Born to Win Podcast - with Ronald L. Dart

Sitting here, watching an impending moral collapse, one is led to wonder what’s going on—what is the proximate cause of all this? I can tell you where I think we went wrong; but to do so, I need something to stand on. And I always try to stand on the Bible to look at issues like this. That’s my worldview. And when you come to an issue like this from a biblical worldview, you find precisely where the responsibility can be laid. When this social pattern was repeated before, a prophet named Jeremiah laid the blame right where it belonged. Woe be unto the shepherds that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel against the shepherds that feed my people; You have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, says the Lord. I will tell you that this chapter has made me shudder from time to time. These are the shepherds of his people that God is talking about, and that is a term reserved for the priests, the prophets, the teachers of the law. So I wouldn’t look to the secular progressives as the cause of the problem. Rather they are the symptoms of the moral disease. Jeremiah now decides to speak on his own: My heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine has overcome, because of the Lord, and because of the words of his holiness. For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourns; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their might is not right. For both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, says the Lord. In Hebrew usage, the prophet is the preacher and the priest is the judiciary—in our society, that might include congress. There is no question that the blame for this deplorable collapse of morals is laid at the feet of the preachers and the civil leaders. But how on earth can that be? When people speak for God, how can they be blamed for a moral collapse? One commentator, in a piece on the Tower of Babel, made an important point: But that was millennia ago. Now, for the first time the whole world speaks the same language. Yet it is not propositional; rather, it is pictorial, literally focused on As a result, the whole process militates against reason because images have become the sum and substance of truth, and the written word is no longer user-friendly. For all practical purposes, truth has been relegated to technology, beauty has been subjugated to the beholder, and goodness is mocked night after night as millions are idiotized before a box. We have been left as expendable entities in a disposable world, and our experiences have become fragmented quantities in a disjointed world. Yet, the fearful symmetry remains, for at such a time as this we are called to proclaim, Is the written Word the best method for an infinite God to have chosen to reveal Himself? Yes! Indeed, an emphatic yes! I’m not sure I follow him all the way through this; he is speaking figuratively, I think. But his point will be that the written word is the way God has chosen to reveal himself, and with this I absolutely agree. I take that to mean that if you don’t stand on the Bible, the word, you are in danger of idolatry—the use of images, which are of little value in reasoning. And the results of the gradual abandonment of the word, even in religious contexts, is what follows in Jeremiah’s prophecy.

The road out of Egypt is not a pleasant drive. It boggles my mind to think about walking it with a million refugees. I set out one morning in a borrowed Volkswagen to drive from Cairo to the Suez Canal. My wife was with me, as was a lady we intended to baptize in, of all places, the Red Sea. It is a desolate wilderness across there. Once you leave the Nile Valley, there is, well, nothing. The only thing we passed on the road was a downed Russian aircraft in the desert. According to the book of Exodus, 600,000 men (plus women and children) set out across that desert to freedom led by Charlton Hes…excuse me…I mean, led by Moses. You don’t have to be very perceptive to realize that this gaggle of refugees, under the best of conditions, would be nothing but trouble. And these were not the best of conditions. But they were free, and it is hard for us to imagine what that meant to them. It is just that they had no idea yet what it was going to mean. At any point in history, men have to make decisions about what freedom is worth. Again and again in history, men have given up freedom for safety and comfort. And the road to slavery is not always seen for what it is. The road from slavery has its own share of difficulties, as well. We begin following the children of Israel along that road in Exodus, chapter 12.

The story of the Exodus is a tremendous story: a wonderful story of liberty, freedom, and an end to slavery for an entire people. It is a story of triumph—and it is also a story of great tragedy. Yes, it involves the birth of a great nation, but it also involves the destruction of a great nation and of one of the world’s most powerful rulers. And because the Bible is such a big story, people often see only part of it at one time and fail to realize the implications of what they read. Some people see only the joy of freedom for the Israelites. Others see the destruction of the Egyptian economy and society and the killing of the firstborn children of all the Egyptian families. It was one of the greatest crises in all of history—and not necessarily the best understood. I knew a fellow once who just couldn’t accept the Passover story. , he wondered. But the part of the story that is not so often told is the brutal subjugation of the Israelites by the Egyptians (all of the Egyptians were involved) and the killing of a whole generation of Israelite babies by the Egyptians—all of the Egyptians. If you think of God as just, how could God not take some form of justice on the Egyptians for their cruelty? We begin the story of this fateful night in Exodus, chapter 12.

Nearly everyone knows the story of the Exodus. Between Charlton Heston playing Moses in the movie and the animated the story has been thoroughly told to the masses. But there is an aspect of it that continues to trouble a lot of people who read the Bible. Pharaoh had no choice. God hardened his heart again and again. It would be one thing if Pharaoh were Hitler: a thoroughly bad man who himself was hard-hearted, started hard-hearted, and stayed that way. But the scriptures don’t say that. There is little doubt Pharaoh was a bad actor, but the Scriptures say categorically that God hardened his heart so he would not let Israel go. I can still remember the first time that I ever encountered this idea. It was in Paul’s writings, and I was just a teenager. I read in Romans 19, verse 17: For the scripture says unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore has he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardens. You will say then unto me, Why does he yet find fault? For who has resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus? Has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction[.] Now, that’s a clear reference to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. But I’ll tell you, it was chilling to me as a young man reading the Bible to consider the possibility, however remote, that I might be a : someone actually created to dishonor. And there is no question about it when you read the story in Exodus–God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. But there is an aspect of that story that rarely gets told. Nothing I have ever seen in the movies about this event accurately portrays what the Egyptians did to the Israelites, and over what period of time they did it.

The world can be a very confusing place, can’t it? It isn’t always easy to know the right thing to do, the right road to take, or the right decision to make. And most of us, most of the time, want to do the right thing. At least we want to think we want to do the right thing. But it seems that, in the modern world, the right thing to do keeps shifting ground on us. There is no constant standard—no absolute truth—some people tell us. The problem is that life and death really are absolutes. When the chest pains come upon you, when they have yelled, , and tried to shock you back into life, and have failed, when they have pulled that sheet up over your face, you are absolutely dead. Sickness, poverty, slavery, disease, hunger; these are real absolutes in the world. So how come we hear people telling us there are no absolutes, when we know better? Why should anyone be so stupid as to believe there aren’t rules of life somewhere that make the difference between life and death, sickness and health, wealth and poverty, when you see these around you every day? Oh sure, time and chance account for a lot of man’s trouble, but on the whole, there is a way that leads to life and a way that leads to death. Intuitively, most of us know that—we just aren’t sure what those ways might be. When you come to the crossroads, how can you know which road to take?

In all of the Bible, who is the greatest example of leadership (apart from Jesus, of course)? Without a doubt, it’s David. When you speak of David in a Biblical context, the name needs no modifier. You don’t have to call him King David for a Bible reader to know exactly who you are talking about. His name occurs more than 1,000 times in the Old Testament alone. A curious fact: No one else in the Bible was ever named . This is, I think, very unusual given the very human proclivity for naming kids after famous people. Yet, with David, it didn’t happen. It is almost as though God intended for David to be, and always be, one of a kind. Names in Hebrew mean something, and until recently, I had never looked at the meaning of David’s name, nor had I ever thought much about the characteristics of this man that made him such a great leader. He is easily the most influential and dominant figure in the Old Testament. He was the youngest of eight sons. His brothers thought he was arrogant. The key story of his life is familiar, but I want to extract from the story the elements of leadership in David that emerge from it. We’ll begin in 1 Samuel, chapter 17.

There was a time when we knew what terrorists wanted. When they blew up something, they identified themselves and made their demands. We knew what they wanted and why they wanted it. All that has changed. Now terrorists don't identify their cause, nor do they make demands. What do they want? At the time, I concluded that what they wanted was Americans dead, in large numbers. On the surface, this is a religious war. But like a deadly iceberg, there is a lot more below the surface than above it. Europe's great religious wars ended 350 years ago. That's plenty of time for us to forget that it is possible for people to slaughter one another over a matter of religious faith. It is frightening, isn't it? And we do well to be frightened. There is great evil afoot in the world. What makes the perpetrators of this evil dangerous is that they don't care who they kill, and they don't care if they die in the process. And it is only natural to wonder if we are approaching some of the terrible events of the end time described in the Book of Revelation. It's possible, but let me introduce you to one of the players in the Book of Revelation: The Destroyer…

We need to talk about Haiti. I know you’ve probably had more Haiti on your television than you’d like to see for some time; you’ve had enough. My question, though, is, “What more could Christians have done for that poor land?” Haiti is actually a largely Christian country, with Roman Catholicism professed by 80% of the Haitians. Protestants made up about 16% of the population. And then there’s Haitian Voodoo, which is practiced by roughly half of the population. Now it’s in that demographic that you get a hint of the problem, don’t you? Did you see it? How can you have a population that is 96% Christian and 50% practitioners of Voodoo? Something is not quite right in Haiti, and it’s a hard thing to say. Is there anything that we Christians might have done that we left undone? Several years ago, I read a book entitled . It was the story of the search for a missing son in Sierra Leone, Africa. The title was the name given to Sierra Leone by slavers who used to call there. I don’t even remember what the purpose of the book was. I was so overwhelmed by the descriptions of tribal life, and the religion and superstitions of those people that I was left feeling hopeless. How on Earth, I wondered, could the Christian faith penetrate that darkness? After some years, I began to see it in the chain that led to the tragic spread of AIDS in Africa. Being a Bible teacher (and in my career I’ve taught all of it, front to back), I came to see in the theories of the development of the disease in Africa a chain of broken laws. Laws the African people never knew because, in many cases, even the Christian missionaries didn’t bother to tell them. The law that would have prevented AIDS from becoming epidemic in Africa, I concluded, was the Law of Moses. If memory serves, in a previous program I did (“A Covenant for AIDS”), I found a sequence of about seven laws; any one of which, faithfully observed throughout Africa, would have prevented AIDS from ever getting a foothold in that continent. Now, while I musing about the wretchedness of Haiti, an article arrived on my desk by Mary Eberstadt. I think she has coined a new term for the Christian failure that’s been much on my mind, and I never got a title on it. Her article (which appeared in the January 2010 edition of ) was titled …

Does anyone know where we went wrong? It is impossible to deny that we have gone wrong somewhere. I hear voices on every side telling the government what to do, but I am left with the sinking feeling that no one knows what to do. We have been sailing happily on our way, looking for all the world like the richest nation the anyone has ever seen. And then we find that it is all debt, all borrowed money. And when we found out there was no collateral for all that stuff, everything comes unglued. If we had a prophet show up in our streets, the day after tomorrow, what would he say was the root of our problem? I am not sure God would even speak to us, but if a Jeremiah showed up somewhere and laid it on the line from God, what would he say? Jeremiah went day after day to the most public place he could find. I don't think he would even speak to the proximate causes or our financial mess. He would go deeper than that. Because you can't cure a disease by merely treating the symptoms. So, if we had a real prophet show up, what would he say? Well, here's something God said through a prophet to nation very much like us.

Years ago a friend told me what I was. Most of us have had that experience at one time or another. (If not who we are, at least where we can go.) My friend told me that I was an apologist. I would have been flattered if I’d known what that meant. It was somewhat later I encountered one of the greatest of Christian apologists, C. S. Lewis. And then recently I came across a quotation from C. S. Lewis that explained a vague disquiet that follows me around. Lewis was remarkable in this regard. He was an intelligent, highly educated, well-read man who also had the good sense to doubt himself, to examine himself, which one cannot do without self-doubt. Lewis understood the spiritual dangers of vanity and he also understood what a thin web is woven by a good argument. He said, Now, doctrine and apologetics are essential otherwise you would never know where you are, you would never know what you should do next. But there is also a temptation to vanity. This was never more clear to me than when I read that quotation from the dean of apologists. There’s a fairly well-known denomination that believes no one is going to be saved except members of their own church. I remember there was a time in my past—I had been baptized by a Baptist church and I was struggling at that time with certain things—and I remember distinctly having a picnic with some friends of ours who are members of this other denomination which shall remain unnamed. Once they realized that I was a little bit at loose ends, they became very urgent about getting me baptized into their church. They wanted to take me down to their church that day, that hour, and get me under the water. They were very concerned that if didn’t get baptized and something happened to me, I would go to hell. I would go straight to hell. think those people will be profoundly surprised when they find me standing right next to them on the sea of glass before the Lamb of God in the resurrection. In fact, I might be as surprised as they are. I’ve been too far down that road myself. Now think about this just for a moment. Imagine that you have made it, you’ve been raised from the dead, you’re standing there before him—the judge of all the earth—you can see him as he is, and there standing along side of you are two figures you recognize immediately who come from differently separate religious backgrounds. They are Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II. Now if you know very much about Catholic and Baptist doctrine, you have to ask yourself, Well, I think I finally understand. They will not owe their presence there to the fact that they had a correct set of doctrines. They will not be there because they kept this or that law, or followed that particular rite or ritual. But, then you see, you won’t be there for that reason either. What makes it possible for you or anyone else to stand before God is the grace of God. And that grace, if it can’t transcend our doctrinal differences, if it can’t transcend our little picky arguments, doesn’t amount to much. And what makes that grace possible is Christ himself. Let’s take a look at an illustration of this in John, chapter 13.

I don’t suppose there has ever been a man on the face of the earth who had the power at his beck and call that Jesus had. But there was never a time when he abused it. He tried to make this lesson clear at the last supper when he got up, took a towel, laid aside his outer garment, got a basin of water, and began to wash his disciples feet. He said, The whole idea is that we are all servants. We’re not emperors, lords, nothing of the kind; we are not masters, we are servants. It seems odd to me when I think about it, but of all the things that Jesus might have said, of all the instructions he might have left us, these are his only words about church governance. He forbade his men from exercising dominion over, or authority upon, the people. It’s that simple. And Jesus, it seems, also taught that —that old principle still applies. And if you trace the grief that has befallen the church down through the ages, an awful lot of it has come straight from ignoring these words and letting some person become the big boss, the governor, the leader of all the people. I think this lies somewhere near the source of what God told Malachi to tell the priests in his own time: For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi," says the Lord Almighty. So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.

It seems like it’s very hard for the servants of God to keep their act together. The worst thing that can happen to us is good times. For the Israelites who returned to Jerusalem from exile, the times had indeed been very hard for a while. They had started rebuilding the temple, then they had to stop because of political pressure. Then, under the prompting of the prophets, and with God’s protection and blessing, they set to work again and finished it. Two men played a major role in all of this: Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the governor. They were good men and they wanted to get the job done, they had prophets along that were stirring everybody, up and the work got done. But there is another danger all of us face. When God has blessed us, we assume we have his approval in more areas than are really justified. In other words, we think that since we built the temple—we got it done—we are really good people. There is yet another danger when any long-term goal is finally realized. After all this striving is past, once you have arrived at your goal, you can find yourself at loose ends. You may think, “Well, I have accomplished this. I deserve a break.” And maybe you do; but it’s a serious mistake to presume it. So here’s the picture for the Israelites: the second temple has been finished, many aspects of their lives were now much better, the ongoing service of God in the temple was continuing on a day-by-day basis, and everything was going on like it was suppose to. Another generation, though, has entered the priesthood and public life, and there is the inevitable let-down that take place—the loss of focus, the loss of awareness, and that’s the picture that prevails when a prophet name Malachi comes on the scene with a message from God.