S. THE RELIGION OF THE NATURAL MAN

THE RELIGION OF THE NATURAL MAN Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 28:1-10 05-30-54

You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. This is the pastor bringing the morning message. It is based upon the first part of Acts 28:1-31. In our preaching through the Bible, the last several Sundays, we were in Acts 27:1-44, which describes the ship wreck in a storm at sea that casts upon the island of Malta, which is south of Sicily, the apostle and two hundred seventy-five other souls. Acts 27:1-44 ends, and the rest, some on board and on broken pieces of the ship, gained to shore and got to land. And so it came to pass that they all escaped safe to land. Now today, we begin with the twenty-eighth chapter. And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita-modern Malta. And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold. And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm.

Howbeit they looked on him that he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god-he is a God. In the same quarters were possessions of the chief of the island, whose name was Publius; who received us, and lodged us three days courteously. And it came to pass that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever [and of a bloody flux]: to whom Paul entered in, and prayed, and laid his hands on him, and healed him. So when this was done, others also, which had diseases in the island, came and were healed;

-he uses a different word there. When Paul did it miraculously, he calls it the iaomai. When Luke does it and shares in it, he calls it therapueo-therapeutic. Luke was a physician. Who also-the Publius who also honored us with many honors: and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary Acts 28:1-10]. And then after three months, they made their journey to Rome.

Now the sermon today is entitled THE RELIGION OF THE NATURAL MAN. And it is presented in order that we might contrast it with the revealed religion of God in Christ Jesus. You see, it is only by contrast that you are ever conscious of anything. If the world were white, you would not be conscious of any color at all. All would be white. You would not even know of color. But when you contrast a color black, then white looks white. If it were all black, you would not be conscious of it. But if you have a white, then the black looks black. Blue and yellow and white, the contrast of the colors make you sensitive to them. Now, it is the same way about error and truth. I do not understand all of why God permits error in the world, but I do know this much: that were it not for error, we would never be conscious of truth. It is error here that points truth there. Or the other hand, it is truth here that so pointedly makes error what it is. Now [it is] the same about religion. It is in the contrast of the revealed religion of Jesus Christ with the religion of a natural man that you find what revealed religion is. So this morning we’re going to look at these barbarians.

Now, may I explain that word “barbarians.” To us, a barbarian is a savage, an uncouth, uncivilized, untaught savage. He is a wild tribesman. In the Roman Empire, there were four cultural groups of people: the Greek, the Roman, the Jew and then it depended upon what nationality you were as to what you called the fourth one. A Roman would call the fourth one a ”provincial”; a Greek would call the fourth one a “barbarian.” Now, the word “barbarian” did not mean to them as it does today-that they are wild savages. But it was the cultural attitude of a learned Greek. That is one reason that I know Luke was a Greek. When he came to these Maltans, or these Melitans, he used the Greek term describing them. He called them “barbarians”; that is, they were not of a cultural family of either the Roman or the Jew or the Greek. Now, these barbarian people. They have a religion. Malta was a colony of ancient Cartage, and the Carthaginians themselves were colonists of ancient Phoenicia. So the religion of Malta in this day under he Roman Empire, the religion was Carthaginian-a Phoenician religion which is but typical of all of the religions of the natural man in the earth everywhere, everywhere.

There are those who speak of the religion of the natural man, just any man outside of the pale of the revealed Word of God, there are those who speak of the barbarians and his religion as being altogether no good -nothing good in it. They describe the savage and the barbarian as half beast and half devil, and they see nothing good at all in their native, natural religion. And that is not true. You can go look at those people for yourselves. They have in many instances, the same great spiritual and ethical drive that you have as a Christian. You will find a mother devoted to her child. You will find great ethical principles running through everyone of the tribes. The lowest tribe that was ever discovered was the Terra del Fuegans that lived way down there on the tip end of South America. And when Charles Darwin saw them, and visited them, he said, “they are the missing link between his evolutionary theory of man and an ape.” And he said they were capable of moral distinction. A great Christian by the name of Captain Gardener heard that Charles Darwin said that, and he outfitted a missionary boat and went down to the Terra del Fuegans. And though he slowly starved to death because his boat of supplies later did not arrive and the whole party perished. Yet he so changed their life and character, and so lifted up the innate qualities on the inside of that pagan, heathen heart that Charles Darwin himself became a subscriber to the great Christian missionary movement to lift the Terra del Fuegans up to God and up to Christ. They have in them the same great God-given moral qualities that you have in you. On the other hand, there are some who look upon the barbarians and the savage as being all good. That is the aesthetic, who wants to say that civilization is nothing but a corrupting force-that a man in his natural state will be simple, child-like unsophisticated, gracious, hospitable and kind. They are altogether good and it is only the corrupting influences from civilization that make men evil and bad and vile and wicked and greedy, all of those things. Nor is that true; nor is that true. These barbarians here, their ancestors I say were the Carthaginians, and when they won a victory against Rome, they took the chief prisoners and burned them alive as offerings to the gods who had given them such victory over the Romans. You can trace this Carthaginian-Phoenician religion back on in the ancient days of the Old Testament. And many, many times did they, these Phoenicians, pull away Israel from God. And, as the old prophet would say in the Old Testament, “they would cause their children, their sons and daughters to pass through the fire unto their gods.” They offered them as burnt sacrifices to heaven. Many times these savages being kind and hospitable to a friend will eat and live off the body of his enemies. If you have ever been down in old Mexico City and go out to look at the Pyramids and the vast altars there, and then go into the museum there right by the great cathedral square, you will see pictures drawn by themselves of their sacrifices. And inevitably they are all humans. Human sacrifices-they take living slaves and pour out the blood in oblation and expiation before God. No, natural religion has in it great ethical potentialities because God put it in the man. But in itself, it has no sensitivity to the great moral value that you and I know in the Lord Jesus. And we will go back to it in a minute.

All right, another thing about the religion of the natural man. The religion of the natural man is based upon the persuasion that there is a nemesis that ever follows which is wrong. When you do evil, there is always retribution. When the barbarians saw that venomous beasts, that poisonous viper cling to the hand of Paul-. You see this is in late November, and the late animal had crawled into a little place somewhere to spend the winter, to sleep for the winter, to hibernate for the winter. And Paul hastily picking up all of those twigs, picked up that sleeping viper. And when he placed the twigs on the fire, the warmth awakened it and it darted out and fastened its poisonous fangs in the hand of the apostle Paul. Now, when that happened, these barbarians looked at Paul and they said, This man no doubt is a murderer. He is a vile, villainous and wicked man, who, though he escaped the terror of the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. There is a nemesis of retribution. There are the whips and the scorpions of the furies that are following him and he cannot escape. That is a fundamental tenant of the religion of the natural world and of the natural man. It is the base of all of the theologies. The great Greek tragedies were written, without exception, on that basis-of the Nemesis, who is the goddess of retribution. And when a man did wrong, she hounded him to his death. The religion of the natural man is based upon the supposition that evil and judgment are always interconnected. Because a man has done evil, therefore he shall suffer for it. There is a sleepless adventure that by day and by night will follow him and will drive him. The sea will not bear up the murderer, nor will the scorpions fail to sting him. Wherever he goes and whatever direction he turns, a man who is guilty will suffer the divine retribution of Almighty God. And I say that seems to be an instinct in natural religion. You come across it all of the time. The whole Book of Job centered around this. Job fell into evil. He fell into all kinds of sorrow-lost his home; lost his children; lost his property; lost his health. So Job’s comforters came to comfort Job. And this is the way they comforted him. They said to Job, Job, confess your sins. You have done evil; therefore, all of these bad and terrible things have overtaken you. And that is the Book of Job. And they talk about it. Job says, I have not done evil. And it is not because I have sinned that these terrible calamities have overwhelmed me. Now, that is the Book of Job. Do you see it? Because evil has befallen you; therefore, you have sinned. That is the Book of Job. Or take it again-just for a minute using an illustration-there came to Jesus men who said, “these Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, they were sinners above all of the other people in Jerusalem, because that thing has happened to them” [Luk 13:3]. Now the historical incident to which that referred, we do not have it in profane history. But there were some Galileans who were worshiping there in Jerusalem. And Pilate fell upon them with his sword and slew them. And when they died there in the blood of their own sacrifices, the people said: These men were wicked above all other men. A nemesis has fallen unto them. There they lie in their own blood. In other incident, they came to Jesus about “those eighteen men on whom the tower of Siloam fell” [Luk 13:4]. The wall fell on them and killed them. And the people said, those eighteen men must have been vile and wicked men because, look at the terrible calamity that has overwhelmed them and overtaken them. They are vile above all other men. Look what happened to them. The disciples said the same thing as they walked by and they saw a man born blind. They asked Jesus, “who did sin, this man or his parents, that he is born blind?” [John 9:2]. He is blind; therefore, it has to be a nemesis has overtaken him. That is the way life is put together. That is religion says the natural man. When you do wrong, there is a retribution. When a man is blind; therefore, somebody has sinned.

I preached a sermon here several evenings ago. And one of the most discriminating men to whom I have ever preached in my life, Brother George Coll* who always sits right here in front of me. Wrote me a long letter. The sermon was on the judgment day. The final judgment of Almighty God. And George wrote me a letter and started it off. And he said, “Pastor, I have not read Emerson’s essay on “Compensation” in forty or fifty years. But after your sermon I went back and read it again.” Now, Emerson’s essay on “Compensation” begins. He had been to church. And he had heard a pastor, his pastor preach on the judgment day of Almighty God. And Emerson wrote that famous essay, one of the most famous in the earth and woven of the great literary masterpieces of all time. He wrote that essay “Compensation” in repudiation of what the preacher had to say. And the thesis of Emerson is this: there is a nemesis in this world, in this life, and in this time. And whoever does wrong and whoever is guilty is overtaken in this world and in this time by those avenging furies. So I just copied this from Emerson’s essay on “Compensation.” That you might see how he says it.

Every act rewards itself. Men call the circumstance retribution. It is inseparable from the thing itself. Crime and punishment grow out of the same stem. Punishment is a fruit that ripens within the flower. This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis-that is a goddess-who keeps watch in the universe and lets no offense go unchastised. The avenging Furies they said are attendant on justice. And if the sun in heaven could transgress his past, they would punish him. When the Phoenicians erected a statue to Theogenes, one of his rivals went to it by night and threw it down until at last he moved it from its pedestal and was crushed to death beneath its fall.

Now, that is Emerson’s essay on “Compensation.” Whatever you do wrong, there is a nemesis that will follow you. And in this life, all of these things are balanced out wrong and judgment, evil and retribution. This man is a murderer, who though he has escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffer him not to live. Look at that, that venomous snake has buried its poisonous fangs in his flesh. And we will watch him die. We will watch him die. That is the religion of the natural man. That is the religion of the natural man. But it is only in poetry and in mythology and in Emerson’s essay that this is true. Actually in experience, it is not true. It is not true. I have seen the most sainted of all Christian people I ever pastored, I have seen them die in agony. In pain indescribable and excruciating. I have seen God’s people rise in sorrow and in suffering. I have seen an alcoholic whose much drinking has so weakened his heart, that when we came to the end of the way, though a young man, weakly, quietly, peacefully, he just quit breathing. His heart quit breathing and he went out in the most sublime manner you could ever describe. I have seen wicked people prosper and never be touched by ill health. And never seemingly be touched by sorrows that afflict some of God’s sainted members in this church. You say that because the tyrant has done evil, therefore his sleep is afflicted with all of the misery and the halting memories of the evil that he’s done. That is not so. He goes to bed and in many instances he sleeps like an innocent child. You can look this earth over, and you will never find that principle and that doctrine illustrated with unerring accuracy. The wicked do not always find themselves hounded to death by that nemesis. Nor do you always find it is the wicked who are bitten by that venomous serpent. Sometimes the innocent are. Sometimes God’s children fall a prey to the most dire, sorrowful misfortune that you could ever describe or know.

All right, I have one third thing and then we go back to the three. The religion of the natural man, its God. They looked to see him die, swell up and die. He did not die. Then they said, “he is a god. He is a god.” Two times here in the New Testament does Paul come in contact with these barbarians. One in Lycaonia [Acts 14:11], and in Malta [Acts 28:6]. And in both instances, he is taken for a god. The religion of the natural man is the worship of the mysterious, the wonderful, the miraculous; the inexplicable. They stand in awe before a thing they cannot explain. And that becomes their deity; their god. They look up in the firmament at night and they worship the stars and the moon; or into the skies in the day and they worship the sun; or they look around them and they worship the phenomena of life into which mystery they cannot enter-the oak, the mountain, the trees, the rivers, the streams; or some times they take animals who represent great qualities of the true God and they worship the animals in token of the quality of the god. For example the hawk-eyed deities of ancient Egypt represented the omniscience of god. And they-and the ox, the Apis, the god Apis which is an ox representing great strength. And even in Israel they worshipped the brazen serpent, which represented healing. They worshiped the miraculous and the inexplicable and they stand in awe before the wonderful. And that becomes their god. When I went to visit the king of Eyo, the tribal king among the Urabas. There in his hallway were all kinds of little old things hanging down. Maybe a gizzard of a strange African bird-or a chicken head or a funny looking stone, and all kinds of little odd things hanging around, for he lives in grief and in fear. And he is full of superstition about the things he cannot explain. So he worships in a world that he cannot understand and stands in awe before things that he cannot receive. The first thing that happens to that kind of a religion, it turns to atheism, which is the religion for the most part of America-religious atheism, intellectual atheism. When you are able to explain the thing, then you do not accept it as a god any more. When the Spaniards came over here to America, the American Indian received them as a visit from the deities. They had never seen ships like that before. But when they came to know the Spaniards better, they did not worship any longer, not they. When the savage first saw the European fire arm, he bowed down and worshiped before a god. Later, when he became accustomed to the arm itself, he used it. When the Laplander sees the eclipse, he stands in awe and adoration before it. When he can predict its coming with unerring accuracy for a thousand years to come, he does not worship any more. You see, when you are able to explain or understand the phenomena, then it loses its awe and you become an atheist. So the people used to think of God’s lightning as being a bolt from heaven. When you go to the World’s Fair in 1933, and see them make those same terrific bolts in laboratory and the philosopher experiments with them, then you don’t worship any more, and you become an atheist. So the intellectual and the professor and the scientist, if he learns and he probes, he pushes the things back and back and back, until finally, he leaves God out of the universe and he is a material atheist for practical purposes. He has no god and no religion at all.

Now in summary-that I tie into the religion of the natural man. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. The revealed of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is it like? First, in its virtue, in its merit and in its worth. The virtue of revealed religion are is the virtue in the mind and in the heart of Christ Jesus. How did He treat an enemy? That is revealed religion. How did He treat those who persecuted Him? That is revealed religion. What was His attitude toward those who cursed Him? That is revealed religion. Revealed religion in Christ Jesus is heart and mind and spirit. It shows the same front to those that hate us as it does to those who love us. And I am frank to tell you, I stagger at it most of the time. But that is revealed religion. The second thing. What is the attitude of revealed religion toward sin and suffering? First about sin-the nature of sin. In revealed religion, sin becomes an attitude and a character of a man and so it is inward. The publican and the harlot in the New Testament went into the kingdom of God, but the Pharisees stayed outside. The prodigal boy who had wasted his substance in a riotous and wicked living, came back to his father, while the elder son, in his pride said, “At no time did I ever transgress thy commandments” [Luk 15:29] is despicable in the sight of all who read the parable. Then it becomes a matter of the soul. I am a murderer if I hate. I am an adulterer if I lust. It is a matter of the inside. And it brings us all to the Lord Jesus for healing and atonement. He is wicked and therefore the nemesis is after him. And I am righteous; therefore, there is no nemesis after me. No, he is a sinner. I am, too. And he needs to be saved. But I do, too. And it does not behoove me to point my finger at him, unless I also point my finger at me. That is revealed religion. We are all lost. We have all sinned. We have all fallen short of the glory of God. And nothing condemns us. But one sin that we refuse the propitiatory, expiatory, the love and grace and atonement of Jesus on the cross. All sinners alike. All saved alike. All glory to the Lamb. That is revealed religion. And now hurriedly, the last-the God of revealed religion, the God of the New Testament. Did you know there is almost-to use the word contemptuous is not right, but I do not know what other word to use. There is almost a contemptuous attitude in the Bible toward the miraculous and the awesome. The reason I had you read the passage of Scripture this morning was this. The twelfth chapter of the [First] Book of Corinthians closes-the twelfth chapter closes with a word about the miraculous gifts-healing, speaking in tongues, working miracles. But Paul almost contemptuously says, “Yet I plead with you to seek after the better gifts; the more excellent way” [1Co 12:31]. Which is what? That you be able to work a miracle? That you be able to command the lightning of God? No, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and I do not have the breath and pulse of love in my soul, it is nothing. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could be anything, do anything. And I do not have the love of Jesus in my soul. That is nothing, too [1Co 13:1-3. You see what is the miraculous? Nothing. Could I say that Jesus had that same attitude, without being too blasphemous about it? One time Jesus said, “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe” [John 4:48]. And again He says, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; but no sign shall be given it” [Mat 12:39]. I am not quite like-when I use words like this, but I do not know how else to say it. Jesus looked upon miracles and signs and wonders almost contemptuously. They were just verification of the great eternal truth that he came to reveal.

Well, what is that great eternal truth? It is this. It is this. The great eternal truth of Jesus is that God, our Father-God, our Father is known by another faculty that you have in your soul. I have the five senses. I can see and taste and hear and smell and touch. I have my five senses. Which are the great five avenues and knowledge of the scientists. He can wave this thing. He can see this thing. He can smell this thing. He can look at that thing. He can go to that thing and he can demonstrate that thing. But the Lord Jesus said there is another tremendous faculty in the soul, and that faculty is faith-faith. I can understand and I can know and I can respond and I can receive great revelations and great truths. And I can commit myself to great things by a faculty of the soul. Faith. I could not demonstrate them to save my life. I could not hold it in my hand. I could not wave them. I cannot show them to you. But they are actual and known by great faith. And with regard to Himself, the religion of Jesus Christ is not the standing in awe and in wonder of an incomparable miracle, the mysterious, the inexplicable. But the religion of Jesus Christ is the d