Good evening, church. If you would, go with me to Genesis 2. Genesis 2. We'll begin there and then move our way into Genesis 3. Genesis 2, starting in verse 15. This is the Word of God. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Let's go to Genesis 3. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate." Go to the Lord in prayer. Father, what a text before us. Lord, this is where the great tragedy of all humanity began. And Lord, we need to see the serpent's schemes. And so I pray that You would illuminate our minds and our hearts, that we would know the truth, and that the truth would set us free. And I pray for the Lord Jesus Christ to be exalted by the power of the Spirit. Come and help us, Father. In Jesus' name, Amen. We've come to week four of our series, and this will be our final week in this first section where we have explored the modern man as a psychologized self. And we've seen how when peoples and cultures deny God's truth and suppress it, they ultimately deny reality. and begin to behave in ways that are contrary to nature. And so we saw primarily from Romans 1, verses 18-32, that as people continue to suppress the truth about God and believe lies and dive headlong into sin, that God gives them up in judgment to the lust of their hearts. And we've seen various ways that this has worked itself out in our culture. And this week, as we wrap up the section of the series, we're going to look at the philosophical framework that allows for all of these ideas and behaviors to exist and to have traction. Namely, the relativism of truth and the denial of absolute objective standards for determining truth. This framework is known as postmodernism. or what I am going to refer to as post-modern epistemology. Epistemology is just simply how we know knowledge. How we gain knowledge. How we know what we know. And the more I have studied these different ideologies over the past few months, the more I am becoming convinced that post-modern epistemology is the engine for the train of ideas that we see in our day. So when we look at cultural Marxism, or modern psychology, or the fragility of the culture, and all the different critical and social theories, what we can see is that in order for these theories to be successful, they have to find a way to remove absolute truth from the equation. They have to. Because the theories themselves are full of contradictions, and they're out of check with reality. They don't make sense to most people who are living the world objectively. So, when the vast majority of people analyze the conclusions of these ideologies through the lens of rational thinking, and you employ logic, and you look at empirical data, and you assess the evidence, these systems of thought make no sense, and they fall apart. And nobody believes them. And nobody buys them. So what have the advocates of these systems of thought done over the decades? They have adopted a philosophical framework that removes the category of absolute truth. And they have found a way from an intellectual and academic position to challenge any claim that says this is true and this is how I know it to be true. They challenge that. And they've adopted a system that forces cynicism and skepticism on everything. And it throws everything into flux and into doubt. This is what James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose call applied post-modernism. Where these modern day theories that we hear about in the news, or maybe many of you have studied in college, especially if you studied the arts or education, They've taken the abstract ideas of the post-modern theory from the 60's and the 70's and they've fused it into modern ideas and brought them together. And so they've turned what was a very discombobulated and nonsensical theory a few decades ago into very robust and as we are seeing, very successful systems of thought. And it is important for us, church, to understand the worldview of the people that we interact with on a daily basis. The people that we want to see come to know the Lord Jesus. The arguments and the systems of thought that we want to bring down that are exalting themselves against the knowledge of God. We need to know the worldviews. We are dealing with the interrogation of language. The interrogation of thought. And ultimately, the interrogation of what we deem to be reality. This is where critical thinking comes in. You remember when you would read the chapter, and at the end of the chapter, you would have critical thinking questions? This is what this is. Thinking, challenging, taking nothing for granted. Being skeptical about reality itself. So I think it would be helpful for me to say right now, if you haven't already, you will feel very frustrated as you listen to these sermons. And you may feel like there's a lack of order and there's a lack of conclusion, and you may try to connect the dots in your mind, only to realize that in many ways, you can't. And I think that's to be expected, because when you try to organize your thoughts with logical progression, and you try to make rational conclusions, and especially when you analyze these systems of thought against Scripture, You get very, very frustrated, and you will find yourself frustrated because post-modern epistemology is cynical about all the means that we take for granted as actually being means to know truth. And I think the frustration itself gives us insight into the insanity and the chaos of the educational theories that are driving this cultural breakdown that we find ourselves in. Now why does all this matter? Okay, I get it. There are implications for bad ways of thinking, but what's at stake here? Well, it matters because the very thing that post-modern epistemology is most cynical about as a means of knowledge, words, is the primary way that we believe God has revealed Himself to man. and the only way that a man can be saved. We're talking about the Scriptures. Special revelation where God has revealed to humanity the way to be saved from His sin. Postmodernist thought does not take language at face value. We need to see this. Yet, God intends for people to receive His Word objectively and to submit themselves to it without question. There is no biblical category for analyzing God's Word and questioning it and being skeptical of it and bringing our own feelings and experiences and cultural understandings to bear on it. No. God's Word comes down to us divinely inspired and authoritative. We are not the standard for judging God's Word. God's Word is the standard for judging us. We don't approach the Bible critically. We approach it reverently, willfully, willing to bow down to what it says. We come to it. asking the Lord to search us, to cut us, to shape us. Why? Because it is the unchanging Word of God. Isaiah 48, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever. Matthew 24-35, heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. The church's testimony in a post-truth age is that there is a text that reveals truth. That's our message. That's our testimony. God has spoken to us in words, and He will judge the world according to His words. Revelation 19.15 says of Christ's second coming, that from His mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. That's apocalyptic language to describe the words of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 4.12, for the Word of God is living and active. sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Brothers and sisters, we cannot compromise on the Word of God. We cannot. It must be a heel that you die on. Because here's the thing, Satan is an old dog. And old dogs do not learn new tricks, do they? Listen, Foucault and Derrida and Lyotard, they were not the first ones in human history to sow cynicism into everybody's minds about words. And the day in which we live is not the first time that there has been doubt raised against the Word of God. We see this all the way back at the beginning of human history with the serpent in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Look at Genesis 2 again. Verse 15. Listen to this. The Lord God took the man. The Lord God took the man. and put Him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it." Verse 16, And the Lord God commanded the man. The Lord God commanded The man. You see this. The Lord God is the subject. Commanded is the verb. The man is the receiver of the command. The Lord gives the command. It starts with the Lord. Not vice versa. This is objective revelation straight from the mouth of God to Adam. Genesis 1 and 2 make this very clear. God is Creator. God is in charge. Adam is subordinate. Adam is dependent. And Adam has one means with which to make sense of himself, to make sense of his purpose, to make sense of the world he's been put in, to make sense of the wife he's been given, to understand what he is to do and not to do, and that means is the voice of God. They don't have an anthropology textbook. They don't have a social studies class. They don't have the behavioral sciences department. They have the Word of God. That's all they have, and that was sufficient. And they're not to question God's Word. They're not called to ask what interest to power and form God's Word. They are not called to change and adapt God's Word to fit the cultural context of the day. They were called to receive the Word of God and obey the Word of God, period. to what we see in these first chapters. Whatever He says about them, they are to accept. Whatever He says to do, they are to do it. Whatever He says not to touch, they are to stay away from it. There is no relativism. There is no subjectivity. It's not open to interpretation. This is objective, and it is absolute. And Adam and Eve are to submit to it gladly. So what do we mean when we say that truth is objective rather than subjective? Well, when we say truth is subjective, we're saying that our own feelings, our own circumstances, our own experiences are allowed to be brought onto the truth to interpret it how we feel it should be interpreted. But when we say truth is objective, we are saying that nothing within us is allowed to be brought to bear on the truth. The truth is what it is. Whether we like it or not. That's how Adam and Eve were to treat God's Word in the garden. But notice what the serpent immediately comes on the scene and says. Look at that second part of chapter 3, verse 1. He said to the woman, Did God actually say? Did God actually say? The serpent tempts Eve to question the objective, absolute Word of God. Not does God actually exist. did God actually say? You shall not eat of any tree in the garden. And he twists God's Word because God never said that they couldn't eat of any tree in the garden. Look back at chapter 2 v. 16. The Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden. except for one. And so Satan, by casting doubt on the legitimacy of God's Word and twisting it, successfully sows cynicism in Eve's mind about the accuracy of God's Word and her ability to receive it and to know it. Very, very important for us to see. He does not tempt her to question her belief in God, but rather her ability to know what He has said and to know what He means. The legitimacy of God's Word is challenged and her interpretation of it is challenged. James Montgomery Boyce says on this verse, the validity of the Word of God is the issue of Satan's temptation. And likewise, post-modern epistemology is not so much skeptical about whether there is a truth out there, but rather how we actually know the truth. The emphasis is on how we know. How do we know what we know? Postmodernism rejects absolute and objective standards for knowing truth. I was watching a debate between a conservative Christian and he calls himself a progressive Christian. When the debate got started, we found out he wasn't really a Christian at all. And they were debating LGBTQT agenda in the church and these types of things. And you didn't have to listen to much of the debate to realize that the primary issues were not even about what the Bible taught. They weren't about biology. They weren't really even about sexuality. They were about how do we know what is true. That is the center of the common debate. And as you can easily imagine, if there is no objective means of knowing truth, then there is no objective means of knowing morality. Because there is no way to establish an objective moral standard. And if there is no objective moral standard, then what do you end up with? Moral autonomy. Everybody doing what is right in his own eyes. You see the progression here. It's the same progression we see unfolding in the garden. Satan tempts Eve to question God's Word, which leads her to question God's character. And all this doubt and questioning opens the door for what? For seeking to gain moral autonomy. For the possibility for Eve to define good and evil on her own terms apart from the Word of God. That's what's at stake here. Look at verse 6. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, listen to this phrase, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband. What was the wisdom or the insight that was associated with the tree that was desirable to Eve? There have been pages and pages written on this question and speculation, and I don't want to speculate today. But what we can seem to say with certainty is that Eve was deceived into believing that it would be good for her and her husband to have a knowledge that God did not allow them to have. And she believed that having this knowledge was better than obeying the voice of God. So rather than submitting to God's Word and receiving it gladly and obeying it, Eve's desire for this moral wisdom for herself apart from the Word of God paved the way for her to disobey God and eat of the fruit and to give it to her husband, who then commits an act of flat-out rebellion. Because see, Paul says in 1 Timothy 2.14 that Eve was deceived into eating the fruit. But Adam simply receives the fruit and eats it and rebels. Flat out rebels in the face of his Creator. And we can easily identify this happening in our own culture, but oh, church, how it has permeated its way into the church and possibly into our own rooms as we study the Bible for ourselves. And primarily through this sentence, that's just your interpretation. That sentence is the Trojan horse for post-modern epistemology in the church. That's just your interpretation. Because there are many who would say, you can't trust that reading the text objectively will render you the meaning. You have to understand that you're coming to the text with interest of power, and your own experiences, and your own social location, and your own socioeconomic status, and all these things are being brought to bear on the text. You don't know the true meaning of the text. And so when one claims that the text has one objective meaning, and that he can find this meaning through a responsible, careful, historical, grammatical reading of the text, what he's actually doing, according to this view, is just manipulating the cards in his favor. and forcing his means of knowing truth onto everybody else and onto the text, because he's ultimately hungry for power. That's straight out of the playbook of Michel Foucault, who was and is perhaps the most influential of the postmodern thinkers in today's activists. And Foucault's writings and interests primarily deal with how power influences the construct of knowledge. So for Foucault, obtaining actual knowledge is not possible. And if it was, it wouldn't be worth pursuing. But what is of value is theorizing about why knowledge was constructed the way it was. That's what he's interested in. What interests were at play? What motivations to power influence constructing the discourse about knowledge in a particular way? And in 1981, he coined the term power knowledge, because any claim to truth is ultimately motivated by power. Now, fast forward to 2022, and this idea permeates the public discussion about what is true and about what is right. And it is very prevalent in the field of hermeneutics, or what we call Bible interpretation. And again, we see the serpent doing this in Genesis 3. Look at v. 4. It says, but the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, Again, we see the serpent sowing doubt into Eve's mind about what God has said and about God's character. Because God did say that if they ate from the tree, they would die. He did say that. He manipulates God's Word. He completely distorts it and he lies. And he tempts Eve to question God's intent. Verse 5, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. Knowing good and evil. You know, rephrase the serpent's words in today's language. Eve, don't you see? Don't you see God is just trying to stay in power? He doesn't want you to be free to be who you really are. He doesn't want you to be empowered to call the shots for yourself. He doesn't want you to be like Him. And He knows when you eat of that tree, you will be like Him. God doesn't want that. He's keeping something good from you. But in reality, what is already true about Eve? What has God already said about Adam and Eve? Look back at chapter 1, verse 26 and 27. Then, listen to this, then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. Verse 27, so God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them. Adam and Eve were already like God in the sense that they bore His image in a way that none of the other creatures bore His image. They were made in His image. They imaged forth His glory in the world. They were His vice-regents in the earth. They were to fill it with image bearers. Fill it with the glory of God. And they were to enjoy all of God's good gifts freely and to worship Him and to know Him Yet, what does the serpent do? He calls God's Word into question. And he tempts Eve to believe that God is withholding something good from her. And she ultimately eats from the one tree. The one tree that God commands her not to eat from. from the very beginning. Satan has set his sights on casting doubt on the legitimacy of God's Word, and thousands of years later, he is still working hard at this. So what do we do? What do we do in an age where not only the legitimacy of God's Word is challenged, but also the legitimacy of even knowing what is true and what is not true? What do we do? And I'm not talking about difficult parts of the Scriptures that are sort of obscure that good Christians disagree about. I'm talking about primary doctrines of the faith. I'm talking about the Gospel. I'm talking about the doctrine of guilt and repentance, substitutionary atonement, faith and repentance, heaven and hell, sexuality, marriage, gender, the Word of God itself. Perhaps the most important question that the church can answer in a post-truth age is the question of whether or not we can know what God says. We need to be able to answer that. And if so, if we can, does the Bible show us how to understand God and what He says? Or are we to say that it means whatever we feel like it means? Can we say this interpretation is right and this interpretation is wrong? And I want to argue that we can. And not only that we can, but that we must. We must be able to say, thus says the Lord. And speak with authority. And know with objective certainty what He says. Eternity is at stake. The Scriptures make it clear that we can know what God has said. The Scriptures make it clear that we are not to change or misinterpret what He has said. You say, where do I get that confidence from? Well, for one, that's the way the Word of God reads. It comes down to us objectively. It comes down to us authoritatively. God gives commands and speaks authoritatively. Jesus speaks authoritatively. Speaking of the nature of Jesus' teaching ministry, Mark 1.22 says that people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one who had authority, not as the scribes. There was no relativism in Jesus' teaching. There was no subjectivity. He spoke with certainty and authority. He corrected wrong interpretations of the Old Testament. We see this in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5, repeatedly we see Jesus saying, you have heard that it was said, but I say to you, over and over and over, giving the proper interpretation of God's Word. And at the end of that sermon, what does Jesus say? The one who hears these words of Mine and obeys them will be like the one who builds his house on the rock. There's a very interesting passage in Matthew 22, where the religious group called the Sadducees question Jesus. They don't believe in the resurrection, so they believe that they can trap Jesus by bringing up the lever at marriage, which was if a husband died, his brother would marry his wife and try to raise up offspring for him in his place. And so the Sadducees draw out this scenario where seven brothers all have the same wife and none of them have a son, and they all die. And then the wife dies also. And the Sadducees say to Jesus, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? Because she was married to all seven men. And listen to what Jesus says to them. It says, but Jesus answered them, you are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. You are wrong. Then he says in verse 31, as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God? I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Jesus rebukes the Sadducees for having the Word of God, yet not knowing it. Not interpreting it rightly. He's saying you should know this, but you're wrong. Because you don't know the Scriptures. And He gives them the proper interpretation. It's amazing that in all the controversies that we see between Jesus and the religious leaders of the day, they're never about the legitimacy of the Scriptures. It's always about the interpretation of the Scriptures. Isn't that interesting? And then we see this in Paul as well. I was reading in my morning devotions Today, and this stuck out to me, and I said, I've got to bring this up. In Acts 17, when Paul and Silas go to Thessalonica, it says that they enter the synagogue of the Jews. And listen to how it says this. It says that Paul reasoned with them from the Scriptures. Explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise again. So the Bible is saying to us Through reasoning, you can prove and explain the truth about the Word of God. It's so cool today to be skeptical. It's so cool today to be uncertain. You know, there's this badge of honor when people say, look, I'm just on this journey. I'm just on this journey to find out my own truth. To find out what's true for me. To explore and ask questions and doubt And I'm not going to be walking around telling people that they need to believe a certain way. I'm not going to judge people's interpretation of the Bible. I'm just on my own journey looking for my own truth. Brothers and sisters, though we may be called narrow and fundamental and closed-minded, we must put our stakes in the ground and say, you are wrong. Not in arrogance, but in love. This is what God has said about this situation. This is what He plainly says about this moment. And if we lose that, brothers and sisters, what do we have to stand on? This is what is problematic with what is called deconstruction. Have you heard about this? All sorts of Christian leaders and artists are coming out and they're deconstructing their faith. And basically, they state publicly, you know, I'm backing away from claiming that I know what I believe about Christianity. And I'm going to give myself space and room to doubt. to ask questions, to explore different avenues. And I'm going to wrestle and analyze what parts of my faith are a product of my own parents and my own social place and my own religion and all this. And I'm going to ask hard questions. And I'm going to consider our own modern social and political situation and ask whether the Scripture is relevant to inform these areas today. And I'm going to see where we've been lied to. where the wool has been pulled over our eyes. And I'm not going to say too much about this. You can look it up for yourselves if you're interested. But here's the thing. Christians should ask questions. And they should always be submitting their beliefs to Scripture. They should always be assessing, are my perceptions about God my own? Have I made God in my own image? Or are they in line with Scripture? We should be doing that. We should be assessing our faith. That's one of my primary goals in biblical counseling. I want to help this struggling counselee tear down every wrong and faulty view of Jesus that they have. And then build back up in their minds and in their hearts the truth about Jesus as He is revealed in Scripture. We should be doing this. The Christians who announce publicly that they are deconstructing usually do not mean that they are approaching the text with careful exegesis in order to more and more conform their lives to the unadulterated Word of God. It usually has to do with their doubt and wanting to explore that doubt. The issue is the posture of your heart. I was listening to a famous Christian talking about one of his friends who recently denounced the faith after 30 years of ministry. And he said something that has landed on me very heavily. And essentially, he said that if you approach the text with a heart posture of belief, wanting to know the truth, wanting all of your perceptions, wanting your whole worldview to be shaped by the Word of God, You will grow in confidence in the truth. You will grow in your confidence in the Scriptures. You will grow in your faith. But if you approach the Scriptures with your questions from a heart posture of doubt and cynicism, as if you're looking for holes in the Christian faith, the enemy will make sure that you find them. It's almost weekly at this point. You hear about a famous Christian artist or speaker or writer come out and denounce his faith altogether. Or we hear someone say, you know, I've just come to the place where I'm going on a journey where I'm going to let everything I've ever learned fall and I'm going to build it back up and put it back together. And it's clothed in all this romanticized language. But if you notice, the road to apostasy usually starts in a very similar way. I just started asking questions about the Scriptures. I just started asking hard questions that I felt like nobody was answering. And then I began to see holes and I began to see things and I began to explore things and read different people and do this and do that. Listen, I believe with all of my heart that the Bible will hold up against any question under the sun. And I believe that the Scriptures are sufficient to deal with every issue under the sun. But if you come to the place where you begin to question God's Word with a heart posture of doubt and skepticism, you have begun to play Satan's favorite game. And essentially, you're asking the same question with the same motives. Did God actually say? Be careful. Be careful of the posture of your heart when seeking the Scriptures. This is what the author of Hebrews meant when he said, be careful that there be in none of you a hard and unbelieving heart. Grow in your confidence in the Scriptures. Come to the Scriptures with a heart posture of humility. Say, God, purge me of everything that is false. Divide soul and spirit. Show me the truth. Show me who You are. I'm open for You to cut and divide and shape me. And the term deconstruction is very significant and telling. You know who penned that term in 1967? It was Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher and one of the most influential players of post-modern thought. Derrida was skeptical that language could actually represent reality. And because language can't actually represent reality, then texts cannot be an objective means of knowing truth. Now you can see why this matters for Christians. Right? Isn't it ironic that the primary skepticism of post-modernism, the thing that it is most interested in challenging, is the notion that truth can be revealed through words, but yet the Lord Jesus Christ is identified as the Word. in the beginning was the Logos. The Word. He is the ultimate expression of truth. He is the ultimate standard of morality. He is the standard by which all truth is assessed. And this revelation comes down to us in words, in language, in texts of Scripture. Church, when the validity of the Word of God is questioned, we must remain faithful. We must. How do we do it? By standing confidently on the objective truth of His Word and looking to the One who withstood every temptation of the enemy and remained sinless. So let me conclude by pointing us, not to the first Adam, but to the second Adam. who was driven by the Spirit, not into the luscious garden of Eden, but into the wilderness. Not with one prohibition, but under the law. To be tempted by the devil for 40 days and 40 nights as he fasted. And just as Satan tempted Eve to question the legitimacy of God's Word, he seeks to employ the same strategy with Christ. Remember when Christ was baptized and God spoke to Him. It says that the heavens were opened and God spoke to Him and said, this is My beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. But yet, how does Satan begin his temptation of Christ? If you are the Son of God, man, these stones will become loaves of bread. Not since you are the Son of God. Not because you are the Son of God. If you are the Son of God. He immediately cast doubt on what God had just objectively spoke from heaven. It's amazing. Just as he does in the garden, Satan lies to Jesus. He's the father of lies. He misrepresents God's Word. He attempts to deceive Jesus into acting on his own initiative to receive what the Father has already promised him in the Old Testament prophets. But unlike the first Adam, the second Adam remains unshaken in these temptations. Not because he turned into a superman. Not because he gritted his teeth and tried really hard to say no. But because he remained unwavering on the objective and absolute Word of God. And because he remained faithful and withstood the temptation that Adam failed to withstand, he was able to go on and to fulfill his ministry. And ultimately to die in our place. To purchase for us forgiveness and redemption. To spill His blood for our sins. And to rise again that we might be restored. all that was lost in the garden, and more. In this age of relativism and moral autonomy, where words are constantly changing and meaning is always changing, we have an unchanging Savior. the same yesterday, today, and forever. May we look to Him. May we stand on His Word. And may we point the world, the modern self, to Him. To find salvation and everlasting joy. Amen? Let's pray. Jesus, we thank You that You stood the test for us in our place. And You accredit to all who believe this righteousness. We thank You, Lord. Lord, I pray that if there are any in this room who are doubting Your Word, who are skeptical of Your Word, Lord, that You would give them the grace to believe. And if there are any in this room who do not believe, Lord, I ask that You would draw their hearts in love to receive the salvation that is given freely by faith. And for Your saints in this room, Lord, put in us an unwavering commitment to stand upon Your Word, to be confident in it, to be faithful to it. And we ask You for Your grace and Your mercy. I pray it all in Jesus' name, Amen.