Dennis Tuuri

Chief city of Samaria used sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is the great power of God.” And to him they had regard because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries. But when they believed Philip, preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

And then Simon himself believed also. And when he was baptized, he continued with Philip and wondered beholding the miracles and signs which were done. And when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost. For as yet he was fallen upon none of them, only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Then laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, “Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.” But Peter said unto him, “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.” Then answered Simon and said, “Pray ye to the Lord for me that none of these things which he hath spoken come upon me.” And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem and preached the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

Let us pray. Text the word magi referring to wise men in the Old Testament. And so I thought it’d be good and proper to return for several lessons. I want to just review the text briefly with us then and then look at three very important lessons from this text before we move on to next week’s text which will deal with the Ethiopian eunuch which we’ll touch briefly on very briefly today.

We have in this account of scripture a text that deals with a particular person Simon who was a wise man the same basic term being used here is for the wise men who came and paid homage to the king of kings incarnate on earth, which we celebrate of course this coming time of year.

Simon was some sort of magician bewitching people. Bewitching simply means to be astonishing them putting them beside themselves. And you remember last week in today’s outline as well I give us kind of an overview of the text by looking at the various aspects of this story as they relate to this person Simon the magician. He’s introduced for us in verses 9 through 11 as one who had used various ways of manipulating people having a great deal of influence and sway over them.

And then we read that those people, however, were rescued out of the enchantment so to speak, the delusion that Simon was some great thing, was the great power of God. They were confronted with the gospel, the true power of God, the dynamite of God as Romans tells us, the dunamis, mega dunamis, big dynamite, the atom bomb of God. The power of the gospel is that and it comes in and converts these people who had been bewitched for a long time by Simon.

Very important lesson for us as we conclude today. We attach to that truth. But in any event, we read then that people were baptized into the faith. And we read also of Simon’s baptism in verses 12 and 13. He comes to have the same faith, the same term used of his faith, the same terminology relative to his baptism is used as it was of the rest of the Samaritans who converted. And so Simon is baptized into the faith.

And then in the text, we have a test given, I believe, for Simon. Now, it has other implications as well for other things that we’ve talked about, but essentially in the context of this particular account of Simon, I think the primary purpose for verses 14-17 is to lay a test so to speak in the providence of God that will reveal Simon’s heart and his particular sin that needed to be worked on and repented of.

And so we read in verses 14-17 that the apostles were at Jerusalem. Remember the dispersion had these guys had left Jerusalem. Most of the church had not in fear. Remember it was the risen Christ that said the race is on now. Take the gospel to the uttermost part of the earth. The apostles have remained behind in Jerusalem for various reasons. They hear that Samaria has converted in mass essentially the whole nation essentially the country and they come to that area and they lay hands upon people and through the laying on of hands an empowerment of visible manifestation of some type of the Holy Spirit comes into their lives.

We can assume it was the same gift that manifested itself in the day of Pentecost. That gift being the ability to speak in tongues foreign languages as it were some visible manifestation that Simon could see. And so this was a test to Simon. In the context of our text, it tells us indeed that Simon saw this and he failed the test. He sins by seeing this happen and he thinks somehow that he can purchase with money the gift of God, the laying on of the spirit.

So he asked the apostles that he says he’ll give them money and he would like to be able to have this gift. He attempted to buy office. That’s one thing he did. And so the church has for many years used the term simony for those who had purchased ecclesiastical office. He saw office and the empowerment is one thing here and he attempts to buy office so to speak. He attempts to buy the ability to bestow this gift of the spirit.

Here was a man who attempted on one hand you can look at him as a syncretist. He takes the things of God and tries to synthesize them into his system and so you come up with something new and better. But it really is not as we talked last week the destruction of his worldview that’s in mind. He hasn’t been stripped away of his existing worldview. Rather he’s tried to tack Christianity onto the top of that as so many people do today.

In the context of the preaching of the gospel in America for the last hundred years. The gospel is not used to challenge people and to cause them to repent. The law of God is not preached. Conviction is not preached in evangelism. Usually, it’s an attempt to give people a better life. So, they tack on what might be called, as Francis Schaeffer called it, the upper story. Well, that’s what Simon attempts to do here is he tacks on this upper story.

And the way to make that a successful area of his life is to employ the same techniques he had learned relative to his magic and his manipulation of people. And so, he attempts to buy this power or gift, this magical power. Well that is his sin. And then Peter of course immediately responds to that sin through a severe rebuke. Peter tells him that you know your money and you will perish forever unless you repent.

And he then corrects him and tells him that he is very close to being cast into hell with his sin. And so he calls on him to repent that God may perhaps in verse 22 if perhaps the thought of thine heart shall be forgiven thee. Simon is perceived to be by Peter to be in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. And so Simon then responds and says well pray to God for me please that this thing not come upon me.

And we talked last week we don’t really know for sure. I don’t think I’m not sure. I don’t have a great deal of certitude over Simon’s eternal state. As we said other commentators for instance Matthew Henry and others have pointed out that this is the same thing that Pharaoh asked for Moses. Pray to your God for me and make these things not come upon me. And so we don’t know but we know enough we know enough from this lesson to learn and contemplate various things that are very important for us to take from this text into our lives and into our culture as well.

Verse 25 concludes the story of the conversion of Samaria with the apostles going back to Jerusalem and preaching in many villages of the Samaritans. And we talked there about how here was a country that was detached seen as essentially gentile although they were Jewish but they were essentially gentile looked that way forbidden to worship at the temple constructed their own temple they were not part of the villages of Israel that the scriptures talk about the presence of God in but yet they become part of the true Israel of God and the apostles go through preaching in the villages of the Samaritans and that gospel word then converts that nation and then we’ll see next week that the progression of the gospel continues in the book of Acts.

Well, I want to today go back to this text and spend a little bit more time talking about three very important lessons. And I touched on a couple of these last week, but I wanted to develop them in a little more detail. And the first each of these three lessons, by the way, are in decreasing length. So, I’ll spend more time on part A, a little less time on part B, and then even less time on part C. That’s not to say that the importance of these lessons that I trace out in your outlines are of relative importance in that way. But part A will require a bit more explanation, a bit more trying to understand the implications of magic, of the manipulation of people, trying to bring the gospel into your own worldview, apart from letting the gospel change your worldview radically and root out your sin. I’ll talk about the dangers of that. I got a little bit of time and then the other aspects will not require as much time hopefully.

Well, let’s talk then first of all that one of the important lessons from this text is a warning, a strong warning I might say against manipulation, domination and syncretism. Simon was a magician. He manipulated people in things for his own purposes and as a result he attempted to dominate people and you can see that the people were looking to him as some great thing. He had put them beside themselves and he had dominated them to a certain extent.

The dominion urge in man is not ever removed from man. It’s twisted as a result of the fall. And so man apart who is not regenerate attempts to exercise dominion over other people and it becomes a way dominating them. And I want to talk about that first of all in relationship to the text that we touched on briefly last week. I’m going to read now from Deuteronomy 18, verses 9 and following. And I’m going to read down through verse 15.

So just try to stay with me here. I know it’s a long text. Deuteronomy 18:9-15.

And we have here one of the longest portions of scripture that deal with the sin of magic and manipulation. Verse 9. When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. Now, this is relevance for us right away. We read that verse and we recognize that we’re in a particular cultural setting here and that is essentially apostatized from the faith.

It’s a post-Christian era to use Francis Schaeffer’s terms. So, we’re coming back into a nation here, so to speak, as Christianity begins to reemerge and the reformation theology that so shook the world 400 years ago begins to emerge from its cocoon, so to speak, in America. We also need these kinds of warnings applied to us because we enter into a culture that is filled with abominations. Verse 10, there shall not be found among you, that’s in the context of the church.

Now, anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that use divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord thy God hath driven them out from before thee. Now, that should assure us that the abomination to the nations in which we live is an indication that God will surely drive them up before us as we go forward as the apostles did preaching the gospel.

Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord your God. For these nations which thou shalt possess, hearken unto observers of times and unto divers. But as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee to do so. The Lord thy God will raise up to thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me. Unto him ye shall hearken. Now this last verse, we’re a bit more familiar with Moses saying that there’s going to be one to come in time who will be like unto me a prophet.

Unto him you shall hearken. We know that those words speak of the coming of the great prophet, the greater Moses, the Lord Jesus Christ. But we don’t usually put them in the context that Deuteronomy 18 places them in. And that context is a warning against magic, conjuring, fortunetelling. We could by implication astrology, crystal ball gazing, etc. And so the scriptures tell us quite clearly that we’re to avoid magic.

Magic is what is in store here. Let me just read a couple of quotes, commentaries on this passage. First from John Calvin. Moses explains clearly in this passage what it is to have other gods. In other words, to mix up the worship of God with things profane since its purity is only thus maintained by banishing from it all unearthly superstitions. The sum therefore is that the people of God should abstain from all the inventions of men whereby pure and simple religion is adulterated.

You see, and so it has context to the word religion and worship of God and particularly again to the one who would come Jesus Christ and listening to him and not these other methods of control. Now to recall and elaborate on the same passage of scripture. Moses groups together all the words which the language contained for the different modes of exploring the future and discovering the will of God for the purpose of forbidding every description of soothsaying and places the prohibition of Moloch worship at the head.

Okay. So Calvin and others said their commentaries are highly language oriented and they said he’s using every term used in the language here for those people who would attempt to explore the future and discover the will of God apart from the true worship of God. And it says they say that they placed the prohibition of Moloch worship at the head to show continuing on in the quote now the inward connection between soothsaying and idolatry possibly because immolation or passing children through the fire in the worship of Moloch was more immediately concerned with soothsaying and magic than any other description of idolatry.

What is being forbidden here is the attempt to control to know the future to control the future for our purposes apart from God’s revelation of himself in the person and work of Jesus Christ. To quote now from R.J. Rushdoony, Rushdoony says based on this text that magic is the attempt to control and govern the supernatural by means of the natural. Now reading from Institutes specifically relative to this text, he says the purpose of magic is control and power over God, man, nature and society.

And that is what is being forbidden in the context of Deuteronomy. And that is what Simon has engaged himself in. He is attempting to control the supernatural, the manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit through his manipulation, his ability to take turn the base elements of money into this power by which he could then exert more control and domination over people. Gary North in Institutes of Biblical Law in an appendix says the following that magic seeks to manipulate reality by means of rigid incantations and self-abnegation compelling the secret powers to perform in accord with the prescribed formulas.

Now, we’re familiar with that. We’re familiar with people you say the right words. You go through the right motions and somehow you draw upon the spiritual forces of the supernatural and you can control other people. You can make a voodoo doll that still looks like somebody else say the right incantation, pull the right levers in the system, the entire world system and somehow you can affect somebody miles away.

This is what is being forbidden by God in Deuteronomy. But it’s interesting because it relates it specifically as Calvin and others say at the head of this list is the passing of children through the fire. worshiping Moloch. And we know that passing the children through the fire in Deuteronomy is referring to Moloch worship through the text that I’ve listed for you on the outline. We won’t bother to look them up here.

In any event, it’s important to see here that magic is the attempt to manipulate people and to control them for one’s own purposes. Now, legalism, and Gary North continues on in his text from Institutes of Biblical Law to say that legalism is very much akin to magic. Why? Legalism is usually apparent. Well, well, let’s see. God is viewed in legalism as being bound by the same laws that bind mankind. God, like the creation, is under laws and must therefore conform himself to the desires and demands of men who act in terms of his law.

Legalism is a blood relative of magic. It attempts to control God through forces in the universe and through particular actions. And of course, God condemns that most heartily. So, it’s important to see in the story of Simon a prohibition against manipulation and control and domination. But it has specific reference to us in various other aspects as well as we began to point out last week specifically.

Now I’d like to talk for just a minute about the relationship of magic not simply to legalism. We’ve talked about that. But now to politics and here this is extremely important as we talked last week a little bit summed it up. I want to talk about it in more detail now about Moloch worship. Calvin and others talked about the immolation of children through the fires to Moloch. Immolation is a form of consecration.

Okay. While we know that children were actually offered up in sacrifices, we also know that at other times in history, both of Israel and its apostate state as well as the nations around it, the children were not consumed. They were simply dedicated to this Moloch through being placed ritually through a fire the same way we place children through the waters of baptism, so to speak. Well, what is Moloch?

And here again, I’m going to quote from R.J. Rushdoony in particular in reference to this particular passage. The word Moloch meaning it means king. It is a misvocalization of the name of a pagan. The consonants of the word king being used and the vowels rather of shame inserted. So you take the consonants to the word of king in the Hebrew language insert the vowels for shame and that’s where you come up with Moloch.

Moloch, Rushdoony goes on to say is the king or kingship. The name of Moloch is also given as Milcom. Moloch was an aspect of Baal. Baal meaning lord. The name of Melkart, king of Tyre. Baal was worshiped with human sacrifices at Tyre. While relatively little is known of Moloch, much more is known of the concept of divine kingship, the king as God and the God as king as the divine human link between heaven and earth.

The God king represented man on a higher scale. Man ascended and the worship of such a god, in other words, of such a Baal or lord was the assertion of the continuity of heaven and earth. It was the belief that all being was one being and that God therefore was an ascended man on this scale of being. The power manifested in the political order was thus a manifestation or apprehension and seizure of divine power.

It represented the triumph of a man and of his people. Moloch worship was thus a political religion. Continuing on, the Moloch state simply represents the supreme effort of man to command the future to predestine the world and to be as God. Lesser efforts, divinations, spirit questing, magic, and witchcraft are equally anathema to God. All represent efforts to have the future on other than God’s terms, to have a future apart from and in defiance of God.

They are assertions that the world is not of God, but of brute factuality, and that man can somehow master the world and the future by going directly to the raw materials thereof. And so Simon the magician attempts to control these forces by going to the direct raw materials by seeking to purchase this gift, this ability. Again, I’m going to quote now from R.G. Rushdoony in the biblical philosophy of history rather.

He says that we must have a distinction between the technique and the purpose of magic. It’s a little odd for us to think that somehow there’s an equation in the scriptures between Moloch worship, worship of the civil state, and sorcery and enchantment. We don’t connect those two things in our mind. Why? And this is what Rushdoony is addressing here. We must make the distinction between the technique and the purpose of magic.

All too commonly magic is defined in terms of its primitive techniques and thereby excised from the modern worldview. But magic is better defined in terms of its purpose. The techniques have varied from culture to culture. But the purpose remains unchanged. The purpose of magic is to gain autonomous control over man, nature, and the supernatural. Control over the totality of whatever really exists and however it may be defined.

Modern science, having steadily forsaken its Christian origins, is governed increasingly by magic, by a divine by a desire for a total control over reality. In the biblical perspective, science is a necessary activity of the godly man and society as they seek to understand and subdue the earth under God and in obedience to his creation mandate. In the magical faith, man aims at total control in contempt, defiance, and unbelief of God.

From the beginning of history, one of the best, if not the easiest, means of exercising this control has been through political control. As a result, magic and politics early made an alliance. And the consequence was that in antiquity, salvation was not religious. Salvation was political. And so, we reach a time today when we are about to enter the land we have entered the land at the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And the abominations of this land are really no different than the abominations of the Canaanites that they were to dispossess as we cross the river Jordan. The abominations of the Canaanites included cruder forms such as Simon, magicians who would attempt to control people through incantations, spells, etc. But behind all these manifestations was the greater danger, the greater higher magic, if you will, of the attempt to exercise control over the universe in defiance and in abandonment of God through the civil state, man’s collective voice.

And so we have a time and age now in which the same thing is true of the culture that we must preach the gospel too. This is why this church has taken such a strong position relative to public schools, government schools. Government schools are increasingly seen and OBE is simply the latest manifestation of this, but a stronger one, a more powerful one. God causes signs to become bigger and bigger. The writing gets clearer and clearer what goes on through public schools.

But it’s the same thing that motivated it a 100 years ago. That motivation is salvation through education. It’s the attempt to be part of essentially a civil perspective of salvation. And so when children are taken into the public schools, they see it as consecrating the child for the purposes of the political state. And so there’s total control that is attempted to be exercised over the civil arena, over the rather the created universe through the political state and the public education system, the government school system is part of that.

We have equated in our position paper the giving of children over to schools for their training carte blanche by the parents to essentially the immolation or passing children through the fires of consecration to the civil state. That’s the way the government schools see it today. When you give their child to them and register them and put them in public school, they see you as essentially consecrating that child to their purposes.

And they now see it as their job to mold and direct that child in every area of life and thought. And when they put morality back into the public schools as they’re doing now, that is not something to be cheered. That is the course that they will take. But it will be morality divorced from the scriptures and from the Christian religion which is an abomination to God. So magic and Simon and the warning we have here in this text warns us of course against consulting astrologers, crystal balls, etc.

But it is also a warning to avoid the abomination of this nation in seeking salvation through the political order and through political means through means of any system really whether it’s a scientific system, an environmental system, an education system or a political system. But in our particular day and age, the political and education system has the dominance. And so it’s a strong warning for us relative to that behind these teachings that we find in Deuteronomy with a linking of the civil state and worship of the king.

The civil order with magic and thus manipulation over people. There are a couple of things relative to this that I think are very important to the basis of what we’re talking about here. When magicians or when the civil state attempts to control all things, it is not really for the purpose of progress. Again quoting from R.J. Rushdoony, he says that instead of movement and progress in history, ancient history simply cited power and control.

And when we look at cultures that developed self-consciously in their abominations of either magic or the political state. We do not see movement in progress in history. We see stagnation. There is an attempt for power and control is the main thing. Not an attempt to provide really a better life or movement and progress in an area. And so movement and progress is tied explicitly to an understanding not to listen to these magic formulas, but instead to listen to the greater prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Pay attention to him. The second thing I want to point out before we move on to an application relative to marriage is that there’s a very profound statement, one of the most profound things by R.J. Rushdoony I think I’ve ever read was in his little booklet the necessity for systematic theology he has a chapter four pages on the search for a master principle and this is what drives men like Simon Magus this is what drives frequently people in the context of our culture as well the searching for master principle or gnosticism a set of master principles by which to manipulate things.

R.J. Rushdoony says that no such master principle or idea exists in behind or beyond the universe. There is rather the master person, the triune God. Between an abstract master principle or idea and the totally personal God, an unbridgeable gap exists. An idea is an abstraction. The triune God is totally personal, real, and concrete. Now, I mentioned that we’re going to talk a little bit about I just want to reference briefly something that’s said in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch that we’ll be reading more extensively next week.

In verse 35 of Acts 8, Philip opens his mouth to the Ethiopian eunuch and he begins at the same scripture that is the book of Isaiah that he cannot understand and he preaches unto him Jesus. What a nice phrase in verse 35. And preached unto him Jesus. Simon Magus needed Jesus preached unto him. He needed to be confronted with a personal God. He needed reminded that God is not something that can be bought or manipulated.

We don’t have behind all of this some set of abstract principles or mechanical laws that mean we can get things by pulling the right levers. So many people today even in the context of Christendom believe this is the case that we can get to the master principle behind the scriptures. We can get to the right covenant formula or we can use the law of God as levers by which we can get to ourselves this that or the other thing.

That’s what Simon Magus was trying to do. That’s what magic does. It manipulates the eternal force of God, the person of God through incantations or through the political order. But God says that it will always be cursed. It will always be judged because we don’t have behind things a master principle. We have a personal God. And I mentioned this last week. I’ll mention it again today. Many of us have been wooed to the faith through promises of this that or the other better life.

And so as a result, we think we do these things. We live a somewhat righteous life. Then God blesses us automatically. It doesn’t work that way. I was at a conference several years ago where a major man who writes in various Christian periodicals, people respect him, was talking about how, you know, if you just look to the new age, they’ve tapped into some forces relative to the economy. If we follow their investment strategy, we’ll be blessed because they’ve tapped into these forces and ideas behind the world.

What really is going on in terms of various systems and thoughts We hear all the time that if people just obey the law of God, they’ll reap blessings to their life. The pagans, they may not obey God, but if they just do the right things economically, they’ll reap blessings from God because that’s the way God works. That’s not the way God works. God is personally involved in everything that happens in this universe and particularly with every person in this universe.

Magic asserts or tries to assert master principles or techniques by which God can be manipulated. And the reason they fail is that God is not like that. God is a person and you can’t do anything to merit God’s favor, moralism, whatever it is, you cannot do it. God is personally relating to you through the Lord Jesus Christ. And we must understand that is how progress and cultural advance happens is through our obedience to knowledge of relationship to Jesus.

Okay? Now, this is real important for us. This is a church that understands the necessity as Rushdoony says for systematic theology. We know systematic theology is important. We know understanding the law of God is important. We know that all these things are important. But we must never think that when we go out and preach, we preach a systematic theology that we preach the law. No, we don’t preach any of those things.

We preach the Lord Jesus Christ, a personal God that men have affronted with their sin and who calls them to account and will either personally consign them to hell or he will personally call them to faith in him and empower them with that faith. And we must never think we who understand the necessity of obeying God’s law and the power of the spirit. We must never think that through that obedience we get blessings.

We must go out of our way as a congregation. I think to train our children. That’s not what happens here. God is not a machine. You can’t pull the right lever and a Hershey bar comes out. It’s not like that. He’s personal. He judges the intents and motives of what you do besides the mere physical actions. He is not able to be manipulated by magic. Now, what does this have to do with you? Well, it’s a warning to us to avoid that in our lives, manipulation of God.

It’s a warning to us that’s what the pagan around us does. And it’s a warning to us as we engage in political action to not be lured into thinking that through political action, salvation can come to man. But it’s also a warning to us in another area. And I want to make some application here. And I know this is kind of extrapolating out from an extrapolation already from the text, but I think it’s so important.

I want to talk about marriage in the context of this warning against manipulation and domination. We were at a most many of us were at a wedding yesterday and we enjoyed that. I think I know I did and it makes us think about weddings, makes us think of our own weddings and what’s going on when a wedding happens.

The scriptures tell us in well, let’s see. Marriage is a very important fact for all of us. And I was listening to a tape this last week. I’m going be talking now about some things that this fellow said or got me thinking about on this tape. This man is a PCA pastor in Colorado. His name is Bledsoe. And reason I’m listening to these three tapes of his is we’re considering him as a family camp speaker one of these years in the future. And I don’t know if we’ll have him out or not, but as a result of that, he sent me three tapes.

He was recommended to us by Reverend Jordan. And one of these tapes was entitled marriage in eschatology and it was a fascinating tape and I think it has it is very relevant to the text that we have today this warning against manipulation and domination. Now remember magic attempts to control God as Rushdoony talked about the that the king is God. He posits an essential continuity. God is like us. But no, God isn’t like us.

God is other than us. He is transcendent from us. He’s immanent in the Lord Jesus Christ but he’s also transcendent. He’s other than us. He’s different than us in a very substantial way. And men by their natures like what is familiar. And so Romans tells us that man doesn’t want to worship the creator. He wants to worship created things because there’s a more continuous sense of continuity between himself and the created things on the earth.

We’re both created beings. And man likes what’s familiar. And so men frequently fall into the worship of other men as they did with Simon Magus. Men like to worship. Men like to be around things that are familiar to them. And so they worship. The creator God in his providence gives us a creation that we see mirror that we see imaged for us in the wedding ceremony of two different kinds of things, men and women.

Women are different from men, but they’re like men as well. Eve was taken from man, but then created as a separate creation, a woman. And so Eve is both like Adam, but she is unlike Adam. She is knowable to Adam, but she’s also mysterious to him. And women are like us but they are unlike us men and that is for a very good reason in the context of God’s providence. This talk that Mr. Bledsoe gave on marriage and eschatology points out that through this difference is how much of what progress happens in cultural advance of humankind as they’re regenerated in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is the difference that we come to in our marriage that produces something new. In other words, we could reproduce our species could by cloning ourselves and that would be stagnation that would be sameness perpetually recreated. But that’s not how God decides to do it. God brings together man and woman something things that are alike and yet unlike and as a result of that creates a new brings to pass rather causes to be born a new creature who is not totally like us nor totally like our wives but is different but is also similar as well bearing some of the characteristics.

God causes us to progress through this diversity in terms of men and women. But men don’t like this. We don’t like this. We want sameness. We don’t like to be changing things. We want things to be the same primarily. That’s the way sinful man is. I saw a musician on TV the other day and he had a shirt on it. It said forward in big bold letters on the front of it and had some other pictures on it as well. I like that.

And as Christians, we should remember that Christianity is not in its essence conservative. It is radical. It is changing the shape of the earth and obedience to the word of God. We don’t want to go back to some kind of golden age that we had in the past. It didn’t happen. God wants us to continue to go forward. And so, eschatology, biblical eschatology is a maturation of going from glory to glory. Well, man, as he said, does not like diversity.

He likes sameness. Man would rather not progress ultimately. We’d rather just stagnate so many in our sinful state, that is. And so, as a result, when God gives us a woman in the context of marriage, we want to in sinful way, we will want to manipulate and dominate the woman as opposed to seeing what is mysterious in her, what is other than her, what she brings to us that is outside of ourselves and thus maturing and progressing.

And so, we can very easily fall into the same trap that Simon fell into. We have a temptation. Mike and Connie are involved in a temptation. They’re involved in a great blessing today as they’ve begun their honeymoon together and their married life together. But it’s a temptation in particular, I’m going to talk in reference to men. They’re the ones who lead the culture and God’s providence. And with men, we have a great temptation to fail to understand and appreciate the need we have for somebody other than ourselves.

And what men will attempt to do in their sin is they’ll attempt to take whatever aspect of the woman is familiar to us. And there is that aspect, isn’t there? Because she came out of man. She’s a human like we are. And there are things that are familiar to us. We will attempt to take that familiarity and focus on it. And whatever is different about our wives, we will attempt to get rid of. Manipulate her to the end that and do dominate her to the end that she does not bring to us the difference in who we are that is necessary for progress in our maturation our walk with Jesus Christ.

We won’t do that. We will rather attempt to manipulate her frequently and not listen to what God has intended for us. On the other side of the coin, the other way the society deals with the differences between the sexes. One way is to dominate and the other way is to say there is no difference. And that’s what our culture is involved with that there is sameness between men and women and it’s interesting if you think about it that the sameness between men and women that the pagan society we live in the context of the way that manifests itself we don’t become more like women usually do we no we’re trying to bring women into the workplace that’s the whole idea and so we try to bring men will inevitably lead in a culture well in any event both of these ways of dealing with the differences between men and women is sinful wants us to please to our wives and in so doing to recognize the intense need we have for someone outside of ourselves someone that God has in his own providence created to influence our lives in a very deep way we want to reject that influence of our lives Mr.

Bledsoe said in his tape that the deepest personal influence upon man is God himself and that’s related back to the idea we don’t have a master principle we have a personal God who is at work in our lives and so the deepest personal influence on our life is the personal God who has brought us to salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. Bledsoe went on to say that God by means of secondary means that the deepest personal influence to men rather upon men would be our wives.

In other words, that God by his secondary means that he uses he brings into our lives most men that is the personal influence of a wife. And that is one of the deepest means by which God uses to root out sinfulness and selfishness in our lives. Bledsoe uses the term that we’re addicted to ourselves as men. Now, women are too, but I’m focusing on men today. We are addicted to sameness. We’re addicted to who we are.

And the purpose for marriage to us is simply to make us into more of what we are. But God’s purpose in marriage is to bring us into something other than what we are, to develop us in ways that are unknown to us when we first get married and yet ways that are very significant to us. As we were at the marriage ceremony yesterday, I looked the part of the sermon that I particularly enjoyed was the unity candle.

Now, I’ve seen unity candles done, most weddings have them. I never really thought much. I guess Richard’s words about symbols kind of motivated me to look at what was happening and to observe it. And of course, what we see in the unity candles, we see two candles representing the husband and wife coming together into one candle and burning now as one person together.

Now that illustration could be taken too far, but essentially that’s a very good illustration of what happens in marriage. And to get across the point I’m trying to make here, if wanted to see a picture, a visual picture of how most men end up practicing marriage, if not entering into marriage, we would see instead of unity candle, we would see the man’s candle here, the wife’s candle here, and a big candle next to the man. And we would see the man, the wife then coming over and lighting the man’s candle, and then she’s gone, and his candle burns the brighter because of her addition.

You see what I’m trying to get at here? In our manipulation, in our sinful rejection of God’s call for us to love something, something other than ourselves and be influenced by something other than ourselves. In our rejection of that, we try to make the wife into something to just build up ourselves in our men in our masculinity, in our manhood or in our pleasure or desires, whatever it is. But God says no.

God says that manipulation and domination of our wives is a very wicked thing. It’s bad for us personally and it’s also bad for us culturally to the end that pagan cultures and pagan cultures have throughout history dominated women to the extent of essentially as I said that thing just adding to the masculinity of culture those cultures don’t progress Christianity which sees in the wife someone in the words of Proverbs 31:11 that we can trust in the man with the with the Proverbs wife the dominion wife that is painted for us in the book of Proverbs trusts in his wife the country culture that understands that in its most basic aspect those cultures progress and move on.

Now, most men would want to in their sinful state, again, we would want to trust in our wives to the end that they would, if we’re going to trust in the wife who is meek, submissive, does what we want to do, and doesn’t bring to us anything other than ourselves. That’s the kind of wife we would have. Luther said of his wife Katie, he said, “If I were to marry again, I would he a meek wife out of stone is what Luther said, “For I doubt whether any other kind would be meek.

Okay. Well, Luther, you know, I understood the, “Oh, this is not really what he would like to do.” But most of us in our sinful state want a meek wife who will not confront us, who will not bring to us an aspect other than what we already are. This is why, I’ve talked about this before, this is why homosexuality becomes more and more dominant in pagan cultures. Men reject the other. They’re rejecting God.

In our rejection of the other who is God, we also then reject the means that God has given to us to bring us to an appreciation for the other through our wives and as a result men turn into themselves more and more. Self love is more and more what happens and as a result men up marrying somebody that’s not different from them somebody who is totally familiar to them in their basic element which is sexuality now I don’t know if this has made any sense to you or not but my point is this by way of application of this text in our marriages men now married men in this congregation whom who I’m speaking to we do not want to manipulate or dominate our wives.

It is bad for us individually. It’s bad for this church. It’s bad for the cultural advance of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. It is a sinful rejection of God’s purpose in bringing man and wife together to cause us to go from glory to glory to have things added into our understanding and relationship to God through the addition of someone that’s really totally different than us. By way of application, all I want you to go away from this part of the sermon today with is a heightened sense that I believe that I need to think about how much I need my wife.

Not need in the sense of building me up build need in the sense of complementing me which is what the term helpmate means in its original. I want you today I want you now to think about your wife a little bit to recognize that she is to a sense mysterious to you. She is both like you but she is unlike you. And I want you as you move into this week in your homes, make a concerted effort not to erase that difference in who she is, but rather to appreciate it to let it produce a humanizing influence in its best sense of the term redeemed humanity and recognize that God as he brings people together into marriage has that as one of the purposes.

The purpose being to prevent stagnation, to prevent control and a search for power over one another. which is really the characteristic as I said before of magic and the political state right in our living rooms that can happen and God doesn’t want us to do that he wants us to go from glory to glory he wants us to listen to our wives to think about who they are now of course the same is true of the wife I focus upon the husband because he leads he leads in this church he leads in culture whether men like it or not if there nothing else no other thing you take out of this particular part of the sermon what I’d like you to do this week is to listen and observe serve your mate.

You know, my wife was reminding me last night that Job’s comforters came to him, spent a whole week before any speech was said. They knew then that we want to be quick to hear and slow to speak. Quick to hear for a week, observing his torment, thinking by their presence, comforting before they would bring a word to him. And I think in our marriages that we need to see that to avoid manipulation and domination and to move in terms of God’s provision in marriage for cultural advance.

We should spend some time listening, thinking, observing our mates, getting to know them so that we then can appreciate the difference and reject our sinfulness in terms of trying to dominate them. Your wives have something to bring to you. You know, First Peter 3:7 says that if you don’t live with your wife in an understanding way, if you don’t recognize you’re a joint heir for the gracious gift of life, your prayers will be hindered.

Now remember the scriptures are not magical. It’s not that God says this doesn’t happen therefore this will happen. No. Why does it say your prayers will be hindered? Because you will not have moved on in maturation.