Responding to Post-Modernism Bible Study

Transcript: Responding to Post-Modernism

Responding to Post-Modernism; A Two-Step Model (A Bible Study)

Submit and Have Faith

Prelude

1. Lesson Responds to Post-Modernism

• The idea that all truths are relative
• Headlined by the famous saying, “speak your truth!”

2. It relies on experience, then the principle

• It asserts that principles are flawed, therefore your experience is what matters
  • Trickles down to theology
• People reason that Biblical principles are fallible, and often don’t respect the authority of Scripture
• Sometimes overgeneralized to the idea, “all religions lead to Heaven”
  • The only thing deemed concrete is that there is a Heaven. Nothing else is. 

3. Notice, it is called “postmodernism”

• It is called postmodernism because modernism was an intermediate stage
  • It was primarily a response to the wars of the 20th century
    • Some thought the only way to “fix the world” was to allow experiences to speak, other than so-called “evil ideologies” and “principle”
• Modernism stated that science is changing, and postmodernism says to be skeptical of everything
  • Meta-modernism is a predominant thought not too far away that says, “Nothing but personal experience is to be trusted”
    • Will cause even more chaos

4. These ideas are here and are dominating many arenas

• The question is, how should a Christian respond
• How can Christians respond and live in a post-modern world?

Q. Before we can address this; it is best to know what you yourselves believe about truth

• How relative is truth?

As Christians, We Recognize Sovereignty

• We have a Lord and a King, when He decrees, we respond with worship
• One specific example I have here can be found in Deuteronomy 12:1-8; we see the nature of God as expectant when He decrees
• Some prior context here:
  • The Israelites are wandering throughout the desert, right near the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 1:26-40)
    • They were told to take the promised land in chapter 1 by God, but because they feared and disobeyed, God swore they would never see the Promised land
    • A promise that he kept
  • Fast forward, to chapter 5, we see God give Moses more non-relative instruction: The 10 Commandments
    • These are an outline of God’s Law essentially
  • Fast forward to Deuteronomy 12, now God is telling the Israelites to act on the second commandment
    • “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
  • And He forbids them from doing what seemed right in their own eyes (12:8)
    • This sets an early pattern in Israel’s history; God does not give relative decrees

1. Proverbs 21:2 gives this bit of wisdom

• Read Proverbs 21:2
  • To further explain, a person may think what they are doing is right, in this day, and we call that “our truth,” but God has the final say on what is true or not
• Modern-day relativism is rebellion against God

2. Jane Roberts (Or as some call her alternate personality (aka demon) “Seth”

• She was a writer and self-proclaimed physic and medium for spirits
• Coined the phrase or least gave power to the phrase, “You create your own reality”

3. I recently read an article by a psychologist and contributor, Ilene Strauss Cohen, and she was stating that the key to a better truth, is self-awareness

• This is a true pandemic; we live in a world that believes that truth comes inside of us
• Instead of the external, omnipresent king of the Universe

4. Relativism first ends when we bow our needs to God
5. As Christians, We Taking Faith as Faith, and Live with Faith as Truth
6. Wrapping up my recent wrestling season as a coach, I look back and I can see the face of every kid who came up to me and said, “Coach, I can’t win, he’s undefeated,” or “Coach Harris, what do I do, he knows all my moves.”

• They keep asking the same question, knowing I am going to give the same response, “Wrestle what you know. Go beat em’.”
• You see, as a Christian, I am not negating faith. We need faith. 
• God created us and He knows that people live by evidence;
  • Time and time again, I pointed my wrestlers back to the truth
    • You trained hard, your in shape, you know the moves, you want to win
• But when we speak of and live by faith, we need to remember our faith, is in truth.
  • Having faith does not mean you do not know something is true.
  • It’s quite the opposite; we look to what is done; and rest in that
    • We know:
      • Christ, came sinless, died a sinners death, was buried and rose again
      • We know Christ beat death and left the grave behind
      • We know He sent His Spirit down to comfort and empower us
      • We know Christ is coming back to judge the dead and alive
      • We know that our God is real and is in Heaven working all things to the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose
      • We know He has our best interest at heart
      • We know He is a jealous God
      • We know He is a perfect God
      • My question is: What do you know?
        • Write it down. Let’s talk about it.
• A classic example, every time you sit in a chair, you have faith that the chair will hold
• You see that is sturdy and capable of holding you
• Hopefully, we recognize God is just as capable

2. Fact: God holds all things together (Colossians 1:16-17)

• God has preeminence to all things
  • Matter of fact; He has provided every thing needed to be grounded and settled in truth; ministers of the truth
    • Go down a little bit further to Colossians 1:22-23, it reads

22 In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:

23 If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister;

3. Do not treat faith as a “guess,” treat faith as a reliance on the truth

• Jesus foretold of the Gospel when He told His disciples in John 8:32; “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
• Fast forward to the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and we see this come to fruition;
  • “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17)