Participants: Clifford Goldstein
Series Code: CFTF
Program Code: CFTF000009
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00:21 Hi, Cliff Goldstein here and I want to welcome you
00:24 to Contending for the Faith. 00:27 You know, the 17th century began 00:31 which called the scientific revolution 00:34 or the modern age. 00:37 A time when slowly but surely many ridiculous superstitions 00:44 were being replaced by 00:46 scientific thought and reasoning. 00:49 Here's where the work of some of the great names 00:52 in philosophy and science arouse. 00:55 Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, John Locke, 01:00 Thomas Hobbes, Galilei Galileo 01:03 or Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler 01:06 and of course, Isaac Newton the great. 01:10 And this is the amazing thing. 01:13 It wasn't just what people knew that had changed, 01:17 what had changed was what was really revolutionary, 01:21 what was the major shift was 01:24 what it meant to know something that changed this well. 01:29 You know, as I said on some other programs 01:32 I can say that I know that Jesus died for my sins. 01:36 I could say that I know that I'm in Illinois right now, 01:40 I know that two plus two equals four, 01:43 I know that I have a headache. 01:46 In each case I have used the verb to know 01:50 but in very different ways 01:52 I knew each of these things in different ways. 01:57 Now but the point is people were developing 02:00 in the 1600s and the 1700s all new concepts about 02:06 what it meant to know something. 02:10 Now many traits of these work 02:13 the beginning of this to an English 02:15 man named Francis Bacon 02:16 but you know, it's so funny just coming out here 02:19 on the plane I was reading a book 02:21 about somebody who challenged this whole idea 02:24 that had began with Francis Bacon. 02:26 So with everything, history, science, whatever 02:29 there always a lot of questions. 02:31 But anyway, the common belief is this 02:34 all began with Francis Bacon. 02:38 Many consider him the world's first scientist. 02:41 So again I think that is wrong 02:43 but anyway they would say 02:45 the modern age is for scientist I should say. 02:49 But anyway, Bacon had been raised 02:51 and educated in the school system 02:54 of the 15th-16th or 1600s and what was fascinating 02:59 he challenged the whole foundation 03:02 of everything that he had been taught. 03:04 He challenged the whole intellectual 03:07 foundation of the time. 03:10 And with the fascinating line, 03:12 a famous line that even gives me 03:14 goosebumps now when I read it. 03:16 When he was getting in trouble, imagine a student in class 03:20 and the teacher speaking to him 03:22 and the student just gets up and say no, 03:24 everything you are saying is wrong. 03:25 It's all wrong and I don't buy any of it and so on. 03:29 Well, I don't know that exactly what 03:31 freak Francis Bacon did but that was the idea. 03:34 Well, he gets in trouble 03:36 and then listen to this line that he says. 03:40 "I cannot be called to abide 03:42 by the sentence of a tribunal which is itself on trial." 03:49 Oh, I love that. 03:50 Bacon challenged 03:52 the entire intellectual foundation of his time. 03:56 Hence he refused to be condemned 03:58 by the very system that he himself was challenging 04:02 which had its roots and foundation 04:05 in the writings of Aristotle. 04:10 See, up till this point 04:12 much of the western intellectual tradition 04:15 at least the past few hundred years 04:18 including and especially the Roman church 04:22 was in the thrall of the writings of Aristotle 04:27 and the effect was I believe terrible 04:30 as much as Aristotle was like, 04:32 it's hard to imagine how smart this guy was 04:35 and how much knowledge he had. 04:37 His influence was powerful 04:39 and in many ways it was very bad. 04:42 You know, we all know some of the story of Galileo 04:45 and the church fighting over cosmology 04:48 and Galileo's contention that Copernicus was right, 04:52 that the earth wasn't at the center of the universe. 04:56 That was his contention. 04:57 The church believing that it was, 05:00 that it was the center and believed that was biblical 05:04 when and for against him. 05:07 Now I mentioned this on the earlier program too. 05:11 Galileo gets in trouble for teaching this. 05:15 Supposedly it's against the Bible. 05:17 But I ask somebody where does the Bible teach 05:21 that the earth sits stationary in the center of the universe 05:26 and all the planets circle around it. 05:28 I mean, it's not in the Bible. 05:30 The Bible never talks about that. 05:33 It's not a biblical teaching. 05:35 But then why did Galileo get in trouble? 05:38 Why was he accused of heresy? 05:41 Well, the answer was easy. 05:43 It was deemed heresy but it wasn't in the Bible, 05:46 it was in the teachings of Aristotle 05:50 and his cosmology which he wrote 05:52 hundreds of years before Christ, 05:55 the earth sat in the center of the universe 05:58 and all the other planets and stars 06:01 and so forth circled in this crystal spheres around it 06:06 and everything below the moon 06:08 was made of one substance 06:10 on the earth or different substance, 06:12 kind of substances on the earth 06:14 and above it there was a special 06:16 immutable perfect substance called the quintessence 06:21 and everything below it was sub-lunar world 06:23 with the world we live in with things changing 06:27 and mutable and so forth. 06:29 But the point is that's Aristotle a pagan Greek. 06:33 Not Moses, not David, not Daniel, 06:35 not Paul, not John, not Peter, 06:38 so what do you have here 06:40 but a prime example of how the church, 06:44 the catholic church though let's not fool ourselves. 06:47 The Protestants weren't a whole lot better. 06:49 You have an example of how the church 06:52 at this time was getting caught up 06:55 in the latest and greatest signs. 06:58 In this case Aristotle and trying to incorporate 07:02 that into their biblical teachings. 07:05 And may I humbly suggest 07:07 that those who think that they can do this today 07:10 that is incorporate the latest and greatest signs 07:14 into the Bible that is evolution. 07:17 They might think there Galileo standing for truth and so on 07:22 but they really just playing 07:24 the role of what the church did. 07:27 And only in this case 07:28 the teaching is not as completely anti-biblical. 07:33 But I'm digressing here, my main point is this, 07:37 my main point is this as the understanding 07:39 of what it meant to know something. 07:42 Change radically during the scientific revolution. 07:48 They began to look at the world 07:49 more quantitatively as opposed to qualitatively. 07:55 Now what is that mean? 07:57 When in the Aristotelian system rocks fell to the earth 08:02 because it was their nature to fall to the earth. 08:06 Fire rose because it was the essence, 08:09 it was the nature of fire to go up. 08:13 But what the new thinking, 08:14 what science did was start to move away 08:18 from these essences and perfections and natures 08:22 all Aristotelian terms instead 08:25 they started to study things like ratios, 08:28 quantitative relationships between force and matter. 08:32 How heavy is this thing? How fast does it fall? 08:36 What changes in the ratios between them and so forth? 08:41 Now the climatic historical example 08:44 of this new way of understanding 08:47 was Isaac Newton 08:48 Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 08:52 1687 often called the principia and this was the famous book 09:00 where Newton worked out the law of gravity. 09:04 But if you look at it sometime you will notice something. 09:07 It's almost all numbers. 09:10 Numbers were Galileo said the language of nature. 09:14 And the following few years have proved him right. 09:17 I mean, after all, what science 09:19 or what technology doesn't employ mathematics. 09:23 I remember I had a roommate in college 09:26 and he was an engineer. 09:28 And I'd come home and he'd be in his room 09:30 and he'd be always doing his math, 09:32 always be doing these math equations. 09:34 I still remember him talking about him saying one time, 09:38 I'll never forget this, 09:40 he said it takes a lot of math to fly a jet. 09:44 And again you look at physics, you look at astronomy, 09:48 it's all numbers that all the, all use numbers. 09:52 Now this itself leads to a whole host of questions. 09:57 Numbers are important. 09:58 We couldn't fly jets without them, 10:00 we couldn't build bridges without numbers, 10:02 we can't do computers without numbers. 10:05 And yet people don't even know what they are. 10:07 I mean one of the century's greatest 10:09 mathematicians Bertrand Russell 10:12 once said about mathematics this. 10:14 He said, "Mathematics be defined as the subject 10:18 in which we never know what we are talking about, 10:21 nor whether what we are saying is true. 10:24 That's incredible." 10:26 And never the less mathematics is here to stay 10:29 and it's a crucial tool in the work of science. 10:35 Now if that's true, if that's true 10:40 I want to ask you a question. 10:43 What about what has been called 10:46 the science of salvation. 10:51 We've all heard that for phrase before, haven't we? 10:54 The science of salvation. 10:58 If salvation is a science and science uses numbers 11:04 then can numbers help us understand science? 11:09 Well, you know, that's what I want to, 11:12 that's what I want to look at because I believe that numbers 11:17 can teach us a very important truth 11:21 about salvation, the science of salvation. 11:25 In the book Steps to Christ, page, 62 " 11:30 Listen to what was written 11:34 "The condition of eternal life is now 11:37 just what it always had been, just what it was in Paradise 11:41 before the fall of our first parents, 11:45 -perfect obedience to the law of God, 11:49 perfect righteousness." 11:52 Let me read that again 11:53 because that's pretty heavy, think about this. 11:56 "The condition of eternal life is now 11:59 just what it has always been, --just what it was in Paradise 12:04 before the fall of our first parents, 12:07 --perfect obedience to the law of God, 12:12 perfect righteousness." 12:15 Now that's pretty heavy, is it not? 12:18 I mean, that's heavy perfect obedience 12:21 to the law of God, prefect righteousness. 12:27 Now here though is where 12:29 I think numbers can be especially helpful. 12:34 See we are talking about absolute perfection here, 12:38 not shades of gray, not shades of gray, 12:41 not something partial, nothing like that. 12:44 Perfect righteousness, perfect holiness, 12:47 perfect obedience to the law of God. 12:53 So, here's where 12:54 I think as I said numbers can be helpful. 12:56 Let's use an example of perfection from mathematics 13:02 and I think most of us could relate to. 13:06 When you were at school and you took a test 13:10 what percentage symbolize perfection, 13:14 what was a perfect score, a flawless score? 13:20 Of course, a hundred percent. 13:23 Ever did a test back that said a hundred percent, 13:28 you got a hundred percent on it. 13:30 Oh, it must have been nice. I don't think I really know. 13:34 Okay, so let's use this as an analogy 13:38 for perfect righteousness. 13:41 Okay, let's parallel it to a hundred percent 13:44 such as you get in a school room 13:46 or a class room. 13:48 So to meet the condition of eternal life, 13:52 okay, which is perfect righteousness 13:54 you need a score of a hundred percent. 13:57 Remember perfect obedience to the law of God, 14:00 perfect righteousness that's a hundred percent. 14:05 Now remember think about this a 99.7 percent 14:12 would fall just as short as would a 9.97 percent. 14:19 Only a hundred percent perfect righteousness 14:22 meets the condition of the eternal life. 14:25 Any other grade, any other percentage 14:28 isn't gonna cut it. 14:29 You know, I was once in a school 14:31 and you know, like an graduate school, 14:33 well, I was in graduate school. 14:34 You either got two grades, you got pass or fail. 14:37 You either pass the class or you fail the class period. 14:41 Now supposedly you are in a school 14:44 and there are only two grades, 14:46 okay, pass or fail 14:48 but the only way to get a passing grade 14:50 is you have to have the hundred percent. 14:53 A 99.7 percent will give you the same grade big fat "F" 14:58 as a 9.97 percent, okay. It's useless. 15:04 Either you get a 100 percent or you fail the class. 15:09 Okay, now, let's say someone is born again 15:14 and say they lived in a world whatever say 15:16 their average righteousness comes out to 68 percent 15:21 because a scripture says we all sinned 15:23 and fall short of the glory of God. 15:27 We are not worrying about what age you 15:28 became born again or whatever, 15:30 we are just starting you at arbitrary 68 percent. 15:34 Well, let's say that first year 15:36 you are in the fire of your new love, 15:38 you are in the fire of your new faith 15:40 and claiming you are walking in the newness of life 15:44 that Paul talks about in Roman 6:4 15:46 and claiming the promises of victory over sin. 15:50 You rack up a perfect hundred percent the first year. 15:55 I mean, you are cooking, okay. 15:58 So let's do the math, 16:00 let's suspire the vigor's of mathematics to this 16:03 because remember we are looking at the science of salvation. 16:07 So if you average 68 percent 16:11 with a hundred percent what do you get? 16:14 Well, you get 84 percent. 16:17 You know, follow well with the calculator 16:19 if you like a hundred percent average 16:21 with 68 percent give you 84 percent. 16:24 Not bad, not a bad jump 16:27 but nowhere near the conditions of eternal life. 16:32 Well, suppose you taking up your cross daily 16:35 you get a hundred percent the next year too. 16:38 You do the math, you're now at 92 percent not bad 16:43 but still not the requisite hundred percent that you need. 16:47 The next year you struggle a bit, 16:49 you repent, whatever your score is 84, 16:53 you average that with 92 percent 16:55 and your scores now 88 percent 16:58 that's nice and that's fine 17:00 but nowhere near what's needed for salvation. 17:06 Well, maybe however 17:08 you attain to sinless perfection, 17:12 we've all met some of the folks 17:13 that we the first to tell you, 17:14 you meet them at camp meeting sometime, 17:16 didn't sinned in 20 years. 17:18 Okay. 17:19 Well, let's say you reached that 17:21 and let's say for the next 50 years 17:24 you rack up a score of a hundred percent every year 17:30 for the next 50 years until your death. 17:33 I mean, you claim promises, you died a self, 17:36 you live a life of sinless perfection 17:39 all through God's grace 17:40 the only way any of us could ever do it. 17:43 Well, let's do the math here, okay. 17:46 Fifty hundreds is 5,000 17:49 add to that 88 your previous score 17:52 you then divide that by 51 17:57 thus you get a whopping 99.7647059 percent. 18:04 Impressive, you're a pretty holy person 18:07 I have to admit that. 18:08 I would know what that would be like 18:10 but that number is still as useless 18:13 as if you had a 0.97 percent, okay. 18:17 In fact if I were trained mathematician, 18:20 if we got a trained mathematician here 18:22 he could stand up here and in five minutes 18:24 and two minutes he could show you that 18:26 even if you live forever, 18:30 if you live forever it's mathematically impossible 18:33 for you to reach a hundred percent. 18:36 Once you have one time, once you have one time 18:40 gotten below a hundred percent 18:42 then it's mathematically impossible 18:45 for you to have to reach that hundred percent. 18:49 What then does math teach us about the science of salvation? 18:54 Teaches us what John said. 18:56 If we say that we have not sinned 18:58 we make him a liar and his word is not in us. 19:04 That's pretty heavy. That's pretty heavy, okay. 19:07 So now the only way you're gonna get, 19:12 you could get a hundred percent there's only one way 19:15 is just to have scored a hundred 19:17 on your first test and every other test 19:20 you got a perfect hundred percent, okay. 19:24 That's the only way to do it. 19:28 Well, then we are in a pretty bad shape, 19:30 aren't we. 19:31 What's gonna happen? 19:32 How do we get the righteousness 19:34 that we need? 19:36 Well, in that same book Steps to Christ 19:41 the author talked about Jesus 19:45 and he said that Christ lived a perfect sinless life. 19:50 In essence you could say that Jesus got the needed 19:54 one hundred percent and the great provision 19:58 of the gospel is that His perfect score, 20:01 His hundred percent is credited to us. 20:06 Listen to these words. 20:09 He died for us 20:10 and now He offers to take our sins 20:12 and give us His righteousness. 20:15 What would Jesus if you are gonna put a number 20:17 on Jesus righteousness what percent would it be? 20:20 It would be a hundred percent. 20:22 If you give yourself to Him and accept Him as your Savior 20:26 then it's simple as your life may have been 20:29 for His sake you are accounted righteousness. 20:33 Christ character, Christ hundred percent 20:35 stands in place of your character 20:38 and you are accepted before God 20:40 just as you have not sinned. 20:43 Did you catch that? 20:44 This is basically what Paul is saying in Romans. 20:49 "But now the righteousness of God 20:51 apart from the law is revealed, 20:54 being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 20:57 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, 21:01 to all and on all and on all who believe." 21:05 That hundred percent score, 21:08 that righteousness of God himself, 21:11 the righteousness of Jesus 21:12 that's the only way we as sinner can have it. 21:16 It has to be credited to us as a gift. 21:20 Now, you know, I use the school analogy. 21:24 Imagine you are in school and you all take the grades 21:28 and you take your tests 21:30 and everybody needs a hundred percent to pass 21:34 and none of you have it, okay. 21:37 Well, some kid comes by 21:40 and some kid gets the hundred percent, 21:43 the only kid in the class to get the hundred percent. 21:46 He is the only one that's gonna pass 21:49 and then the teacher says okay, I'm gonna make a provision. 21:52 If you claim for yourself his hundred percent, 21:56 his grade is given to you instead of your grade 22:00 because your own grade is guaranteed to fail you. 22:05 But you say hey, that's not totally fair, is it? 22:09 No, it's not fair. It's what called grace. 22:12 If you want complete fairness, go find a religion 22:15 that teaches salvation by works. 22:17 If you want grace instead of fairness 22:22 then you come to the cross, you come to Jesus 22:26 and you claim His righteousness for you. 22:29 Because once you sinned, once you one time 22:32 got one question wrong on one test 22:35 it's impossible for you 22:36 no matter how well you do to ever get the grade you need. 22:42 You need that hundred percent covering you. 22:46 It's mathematically impossible otherwise. 22:52 Can you see then? Can you see then? 22:55 Then how mathematics explains the science of salvation? 23:00 The issue folks, isn't whether 23:02 we can overcome sinful tendencies. 23:05 The Bible promises us that we can. 23:08 The issue isn't 23:09 whether we can have a new life in Jesus, 23:12 the Bible tells us we can. 23:14 The issue isn't whether or not we could cleanse ourselves 23:17 from our filthiness of flesh and spirit. 23:20 2 Corinthians 7:1 the Bible tells us that we can. 23:26 The issue in the end is how are we saved. 23:31 And we are saved by Christ 23:33 perfect obedience to the law of God. 23:37 I mean, how else, 23:38 I mean, anybody there listening anybody there 23:41 I want you to stop for a minute, 23:43 I want you to think about your law keeping. 23:47 Who out there, who among you thinks 23:49 you have kept God's law 23:51 well enough to be saved by it, okay. 23:54 Raise your hand if you can, I can't see you, okay. 23:58 Well, if you haven't kept God's law 24:00 well enough to be saved by it 24:02 then how do you think you are gonna be saved? 24:04 How do you think you are gonna get to heaven? 24:06 Why do you think God is gonna accept you. 24:09 I don't know what your math score would be. 24:11 Maybe you are at 95 percent, maybe you are at 85 percent, 24:15 maybe you are 22 percent all I know is one thing, 24:19 if you are not at one hundred percent 24:22 you have not met the conditions of eternal life. 24:27 You have to have that hundred percent 24:30 in order to be saved. 24:34 He died for us and now He offers to take our sins 24:38 and give us His righteousness, His hundred percent. 24:43 If you give yourself to Him 24:45 and accept Him as your Savior 24:47 then sinful as your life may have been 24:50 for His sake you are accounted righteousness. 24:53 You are accounted. Christ character, 24:56 Christ hundred percent stands in place of your 98 percent, 25:01 8.9 percent, 0.09 percent whatever it is 25:06 Christ righteousness stands in place of your character 25:09 and you are accepted before God 25:12 just as if you had not sinned. 25:17 Just as if you had not gotten one question wrong. 25:21 Just as if every text, I mean, every test, 25:26 every grade, every exam 25:28 because see the way it would work 25:31 if you go back to the school now with Jesus you take a test. 25:36 You get the first question wrong 25:38 then you get all the other questions right 25:41 and then the next test you get all the other questions right 25:45 and the next test you get 25:46 all the other questions right 25:49 and you get them all right you average it up 25:52 you don't have a hundred percent. 25:54 Or you can do all-- you get all the questions right, 25:58 you get down to the last question 26:00 on the last test you get it wrong you still fail. 26:07 You have to have that hundred percent covering up. 26:12 You know, I didn't believe a 34 years 26:18 and if there's anything my experience has taught me 26:21 and experience buttress by the word of God 26:25 because we get all sorts of experiences 26:28 but you got to interpret them through the word of God. 26:31 Jesus has changed my life. 26:34 I don't know what my score would have been 26:36 before I knew Jesus but I promise you 26:39 if you could put a quantitative numbers to it, 26:43 you could add the numbers 26:44 my score would be so much higher 26:48 than it was before I knew the Lord, okay. 26:52 So much higher but one thing I do know though 26:56 is that whatever that score was 27:00 it would never what was and whatever it is now 27:04 it's not the requisite one hundred percent. 27:08 That's why there is not a day in my life that doesn't go by 27:13 where I don't have to lean 27:15 on Jesus one hundred percent for me. 27:19 Folks, that's not an excuse to sin. 27:22 This hope, this promise, Christ righteousness for me 27:26 that is the only thing that after 34 years 27:30 has kept me from throwing it all out when I do sin, 27:34 when I do fall short, 27:36 when I do feel I'm just not good enough. 27:38 I don't feel that I'm good enough to be saved. 27:41 That I know I'm not good enough to be saved. 27:45 That's why I have to claim Jesus hundred percent for me. 27:52 We have a life in Jesus. 27:54 Jesus will take our score from wherever it was 27:58 and He will move us upward and upward and upward. 28:02 But in the end the math shows us 28:06 we need Christ righteousness for salvation. 28:09 Hey, don't take my word for it, 28:13 do the math. |
Revised 2014-12-28