They were, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Chris Hitchens and Daniel Dennet.
Dennet and Hitchens are no longer atheists, because they have both died.
These four men capitalized on the terror attack on 9.11.2001 to paint all religion as evil and the source of all human ills.
Their work to convince people to disbelieve in God didn’t work…the number of Atheists holds steady at about 4%, the same number as it was in 1944.
There are many what is called “nones”…people not connected to a religion, but they don’t claim to be atheists.
Christian philosopher Paul Copan wrote that, “The New-atheists are often profoundly ignorant of what they criticize, and they typically receive the greatest laughs and cheers from the philosophically and theologically challenged.”
The atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse wrote that Dawkins’s arguments are so bad that he’s embarrassed to call himself an atheist.
Atheist professor Quentin Smith crowned Stephen Hawking’s argument against God in A Brief History of Time as “the worst atheistic argument in the history of Western thought.”
Until Dawkins wrote The God Delusion, he said it took over as the worse argument for atheism.
Copan, Paul (2010-12-31T22:58:59.000). Is God a Moral Monster?. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
There have always been arrogant people, making straw man arguments, then attacking those straw men and proclaiming a victory over them.
I will repeat what I said two weeks ago…following Christ is not a matter of education or intelligence it is a matter of Lordship…who will be my boss…me or Jesus?
Will we follow Christ as Lord or not?
It’s not a leap of faith in terms of anti-intellectualism, or anti-science…Faith in God, the truth of the gospel are the best explanations for what we see and experience in the world.
This is so, precisely because the gospel is true.
Today, we are going to finish John chapter 7
25 Some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill?26 Yet, look, he’s speaking publicly and they’re saying nothing to him. Can it be true that the authorities know he is the Messiah? 27 But we know where this man is from. When the Messiah comes, nobody will know where he is from.”
The leaders had just mocked Jesus as a conspiracy theorist, saying, “No one is trying to kill you.”
But that was a lie, and these folks were from Jerusalem, so they knew how the system down there worked…nobody was fooling them…”oh yeah”, they said, “They definitely want this guy dead.”
The fact that the authorities wanted Jesus dead did not surprise him, but the fact that Jesus was out there speaking publicly, in the face of this threat did surprise them…this guy Jesus has nerve.
And it was also surprising that the ones trying to kill him were not making more noise…. maybe, they thought…behind the scenes these leaders have figured out that he actually is the Messiah.
Perhaps they know something we don’t know.
Then, as John records their flip flopping on who Jesus is…they conclude…
“Nah, it can’t be, we know where this guy is from and when the Messiah comes, nobody is going to know where he is from.”
There was a widely held belief at the time that said the Messiah would be flesh and blood, but he would suddenly just show up out of nowhere and bring about Israel’s redemption.
John’s gospel is full of intentional irony, this is one of those instances…he isn’t making up irony for his gospel, he highlights it…the irony is in their in history.
We will see shortly that they assumed they knew where was from, but they actually didn’t.
They had confident ignorance.
Back to the New Atheists…who also are confident in their own ignorance.
Terry Eagleton, an English literature and cultural theory professor, wrote about them…that they are out of their depth and are misrepresenters of the Christian faith: “they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be.”
The one’s opposing Jesus in the first century were not atheists like these men of our time…but they did have the same kind of confident ignorance.
Copan, Paul (2010-12-31T22:58:59.000). Is God a Moral Monster? . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
28 As he was teaching in the temple, Jesus cried out, “You know me, and you know where I am from. Yet I have not come on my own, but the one who sent me is true. You don’t know him; 29 I know him because I am from him, and he sent me.”
“Cried out” is a term John uses to describe a public pronouncement…it doesn’t imply some kind of emotion…like Jesus was angry or anxious.
It just means he spoke out.
He hears what they are saying about him and stands up in the temple to address them publicly.
By the way, we spoke earlier this year about the R/A model.
Jesus, all through John displays perfection in his ability to both read and take appropriate action.
This is not merely cognitive and courage traits…it is a component of his desire to love his Father and others.
If you went back through the first seven chapters of John and read them through the R/A lens, you would see how over and over Jesus made the right read (women at the well, Nic, his brothers) and he took the right action.
Here, appropriate action was to speak directly to their confusion.
This is translated as if Jesus is affirming their conclusions, but he is actually exposing their ignorance.
“You know me, and you know where I am from” could be read as a question…”You only think you know me and where I am from…you don’t.”
“I have come from God, you don’t really know him, or you would know this about me.”
As you can imagine, this didn’t sit well with these guys who prided themselves on their knowledge of God.
30 Then they tried to seize him. Yet no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come. 31 However, many from the crowd believed in him and said, “When the Messiah comes, he won’t perform more signs than this man has done, will he?”
I have wondered how they tried to seize him and why it was that they were unable to accomplish this.
John will repeat this in a few verses…they try several times to seize him…but they can’t.
What did that look like?
Does Jesus just stare them down as if to say, “I don’t think I will let you capture me today.”
You see something like this when the military came to capture him in the garden…and he allows them to take him, but not before they fall down in the face of his power.
I would love to know more about how this actually went down.
But as usual, John doesn’t give me the details I want…he gives me the one’s that I need.
John’s point…made over and over in his gospel is that Jesus’ “hour” his “time” had not yet come.
That would be the appointed hour when he would be seized and crucified…but this would happen at the time of the Father’s will, not at the whims of human design.
In chapter 12, Jesus will say, “The hour has come.”
Then very soon after that, Jesus will allow himself to be arrested and crucified.
If you pay attention to John’s narrative, in this chapter alone…you see Jesus operating on his Father’s timeline and inside his Father’s will and protection.
I frequently hear this statement, I heard it just two weeks ago:
-Everything happens for a reason
These is generally a true statement but in context it’s often not used in a balanced way.
“Everything happens for a reason” is often, in my experience, a cliche, that is detached from an actual confidence in a personal God and from personal choices to obey him.
It’s more superstition than biblical faith.
Of course, God is sovereign, and he works everything according to his purposes but that is not an excuse to be passive…and it is certainly not an excuse to disobey him then hope for the best.
Jesus, told his brothers, “You go whenever you want to…you guys are doing your own thing, I’m not.”
“I’ll go when, where, and how my father wants me to go.”
Jesus then, out of obedience to his Father’s will goes straight into the teeth of danger in Jerusalem…because it is time for him to go there.
And, as he operates in this state of faithful obedience…he experiences his Father’s consistent protection…they are not going to be able to touch him, until it is the right time.
This is another place where we hold the tension of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility together.
We don’t become passive or disobedient and then just say, “God has his will, doesn’t matter what I do.” “It is what is.”
AND
We don’t live fearfully and faithlessly, as if God is not in charge.
We live faithfully, in obedience…and from that posture towards God…we live with full confidence in His purposes in our lives.
Again, this is no math problem to be solved…this is a balanced life of faith to be lived…God is sovereign and we are responsible to choose.
We proactively obey and we confidently trust…it is always both.
Nothing is going to touch me apart from the will of God…I can live in confidence of this fact.
When something hard does touch my life…it is because of the purposes of God…I can live faithfully because of this fact.
So, from that faith and faithfulness life posture…we can, with confidence say,
“Everything happens for a reason, and I am actively participating in the purposes of God.”
But if we try to live on our own timelines and for our own purposes…the truth of God’s sovereignty will turn into meaningless cliches (everything happens for a reason) but we don’t really believe that …and passivity (it is, what it is)…it doesn’t matter what I do.
It certainly does matter.
32 The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about him, and so the chief priests and the Pharisees sent servants (temple guards) to arrest him.
33 Then Jesus said, “I am only with you for a short time. Then I’m going to the one who sent me. 34 You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.”
35 Then the Jews said to one another, “Where does he intend to go that we won’t find him? He doesn’t intend to go to the Jewish people dispersed, among the Greeks and teach the Greeks, does he? 36 What is this remark he made: ‘You will look for me, and you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come’?”
The servants mentioned here were a kind of temple police force, drawn from the Levites, the priestly family.
Their job was to maintain order in the temple area.
So don’t think swat team…think “Mall cop”.
This is not to mock mall cops…but to get a picture of who they were…they were not hard-core law enforcement.
John keeps us in suspense as to what happened for a few verses, but shortly we will see that they failed to capture…and why they failed.
Meanwhile, Jesus, continues to disclose who he is and why he came.
He has just a short time before death…that will not be the end for Jesus but rather his return to glory with his Father.
As usual, his words are misunderstood.
They think they know where he is from (they are wrong) …and they can’t imagine he will go somewhere where they can’t find him (wrong again).
They conclude…he will probably go hide out among the Greek speaking Jew’s somewhere outside the region in the wider Roman empire…outside their limited authority.
John’s irony is shining through here again…they have no idea that 6 months from then Jesus would not go to the diaspora Greeks, but they could come him.
In chapter 12, we read…
Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the Feast. 21 They came to Philip, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.
At that point Jesus will say, “My hour has come.”
So, they keep stumbling on the truth that is hidden from them in their own arrogance and ignorance.
Remember, this is intentional ignorance…last week we say that Jesus told them, “If you really want to obey God, you will see that my teaching is from him.”
So, Jesus will not go to hide among the dispersed…but they will soon come to find him.
Remember this is all happening during the Feast of Tabernacles, or shelters…where the people lived in homemade tentlike structures for a week to commemorate God’s rescue from Egypt in the Exodus.
Each day of the festival a golden flask, filled with water was carried by the High Priest to the Temple.
Everyone would follow in procession and while the people watched the priests would walk around the altar with the flask while the temple choir sang from some Psalms.
When the choir reached Psalm 118, the male celebrants would raise their hands with fruit in them and cry out three times, “Give thanks to the Lord.”
They are remembering God’s provision…past, present, future.
Then the water was poured out before the Lord.
It was all very cool, very moving…designed to touch both heart and head.
This was symbolic of both the Lord’s provision of water in the desert and the outpouring of the Spirit in the last days.
It was seen by celebrants to symbolically refer to the age of the Messiah where life giving water would flow over the whole earth.
With that in mind, let’s read what happens next
37 On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and drink. 38 The one who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.” 39 He said this about the Spirit. Those who believed in Jesus were going to receive the Spirit, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified.
This is crystal clear…Jesus is declaring that he is the fulfillment of all that the Feast of Tabernacles celebrated and anticipated.
John wrote his gospel years after the events recorded in it…and he is connecting the dots for his readers.
His goal is not mere information but rather transformation.
His goal is that they will see how God has stitched together his plan of redemption through the ages, and it has come to fruition in Jesus.
His purpose is belief leading to life.
That they would drink of the water of life that only Jesus offers…and that water would fill and overflow their lives.
40 When some from the crowd heard these words, they said, “This truly is the Prophet.” 41 Others said, “This is the Messiah.” But some said, “Surely the Messiah doesn’t come from Galilee, does he? 42 Doesn’t the Scripture say that the Messiah comes from David’s offspring and from the town of Bethlehem, where David lived?” 43 So the crowd was divided because of him. 44 Some of them wanted to seize him, but no one laid hands on him.
It’s hard for us to understand the debate here.
Some say Jesus is “The Prophet” and others “No, he is the Messiah.”
Bottom line, at the time many Jews thought of the promised Prophet and Messiah as two separate people.
Look here again at the John’s irony.
They say, “Scripture teaches the Messiah will come from David’s offspring and from the town of Bethlehem…we know this guy is neither of those things.”
The fact is, Jesus is from the line of David and though he was raised up north in Nazareth he was born down south in Bethlehem.
They had no idea…they were ruling Jesus in, when they thought they were ruling him out.
Look at verse 43.
43 So the crowd was divided because of him.
Jesus said that he came to bring division. (Luke 12)
We can expect to see this same thing happen in response to our own gospel witness.
We should not be surprised or dismayed when this happens.
We are not to be divisive people…but when Jesus forces a decision…that is going to lead to some division.
One believes…another strongly disbelieves…and the division is formed.
Christians are to do all they can to live at peace with all people…but this does not include, betraying Christ, or denying the truth.
Jesus said, he would be a divisive force…because he would force a decision…and some would choose to believe and obey, and some would not.
Two things are important to keep in mind:
1. We are required to be faithful, changing people’s minds, hearts, lives are not our business.
-We musn’t try to be divisive but we must not shrink back from the truth either.
2. We must not measure too soon. There are way too many stories to count of people who rejected, mocked, attacked the faith who later became faithful followers of Christ.
I’ve known some personally.
Look at verse 45, now we see the outcome of the Mall Cops being sent to arrest Jesus.
They ended up being enamored by him.
45 Then the servants (temple guards) came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him?” 46 The servants answered, “No man ever spoke like this!”,
Remember, these are not law enforcement, they are not Roman soldiers…they are Levites…they can’t be blamed for being captivated by the words of Jesus.
This is not to say they became his followers, but they did, inadvertently, speak the truth.
“No one has ever spoken like Jesus. ”
We know why this is the case…he is the Word made flesh.
They don’t know why; they are just confused.
47 Then the Pharisees responded to them, “Are you fooled too? 48 Have any of the rulers or Pharisees believed in him? 49 But this crowd, which doesn’t know the law, is accursed.” 50 Nicodemus—the one who came to him previously and who was one of them—said to them, 51 “Our law doesn’t judge a man before it hears from him and knows what he’s doing, does it?”
These verses are packed full of Johns’ irony.
The proud Pharisees mock the temple guards for being taken in by Jesus, the imposter.
“Do you see any of the Pharisees believing in him? Just the dull minded masses who don’t even know the law.”
John has to be laughing as he writes this…these dull minded masses got it right…you experts, got it wrong.
Then Nicodemus, who may not be a genuine disciple at this point, but who is called “Israel’s teacher”…he IS an expert…he steps up to correct them on a point of procedure.
“Who, slow down fellas…our own law doesn’t allow us to make this kind of judgment without all the facts.”
Now they are fully amped up with their insecurity and hostility…they turn on their own in a rage of ad hominin attack.
52 “You aren’t from Galilee too, are you?” they replied. “Investigate and you will see that no prophet arises from Galilee.
They attack Nick with, “The only reason you would defend this nobody from Galilee is that you are an inferior Galilean yourself!”
“Search the scriptures Nick! No prophet comes from Galilee…duh!”
In fact, in their own calmer moments they would have acknowledged that Jonah and Nahum and probably others actually did come from up north…but they probably meant to say…
“THE Prophet” doesn’t come from there.
John, chuckling as he writes is thinking…”Jesus is from Judah, you guys have no idea what you are even talking about.”
One more time, a correlation with the atheists of our time.
Long time professor at the U. of Washington, now deceased, Rodney Stark wrote that these men are “angry and remarkably nasty atheists.”
Michael Novak said, “There’s an odd defensiveness about all their books…as though they were a sign not of victory but of desperation.”
There is a reason I have tied those who were anti-gospel in the time of Jesus to those of our time.
I hope to inspire confidence in believers and also, in those who have yet trusted Christ.
To say that you can, without taking an irrational leap of faith…place your faith fully in Christ.
CONCLUSION
Most Sundays, I aim our application to those who have trusted Christ.
Since most people who attend are followers of Christ, I mostly direct my applications accordingly.
Today, I want to speak more directly to those who have not yet trusted Christ or who are unsure as to where you stand in regard to the gospel.
Since you are here, you are probably not hostile to the gospel and are, to a degree, open.
Unless you are a youth…who like me, was made to come…but God uses that doesn’t he?
And if you have come for some time you are aware that I have no interest in argument or in beating people over the head with truth.
It doesn’t work…a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.
I know that being born again is both a work of God and a decision to believe…we have seen that clearly in John.
So, what God wants from me, from us who follow Christ…is to pray, share, and try to form trust relationships…to tell the gospel, good news.
Let me speak to you if you are not yet a Christian…if you have not made Jesus boss, Lord of your life.
1. If your struggle with the gospel is intellectual
-Perhaps you have heard or read someone who has cast doubt on the Scriptures, the existence of God, or the historicity of Christ.
-If you are interested there is more information out there than you could digest in a lifetime…compelling and true information.
-Historical, philosophical, ethical, archeologically, cosmologically…and many, many more areas of compelling witness to the reality of God, truth of the Scriptures, and divinity of Jesus.
2. If your struggle with the gospel is volitional
-If you are waiting for something else to happen, a light bulb to go on, a certain feeling, some new experience or information…I want to invite you to ask yourself…
“Am I a seeker who wants to find truth, or have I become content or complacent as a seeker.”
You have to decide…God has given that to you.
To not decide, is in itself, a decision.
3. If your struggle with the gospel is moral
-There are those who understand the claims of Christ as well as his demands and they are honest enough to say, “I don’t want to change, I want to do what I want to do.”
-I applaud your honesty but challenge your rationality.
-Jesus said, “What good does it do to gain the whole world and lose your soul.”
-I am convinced you are making a bad trade and you will, if you continue…live to regret this path.
-God is inviting you to into the freedom of obedience, away from the tyranny of being your own lord.
4. If you struggle with the gospel is “personal”
-Perhaps you have suffered and find it hard to trust God.
-Perhaps someone has betrayed you and you find it hard to trust anyone…maybe some Christian.
I would simply say, look to Jesus.
His is the singularity in human history…he suffered on the cross answering the question…”God, do you care?”
He lived a life of perfect integrity answering the question…”Can I trust anyone?”
Many have claimed to have gone up to heaven and to have seen or heard God. They then claim to have brought back to other humans what they went up and received from God.
Jesus is the only one who has claimed to have originated in heaven.
He didn’t “go up” and bring down the word of God. He came down, and would return to the glory of his Father.
In every way possible Jesus is a singularity in human history. Out of billions, there has literally only been one like him. Think of that, just one. No one else has even been close. I
t really does come down to Jesus…who he is, what will you do with him?
I don’t presume to compel you in 5 minutes to believe and receive the gospel…but I believe that this is not the first 5 minutes you have thought about these things.
Perhaps this is your time to believe and received the gospel…you will not settle every issue to 100 percent satisfaction…but you don’t have to if you are going to make a good, reasonable, decision to follow Christ.
He has given you enough to decide…I simple want to give you space, right now to do just that.
If you do decide to follow Christ today, it is very important that you tell someone, today.
And that you get help in next steps in your walk with Jesus.