Monotheism Made Our World

6 · Oswald returns to the sermon's central question and signals the coming answer

Now, why do I want to mention this to you? Well, again we're asking why was it necessary for God to contend with Pharaoh over and over again for these nine chapters coming up? Why not just smite him immediately or just kind of surreptitiously take everybody out of Egypt and have no conflict whatsoever? Why did God choose to do it this way?

7 · Oswald makes the sermon's central theological and historical claim: God orchestrated the prolonged conflict with Pharaoh to introduce monotheism into the world, and monotheism is the intellectual foundation for modern science and human flourishing

And I want to suggest that it was God's purpose to reveal himself through the contest with Pharaoh so that he could introduce this great doctrine of monotheism into the world. Now you think, well, why is it important that monotheism be introduced into the world? Well, let me just narrow down into one particular thing. There is a direct link between monotheism, science, and human flourishing. There's a direct link between when the world finally sort of owned this idea that there is just one God and the advent of science and the increase of human flourishing. There's a profession I think is kind of cool. It's called essentially a historian of science. And your job as a historian of science is just to sort of look back through scientific development and tell the story and then to kind of understand why did things develop the way that they did. And one such man is a guy named John Hedley Brook, and he wrote this. The quest after the laws of nature can be seen as a quest to uncover the divine legislation that lies behind nature's regularities. Many years before John Hedley Brooks, CS Lewis said it better in his book called Miracles. He said it this way, men became scientific because they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature because they believed in a legislator. Are you seeing why monotheism actually makes a real difference in the world? The whole advent of science as we know it is built upon this expectation that the world is not governed by hundreds or thousands, or in the case of the Hindu perspective, millions of competing gods, but that there is just one God who rules over all things. And therefore his creation is interconnected and orderly.

8 · Oswald grounds his historical argument in direct biblical evidence: Exodus 9:16 explicitly states God's purpose in raising up Pharaoh — to display divine power so God's name would be proclaimed throughout the earth

So what God is doing here in exposing the Hebrews to the persecution of the Pharaoh, of contending with Pharaoh in general? What God is doing is he's introducing this most important doctrine into the world. He's introducing. He's moving from the concept that there are competing gods that are over particular regions. And he's introducing this thing that we all take for granted upon which the world we now live in is built, that being monotheism, the idea that there is just one God. If you want to understand why God is wrestling with Pharaoh in the way that he is, we could turn to Exodus 9, 16, where God says explicitly why he's doing what he's doing. He says this, but for this purpose, I have raised you up, Pharaoh, to show you my power so that my name may be proclaimed in Israel, you know, in media. No, in all the earth. We're done with the regionalism. We're done with me being seen as a competitor amongst other gods. I am doing this thing with Pharaoh so that I can show my power and that my name will be proclaimed in all the earth.

9 · Oswald cites Exodus 19 to show the outcome of the Pharaoh conflict: God reminds Israel of his power over Egypt and declares his ownership of all the earth

And when it's all said and done, when Egypt lies in ruins, when spoiler plot, spoiler there. When Egypt lies in ruins, God says to his people in Exodus chapter 19, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples. For all the earth is mine.

10 · Oswald uses a cultural analogy — the prison yard dominance display — to illustrate God's strategy with Pharaoh

What's God doing in the next nine chapters of the book of Exodus? He's picking a fight with, at the time, was the dominant world leader. You guys have heard the joke, you know, if you ever get put into prison, the first thing you want to do on day one is to find the biggest man in the room, walk right up to him and punch him in the face. Establish your dominance. Well, that's actually a pretty good explanation of what God's doing with Pharaoh. That's actually a pretty good explanation of what we're going to see over the next nine chapters.

11 · Oswald reveals the theological subtext of the plagues: each plague targeted a specific Egyptian deity, systematically dismantling the Egyptian pantheon

What's his end game? Why is he doing this? Well, on the one hand, there's a personal purpose. He wants to redeem a certain people. But why the hardening of Pharaoh's heart? Why all the back and forth? Because God in this particular story, in the Exodus story, is picking on the strongest God of the time. And he is showing that he is above all, all gods. Let's just talk for a moment about this. There's a layer of the plague situation that most people don't know about. And that is, is that for each plague that God sent on Egypt, there was a God worshiped by Egypt that he was specifically picking on, that he was specifically neutering, I suppose you might say. Well, with the lice, he is attacking a God named Seb. And with the flies, he's attacking a God whose name I can't pronounce. And when he afflicts the cattle, there are four Egyptian gods that the Egyptians worshiped related to cattle. And when he brings boils upon the people, he's confronting Imhotep and another God, gods of healing. When the hail comes, he's attacking four other Egyptian deities, including Isis and Seth. And then he brings the locusts. And the Egyptians worshiped the God Seraphim specifically so that the locusts would be kept away. They had a problem with locusts and they worshiped the God just to keep that situation under control. And then when we get to the climax or the near climax of the plagues, the darkness plague comes. And Yahweh is targeting the most important God to Egypt, and that was Ra, the sun God. And so plague by plague. You ever wonder why lice, why boils? God is systematically dismantling the authority claims of all of the Egyptian gods. Why is he doing that? He didn't have to do that. To free Israel. What's the bigger purpose? He's introducing what we now think of as monotheism. He's introducing the idea that there is but one God who rules over all other gods.

12 · Oswald cites Jethro's confession in Exodus 18 as evidence of monotheism's advance: Jethro acknowledges Yahweh as greater than all gods, though he still operates within a henotheistic framework

In fact, again back in Exodus 18, Jethro Moses, Father in law, is reunited with Moses. And he says this after hearing about all this. He says, now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods. So he's still in kind of a henotheistic space right now. He's. But his understanding of God has advanced. He doesn't think of the world as a collection of competing gods and oh, who will win. He doesn't think of the world as like one giant UFC match or a royal rumble. And well, that outcome is already determined. So I don't know if that would work. But he doesn't see this. He doesn't see the world like he did before. It's just hard because we see it this way. It's hard to understand what a revolution monotheism is to the human mind and to the understanding of the way that the world works.

13 · Oswald pivots from the historical consequences of monotheism (science, human flourishing) to the redemptive-historical fulfillment: the Incarnation

You know, while I was writing some of this sermon, I placed the VOC up there in Lenexas city center. And what a beautiful place the Lenexas city center is shaping out to be. You know, I sat there in the air conditioned room with jazz playing in the Bose speakers. Overhead electricity, you know, at fingertip. Not literally beautiful buildings. You know, they have this lawn edging that's probably, probably about 3ft high and it's made out of aluminum and they milled it with a CNC machine so that it's got all these intricate cuts out of it. And you just take a moment like you'll be somewhere this week that is built on monotheism. You'll be a lot of places this week that's built on this connection between. No longer do I view the world as this chaotic place of competition between gods. I view the world as an orderly place ruled by one God. Therefore, I will go discover the laws of nature. And in understanding the laws of nature, I will promote human flourishing. So what? Why is God picking on old Pharaoh? Because he wants you to have air conditioning and antibiotics or whatever. Now really you have to see how big God's purposes are. People didn't understand this. And how is he going to teach it to them? He's going to pick on old Pharaoh time after time after time again in a very surgical way, dismantling all of the, all of the gods of Egypt to show that he is indeed the one true God. Now, we can't look at this verse, Exodus 4:31, without thinking of something else. Look at it again. And the people believed. And when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped. What else is there? What else is going on there? Well, remember, I think I mentioned this last week. Paul talks about how the old covenant was glorious, but the new covenant is much more glorious. And here we see kind of a whisper, kind of a foreshadowing of the visitation that really would change everything, right? This is a. This is a little whisper, a little foreshadowing of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. John, chapter 1, verse 14 says, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And now we. Now our understanding of monotheism is even richer because now we understand not only is there a God that's like really, really, really, ultimately, perfectly, completely sovereignly in charge, but that he is so kind as to condescend and leave this perfect glory to put on flesh. A word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as the Son, as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Verse 16 of John 1. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. So what we have in the Incarnation is a better visitation. And friends, if the first visitation led the elders to rejoice, how much more so does the second visitation lead us to rejoice? God took on flesh, he dwelt among us. He who knew no sin became sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. We're not only talking about deliverance out of, you know, intellectual darkness, which is a component of the introduction of monotheism and the deliverance of a kind of sense that the world is just a pure chaos, which is a. Which is a component of monotheism. But now we're seeing like, no, no, no. He actually came not just to deliver us from darkness or slavery, but to deliver us from our actual sins.

14 · Oswald cites 1 Corinthians 15 to show that the gospel — Christ's death, burial, and resurrection — is what spread monotheism beyond Israel to the whole world

First Corinthians 15. Paul says in verse 3, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom were still alive, though some have fallen asleep. And then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And really, this is really what caused monotheism to take hold in the world, because up until this time, it was located in one particular people. And even then, imperfectly, even then with a lot of variation, even then with a lot of reversion back to these other forms. But this, the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and his taking on flesh, his dying for our sins, and then being risen on the third day before many witnesses. Now, monotheism spreads out of just this little Jewish community and into the whole world. In fact, what's the very next target of the gospel after the Jews? First to the Jew and then to the system had they developed?

15 · Oswald traces God's providential work through history: Aristotle philosophized the necessity of a first mover, preparing the intellectual ground for monotheism

Now, interestingly, I'm running a little ahead on time, so this is going to be a short sermon. So. But let me just take you down a bit of a rabbit trail really quickly. Aristotle had already sort of philosophized monotheism, though he never made the full connection because he began to see that there was the necessity of the first mover. And so there was already an intellectual category. God was already working in the Greeks to develop an intellectual category for a God above all the gods. And now Jesus comes after Aristotle and he takes on flesh and he dies for our sins, and he's risen on the third day. And now this idea that God really is in charge and that everybody has to report to him that he runs the whole thing, well, that was kind of whispered a little bit in Aristotle. But now when Paul makes his appeal, say, to the Athenians or to any of the Greeks, typically when we see him making appeal to the Greek, he uses first mover language. He uses Aristotelian language where he talks about the God in whom we move and have our being, the God of first cause. So all of this is happening according to God's perfect plan. And this development, though, it would take time to work out into the world, the taking hold of monotheism in the whole world. Well, almost the whole world. We still got some work to do. That has been the fundamental change to the way of life we now enjoy. I really like to do biblical theological history where we see that God has worked in not only salvation history, but continues to work in the world. So something God did way back thousands of years ago with Pharaoh was his way of introducing this truth to the world. And Then he like highlighted it in red with Jesus. And he made it possible for this truth to be not only for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles. And it's this very truth that's been kind of percolating and growing for the last 2000 years. And it has shaped the world you live in now. Another science historian by the name of Dr. Mark Worthing, he wrote a book called Unlikely Monotheism and the Rise of Science. And this is what he says. If a single divine being was responsible for the whole of the created natural order, then all knowledge about the natural world must be fundamentally interconnected. If there's one person in charge of it all, that means that all of it's interconnected. There's not some rules over here or some rules over there, and not just in geographic sense, but the sciences are united. That's why for the longest time theology was considered the queen of the sciences, because theology showed the interconnectivity of all the other sciences. And he says then all knowledge about the natural world must be fundamentally interconnected. Monotheistic thinkers not only tended to ask after natural causes and explanations without rejecting God as the ultimate cause of all them, but also to view these causes as fundamentally linked, having a common ground in the one Creator. So it seems obvious to us that you could use math to launch a rocket into space, but if you think more primitively, those two things don't appear appear to have anything in common. Like one's an explosion and one's a chalkboard, right? Like the interconnectivity of reality is actually just a downstream thought from this idea that there is but one God and he's over all things. Pretty cool.

16 · Oswald issues a warning based on C

Now, we do have a word of warning. I read a little bit from the CS Lewis quote. Let me read the whole quote to you from his book Miracles. Men became scientific because they expected law and nature, and they expected law and nature because they believed in a legislator. But in most modern scientists, this belief has died. Now he's writing this. I would. I don't actually know the date date, but I would say early 50s. If anyone knows when, when quantum physics, when Einstein had the debate over quantum. If anyone knows that date, it'd be around that time because listen what he says. Two significant developments have already appeared. The hypothesis of a lawless sub nature. So he's already aware of this introduction of the quantum, a lawless sub nature and the surrender of the claim that science is true. We may be living nearer than we suppose to the end of the scientific age. Age. I actually believe that over the last 50 years, our science has been greatly hobbled by our lack of respect for the God of the universe. I believe that when we surrendered that we actually hobbled our science. I actually do believe we should all have jet packs by now. In an alternate world, we would all have jet packs if the scientists kept honoring God. So Lewis is issuing a warning. He says, we discovered science because we made a commitment. We discovered science because we discovered the unity of the universe around one cause, around the God of the universe. He says, but what happens when we abandon that? What happens to science when we abandon that?

17 · Oswald signals a major rhetorical shift from historical theology to personal application

Well, that's a bit of a historical take that I was just excited to share to you. Not all of our application when we preach has to be about your latest struggle or my latest struggle struggle. Sometimes it's good to take the 30,000 foot view and see the God who reigns and infer from that truth. Well, then if he's got that figured out, then he's probably got. He's probably got me figured out as well. But let's talk about me, let's talk about you. Let's talk about personal application from what we've just seen.

18 · Oswald applies the Pharaoh pattern to contemporary and personal life: God allows evil and hardship to arise so he can publicly defeat them and demonstrate his sovereignty

Firstly, now there are no slides for this. You could just put up a black slide for this. I wrote this after I sent in the slides. I think we need to have a category for why from time to time God allows evil to arise. Okay, that may be a very important category to develop in the next few years. We need to have a category for why time to time God allows evil to arise and why he may even decide to allow paganism to arise again. So what would God be doing in that respect? What he's doing is he's allowing it to arise so that he can kill it in public view. It's exactly what he said of Pharaoh in Exodus 9. For this purpose, I raised you up to show that I have the power and that all the earth reports to me. Now that's going to be relevant next week because we're going to go into chapter four next week and what we're going to see is the very first time we, Moses and Aaron, pick on Pharaoh, he gets angry and begins to oppress the Jews even more. And so while in our passage In Exodus chapter 4, verse 31, we see the Jews rejoicing because God had visited them. And they see a way out by the end of chapter, by the end of chapter five, they're complaining. Moses is even complaining, why have you done this to us? Why have you picked a fight with Pharaoh? Because they were suffering. Pharaoh got even worse after God picked this fight. Well, that could happen to us. That's a real possibility. This week I'll do a podcast on, like, the political angle of a lot of this. That really could happen to you. You really could wind up finding yourself living in a world where the authorities are more provoked against you than they were even 10 short years ago. And you need to understand, well, what is God doing? When God allows injustice to arise on the face of the earth, he does that so that in public view he may smash it and remind the whole world that he is in charge. It reminded me of that passage in Hebrews where it says, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but in the end yields a peaceful harvest. No season of persecution seems pleasant at the time, but the church always wins, guys. God always emerges the victor. And when he emerges the victor, there is a harvest of peace brought by that victory in which the whole world once again sees. As Jethro said to Moses, I now know that this God is stronger than all the other gods. So that's one thing to think about. Like, what's the personal application of this insight? One, if God allows a hardship to come to you, even personally, not politically, just personally, not even persecution, what is God doing? He's going to show you that he's stronger than the thing. He's going to show you that he's stronger than the job loss. He's going to show you that he's stronger than the cancer. He's going to show you that he's stronger than the thing. That's what God's doing. That's why he allows these things. He allows them to come up, raise up, so that he can step on them. And you see the stepping and you're like, I've learned a very important thing about God. He really is in charge.

19 · Oswald transitions from the macro (cultural and political hardship) to the personal (the idolatry of the heart)

But secondly, let's just get even more personal. We've been very macro in this conversation. Let's go smaller and let's talk about your heart. I know that all of you are intellectually monotheists, but you know, we're always creeping back toward henotheism or paganism. Not intellectually, but all of the quiet conversations of our heart tend to point us to the worship of idols with God, tend to point us to trusting in and hoping in other things along with God.

20 · Oswald exposes the heart's idolatry using Jeremiah 2:12-13: the human heart forsakes God as the fountain of living water and hews out broken cisterns

This is what God's talking about in Jeremiah 2 when he says, be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and have hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that hold no water. This is. This is the problem of the human heart. We can have the head of a monotheist, but the heart of a pagan can have the head that says, yes, of course, there's only one God. Duh, Chris. But the heart that says, I really think that trusting in this or that or this, or leaning on my own understanding, that seems like a really good plan for this particular segment of my life. You know how they used to worship? They used to think of gods as regional. I don't think we think that, but unless you count, like, different areas of our life as regions, and I think we do think that, or days of the week, like, we're strict monotheists on Sunday, at least from, you know, 10 to 12. But then other gods do creep in, don't they?

21 · Oswald connects the historical argument to personal experience: just as monotheism brought order and flourishing to the world, so consolidating worship on God alone brings peace to the individual

Now, friends, we can see from the historical what it would do to the personal. And that would be that your life, when you are solely consolidated on the worship of the Lord, your life is peaceful, it's orderly. But when you start allowing the entrance of competing idols, even in, like, one area of your life, that peace goes away. Because that peace, just like the peace that we experience, the bounty, the human flourishing in this world, that all goes away when you start introducing this inner competition. That's what James talks about in James, chapter four. He says, what causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not this? That your passions are at war within you. You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. So this is a good time for you to understand whether you are experiencing a lack of peace, whether your inner life is quite disordered. Well, this is why you're not being a good monotheist. You've allowed the introduction of various idols and various passions to come in and kind of hold sway and clutter up the sanctuary of your heart. And this is a good way to understand why homes sometimes get dysfunctional or why marriages sometimes get dysfunctional. It's a competition. When there is no competition. You're both supposed to be for the Lord. That's it. You can see that whenever you want peace in something the way you get peace in something is to consolidate all your hopes on God.

22 · Oswald cites Isaiah 26:3 to show that peace comes from staying the mind on God in trust

Isaiah 26:3. You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. So this is the thing I want to present to you. After just seeing the goodness of God, his careful revelation of his own nature to us throughout history, I want you to think about you for a minute and ask, is the sanctuary of your heart cluttered? Are there areas of your life where you know, you know you're a good monotheist? Over here and over here and over here. But when it comes to your sexual desires or your need for flattery or your need for control, when it comes to something else, you got another little regional mini God you put to work here.

23 · Oswald issues a direct charge using Joshua 24:14-15: choose this day whom you will serve

And I just want to leave you with this charge from Joshua 24. Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day who you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers, the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. It seems like the way to end this message is to see this huge historical development and God's careful revelation of himself throughout history and say, God, I want to make sure that I'm on. I'm on the same page with you. I want to make sure that all of my hope, all of my trust, all of my desires are submitted to you, and that you are the only God that's reigning in my heart, the only God that's reigning in my home. You're the only God that's reigning in my family. That choice is what leads to peace and human flourishing.

24 · Oswald offers a gospel invitation: salvation comes through confessing Jesus as Lord and believing in his resurrection

And if you're here today and you're like, well, tell me more. This is. People get confused about what salvation is. Salvation is this, as, so far as you understand in your will, you do this if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, Lord, he's in charge, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And what will happen when you put your faith in Jesus as Lord, as the king and ruler over all things, is that he will bring a peace to you that passes all understanding, and you will live a consolidated life, a life that makes sense, a life where all the interconnectedness has the same reason and the same purpose and the same goal. And that's what Jesus meant when he said, I've come to give you life and to give it to you abundantly.

25 · Oswald closes with prayer, summarizing the sermon's argument and turning it into worship

So let me pray for us and then I'll lead us through communion. Father God, I think the best thing to say is, wow, what an amazing God you are. That carefully, so many thousands of years ago you would begin to teach the world to depart from the pagan darkness and chaos that, yeah, we do actually still see, consume some and reveal this simple fact that we often take for granted there is just one God. And then, Lord, for you to take it a step further, not content simply to say that at one moment in history, you revolutionized history itself, splitting things into AD and BC by taking on flesh and coming and visiting us and dwelling among us, taking on our sin, though you yourself were perfect and righteous and dying for our sins so that we could be brought into freedom and forgiveness. Those two words have been ringing in my ear for the whole week. The blood of Jesus buys our forgiveness and our freedom. Lord, if anyone's here today who doesn't have that, I pray that through your Holy Spirit, you would help them God to confess that Jesus is Lord, and that Lord, you would help them today to choose this day whom they will serve. And Lord, may they choose to serve you with their whole life. Jesus says, this is the summation of the whole law and prophets to love God with all of us and to love our neighbor as ourself. So Lord, today would you, in the different levels that it needs to happen, make us monotheists all the way down from from head to toe. We love you, Lord. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.