OK, let's open with a word of prayer. Our Father, we thank you for this day and time to come and hear your word. We ask that you would speak to us, that we might realign our thinking with that of scripture and your will for us in our lives. We thank you for that you've given us this instruction so we can have a place to go for refuge and rejuvenation. I told you a bit with how to start this morning, how to do this, and decided to do it the most confusing way possible. So, what I want to do is give you this message from, I'm going to call it from the other side, when we're not in our right mind, when we're not saved, what this sounds like. So, if I were a third party from the world giving some of this message and looking at some of these verses, the title for this message would be, the strongest one would be, The Insanity of Christianity. Maybe a little lesser one would be, Irrational Joy. And probably the least offensive would be, A Different Perspective. Turn to Habakkuk 317. Actually, I want to start in verse 16. This is Habakkuk speaking. I heard and my inward parts trembled. At the sound, my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones, and in my place I tremble. Why? Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress. for the people to arise who will invade us. Though the fig tree should not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olives should fail, and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold, and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet will I exult in the Lord. I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength. He made my feet like Heinz feet and makes me walk on high places. And my statement would be he's insane, he's crazy. He's saying that a country is going to invade his. There's going to be famine, there's going to be terrible things happening, how could anybody rejoice in that? From the outside, someone who would call this the insanity of Christianity, or irrational joy, makes no sense. How could anyone find anything to rejoice about when your livelihood of farming, the only way to get your food, is from the crops and the cattle, and it's all gone. It doesn't produce. And yet this man says, I will exalt in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. How is this possible? Why is it possible? I went to Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary for the definition of the word rejoice. to experience joy and gladness in a high degree, or to exalt. Your nation's under. You're waiting for the nation. He knows someone's coming to invade. He knows what that's going to mean for His land. And He's going to experience joy and gladness to a high degree. The world says, insanity. So, let's look at the definition of insanity. The state of being unfound in mind. Derangement of intellect or madness. So, I had to go to derangement, of course. Derangement, disorder of the intellect or reason. So, really, insanity sounds pretty good for Habakkuk, because he certainly isn't reasoning, because reason would tell you that there's nothing to be glad about, there's nothing to rejoice with or about, and certainly not to a high degree, which is where you've got to be to rejoice. Just a little gladness doesn't get there. A lot of gladness and a lot of joy gets you to rejoice. So, My conclusion is that at this point is that Habakkuk is insane. Let's go to James 1 verse 2. And then I was reading on and I as a person of the world and I ran into this verse. Consider it all joy, my brethren or brothers, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces Endurance, I'll just leave it at that. Counter it all joy when you face various trials. Obviously, another insane, non-reasoning, deranged individual. Isaiah 61 verse 10. I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul I will exalt in my God, for he has wrapped me with garments of salvation. He has wrapped me with the robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland and as a bride adorns herself with jewels. For as the earth springs forth its sprouts and as the garden causes the things sown in it to spring up so The Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. Now for you to understand how insane Isaiah is, you have to know that he wasn't living in good times. And he too rests and exalts and rejoices greatly in this Lord. What's fascinating to me is When you start talking about reason, and the lack thereof of its arrangement, meaning, comes from, or the definition, meaning, a disorder of the intellect, or reason, then you're really trying to deal with reality, aren't you? You're saying that the insane person is not dealing with reality, okay? And that's my statement about these people, is that the reality is not one to be glad about, is not one to exult about, And yet, they write in this book that they have a place that they can rejoice in those consequences and in those circumstances—that's the word I'm using—the circumstances that are surrounding them. So, from the outside, the world looks and says, but it's not—there's nothing to rejoice in. Therefore, they're not dealing with reality. Therefore, there is a problem. So we'll still stick with it there and sing. Let's go to Psalm 32, 11. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you upright ones, and shout for joy all you who are upright in heart. And then 33, one, sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones. Praise is becoming to the upright. Give thanks to the Lord. with the liar, sing praises to him with harp of 10 strings, sing to him a new song, play skillfully with a shout of joy. For the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the loving kindness of the Lord. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth, all their host. He gathers the water together as a heap and lays up the deeps in storehouses. Skip to verse 20. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield, for our heart rejoices in Him because we trust in His holy name. Go to Job 13.15. This guy is definitely not dealing in reality. Though he, capital H, though he slay me, I will hope in him. Though he kill me, I will hope in him. Definitely not dealing with reality here, Job. Job definitely would fall into the category of being insane as well. Not dealing with reality. Anyone who would trust in the one, who would take his life, he's not getting it. Go to Luke 12, 19. Before I read that, the question becomes, where is reality? What is reality? What is truth? Those are the questions that have to be answered. If a person sits and says what I've been saying, that these people are insane, he's coming from a position of what he believes as truth, right? And his truth is that his reality is here in time. His reality is that someone's invading Habakkuk's country, and he's going to go through hard times. And there is no further reality than that. That's the only way that these people, if you believe that, you have to go that they're insane, or crazy, or foolish, or something. If all there is in life is circumstances to us to deal with and eventually die, then that's all there is. One of the things that kind of got me on this is when you talk to a person who is unsaved and they truly believe there's no eternity, there's no God. We've always said it's foolishness to those who aren't to be saved. Now we see why. If they don't believe that there's any eternity, anything afterwards, And they're looking only at circumstances. We do look insane. We do. If we're believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ deals with this issue of where is your reality in 12.9. I'll go a little bit before that. He told them a parable saying, the land of a certain rich man was very productive and he began reasoning to himself saying, what shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? bountiful harvest of so much that he can't store it all. He said, this is what I will do. I'll tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. God said to him, you fool. This very night, your soul is required of you. And now, who will own what you have prepared? So is the man who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. And he said to his disciples, for this reason I say to you, do not be anxious for your life as to what you shall eat, nor for your body as to what you shall put on, for life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, and they have no storerooms nor barn, yet God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than the birds? So he's saying, lay up for yourselves. Your reality needs to be in a different place than here in time. OK. I'm going to do a little skip here. Has anybody heard of humanists? what a humanist is. 1933, the first Humanist Manifesto was written. It basically is a document that says what modern thought says about religion. I highly recommend you go on the internet, type in Humanist Manifesto, go to the Wikipedia link, Down from that, you'll find three manifestos. The first one written in 1933, the second one written in 1973, and the third manifesto written, I think, in 2002. They're very short. They're a page and a half, two pages each. But when you read that, you will not believe how much it parallels to the modern, worldly thought that you see on the TV every day. I've got some quotes from Humanist Manifesto I and Humanist Manifesto II. This is the concluding statement from Humanist Manifesto I, 1933. Fifteen points are before this. Each one is a paragraph long dealing with what this new humanist religion is. Here's the conclusion. So stand the theses of religious humanism. Though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, and he has within himself the power for its achievement, he must set intelligence and will to the task. That is the very last statement in the Humanist Manifesto, 1933. What happens after 1933? We get World War II, Nazism, then Communism. Nazism, what? Don't know all the numbers, but 7 to 9 million people killed. Some estimates out of Stalinism and Communism are close to 40 million. So now we're in 1973, and they've got a little bit of a problem, because this world order that was supposed to come out of this Humanist Manifesto, Man Can Fix Everything, sounds a little bit more desperate when they write the concluding section in 1973. Now, when I just read you the 1933 manifesto, it was kind of upbeat. It's like, we can do this, we don't need to suffer in the past, right? Here's the final closing statement from the 1973 Humanist Manifesto. The world cannot wait for reconciliation of competing political or economic systems to resolve its problems. These are the times for men and women of goodwill to further the building of a peaceful and prosperous world. We urge that parochial loyalties and inflexible moral and religious ideologies be transcended. We urge recognition of the common humanity of all people. We further urge the use of reason and compassion to produce the kind of world we want, a world in which peace, prosperity, freedom, and happiness are widely shared. Let us not abandon that vision in despair or cowardice. We are responsible for what we are or will be. Let us work together for a humane world by means commensurate with humane ends. Destructive ideological differences among communism, capitalism, socialism, conservatism, liberalism, radicalism should be overcome. Let us call for an end to terror and hatred. We will survive and prosper only in a world of shared human values. We can initiate new directions for humankind. Ancient rivalries can be superseded by broad-based cooperation efforts. The commitment to tolerance, understanding, and peaceful negotiations does not necessitate acquiescence to a status quo nor the damning of dynamic and revolutionary forces. The true revolution is occurring and can continue in countless non-violent adjustments, but this entails the willingness to step forward onto new and expanding plateaus. At the present junction of history, commitment to all mankind is the highest commitment of which we are capable. It transcends the narrow allegiance of church, state, party, class, or race in moving toward a wider vision of human potential. What more daring a goal for humankind than for each person to become an ideal, as well as practice, a citizen of the world community? It is a classical vision. We can now give it a new vitality. Humanism, thus interpreted, is a moral force that has time on its side. We believe that humankind has the potential, intelligence, goodwill, and cooperative skill to implement this commitment in the decades ahead. Humanist Manifesto 2, 1973. Can you believe how many of those tones we get from the world? That sounds like a nightly newscast on cooperation and negotiation. I'm just shocked. Now, I didn't pick out anything from Humanist Manifesto 3, although it is so... when I read it, I couldn't believe how much it was 2000, even more wishy-washy. This is actually even stronger language than... It's almost like a desperate appeal in 2002. You're like, ah, please guys, let's get together, you know? 33 was, we can do this. 73 was, man, we didn't do this, and boy, we gotta... let's say how we really need to do this in 2000. It's like, ah, please, come on, okay? This is all a humanist manifesto. I'd like to point out that the humanist The American Humanist logo on their website is a figure of a human, and it's called the Happy Human logo. So, I'm going to try to tile this together. We've got these insane people in the Bible, if we look at it from the humanist standpoint, right? They're crazy, okay? You can't be happy, you can't be content, you can't be glad with all these things going on in the world, okay? found this kind of interesting, the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 3rd edition, 2002, has this quote, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, and that's found, of course, we know, in a couple places in scripture, and when Paul says in Corinthians 15.32, if Christ is not raised from the dead, or if the dead are not raised, let us eat, drink, for tomorrow we die. His statement meaning, I love it, it's like a concluding statement to what I'm talking about, because he's saying, if there isn't that other reality, if there isn't an eternal reality, and he defines it all the way down to if the dead are not raised, if the crux issue, if Christ was not raised, then there is no other reality, then today is all we got, eat, drink, or tomorrow we die. That's why if you stand over here and all you have is this reality, then all those people that have this other reality are insane. They must be, they have to be, because to them there isn't a second reality. But anyway, I found this interesting. Here's what the concluding statement of this cultural dictionary was. What this means is, we should enjoy life as much as possible, because soon it will be over. This saying is based on verses from the biblical books of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah. I mean, if you read that, you'd think that the Bible teaches this concept of, eat, drink, and be married, for tomorrow we die. Blows my mind. But anyway, OK. Now we have to get these people not insane. And the passage to get these people not insane is Psalm 73. And the reason why this passage is so important to this topic, and we're going to read all of it, is David is going to show you that us as Christians can actually live like those other people are insane. If we don't have an internal perspective, if we don't live with that other reality of the future and eternity, we can be just like the humanists saying, I can't be happy now. Look at what's happening in my life. I can't be. There's no joy. There's no rejoicing. Here's what we're going to see. Because David actually had this problem at this point in time. Chapter 73, verse 1. Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling. My steps had almost slipped. Why? He starts telling you of his observations. I was envious of the arrogant, and I saw the prosperity of the wicked. There are no pains in their death. Their body is fat. And I don't know, for we, we don't have this in our modern lexicon, but in the ancient world, to have any sort of excess weight was a total luxury because it meant that you had prosperity enough that you didn't have to work so hard that you lost it all and you had enough food to eat to get there. So the idea that these people are in prosperity, their body is fat, they are not in trouble as other men, nor are they plagued like mankind, rich people. They just have a light, easy life. Therefore, pride is their necklace. These prideful people, the garment of violence covers them. Their eyes bulge from fatness. The imaginations of their heart run riot. They have time to just do what they want. Their imagination is wherever they want to do. They mock and wickedly speak of oppression. They speak from on high. They have set their mouth against the heavens. They even rail against God in heaven. Their tongues parades through the earth. Therefore, as people return to this place, and waters of abundance are drunk by them, and they say, How does God know? And is there knowledge with the Most High? Behold, these are the wicked, and always at ease. They have increased in wealth. Those are his observations. Now he makes a conclusion. Surely in vain, I have kept my heart pure. We see a lot of things here, some got envy, he admits envy. I've been godly for nothing, is what he's saying. I'm missed out on the debauchery, the fatness, the prosperity, because I haven't pursued the treachery that they've pursued. and washed my hands in innocence. I have been stricken all day long and chastened every morning. If I had said, I will speak thus, behold, I should have betrayed the generations of thy children. When I pondered to understand this, it was troublesome in my sight." So he's wrestling with this concept. And now here's the change of heart. Until I came into the sanctuary of God. Until I came into the sanctuary of God. Now, I don't believe this meant that he walked into a certain place. I think he went there in his mind. He went to eternal things. He saw it the way God sees it. He jumped from a single reality of what he sees to a true reality of eternity. And here's what he says, then I perceived their end. It isn't without cost. All these people who have not believed, have lived treacherously, have lived in their own way, okay? They don't do it without cost. There is a consequence to this way of living that for a while, as he speaks here, is so appealing to him. Surely thou, meaning God, doth set them in slippery places, thou dost cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment, they are utterly swept away by sudden terrors, like a dream when one arouses, excuse me, when one awakes. O Lord, when aroused, thou wilt despise their form. When it comes time, God, I see that you will despise them because of their wickedness. When my heart was embittered, I was pierced within. So he states when he was focused on these people, what they had, he was embittered and he was pierced within. When I was senseless and ignorant. Ah, here we get some information. Who's ignorant? All those who look and say, Habakkuk's insane. They're senseless and ignorant. That's the position they're looking from. The senseless and ignorant position. They don't know God. They don't know of eternity. I was like a beast before thee. What are they like? Animals. When you have only the today perspective and not eternity, you live, lie, and animal. Animals don't think about eternity. They think about now and the next minute. They don't think about eternity. Nevertheless, I am continually with thee. Thou hast taken hold of my right hand. With thy counsel thou wilt guide me. And afterward, receive me to glory. What? Receive me to glory? There's something after now? There's something beyond the circumstance? Huh. New concept. Maybe Job isn't insane. This one that will take him to glory? Habakkuk says, don't my circumstances crumble? What do I have to look forward to? I rejoice in Thy salvation. Listen, if Christianity is just for the here and now, you're insane, or I'm insane. Does that make sense? If it's only for now, meaning we think we're going to live a better life, and we can live a better life, just obeying God's God-given principles of morality will save us much pain and anguish here in time. But, If that's all your Christianity is, then that's all it is. It's just some morality. And you don't get the benefit of this. We don't get the benefit of this eternal perspective until we give up the animal reasoning, we gain knowledge and senses, and look to the Lord. And afterward, receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven? I love this. Whom have I in heaven but thee? It reminds me of the disciples saying, to whom would we go? Right. They say to Christ, we can't leave you, to whom would we go? If you're not it, what do we do? He's saying, whom have I in heaven but thee? And besides thee, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from thee, he looks back at those people that he envied, for those who are far from thee will perish. Thou has destroyed all those who are unfaithful to thee. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good. I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all thy works. I think it's really neat that he didn't say tell of all thy works through me. I mean, just saying, all I have to talk about is your works, God's works. That's all you have. I'm going to end with this. For those of you who know your hymnals, you'll get this story before I conclude it. Horatio Stafford. Don't pick up your hymnal. Horatio Stafford. The first tragedy of his life, born 1828, October in Troy, New York. First tragedy, the Great Chicago Fire. On October 8, 1871, as Horatio and his wife Anna were grieving over the death of their son, the Great Chicago Fire swept through the city. Horatio was a prominent lawyer in Chicago and had invested heavily in the city's real estate, and the fire destroyed almost everything he owned. First tragedy in his life. He's mourning the death of a son, and this happens, so financially ruined. Second tragedy, the wreck of the, I don't know how to pronounce this, Ville du Havre. Two years later, in 1873, Spafford decided his family should take a holiday somewhere in Europe. He chose England, knowing that his friend, Dwight L. Moody, would be preaching there in the fall. Delayed because of business, he sent ahead of him his family, his wife, Anna, and his four remaining children, daughters, Tenette, Maggie, Annie and Bessie, four daughters. On November 21st, 1873, while crossing the Atlantic on a steamship, their ship was struck by an iron sailing vessel and 226 people lost their lives. including all four of Spafford's daughters. Somehow, his wife, Anna, survived. On arriving in England, she sent a telegram to Spafford, beginning, saved alone, period. Spafford then himself took a ship to England, going past the tragedy where his daughters had died. According to Bertha Spafford, a daughter born after the tragedy, The hymn was written in mid-Atlantic. Anybody know what the hymn was? As well as my soul, as he passed the spot. Amazing, where was his reality? Just not comprehendable, unless you are where we need to be scripturally. Our Father, we do thank you for seriousness of your word, and how it addresses those things in our lives. If you asked it, we would indeed keep us more often with eternity in perspective, and less often as unreasoning animals, senseless and ignorant. I ask that for everyone here and myself. I just ask that you would go with us from now, continue to be gracious to us as He sings in Jesus' name. Amen.