Yeah, so as prophets have gone out of style, it seems the weathermen of the church are in style. Always predicting new things, new climates, new cultures, always predicting new things, and don't seem to have any real regard for whether they're right or wrong. And I think that as church members today, we have to recognize this phenomenon as it comes to us and as these voices get greater and greater play in the media. we do have to be careful as to how much we extract from them as God's truth and how much is man's invention. I'm going to ask you today to turn to Titus chapter 1 and I'm going to read the whole of the chapter and the first two verses of the next chapter just to give an idea of something here. Now obviously I'm not going to get down into the specifics of this chapter on church order and what God, through His Apostle, expects the church to be. But I do want to present this as an overview that the church in God's sight is a fairly specific thing. It's not amorphous. It's not hard to define, not for those of us who can read. It's there. And it's present. And we have to wonder that God hasn't changed his view on it. So when men change their views on it, we have to wonder is this a prophet of the church or just one of the new weathermen of the church? Alright, so let me begin with the text beginning with the book of Titus chapter 1 and it begins like this. The apostle says, Paul a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledgement of the truth which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life which God who cannot lie promised before time began. but has in due time manifested his word through preaching which was committed to me according to the commandment of God our Savior to Titus a true son in our common faith grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior for this reason I left you in Crete that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. If a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of dissipation or insubordination, for a bishop must be blameless as a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled, holding fast to the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be abled by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. For there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. One of them, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth, to the pure. All things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but even their mind and conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work. But as for you, Speak those things which are proper for sound doctrine, that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience. Let's pray. O good and great and merciful Father in heaven, do forgive your servants for our sins, O Lord, those things we have committed that offend you, Father. those thoughts, those activities that we've partaken in, Lord. Do forgive us, for we confess them as sin and ask You, Lord, to sprinkle our souls with the atoning blood of Your Son, which was once for all offered for our sakes, O Lord. O Father, in Jesus' name, give us the Holy Spirit now, that He might live and walk and dwell among us, O Lord. That He, in the person of very God Himself, will give us ears to hear these truths the deep things of God we pray in Jesus name Amen you can see I have entitled the sermon this morning with this title Authentic Christianity now the post-modern church that's the era we are in A number of very wise men got together and decided we were no longer in the modern age, we are now in the post-modern age. And the post-modern church is in search of authenticity. Friends, I gotta tell you something, the more I think about this, the more it seems to me that from my whole life's experience in the 60s and in the 70s and in the 80s and in the 90s and now, In the first years of the 21st century, it seems someone has always spoken up and said, we need to find the authentic expression of Christianity. As though it was something hidden. You know, it's always interesting, they came and said to Jesus, you said this thing, and you said this thing, and they accused him of all these things, and he said, what are you talking about? Everything I did, I did openly. I preached on the hillsides. The most famous sermon he preached is called the Sermon on the Mount. There's no sermon in the closet. It's the sermon on the mouth. The Lord did things openly. He's not ashamed of the revelation of God. In fact, we even read from the psalmist that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament is handiwork. Day unto day are His speech, and night unto night knowledge. God's wisdom is in the open square. It is not hard to find for the literate, for the regenerate. In fact, for the regenerate, it is the only thing we know of worth finding and yet the post-modern church, self-described, is in search of authenticity. It seems an authentic encounter with God is something our contemporary culture is searching for and the church in our culture is no exception. Now you might have guessed it, pastor's been reading again. and I've been reading on the so-called emergent church movement, and I've been reading some of the writings of D. A. Carson, who is a Baptist like ourselves, who has studied this, and who I have to say is approaching this a bit more charitably perhaps than, well, I would. Many of those who call themselves Christian in our society are finding it difficult to nail down a process for evangelizing and for organizing in such a rapidly changing world. In fact, it's precisely this need to nail down anything that's being tossed. We've come to a place where many will query truth itself. as though absolute truth cannot be known. In fact, one of the books of this movement is, it's called, From Absolute to Authentic. The name itself is heresy, in my view. We've come to a place where many will query truth itself as though absolute truth cannot be known. It can only be interpreted from the subjective standpoint from which an individual was brought up. The experiences and education he has had in the intellectual compartment he now resides in. And so why do I bring this to your attention? I bring this to your attention because it is a massive movement. And there are many who claim to be of the people of God, who would not fit into this narrow description that we've just read from Paul to Pastor Titus in Crete, that he, and those who call themselves the church, must fit into, you see. And we're always in the search for broadening what God has narrowed. I remember Gresham Mason's assessment of the difference between Christianity and Liberalism in his great book called Christianity and Liberalism. He said Christianity, Christians are those people who truth has been revealed to and they know it. And Liberals are those people who truth has been revealed to and they doubt it. because they think they can only know what they think about truth and they can't actually know the truth. And so there is this gulf between human experience and actual truth. And he said essentially challenging the Christian claim that revealed truth can be known and lived and taught that the opinion of the liberal interpreter of the Bible is that we cannot know truth, we can only know what we think about the truth. One leader in the so-called emergent church movement says that we must strive from the absolute to the authentic. Authenticity is approached in other words, or rather in the words of one author on the subject, like this. He says, we take into account contemporary emphases on tolerance. It means not telling others they are wrong. So you see, the truth can be out there. You can proclaim it. But if somehow It gets accused of saying it's right or righter than somebody else's proclaimed truth. You're not being authentic. You're not being an authentic Christian. It means not telling others they are wrong. You know, it's interesting because I just read from the Apostle Paul how he said there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcisions, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. And then he says, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith. In other words, Paul empowers the church to take the absolute stance that revealed truth requires of the Christian. And he anticipates that that will cause confrontations in the prevailing culture of the day. He is not trying to suppress confrontation. He's saying, bring it on. God's Word can handle it. God's prophet can handle it. Because even if he's killed and martyred in the process, God is honored and the church is prospered. And the martyr is rewarded. You can't lose unless you exchange the absolute. for the opinions of other men, you see. And so taking into account contemporary emphases on tolerance, it means not telling others they are wrong. I, for one, am prompted to ask of this gentleman, are we to presume then that the Apostle Paul should apologize to the pagan Athenians for preaching this? Truly, he said, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. What is the Apostle saying? He's saying, I alone know the truth. And you are all ignorant of the truth. Friends, truth has to take that stance, that's why we have to be careful with it. Because if we're not really certain what it is, if we can't really pin it down and show it to be true, then we ought to be careful what we require of one another. But when the truth is clearly revealed, as it is with church organization, church structure, gender roles in society. When the church is very clear, when the scriptures are very clear about these things, we ought not to shy away from them. Many of these post-modern thinkers who for any number of reasons have rejected traditional forms of churches and worship, even some of the most recent seeker-friendly approaches to these things. You know, the seeker-friendly church is already passé to this new movement, and already trying to adapt into it. So they don't lose their mega-church status, I suppose. And they're calling this a new Reformation. For them it's increasingly necessary to protest existing methods of evangelism, existing beliefs regarding order and morality in the church and in society at large. They query everything from gathering in church buildings to preaching as the primary form of disseminating spiritual truths to churches being led by pastors as though every member's intellectual understanding of Christ and salvation is equally valid and given equal time to be heard. If that were the case, why did Paul write to the pastor of this church and give him this very specific charge unless somehow we have to presume that what the apostle wrote has expired and come to an end? And what are we to make of, in due time, God manifested his word through preaching. Are we to assume that preaching is also passé? Indeed, every liturgical form is questioned in this new movement. Even order itself among people gathered for worship is troubling for them and deemed somehow too subjective, too autocratic, too hierarchical. too passé and therefore inauthentic. So what are they proposing? That worship meetings must be multi-sensory because that's the way to engage new converts who've been raised on searching the web. There's a not-so-new emphasis on individuality and individual expression, expressions of fears and doubts and anger and acceptance, and though the emergent spokesman would be reluctant to admit it, there seems to be a newer, stronger emphasis on a me-centered gospel that's not so different from its predecessor, the seeker-friendly movement, both which seem to presume that God is there to respond to me to respond primarily to my felt needs but also to my immediate moods and there is a curious implication that an authentic savior must take me as I am and be concerned about the very specific things with which I am now concerned even if it's my habit to drastically change concerns often now listen what one writer writes about this One such leader wrote this and I quote, and yet as I sat there fuming, a strange thing happened. I felt like I could see Jesus standing there asking to come and be with me. In my anger I refused. I could barely even look at him still, he stood there. And when I finally relented, he sat down next to me, gently wrapped his arms around me. He didn't say anything, he just held me in my pain. In that moment, I realized that God could handle severe honesty. authenticity in all its messiness is not offensive to him. There is room for doubt and anger and confusion. There was room for the real me. I don't know what's so groundbreaking and new about that statement. It sounds like any old spiritual brat railing against God for not accepting him as he is. And I wonder what it means, friends. When I read something like this, you have to question some things. When someone says, I felt like I could see Jesus, what does that mean? Could you see him? Or couldn't you see him? You felt like you could see him? You felt like you could see him and he wrapped his arms around you? So if I walk up to you now and you close your eyes, and I wrap my human arms around you to comfort you, Is that what it felt like? Did you really feel that? Or does I felt like I could see really mean I imagined it? Could it mean I conjured up the idea and I visualized it in my mind? You know, when Paul was knocked off his horse by the entering Christ, he didn't imagine it. He didn't feel like it was happening, it happened. The people around him knew it happened. So either it happened, or it didn't happen. So am I to presume that this imagination was an authentic encounter with Christ, and when Paul was knocked off his horse and blinded, it was somehow inauthentic? What am I supposed to presume here? I don't know what it means when someone says, I felt like I could see Jesus. And then he says he didn't say anything. So, are we to presume that the incarnate word, in the estimation of these innovators, has nothing to say? He just appears. You know, when you think about it, look all throughout your New Testament. When Jesus comes in, he usually has something to say. He doesn't usually just stand there. Like an apparition. He's not just a ghost. He doesn't just wander in. You know, and I've got to tell you, I do not see Jesus as primarily a good listener. He'd rather do the talking when he's in the room. And it seems to me we would be very wise to become good listeners ourselves. So I would point out here that though I believe that God can handle authenticity in any of its forms, that what the writer is here expressing is his sin. It is sin to not want God near. Even though many of us in a moment of anger may feel such a thing. We are all sinners, as this man is a sinner. However, sin is always offensive to God. Even though our doctrine will confirm that He can and did handle it. God can handle our sin. So when I put a doctrinally correct transparency over this statement for the disillusioned church leader, I can really tell him what he's actually feeling. I can tell him this, first of all, you felt like something but it didn't really happen. Jesus didn't walk into the room, you imagined that he did. In fact, you imagined your own Jesus who doesn't talk, he listens. And you imagined a Jesus who is not offended by sin. Well the fact is he is offended by sin, but he can handle it. In fact, he did, once for all, and it is finished. So if you truly love Jesus, you needn't fear when he walks into the room. He describes a closeness with Jesus that is non-verbal. A strange new attribute of the Savior that is described as the Word become flesh. And who said such things as, My Word is life. My Word is truth. My Word is health to the bones and healing to the flesh. My Word is a lamp under the feet and a light under your path. Friends, when Jesus comes into your presence, if ever He should, I would hope He would come with a Word. And not just with a hug. What we are seeing here is an exchange, friends. We might go so far as to say exchanging the truth for the lie, but certainly we can go as far as to say that this new brand of Christianity is saying that we are now the ones who need to put forth our words and Jesus is the one who needs to listen if he intends to make himself authentic to us. Now this is a very real danger, and because we all want to be heard, and we all want someone to tell our grievances and our pains to, and indeed God serves well as that person, but we dare not exchange the role of one for the other. What we have here is a disillusioned, perhaps burned out church leader, and though we may have great sympathy for his condition, we may also question his conclusions regarding the nature of Christ and his approach to ministry. Another such treatment of the Savior is to say that our relationship with him is one of mutual edification. This is part of the movement masquerading as Christianity. He, as well as we, are taught inspired and edified in the interchange between us. I'm talking mainline churches, friends. So we read this. One of these spokesmen for the movement says, in such dialogue with Jesus in such dialogue we may learn things as Peter does in Acts 10 through 11 that's when Peter saw the great sheep and God said take and eat and go and bring the gospel to Cornelius you remember all of that right? so we may learn things as Peter does in Acts 10 and 11 I'm okay with that until he says this similarly Jesus learns from his interchange with the Syrophoenician woman she taught the Lord something Presumably Jesus as well as Peter learned that true faith in the gospel are pluralistic. Such things are for other than ethnic Jews and so our pluralistic culture like the culture of the Syrophoenician woman has much of which to inform our Savior. A final characteristic of the new search for authentic Christianity presumably the authentic Christ is that it is dedicated to being amorphous, which means hard to define or pin down, and that that is its strength. You know, I knew this had to happen. I knew this had to happen because it was always strange to me that the churches always cater to the prevailing culture, but they always define culture by a small movement among youth culture. The latest movement among youth culture. And I've always said churches that cater to the youth will have a lifespan of 5 to 10 years because how long can a trend last? Not very long usually. So I knew that at some point someone would come along and say, well I've invented a new form of Christianity that can easily transform itself with every new trend and reach every new believer much more effectively. So here it is. It's here. It's able to adapt to a constantly changing culture. The characteristic is best perhaps understood by the philosophy behind the creation of a chatroom called ooze.com. The various parts of the faith community are like mercury, they say. Now I want to tell you something, I almost wish I didn't mention ooze.com because I know everybody's going to go home and log on and see what's going on there. And I resisted the temptation myself, but this is the philosophy behind it. At times we'll roll together, at times we'll roll apart. Try to touch the liquid or constrain it and the substance will resist, rather than force people to fall into line. An oozy community tolerates differences. and treats people who hold opposing views with great dignity. To me, that's the essence of the emerging church. Now, isn't there a movie? I was trying to think of what it was. Maybe you can tell me. Maybe it's RoboCop. Has anyone seen RoboCop? It just comes to mind. Isn't he really made of some kind of mercury-like ooze? And every time he's blown up, he turns into this ooze, but the ooze just reconstitutes itself and it's like almost Is it Terminator? Oh, it's Terminator. But is that the one with the ooze? That's exactly the picture I thought of when I thought of this. I said, that's the church you can bomb it. And it'll just reconstitute itself and become something else more powerful all the time. I guess that's the vision they have. I'll bet he was thinking of that movie when he read this because he's part of the culture that he's trying to reach here, you see. And yet we read today's text from the inspired prophet of God, his self-described bond-servant who beheld him in his resurrected state and was given a charge to preach him to the Gentiles. The Jesus that Paul met on the road did not simply hold him tight and listen to his story. Can you imagine what would have happened if he did? Paul, let me help you down off your horse. I'm the Lord that you've been persecuting. Oh, why do you kick against the codes, my fellow? Can you imagine? That Jesus, that confrontation? That's the authentic encounter. The one we know of is not authentic because it was just too demanding, you see. And certainly Paul would have almost certainly told the story about his authoritarian parents who insisted he attend Pharisee school. who determined to teach him to hate his fellow citizens because they were pagan. And surely contributed to his hatred of God's elect among the new sect of Judaism called Christians. It wasn't his fault he hated them. It was his parents' fault. It was his bigoted society's fault. All this poor mass murderer of Christians wanted to do was to kill for God's sake. And to be understood. by a compassionate, sympathetic, non-judgmental, authentic Savior. Instead, he was confronted, knocked off his horse, and blinded and told that he was wrong. And to make matters worse, what did this inauthentic Savior do, but run over to Ananias' house and says, I'm going to show you how many things he must suffer for my sake, as though he didn't suffer enough? That's the inauthentic. way Christ confronts his people that he calls out from iniquity according to the new church movement and yet what did he do but accuse this poor murderous villain of persecuting him and then rather than listen to his life story the Savior went to another man and said I will show him how many things he must suffer for my sake What tyrannical person could demand more suffering of such a good man who had already suffered so much at the hands of his demanding parents in an unscrupulous society? And I say this all, of course, facetiously, and yet we read from Paul these words, Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledgement of the truth which God which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life which God who cannot lie promised before time began but has in due time manifested his word through preaching. Sounds to me like God has his handle on time. Doesn't sound to me like time and new trends take him unawares. I don't think the 21st century has anything to offer as a perplexity to our God that his church cannot confront in the form with which he mandated that we be. And so a starting point for understanding these basic truths of these verses would be to agree that such a statement is primarily for those who walk in hope of eternal life with God. as the verse itself says. We should recognize at the outset that many multitudes in fact have had what may be called an authentic encounter with Jesus who neither had nor attained such a hope and there were many who may be said to have had a relationship with Jesus who will rise in hell for eternity. Now what do you suppose I mean by that? Well I suggest to you that Pilate inherit such men. Both had some kind of encounter with Christ, which may hardly be termed inauthentic, yet both chose to let their respective relationships with him be on his terms, but on theirs, and both have paid the price for their insistence. I submit to you that Judas was such a man. Are we to say Judas didn't have an authentic relationship with Christ? Of course he did, but he insisted it be on his terms, and he paid the price for that. When you meet Christ, you surrender to His terms. You don't invent your own standard of authenticity. A number of ancient Gadarenes chased this pig-hating Messiah from their land. A rather large and prestigious contingent of Pharisees encountered Him in a very authentic way and received from Him a new title. Sons of the Devil, He called them. There's at least one poor crucified thief who wishes that his authentic encounter had gone differently with the Savior. There's all kinds of authentic encounters with Jesus, but the one that saves is the one that takes Him as He is, and recognizes that the fault is in you, that you have nothing to teach Him. and have everything to gain by being taught by Him. And I suggest to you that there are multitudes since who sincerely wish, now that it's too late, that they did not try to mold or redefine the Son of God, who incidentally has no stated or implied intention to accept anyone as they are, but blessed those who humbly submitted to receive Him as He is, though they themselves might have been haggard and heinous sinners. He came to redeem them and to remake them. And this process may hardly be improved upon by man in any age or any culture by any human scheme or technological advancement. Friends, technology will not improve the church. I'm not against new gadgets and things. But they can't lead us. We have to lead them. In fact, we can't let the culture lead us. We have to be a light to the culture. And I grow weary of any new development in ministry that presumes to call itself new while it is transparently nothing more than a denial of the design and mandate of our Creator for the Church and a willing blindness to seeing ourselves as primarily sinful and self-serving even while we attempt to hide behind the veil of making Christ more accessible to our poor blind culture that we ourselves may be all too fond of. Sounds to me like a church led by Lot's wife. You might say a church whose fault has lost its flavor. Pun intended. personal significance, I suspect, lurks behind almost every protest of traditional norms and practices. The movement has no hope of authentically reaching our culture because it is steeped in defining the whole culture in terms of a whimsical, youthful subculture. In other words, They are indicting the church for not reaching the culture. But I'm here to tell you, I think that their assessment of what the culture is, is wrong. At least, greatly flawed. We still live in a society, I learned this fact the other day. We still live in a society where 20% of our citizens have never logged on to the internet. Are you aware of that? To say we're an internet culture, and we have to approach people with a lot of visual stimuli is intentionally leaving out 20% of the culture. And I suggest to you, those are the old people of the culture. If my guess is correct. I suggest to you that that's what it is. You know, the church has been trying to push old people aside since I've been in it. Since I've been in it. They've been catering to the youth. So I'm here to say their assessment of the society is wrong where 20% of our citizens have never logged on to the internet and we're a major elderly presidential candidate openly professed and confessed computer illiteracy. John McCain said he let Cindy handle that stuff. He doesn't even go on the thing. So I'm here to say we're not really where the emergent church says we are. and where the spiritual innovators of today are crying, cater to the young, the hope of eternity. Paul cries to Titus, appoint elders in every city. Instead of claiming to be the authority on how young people do act, the Word of God proclaims how young people should act. Friends, the church is to be led by elders, not by youngers. Now, we can be sensitive to all these observations and make compromises and changes on how the church should operate, but the question will then become, whose church are we? Indeed, friends, that's always the question. There have been countless new blueprints and only one, an enduring old blueprint, and I'm betting that when the Savior comes for us, he'll not be impressed so much with innovation as with conservation. which is perhaps why the apostle said to a pagan city Corinth, he said, imitate me just as I also imitate Christ. Now I praise you brethren that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. Doesn't sound like adhering to the next trend that comes along in Corinth, to my ear. And so the sappy sentimentalism of these poor, disillusioned church leaders are little more than the dissatisfied remnants of the me generation and their goal is to inject self-importance into salvation. Friends, God does care for our needs. So that we who trust in him ought to be anxious for nothing, he says. He cares about our needs. He satisfies our needs, the Bible says. He says, be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer and supplication. You may pour out yourselves to Him, but He is no mere listener. He has spoken, and He tends to speak in commandments when He speaks. He's big on organization, as our text tells us. He majors on organizing the church in direct accord with his design for the human family. He is concerned with gender roles, such as mother, wife, and sister. He's concerned, he commands men, rather, to be selfless, thinking of others as greater than themselves, beginning first with their wives. and we're to organize our lives around the worship of our great God and we're to worship Him in a way that this great diviner desires to be worshipped. Human innovation to Him is usually seen as a statement of our dissatisfaction with His design. Isn't it? He sees our suggestions as implying his inadequacy to design and to demand, yet when we submit to him, we may expect him to descend with his spiritual presence upon us in worship. And I'm at a loss to understand why church, order, and organization are always at issue when leaders become disillusioned. Rather than question the authenticity of our culture, of the church. What's so authentic about this virtual culture we live in? We just become part of it amorphously? Just morph into what the culture is teaching? Now I see God's church as inauthentic and insincere from time to time as well. But unlike a culture that's addicted to self-esteem and self-fulfillment and self-image and self-improvement, the church has the tools to advance itself in God's sight. We have the Word of God. We have the spiritual gifts. And when we fail as the church to communicate, When we fail in compassion, when we fail in competence, it is because we have given in to culture, not because we need more of it. And when we fail in evangelism, it's because we fail to affect the culture, to be a light to a dying world, not because we fail to emulate the latest trends and to become part of this amorphous, indefinable cultural ooze that I admit is out there. How is it that Christianity, which from the beginning was self-described as counter-cultural, being persecuted by and an offense to prevailing cultures, now has this new mission to downgrade to cultural standards? You know, when I came into the church, I remember we were always talking about persecution and what an offense the gospel was. Now, we want to take all the offense out of it. We want to just amorphously become part of the culture and hope by osmosis that salvation will come out of this for the masses. It makes me wonder what Peter meant in his time when he said, be saved from this perverse generation. Not be saved into it. How does any Christian conclude that the latest trends in information gathering and entertainment have much of which to inform the church who from the beginning has had a divinely appointed access to the Word of God? And then it occurred to me when I thought of this, this idea of becoming less organized, less specific in our charge less a cultural force in society. It occurred to me that the whole concept of Sabbath is that the experience is qualitatively different from the other six days that comprise our worldly day-to-day experience. The Sabbath experience is supposed to be something different, not the same. You're not supposed to walk out of the six days into the Sabbath day and have it be just like a concert hall or some other entertainment center. If you watch a sunset, does it set with greater visual stimuli because we're a new cyber generation who looks at beauty differently? If you go to the beach, Does the tide come in with a click of a mouse with the exact intensity that you desire at the moment? When you sit by a brook to pray, if you do, does it babble at the precise decibel that you desire? Do the birds chirp in more pleasant tones because the culture has changed? No, the heavens still declare the glory of God and the firmament still shows His handiwork. Even though time to time nature thrusts upon us things that we don't particularly like and find comforting. The center of our nation today, our bread basket, is underwater. And nature wasn't culturally sensitive to the fact that this was a pretty bad time for that to happen economically. And yet still nature declares the glory of God and has not changed because of a virtual society. and a society addicted to entertainment which is so easy to appease. We can throw a big show if we want to. But whose church will we be the day we do that? What these pretenders want is a virtual church. A church where what is on the screen is what we've conjured up in the moment and in the mood with which we desired it. And all this emphasis on importing cultural trends into worship and teaching is little more than that ancient rebellion against God which exalts the glory of man. It's little more than eating of that which is forbidden, building towers to an imaginary God, claiming that God's appointed authorities do not have our best interest at heart because they'll not excuse our latest sin or accept that our latest rant is worthy of their attention. And then as now, the church of God will conform not to the latest trend of perverse cultural ignorance, but to the oldest trend that God in his mercy spoke to us in words, friends. Inspired the prophets to record them, gave gifts to men to impart them, gave faith to a dying race. to love them and obey them and to know that when they hear them, they hear the very voice of Omnipotent God and are thankful that they have indeed arrived. and that knowing when they do stray he will gather them again and they will be thankful again and again know the truth of today's text which says that God's elect will be found holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught that he may be abled by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who confident let's pray Our Father, in Jesus' name, we ask you, Lord, to make us faithful to your word. Make us strong, Lord, never to rebel against it, but in our time of trial to look more deeply into it, Lord. To look more deeply into ourselves, O Lord, that we might be conformed to the person of Christ. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.