by proxy, the serpent, who was in effect Satan, momentarily usurped the authority from under Yahweh.

[00:02:16]This was effectively the first instance of idolatry, and we all know what the repercussions were for both parties involved. In fact, we're still dealing with those repercussions even today.

[00:02:27]But at the very heart of idolatry is the element of trust. I want you to see this insightful clip of Professor John Lennox examining the nature of idolatry because he approaches this topic from an interesting angle. Let's check it out.

[00:02:41]>> There is such a profound dimension of supernaturalism in scripture right from the very beginning.

[00:02:52]Genesis, you see, not only gives an account of the temporal beginnings of the universe, >> [snorts] >> but it also gives us a biblical anthropology in the original sense of that word. A logos account of anthropos, man.

[00:03:10]And Leon Kass, a Jewish writer of great academic distinction, suggests that the stories are powerful precisely because they present human life in all its moral ambiguity.

[00:03:26]They present to us not simply what once happened in a particular time and place, but in a very real sense, they will throw light on what always happens.

[00:03:41]And hence, they will throw light on the complexity of our own lives.

[00:03:49]So, Genesis does not simply show us what is first in time, but what is first in importance when it comes to understanding fundamental things.

[00:04:02]God, the universe, life, language, morality, relationships, sin, death, faith, salvation, judgment.

[00:04:12]And the first three sections reveal to us what the world once was in all its glory.

[00:04:19]With human beings made in the image of God as the pinnacle of his creation with all their wonderful capacities.

[00:04:27]But it then relates to devastation wrought by the misuse of those capacities in disobeying the word of God and then bringing sin >> [clears throat] >> and alienation into the world.

[00:04:41]The banishing from Eden.

[00:04:44]The trials of life, the increasing violence of human behavior that leads to the capital judgment of the flood with only the family of Noah saved to repopulate the planet.

[00:04:59]It's a pretty grim picture.

[00:05:02]And God starts again.

[00:05:05]This time by calling out a particular person, Abram, from the descendants of Noah to form a new nation that would live life God's way.

[00:05:17]And of course the major lesson and the biggest lesson is that since sin entered the world through human failure to trust God and grasping at independence of God the way back to God will involve learning to trust him and his word.

[00:05:39]And you know it's immensely encouraging.

[00:05:42]As we study we shall see some of the immense complexities of the way back to God.

[00:05:48]But, we can stand back from this and be encouraged that a flawed men and women like the three great patriarchs, and Abram in particular, can learn to trust God, then there's some hope for the rest of us.

[00:06:05]>> [snorts] >> Ladies and gentlemen, the biggest issue we face, the biggest pressure on us, is to undermine our confidence in God and his word.

[00:06:17]That's number one.

[00:06:19]And the enemy will do anything he can to trip you up morally, but he'll do everything he can to undermine your confidence in the word of God and his truth.

[00:06:31]That's why we have vast reams of history of Abraham and the patriarchs, because the key issue for them, in the midst of all the other issues of family and so on, the key issue was, am I going to trust God?

[00:06:51]And that will be the challenge to my heart and to yours. Well, where did he start?

[00:06:58]Well, we don't know a great deal about Abram's early life.

[00:07:05]But, the book of Joshua tells us that Abram was an idol worshiper.

[00:07:11]Joshua said to all the people, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, long ago your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor, and they served other gods.

[00:07:24]That's the starting place. And we know far too little about it, really. And so, speculation is rife.

[00:07:34]But, at least we can ask the question, what is the nature of idolatry?

[00:07:41]Because God had to break its grip in Abraham's life.

[00:07:47]Is it relevant to us? Yes, says John the Apostle. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

[00:07:55]They may be things, forces, powers, false gods, ideas, but generally speaking, idols form that category of things that we trust rather than God.

[00:08:08]They can be things we love. Though many in the ancient world feared their idols, the key thing is it has to do with trust. And so it has to do with the central message of Abraham's life. Now, of course, every day we have to trust people, doctors, dentists, institutions, but that does not mean we put our final trust in them.

[00:08:33]And there are many things, power, fame, wealth, health, education, sex, and so on, that become God substitutes for many in our societies.

[00:08:44]But in the West, the dominant view of naturalism, its worldview, its central focus is its proud trust in the human mind, and in its attribution of creative powers to nature, and that is as idolatrous as any of the idolatries of the ancient world. Because, of course, you will be aware that ancient Babylonian Mesopotamia, their gods were material gods, by which I mean that they had not simply cosmogenies, but theogenies.

[00:09:21]Their gods came out of the original mass energy or physics and chemistry of the universe.

[00:09:28]That is immensely important.

[00:09:32]As one writer put it, getting it exactly right, the gods of the ancient Near East were descended from the heavens and the earth. The God of the Bible created the heavens and the earth.

[00:09:45]That's the vast difference.

[00:09:48]And it is amusing when you debate people like Michael Shermer and so on as they did at Oxford last year, and they come up with this argument, you know, you are an atheist with respect to Artemis, Baal, they go through the alphabet and tell me I'm an atheist with regard to Zeus, and then they said, "We just go one God more."

[00:10:07]What a childish comment that is. It shows they haven't a clue about the nature of the gods of the ancient Near East.

[00:10:15]>> [snorts] >> Because all the gods I've just mentioned were products of the universe. The God of the Bible created the universe.

[00:10:24]And we need to emphasize that very strongly, because what Genesis would be doing in the life of Abraham is to move him from a worldview that deifies the basic forces of nature as we would call them, projecting their images onto gods.

[00:10:41]And bring him to the worship of the true God who transcends space-time and who created the universe.

[00:10:49]>> [snorts] >> And of course this idolatry is um the center of what happens in um Genesis in the Garden of Eden.

[00:11:01]The temptations surrounded the human satisfaction of three desires, the basic appetite for food, the desire for aesthetic satisfaction, and the intellectual desire for human flourishing. You shall be as God.

[00:11:17]>> [snorts] >> And the subtlety of the talking snake, and that's another story.

[00:11:21]But you'll notice that the principal first attack on humanity was this, has God said?

[00:11:29]Has God said? That's the attack. That's where it comes.

[00:11:34]If God can get you if if the enemy can get you to ask that question, has God said? You're well on the way to losing your compass.

[00:11:44]And what we need to do for one another at a conference like this, and I'm so delighted to be part of it in all the workshops, is to ram home the importance and the reasons that God can be trusted and we can have confidence in him as we go out into a world which for some of you means that you're in a very extreme minority and it's very hard to keep your head above the parapet and to keep yourself straight.

[00:12:13]And so I trust that God will encourage us.

[00:12:16]So the central issue is this.

[00:12:19]Are we going to trust God in his word or are we going to trust ourselves and our abilities? There is a danger of that, of course.

[00:12:28]You know, all of us in this room I suspect have had a very good education.

[00:12:33]And you know what one of the biggest dangers for us is? It's idolatry of the mind.

[00:12:38]You say, "What's that?"

[00:12:40]Idolatry of the mind, ladies and gentlemen, is where I trust my mind and my intellectual ability and then I use God when I get stuck.

[00:12:53]Christianity is when I trust God and use my mind.

[00:12:57]There's a vast world of difference.

[00:13:00]And there's a temptation for us, especially if we've been given those kind of gifts, to subtly and increasingly trust our mind, our arguments, our abilities, and God gets crammed into a corner. And you can measure that by the amount of time we spend in scripture, which we claim to believe and to teach.

[00:13:22]That's the challenge, isn't it?

[00:13:25]How can I possibly convince the world that the Bible is God's word when I'm a bright person who spends 5 minutes a day or less reading it?

[00:13:35]I probably don't need to say that to you, but perhaps I do to some of the people that you're responsible for teaching.

[00:13:43]We need to wake up and get real about this.

[00:13:47]>> Professor Lennox's presentation here of his view on the nature of idolatry was, as always, thoughtfully worded, and I couldn't agree more that the entire concept centers around wherein our trust lies.

[00:14:00]The question he posed about whether we trust God and use our minds or trust our minds and use God is something that we should consider for everything we put our minds or our hands to.

[00:14:11]The famous passage in Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths."

[00:14:25]This is the essence of Professor Lennox's question, and ironically enough, it comes from King Solomon, whose life is one of scripture's most famous paradoxes.

[00:14:35]In 1 Kings chapter 3, Yahweh appears to a youthful King Solomon in a dream and offers to grant him whatever the boy desires.

[00:14:43]Instead of asking for wealth or longevity, Solomon humbly asked for a discerning heart by which to govern God's people fairly.

[00:14:51]Yahweh is deeply pleased with this unselfish request, so he grants Solomon unprecedented wisdom, but adds wealth, honor, and a long life. However, despite the wisdom God endowed him with, his unchecked pursuit of power, wealth, foreign alliances, and sensual desires led to the downfall of this wise king, and ultimately pulled him away from the Most High who gave him his unmatched intellect.

[00:15:17]While he was incredibly wise, he made terrible decisions like marrying hundreds of foreign wives to secure political alliances which led to the turning of his heart from Yahweh toward the gods of his wives and concubines and building altars and participating in pagan worship.

[00:15:36]It goes to show that knowledge of how the world works doesn't automatically equal moral obedience.

[00:15:42]In the wise words of Chuck Missler, it's a miracle for a person to be saved by Jesus Christ. It's an even bigger miracle for a person with a doctorate degree to be saved by Jesus Christ.

[00:15:54]But I want you to see the next portion of this John Lennox clip because he touches on another aspect of idolatry and how modern examples mimic those of the ancient world. Let's check it out.

[00:16:04]>> The importance of beginning with the word of God and letting it soak into our minds and hearts. Now, the universal project is the background to Abram, the building of the great city. If it is a fascinating genealogy because the genealogy of Shem is interrupted, of Noah is interrupted and you get this little bit about um Nimrod, the founder of Babel, who's said to be a first mighty man on the earth, a powerful hunter.

[00:16:38]And again, we know relatively little about him. Josephus held that it was Nimrod who excited the people of Shinar to such an affront and contempt of God.

[00:16:49]He said he would be revenged on God if he should have a mind to drown the world again and his idea was to build a city big enough that the flood of it happened again would never reached it.

[00:17:01]There's a very telling phrase, "The beginning of his kingdom."

[00:17:08]Genesis starts with the words "in the beginning."

[00:17:13]That's the beginning of space-time, the universe. Now, we come to another beginning, the beginning of secular power, we would call it.

[00:17:22]In the city of Babel, which which was a very advanced project.

[00:17:30]There are hints earlier in Genesis about the beginnings of civilization. Cain, we're told, built a city called Enoch, and one of his descendants had a particularly talented family that developed agriculture, industry, music, and the arts.

[00:17:46]And these ancient people, as they migrated, say to one another, "Come, let us break bricks, literally, [snorts] and burn them to a burning. Let us build for ourselves a city with a tower with its head in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves." And the word for name is Shem.

[00:18:09]This is all happening in the genealogy of Shem.

[00:18:14]Let us make a Shem for ourselves.

[00:18:18]What does that mean?

[00:18:20]You say I'm here at this conference, and I'm looking for meaning. Of course we are.

[00:18:28]What is your name? What do you mean?

[00:18:31]The search for meaning is one of the most motivational searches that humanity knows.

[00:18:39]And we start with it.

[00:18:41]Let us make a name for ourselves, but somehow they were discontent. And this is making a name through the use of advanced, sophisticated human technology.

[00:18:53]We're right into the 21st century, of course.

[00:18:58]Harvey Cox in his landmark book, The Secular City, written in '65, says, "In our day, the secular metropolis stands as both the pattern of our life together and the symbol of our view of the world."

[00:19:12]And Leon Kass said, "Babel is a new idea in Genesis. It's a redefining of what humanity means, and this is what the city does."

[00:19:23]>> [snorts] >> Now, that is a topic for you to work out in your workshops, the secular city, death in the city, as Francis Schaeffer once said, "What is the city and what is its significance?" Because, of course, vast proportion of the earth now is living in cities, aren't they?

[00:19:42]And big towers. Have you noticed how the nations are competing to build the biggest thing into the sky they can?

[00:19:48]Fascinating, isn't it?

[00:19:51]Philip Noble, writing in The American, "The most primal motivation for skyscraper construction is to stake a claim, to mark the land, to show how your power can change the world both physically and psychologically. Nothing says, 'I am master of the universe' more clearly than the erection of a tall building.

[00:20:13]And if it can be taller than all the rest, so much the better. Before the Petronas Towers, no one knew where Kuala Lumpur was."

[00:20:20]Skyscrapers are made to make space. They are built to make money, but they are also built to make a point. They are built to awe.

[00:20:31]And when we do get our true mile-high tower in 2030 or sooner, one thing is certain, behind the financing, behind the army of workers, the engineers, the architects, there will stand a giant ego, personal, corporate, or national, but still requiring its likeness to be etched in the clouds. And the ideology of the modern skyscraper is the ideology of ancient Babylon, identity, technological achievement, prowess, pushing out the boundaries, fronting wealth and power, reaching for the sky, grasping at immortality.

[00:21:12]And the tower or ziggurat in Babylon was called Etemenanki, the house of the foundation of heaven and earth.

[00:21:20]It sought to link the city with the cosmos.

[00:21:25]At the level of rational investigation and plotting the stars, trying to predict the seasons, but then in trying to reach the heavens and to control its powers. Do you recognize this as motivation?

[00:21:40]The irony is that later in scripture we read that the only thing in Babylon that reached to heaven was its sins.

[00:21:50]The ancient tower reached up towards heaven, but Genesis has a beautifully ironic comment. God had to come down to see what they were building.

[00:22:01]That's not bad, is it?

[00:22:04]It didn't reach very high.

[00:22:07]God had to come down.

[00:22:09]There was an unbridgeable gap between God and their achievement, and we need to communicate that, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:22:17]Because the higher the skyscrapers go up, they think the less space is left for God.

[00:22:25]Because they feel that God resides in the gap between the height of the skyscraper and the dimension of heaven.

[00:22:34]And God commented in a chilling way on their capacity, "Nothing will be impossible to them."

[00:22:41]What does that mean?

[00:22:42]Does it mean that the project is feasible, but God will not allow it to happen?

[00:22:48]Well, at least we can see what God does.

[00:22:52]He doesn't destroy the city. He breaks its language down.

[00:22:57]Now, language plays a vital part in Genesis.

[00:23:02]>> [snorts] >> By his word, God created. God said to them, by his word he defines morality and relationship.

[00:23:13]And now, God does something that confuses their language.

[00:23:22]Because language creates unity and commonality. It is the foundation of order, and without common language, the common building project collapses.

[00:23:33]Since as we know, in Europe even, the lack of common language causes all kinds of misunderstandings and frustrates the desire for control.

[00:23:46]And these are things we could develop right from now and stop at this.

[00:23:51]They're so important, the meaning of the city.

[00:23:56]Cuz can it all be wrong?

[00:23:59]Many of you work in cities, and we owe the city to the development of the million iPhones that there are in this room and all the rest of it.

[00:24:08]We're grateful for the city. Well, let's before I stop now this morning, get to the opposite side of this to get it into proportion.

[00:24:17]The key statement is this.

[00:24:21]God speaks to a man called Abram.

[00:24:25]And he says, leave your country and your kindred.

[00:24:29]I'll make a great nation of you, but then he says this.

[00:24:32]I will make your name great.

[00:24:37]Shem, your Shem, great.

[00:24:40]And this is it, isn't it? This is the message.

[00:24:44]It is actually something utterly fundamental.

[00:24:48]Because either I'm trying to make my own name great, or I'm I God to make my name great?

[00:24:58]Where do I generate significance?

[00:25:02]Is meaning something only we and we alone can create as Babel thought?

[00:25:09]Abraham's called to trust God for meaning.

[00:25:17]And inside any of us there can be a struggle even in this conference.

[00:25:22]We see walking around at this conference what we imagine to be great names.

[00:25:29]Sure, you know, so-and-so's great name, you know.

[00:25:31]Well, that may be as it may, but we need to be careful with that kind of talk, don't we?

[00:25:37]Because we can begin to feel insignificant.

[00:25:40]And the pressure then is to compete.

[00:25:43]You listen to a group of powerful people talking and you can see subtly behind the scenes a pecking order is being established. You ever noticed that? No, you wouldn't notice that, would you?

[00:25:53]And people pushing.

[00:25:56]And because I'm searching for my significance and you're searching for your significance, my significance sometimes mean that I push my tower a bit higher than yours. In fact, I can't even see yours.

[00:26:11]And you can't even see mine because you feel yours is higher than mine already.

[00:26:16]And that can lead to a lot of hurt and pain, ladies and gentlemen. We need to be practical here. If this is what Abraham was saved from, it must be real.

[00:26:26]And if this is the heart of the diagnosis given in scripture, that Abraham's coming out of this background, that is God is trying to get this background out of him.

[00:26:38]We may be sure that the way we build our lives and the way we search for our meaning is utterly central.

[00:26:50]It's a deep challenge, isn't it?

[00:26:54]And you see, if people say this is a negative attitude to the city, it's culture, it's agriculture, it's infrastructure, it's commerce, it's financial systems, educational, all the rest of it.

[00:27:07]And my friends at IBM tell me we are now entering the age of the smart city, and it sounds utterly fascinating. What's wrong with that? And what is wrong with using your mind to develop these things?

[00:27:19]Absolutely nothing as far as I can see.

[00:27:22]Absolutely nothing.

[00:27:25]There's nothing wrong with using the mind and trusting God. There's everything wrong with trusting the mind and using God.

[00:27:34]And that makes a practical difference.

[00:27:37]>> This was nothing short of a wise message, and this is one major facet of Yahweh's redemption plan for mankind through the work of Jesus Christ.

[00:27:47]It all began in the garden with the first instance of idolatry. As Professor Lennox said, the three desires satisfied by the first rebellion, the appetite for food, the desire for aesthetic satisfaction, and the intellectual desire for human flourishing, i.e., you shall be like God, all fulfilled with one bite.

[00:28:07]The threefold desires of man, as well as the threefold rebellions, as Dr. Michael Heiser notes, the garden, the angels who sinned, and the Tower of Babel, are both reversed by the threefold nature of the Godhead fulfilled as Jesus Christ offered himself as the lamb slain before time.

[00:28:25]When Jesus is our focus and we're completely trusting in him, our desires are to do the will of God, and we're impervious to the temptation of idolatry. This is what Paul wrote of in Romans 12:1.

[00:28:37]Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.

[00:28:45]As we allow God to work through us, sacrificing our own human desires, we actually embody the concept of worship and fulfill God's purpose for our very existence.

[00:28:58]But at any rate, I pray that this video has been a blessing to you. And if you've made it this far, please like this video, subscribe to Dance Like David, and leave a comment that says, "I have no other gods before him." As any interaction with this video allows our content to reach [music] and help more people.

[00:29:15]And may God shine his face upon you and give you peace.

[00:29:19]>> [music] [music]