The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): The world sometimes points to God's people as hypocrites because we say one thing but do another, and sometimes that observation is correct. The Israelites were no different. While their worship may have seemed happy and joyful, the Lord knew their hearts. And while they claimed to love Him, they would not listen and obey.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Dr. Boice asks the question: Has Christianity become mere Sunday entertainment, a political action committee, or a 12-step program, rather than a community of people who are learning to obey their God? Turn in your Bible to Psalm 81 as we examine what true worship looks like in the eyes of our great God.

Dr. James Boice: Earlier this year, a number of very creative people in the church worked with Bill Walter, one of our elders and trustees, to develop an advertising campaign for the church that was meant to present the challenge of the Gospel to secular people. There were about four or five different ads. One of them had the title "Jesus Hated Church Too". And then underneath was the copy that went on to explain what that was all about. It acknowledged that the church is often filled with hypocrites, it's marred by politics, there's often very rampant sin and a failure to live up to the standards of Jesus Christ. But then it said, and I think this is where it communicated pretty well, "Nevertheless, Jesus didn't give up on worshipping God. Maybe He knew something you don't. Why don't you come to 10th Presbyterian Church?"

Well, we didn't run the campaign because a number of people objected to it. They thought that it made fun of the church. Jesus would never have said "I hate the church". And we didn't want to produce division and certainly didn't want any kind of misunderstanding. But I find it difficult to understand, if for no other reason than that nobody spoke out more forcefully against the sins of the church than Jesus, or God the Father, for that matter. You know what Jesus said of the church of His day. The church of His day was Judaism that was dominated by a corrupt clergy, and He called them hypocrites, whitewashed tombs, blind sepulchers, and fools. That's stronger language than I've ever used, and I don't think too highly of many branches of the church myself. And then He said on one occasion, it's there in the 23rd chapter of Matthew: "You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to."

That's pretty forceful language. And as far as the things that God the Father Himself says, how about the Book of Amos, 5th chapter? God speaking: "I hate, I despise your religious feasts. I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring Me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Away with the noise of your songs. I will not listen to the music of your harps." Well, that's pretty comprehensive. God doesn't like their assemblies. He doesn't like their offerings. He doesn't like their worship. He doesn't even like the noise of their music. And He uses strong language. He says He hates it.

Now, those are good reminders for us. They're reminders that just because we go to church and worship doesn't mean that we really are worshipping, certainly not worshipping the true God, or that God is pleased necessarily with anything we do. And so it's a very direct word to Christian people to say, "Is your worship really something that's pleasing God?" Now, I begin our study this way because this is exactly what Psalm 81 is all about. Very interesting. Psalm 81 has to be understood as making a contrast between what people think they're doing and what they're actually doing. That is, how we see our worship and how God sees it.

Now let me explain. The Psalm falls into two parts. The first part is a wonderful call to worship, verses one through five. It's very comprehensive. It calls all of the congregation to worship. One of the great German commentators, Franz Delitzsch, from an earlier generation, points out that verse one is a call to worship of the congregation as a whole. Verse two is a summons to the Levites, who were the appointed temple singers and musicians. And verse three is a summons to the priests, who had the specific job of blowing the trumpets. So, this stanza gives the impression that all Israel is not only called to worship but is worshipping and is doing it well.

Now let me read it. "Sing for joy to the God our strength. Shout aloud to the God of Jacob. Begin the music, strike the tambourine, play the melodious harp and lyre. Sound the ram's horn at the new moon, and when the moon is full, on the day of our feast. This is a decree for Israel." All of that sounds pretty good. But you see, the problem is that from this point on in the Psalm, beginning in verse six, what we have are the words of God, who reproves the people for their disobedience and says that their worship really isn't pleasing to Him at all. It calls on them to repent of their sin and it says that they really won't do it. Now, that's a strange anomaly, isn't it?

On the one hand, you have this happy, joyful worshipping congregation that you think any god would be happy with. And then you have the true God saying, "I don't like it at all because your hearts are far from Me." Now we say that's strange, but it's really not strange because you find it all over the place in life and you certainly find it in the Bible. Think of those words of Isaiah. Jesus quoted them, applying to the religion of His day. "These people come near Me with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me." So we have to ask ourselves: is our worship like that? Is it a worship with our lips only while we keep our hearts to ourselves and do what we want to do day by day, or are our hearts and minds and soul and strength really given over to God in His worship?

Now, that's what this Psalm is meant to help us do. Now, after that first call to worship, God begins in verses six and seven, the next stanza as you have it in the New International Version translation. Use it in the pews if you didn't bring one with you. God begins with a reminder of what He had done in delivering the Jews from Egypt. He's writing to Jews. They had called to Him in their distress. He says that He heard them, He answered them, and not only that, He rescued them. He lifted the burdens from their shoulders and He freed their hands from the baskets with which they had been carrying bricks in order to contribute to Pharaoh's massive building projects.

Now, this is an aside, this is a parenthesis. It has nothing to do with the outline. But if you go back to the Book of Genesis and you study the accounts or Exodus and study the accounts there of the slavery in Egypt, you don't have any mention of these baskets. So here is something that you have in a song that you don't get out of the earlier chapters of the Bible. And yet, we know from the inscriptions that exist in Egypt, particularly in Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, that they did use baskets to carry the bricks. So what you have here is an independent memory later on in the Bible of something that had happened but wasn't recorded in the earlier books. It's a small little detail that kind of substantiates the authenticity of this religious memory of the people and the books.

In any rate, God said that He saw them and He cared. Now, that is a direct echo of what you have in Exodus when God appeared to Moses at the burning bush. Remember, He called Moses to him. He was going to send Moses as the human deliverer to bring the people out. But God begins by saying, "I have indeed seen the misery of My people in Egypt. I have heard them crying because of their slave drivers. I'm concerned about their suffering. So I've come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of into a good land."

Well, it's an echo of that and it's a memory of what God had actually done. Now, our equivalent today would be God's deliverance of us from sin through the power of Jesus Christ and His death upon the cross. The Bible uses it that way. Egypt was a place of slavery. For us, sin is our place of slavery. God heard their cry, He delivered them. God has heard us and delivered us as well. So God begins by reminding the people what He'd actually done for them.

Now, I said there are two main parts to this Psalm. There's the opening invocation, that's the call to worship. That's what we do in a service. We did it earlier. I used these very verses to do it. And then there's the section that is God's word to the people. Now, this second section in which God speaks to the people is itself divided into parts. You can divide some of these Psalms in different ways, but the way the New International Version does it with its stanzas is probably as good as any. What you have is a reminder of what God has done for them in the past. That's the first of those four stanzas, verses six and seven.

Then there's a warning to the people because of their idolatry, verses 8 through 10. And you have a record of the people's disobedience in spite of the warning. That's in verses 11 and 12. And then finally, the whole Psalm jumps to the present. Down to this point, it's been speaking of the past, how the people reacted in the past. Then it jumps to the present application to the present time to indicate that the situation that's described earlier is still continuing and that the people need to repent. Now, I'm giving you the outline now, but we've already gone through two sections. We went through that opening call to worship and we had God's reminder of what He's done for the people.

This next section is the very heart of the Psalm. Now, it's the heart structurally, isn't it? You've got five stanzas, it's the third one, it's right in the middle. That's intentional. But in terms of the content, it's also the most important. It's a warning about the people's idolatry. "Hear, O My people, and I will warn you. If you would but listen to Me, O Israel. You shall have no foreign god among you. You shall not bow down to an alien god. I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt. Open your mouth and I will fill it." Now, that particular paragraph has a lot of echoes of earlier parts of the Old Testament. To Jews in the service will recognize right away when it begins "Hear, O Israel". That's a repetition of the first words of the Shema, Shema Yisrael, and so on. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." That's a reminder of that.

The phrase "if My people" or "if they would but" picks up things that you find in Deuteronomy 5 and 32. References to a foreign god are from Deuteronomy 32, the great song of Moses and so forth. But the main echo of the Old Testament, you must have noticed it when I read it, is from the start of the Ten Commandments. And the words of the very first of the laws, what does God say? He says, "I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me." So this is what's picked up here. This is the command. And yet, the problem is that this is what the people have actually not done.

Now, this is the first of all laws and it's the most important of all laws. You have to understand that you're going to talk about religion. That's where you begin. It begins with the knowledge of the true God and the worship of that God and Him only. When Jesus was asked on one occasion what was the first and greatest of all the commandments, He didn't refer to the first of the Ten Commandments. Everybody knew that. But He referred to Deuteronomy 6:5, which is a commentary on it. Because Deuteronomy 6:5 says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." That's what it is to have no other gods before God. You get that right, all the other commandments follow in their place.

Now, the importance of that for us is that that is also the great issue of all time. That is the knowledge of the true God and the worshipping of Him only. This is the great issue of religion. The great issue in religion is not between the existence of a God and atheism. There are very few people that are real atheists and some who profess to be aren't even serious about it because they know better. That's not the issue in religion. The issue is: Who is God? You believe in God, I believe in God. You have your idea of God, I have my idea of God. Who's the true God? That's the issue. And what the Bible is saying is that the true God, the true God, not an imaginary god, not another god, but the true God has revealed Himself.

And He's done it historically. With Israel, He did it in the Exodus, taking the people out of Egypt, showing His power, and at Sinai, where He revealed His law. And since then, He's revealed Himself in a personal way in Jesus Christ, consistent with that Old Testament revelation. Now what Christianity says is that this is the true God. And so this great commandment is the issue of all time. Do we really believe it? And we who claim to be God's people and come to church to worship, are we really worshipping Him, or is it a god of our own imagination? Let me put it this way: the great issue today as always is the truth or falsity of this statement. "I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before Me." Is that true and should we obey it?

Some time ago I came across an article written by a professor, his name is Robert Wilken, it was published in First Things magazine. He's a professor of history, history of Christianity at the University of Virginia, secular school. This particular article was entitled "No Other Gods", the very issue we're talking about. And it was an attempt to apply the first commandment to our times. Let me share a little bit what this man, this professor, says. He began with an analysis of our current secular Western culture, which he accuses of undermining beliefs, attitudes, and conventions, those that have nurtured civilization for centuries.

Here's what he said, I'll quote him exactly. "The purpose, the goal of secular Western culture is to dismantle Western culture, to turn everything into a subculture. Secularism wants religious practice, especially Christian practice, banished to a private world of feelings and attitudes, while at the same time the realm of the public is to be expanded to include every aspect of one's life." Now you don't need a degree in the history of religion or sociology or contemporary times to know that that's exactly what's happening. It's actually what is being called today post-modernism.

You know, pre-modernism was the idea that truth can be discovered both through reason and revelation. In other words, science tells us certain truths, revelation, the Bible, tells us certain truths. Then modernism came along, rejected revelation, and said you only can discover truth by reason. We had that for a while and Christianity was pushed aside. Now you have in post-modernism something that destroys even that. Not only is there no truth to be discovered, everything is relative, and so reason isn't worth anything at all. Now that's what he's talking about. It's a conscious attempt in our age, post-modern age, to destroy, undermine all values that have given culture any meaning.

Now, Christianity stands against that, of course. And the reason we stand against it is we say God has revealed Himself, the truth is known. Some people don't like that today in a post-modern age. As a matter of fact, even to claim that you have any knowledge of the truth is regarded by some, this is what they say, as hate language. If you claim to know the truth, you're saying somebody else doesn't know the truth if they disagree with you, and therefore you hate them. That doesn't follow at all. That's as irrational as it can be. It isn't true. But nevertheless, that's what's said. There's so much opposition to it. But Christians stand against that, you see. We say that God has made Himself known. That's what we're here for. That's what we want to tell people: God has made Himself known and to challenge them to see if in fact that is not true, that God has really revealed Himself in Jesus Christ.

Now this article backs it up, as you'd expect a scholar to do. He goes back to the days of Origen of Alexandria. He was a great Christian apologist in the third century. The Roman Empire was beginning to break down the same way our culture is breaking down. Eventually Rome was overrun by the barbarians, as you know. And he pointed out that Origen was writing to a secular world just like ours. And he stressed as his apologetic for Christianity that what we are concerned about is the truth. Christianity, he said, stands even in tumultuous times because of what we know. And it did. The Roman Empire collapsed, Christianity stood, and it rose from the ashes and was strong and preserved civilization, such as it was, through the Middle Ages.

Now, we acknowledge that the kind of certainty we claim for truth in Christianity is different from the kind the world has. The world talks about reason alone, we talk about revelation, that God has made Himself known. But to talk about revelation is not irrational. You see, if you're talking about God making Himself known in history, primarily in Jesus Christ, that's a rational statement. And if you don't like it, well, you examine it and prove it to be untrue. Or if you find it to be true, well, it is true and you ought to order your life in accordance with it. But that's what Origen was saying. He said, "We speak of what we know."

You know, in those early days, one of the great verses in the Bible the apologists loved was John 1:18. They used it often in support of their position. That verse says, "No one has ever seen God." In other words, it acknowledges our inability to find the invisible God. But it says, "God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known." So they say, "We've come to know who God is through Jesus Christ."

Now this Professor Wilken also brings us up to date a little bit by some observations of TS Eliot. You know who he is. He's the author of the "Wasteland", he wrote "Murder in the Cathedral". He lived between the wars. And he was seeing the same thing happen in Britain that Origen was seeing in the third century with the Roman Empire. The period between the wars in Britain and in Europe was a time of moral decay. Society seemed to be falling apart, the same sort of thing we have today. And so Eliot wrote about this. He gave a series of lectures, he published them in a book called "Christianity and Culture". And here's the way he put it. "The choice before us is between the formation of a new Christian culture and the acceptance of a pagan one."

"Instead of showing that Christianity provides a foundation for morality, we must show the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity." Do you understand the difference? We begin with truth. He went on to say, "It's not enthusiasm but dogma that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society." And all that really is is another way of saying the first commandment still matters. Do you know the true God and are you worshipping Him only?

Here's Wilken's summary: "Christians are called to persuade others, including many within the churches, that our first duty as human beings is to honor and venerate the one true God, and that without the worship of God, society disintegrates into an immoral aggregate of competing self-centered interests, destructive of the health of the society. Only God can give ultimate purpose to our lives and direction to our society." His last line: "The first commandment is not just a text to be memorized in a catechism class. It's a theological basis for a just and humane society."

Well, that's something that Christian people have always known. At least they should have known it. It's what they should be practicing. But of course, the sad thing is that they don't, and that's what the Psalm is saying. Looking to the actions of these people in the past, the Jews who had this revelation, God says that He had heard them, He delivered them, He had instructed them, and He warned them. Nevertheless, verse 11, "My people would not listen to Me. Israel would not submit to Me." You see, the remarkable thing about this ignorance of the true God and the failure to follow the true God is that this is being said of the Jews who had the knowledge of the true God.

That's not being said about the world. Nothing amazing about that being said about the world. The world doesn't know God. They're consistent with their non-knowledge of God in the way they act. Nothing surprised you that the world goes the way it does. They at least maybe are consistent. Of course, they're consistently wrong. We think they're going to pay the price for that. That's why we warn them. That secular way of life doesn't work because this is not a secular world, it's God's world. You have to live it in accordance with His laws or things are not going to work out for you. It's the explanation of much of the misery in your life.

But nevertheless, this is not said of the world, this is said of Christian people. "It's My people who would not listen to Me. It's Israel, the people of God, who would not submit." You know, I've said on more than one occasion that when I travel around the country as I do, what amazes me about the evangelical church, not the liberal churches, not the sects, but the evangelical churches, is how little awareness of the presence and the existence of God there actually seems to be. You go to these churches and wonderful churches, they're big and they're prosperous, they have lots of money, lots of programs, everybody's having a good time. But where is God? I hardly hear Him mentioned in some churches.

Bible isn't read. Nobody does Scripture readings anymore. You'd think God hadn't revealed Himself in the Bible, or if He had, it doesn't really matter. And as far as talking to God, which is what prayer is all about, prayer has almost evaporated. And what has come in place of that is a low kind of entertainment, a competition with Hollywood or the stage. The hymns aren't even about God anymore. The great hymns were all about God and His attributes and what He's done. And the modern hymns are all about us and how good we're feeling and things like that. Well, maybe they have their place. All kinds of songs have their place. I even sing popular songs sometimes. But you see, God is being pushed out.

To judge from what I hear, Christianity in many of these churches has become either a form of Sunday entertainment, a political pressure group, or a 12-step recovery process, rather than a community of those who know and are learning to obey God. But you see, that's what we have to offer our culture as Christians. That's all we have to offer. We don't have any greater wisdom than anybody else about politics or psychology or science. But what we have to offer is the knowledge of God. God's made Himself known to us in Scripture and in Jesus Christ. And the question is: do we really know Him?

Here's what Mike Horton says, one of my friends. "What is required in our day as even many non-Christian thinkers are saying is nothing less than a spiritual quest. Will we, the Christians, be there ready for the ultimate questions with answers from the personal God of biblical revelation who is the source of all truth, or will we still be entangled in the ideological movements and draw our water from streams which have run their course, progressing from a mighty ocean to a stagnant pond?"

Well, we get to the end of this Psalm, the fourth stanza. We find God indicating the result that comes to His people when they won't hear His voice. What He says is that He gives them up to their own devices. You notice that? Verse 12: "So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices." That is exactly what God says of the unbelieving world in Romans 1. We spent eight years studying Romans. I'm sure you don't remember that far back. But Romans 1 says that God gave them up. You know, they wanted to go their own way, they didn't want God. God gave them up. That's what God does with a secular culture. You don't want Me, you don't want religion? Go your own way. You see what a mess we make of things when we do it that way.

But you see what God is saying here in this Psalm is that it's true of Christians too. You won't acknowledge God and go God's way? God will give you up. And what He gives you up to is your own devices. And so what you find yourself being is the world. You become just like the world, you see. And in our day, what that means for evangelicals is that we become as materialistic and secular as those around us. That's what the polls are showing. There's virtually no difference in many cases between those who profess the name of Christ and those who are about them in all their major beliefs and so on. And we're just as materialistic. And you see, it's no good, is it? To say, "Come, let's worship God. Let's make a lot of noise. Let's play the trumpets. Let's sing real loud" if we're not worshipping God. Because even when you're doing that, you become as materialistic and as secular and as sinful and as worldly as the world.

So what's needed? Well, I think here of 2 Chronicles 7:14, great Old Testament text that's written to the church. And here's what it says. "If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways," that is, if they'll seek the true God in holiness as He can be found, "then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land." You see, the problem with Christian people is that they want other people to be humbled. They want the world to be humbled, especially in the presence of the church. They want them to confess their sins, want them to turn from their wicked ways. But what God says is that that's not where revival begins. Revival begins with God's people. It's you and me that have to humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways. The world can't do it, not by itself. But we're to proclaim the God who reveals Himself to us that way in order that by God's grace, many might actually hear about Him, find salvation in Jesus Christ, and so be on their way to heaven.

Let's pray. Our Father, we're thankful that we have had a chance to study this Psalm. We pass over some of these Psalms. We just read their words without understanding, and many times as we do with Scripture, without application to ourselves. But here is a Psalm so relevant for our day, so relevant for us. Our Father, grant that we, Your people who are called by Your name, that we might actually worship You in spirit and in truth and so have something so real in our own fellowship that those who don't know You might be drawn to it, saying, "Well, we don't know the answer, but if the answer's to be found anywhere, it must be somewhere here." And so by Your grace, come to know Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, visit alliancenet.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians. Or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888. Please take the time to write to us and share how the Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601.

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