Gooding, David: 3 - Balaam: An Advocate of Permissiveness

Together therein from verse eleven. Woe unto them, for they went in the way of Cain and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for her. And perished in the gainsaying of Korah. And may God give us good understanding of his word. Now this weekend we are currently studying together the little epistle by Jude, with particular interest to see what he has to tell us about signs of the last days. Jude, among the epistles of the New Testament, concentrates on this, that in the last days, before the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ for his people, there will arise false teachers among the people of God, introducing into the churches of Christ doctrines that are perverse of the very fundamentals of the Christian faith. Now, very often it happens that when false doctrines are introduced in Christian circles, they who promote these false doctrines represented that they are moving with the times. They are learning to keep pace with the progress in the world outside. They tell us that they would move beyond the simplicities and the crudities of ancient beliefs, passing from medieval superstitions. They are bringing us, if you will have it, into the modern world of light and reasonableness. The very opposite, of course, is the case, as Jude makes clear in his small epistle. He tells us that even in his own days there were false teachers already beginning to penetrate the original Christian assemblies. Jude writes, of course, towards the end of the Apostolic Age, when the apostles such as Paul and Peter in their second epistles bear witness to this, that the great flood tide of the early period evangelism was beginning to abate. And there were problems in the churches, not least amongst which were the entrance of false teachers. Says Jude, certain men have crept in unawares, and you can see from the very verb he uses that these people were not true believers. I don't know how you got into the church of which you are a member. I am sure, I think, as sure as anyone can be, that you didn't creep in. You came in with colors flying, or at least I hope you did. These men didn't. If the believers had really known what was in the heart of these people, of course they never would have been accepted in the Christian church, but they managed to creep in, and the very manner of their access to the church shows us that they were not genuine believers. No genuine believer has any reason to creep in to a Christian church. Moreover, Ja- Jude, when he, uh, uh, sets himself to describe to us the false teachings that these men brought with them, finds it convenient to mention in verse eleven three Old Testament characters, and says, as we have read, that these modern teachers between them have gone in the way of Cain. Or if they haven't done that, they have run riotously in the error of Balaam for hire. Or if they haven't done either of those two, then they have done the third. They have perished, he says, in the gainsaying of Korah. So now, far from these teachers being modern in their ideas, they're not modern in nineteen eighty nine. They weren't modern in the year that James, uh, that Jude wrote. For the doctrines they taught and the attitudes to religion that they maintained had long since been exemplified in centuries far past in such characters as Cain and Balaam and Korah. Sin, ladies and gentlemen, is very monotonous, and it's very boring in the end. It finds it difficult to be original. What go for new fashion doctrines turn out generally the end to be old fashioned lies. Now, last night we considered together, therefore, the Old Testament example of Korah and s- dubbed him a humanist cleric and saw in what he stood for anticipations of modern people who belong to the so-called secular wing of Christianity and preach a secular gospel and deny the authority of our blessed Lord, both as their apostle and as their high priest. This afternoon we come to Balham, for as you perceive, I have not lived here for thirty years without learning the skills of the Irish, and I'm taking things upside down, inside out, and back to front. But never mind, I'm one of you, and we started at the end with Korah, and we're going backwards and have arrived this afternoon with Balaam. And what did Balaam stand for, and what were the peculiar marks of the false doctrine that he brought into Israel and his successors brought into the Christian churches? Well, the first thing stares us in the face in verse eleven. what Balaam did was to go astray. You'll notice that his word is not gainsaying or rebellion, as you might translate it, such as marked Korah, but it is an error. It is a going astray. Alas, he wasn't content merely to go astray, but he ran riotously, says James, says Jules, Julesy. Like a pent-up animal when the door is opened and it escapes the kennel and go running for all its worth down the road. Balaam ran riotously in his error, and he did it because of the attraction of financial gain. He did it for hire. He is one of the e- e- e- early examples of men who have looked upon religion as a way of making money. Now this, you will remember, is a thing that angered our blessed Lord Jesus on two occasions when he was here on earth. According to John, at the beginning of his ministry, and according to Matthew and Mark and Luke, at the end of his ministry, when he had occasion to visit the temple at Jerusalem, he was outraged in his spirit. And on those two occasions, he saw people in the temple selling oxen and doves and changing money and representing salvation as a marketable commodity. A thing that could be sold for money, from the proceeds of which men might make themselves wealthy. On the first occasion, according to John in chapter 2, our Lord made himself a whip of cords and drove them out of the temple courts. Don't you make my father's house a house of merchandise? It wasn't the ordinary people, as you see. It was the religious leaders of the time that had allowed the temple thus to be perverted. Of course, you can argue, if you like, that the Jews, according to God's own word, had to offer sacrifices, and if you had to offer a lamb or a bullock or a turtle dove, you had to buy the thing somewhere if you were a pilgrim to Jerusalem. Yeah, very good, but let them buy those things in the shops. Don't sell them in the very temple of God, for if you sell in the temple, says our Lord, in effect, you run the desperate danger of giving people the impression that salvation is a something to be bought, that religion is a gigantic institution that deals in making money. It angered our Lord Jesus that, uh, the masses of the people should be given the impression that God was a God who sells salvation, whose pardon, whose peace, whose very heaven can be and must be bought with money. That misconception is a misconception that very much troubled medieval Christendom, didn't it? When Zetsel the friar went around telling the people that if only they put their money in the collecting box, as soon as their coin hit the bottom of the box, a soul would be released from purgatory and made vast sums of money. Our Lord was outraged by it, because, as John tells us, he had come to bring men the very opposite message. As son of the Father, coming to tell out the Father, hear his glad message again. He told of the God whose presence was in that temple, a God who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And he said presently to the woman at Samaria, recorded in the next chapter of that gospel, my dear lady, said he, if only you knew the gift of God and who it is that speaketh with thee, you would have asked of him, and he would have given you living water. To represent salvation as a marketable commodity, to run religion so it appears to the world that it is a money-making concern, is serious because it flies in the face of the very character of God. What shall evangelicals say when on their TV machines and in the world's press, we find arraigned before public opinion professed evangelicals that make millions and live in luxury as a result of their television programs. Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, and chapter six, he too talks of perverse teachers. They were telling the people such things as gave Paul to think that these men imagined that godliness is a way of making money. Now, our beloved King James Authorized Version, uh, in that particular verse got things like I do, back to front, and reads supposing that gain is godliness. Well, I suppose there are people around who might fall into that elementary m- mistake of thinking that if they make a lot of money, they must be godly. But what Paul says really was the other way round. These teachers, he said, give the impression that godliness is a way of making. And of course it isn't it. But that brings us to another modern phenomenon, widespread throughout the Far East, and it hasn't been unknown here in our own beloved province, have risen up teachers to say that, you know, if only you believe, you could be wealthy. God wants his people to prosper. Learn to believe God. Ask him for big things. If only you are a believer, ask him for health and you'll be given health. Do you want a motor car? Well, specify it in your prayers then. Don't be vague and say, I'd like a motor car. What kind of motor car would you like? Mercedes? Well, picture a Mercedes, and you can claim a Mercedes from God, for he wants you to be wealthy, not only saved, not only heaven aloft, but heaven here as well. Be bold, believe. You want a wife? Well, don't just ask for a wife, picture the dear wife, picture what she looks like. Is yours a choice of brunette and, uh, medium height and slim? Well, ask for a brunette, medium height and slim, and God will give you what you ask for. It is his will that his people be prosperous. And thousands, uh, come to believe it, don't they? It is quite false. Of that, Paul warned us in the verse that I have just quoted. These men imagine that godliness is a way of providing for yourself in life, a way of making gain. Whereas he says godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into this world, we shall take nothing out. Having food and a rag screen, says Paul, let us therewith be content. Paul is not preaching that if God prospers us in, in business, in daily life, that is a bad thing. But what he is saying is that godliness is not a scheme that God has devised by which we can make ourselves rich. That then was the first mistake on Balaam's part, according to Jude. He did what he did for the sake of making money, and did it, be it said, with his eyes open, for God had spoken to him and knew it was wrong, knew it was a perversion of the truth, but the chance of promotion to high office in the religious establishment of the kingdom of Moab drove him on, career man to the last, dazzled by the hope of moving with kings and nobility, being the acknowledged leading prophet in the land, he sided knowingly with error, and as presently we shall see, did worse and corrupted the people of God. He stands as a beacon light. All of us must take notice of him. Not only Jude, but, uh, the great apostle Peter himself also, in language very similar to that which Jude uses, has occasion to talk of Balaam. He mentions him in his chapter two, where he cites him as one example of a false teacher who encouraged the people of God to live morally permissive lives, and thus perverted the doctrine of the grace of God into a doctrine that God is so kind and loving that when it comes to morality, God is prepared to overlook anything at all, and you needn't be too strict. Peter, in his second epistle, characterizes these false teachers in a phrase now that I bring to your attention, Dulcy. They, he says, have forsaken the right way. They have left the way of truth, that is the true way, Two Peter two and verse two, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. Or again, he says in verse twenty one, it were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered unto them. Let us therefore for a moment concentrate on that little word, way. It is a very important word in the vocabulary of the early Christians. In the Acts of the Apostles, one of the ways of describing Christians is this: they were said to be of the way. And you could have been asked if you had been wandering about Ephesus or Corinth, and people had got to know you, you could have been have the question put to, do you belong to the way? Ultimately, of course, in the New Testament, it goes back to our blessed Lord Jesus and his teaching recorded for us in the so-called Sermon on the Mount. Our blessed Lord, in chapter seven of Matthew, is the record. Our blessed Lord warned us that there would come false prophets. And to help us, uh, see what their evil doctrines would be, he said the following famous words: For straight is the gate, and straight is the way that leadeth to life. Wide is the gate, and wide is the way that leadeth to destruction. And there, for a moment, uh, we pick up the word, don't we, in the lips of our blessed Lord Jesus. Christianity is a path, a road, a way. It was over this that these false teachers like Balaam had made their grievous error, misrepresenting the way of Christianity. Christianity is a way of truth. It is a way of righteousness. Balaam and company had perverted and misrepresented the way. Of course, that's not the only mistake you can make, is it? For you notice from our Lord Jesus that Christianity is not one thing, it's not just a way, it is also a gate. In fact, it's got to be two things. It's got first to be a gate, and then it is a way. It is not a gate without a way, nor is it a way without a gate. Truly, to be Christian, one needs to be able to say, yes, I have entered the true, the narrow gateway. Secondly, I am walking the narrow path and road. We need two things if we are to be authentic Christians. Some people make a mistake over the gateway, don't they? In ordinary language, they try to live Christian lives without having first entered the true gateway. That can be disastrous. We'll say, as our blessed Lord Jesus himself reminded us, if we would be in the kingdom of God, then of course we must first come through the gateway. And there is only one gateway, and it is a very narrow gateway in the sense that it is very selective. Except a man or woman be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Here stands the gate then, and it's a narrow gate. Some people there are who, through genuine ignorance of Holy Scripture, are trying to make progress along the Christian way of life and to conform to the standards of Christian morality. Sometimes they appear to succeed, and sometimes not, but they are genuinely trying to walk the Christian pathway. The trouble is that though they are trying to walk the way, they never really entered the gate. Or it may be that they have mistaken the gate, for our blessed Lord, in warning us of false prophets, reminded us, you'll see, that there's an imitation way, there is an imitation gate alongside of the narrow gate of authentic Christianity, which is the gate of personal repentance and personal faith. False prophets will have wide gates, so wide you can get in without knowing you've got in, so to speak, if you see what I mean, and only wake up to it afterwards that you're supposed to be in. That's no use, is it? And you'll see, if we are to be proof against the attractions of false teachers like Balaam in our day and age, it is of exceeding importance that we have come through the narrow gate. Peter tells us in his second letter in chapter two how some people do say had been led astray by these false teachers, and he says it has happened to them like the, uh, pig who went to the baths, like the dog in the, in the proverb who returned to his vomit. And at that point, Peter took leave to remind his fellow Christians of an ancient Greek, uh, uh, fable, uh, the sow that went to the bars. Have you heard the story of the sow that went to the bars? The pig that went to the bars. I hope it doesn't offend your sensibilities. I gather that our German believers don't like to hear this fable, at least not in public, because its language offends them. I don't think it would offend a genuine Irishman, would he, to hear about the, the old sow that, uh, went to the bars. We'll say this sow had been, uh, lived in a, in a ancient Greek city, of course, where people didn't have their own bathrooms in their own house. If you wanted a bath once a year or so, you went down to the public baths, you'll see, uh, when it was really necessary. And this, uh, this, uh, this sow had been watching the ladies as they came out of the baths. You must have seen the ladies, the Greek ladies, oh, face shining, you'll see, hair done just so, beautiful dress, perhaps a diamond in the ear, dorsi, and strutting up the street in their new pair of sandals, and the sun thought this was tremendous. Thought indeed she'd like to be like this too. So one day she decided that she was going to, she was going to be different from now on. She would go to the bars herself. So she went to the bars, came out beautifully pink with a curly tail, no, didn't like fall, and put a little jewel in her nose, you'll see, and brushed her hair, and had a nice little satin gown on, and then started to walk up the street on hind legs like she'd been watching the ladies, you'll see, and was making quite a good job of it, when all of a sudden she came across a big puddle of mud, and forgetting all about being a lady, in she went and wallowed in the gorgeous mud, glorious mud. Yeah. Why? Well, she had had an out external moral cleanup. Inside she was still an unregenerate sow. No change of nature, no new birth, just an external cleanup. And to transpose the parable to the level of spiritual experience, she was trying to walk the pathway without having come through the necessary initial experience of coming through the gate. And you'll see we need to make it clear, don't we, to our friends in personal work, in our evangelism, that to be an authentic Christian, it's not enough to try and walk the Christian pathway. You must first come through the gate, because in fact it is impossible to walk the true Christian pathway unless, by God's grace, you have been born again and received a new nature, and with it the new strength and the new power to be enabled to walk the Christian pathway. But if it is important then that we, uh, do not mistake the gate and make sure that we have come through the narrow gate, there is another mistake, isn't it? Sometimes we evangelicals are in danger of making it. We fall to thinking that if you've come through the gate, well, really speaking, bring it down to brass tacks, so long as you've come through the gate, then you don't really need to trouble too much after that about the pathway. Because we tell ourselves that everybody that's come through the gate's going to be in heaven, and right sure they will, and you say, therefore, well, what does it really matter how I behave upon the path? And that's quite false, isn't it? Christianity is not just a gate. It is a gate plus a way. And it was the grievous error of people like Balaam to encourage the Lord's people into thinking that the way didn't really matter all that. Does it matter? Well, of course it does, in a very positive way it matters, as Peter reminds us in his first chapter of his second epistle. Now you've been born again, says he, you are partakers of the divine nature. Now, in the power of God's grace, add to yourself, add the great Christian qualities to your character, make progress along the way. For if you do these things, you shall never stumble, he says. For if you do these things, if by God's grace and power you give all diligence to add to your Christian character the qualities of virtue and knowledge and perseverance and self-control, and love of the brethren, and love, making progress along the way and developing a Christian character. He says you will not only get into the eternal kingdom, for all believers get in, but more than that, there shall be ministered to you abundantly that entrance into the eternal kingdom, from which it becomes apparent that while all believers will enter, for entry into the eternal kingdom depends upon the blood of Christ and nothing else. While all believers shall enter, some shall have an abundant entrance, and some shall just enter. It does make a difference. So there is the way of truth, and there is the way of righteousness. Balaam had taught his generation, and the false teachers in Jude's day were telling their generation, and false teachers are telling us in our generation that the Christian standards, the narrow way, can be disregarded as old fashioned. I repeat what I said last night, that last year the Synod in England, being faced with a motion that declared that the practice of fornication and adultery and homosexuality is always sin, declined to pass that motion and substituted for it a motion that read that the practice of these things is falling short of the ideal. That is bananism. And my younger friends tell me that such is the temper and the temperature of life in the world at large. That if people have maintained themselves chaste before marriage, they are thought to be psychologically odd. I do not choose to enlarge upon these things. A word to the wise is enough, is it not? Our young people need our constant prayers. They live in a very different world from which we old codgers were brought up. A world where nowadays, in many a country and in many levels of society, and sometimes in Christian quarters, premarital chastity is regarded as a sign of oddity, psychological oddity. We need, therefore, to be warned. Now we come to a next thing that marked the antics of Balaam. The Old Testament in the Book of Numbers tells us that Balaam was summoned by Balak, king of Moab. Balak had heard that there was coming a great nation out of Egypt, led by their God Jehovah. The nation was subduing all in its path, and Moab, of course, felt itself threatened. And summoned Balaam, the false prophet from the east, to come and use his occult powers in order to curse Israel and thus remove the threat to Moab, Moab's culture and Moab's religion. And as you read the Old Testament story, you can easily see, surely, how Israel would have seemed to the surrounding nations to have been a colossal threat. Not only a military threat that might destroy them and a- and take away their independence, but also a religious threat. Because in those days when Israel, fresh from her redemption, came into the land, they not only conquered it, but banished every form of idolatry. Therefore posed herself a threat to all the sundry religions and their age-old hoary rites, rituals, and ceremonies. And as Balaam himself observed when he was obliged to under the pressure of God's spirit, Israel, says he, is a people that dwells alone. That is to say, Israel in the ancient world stood out, unique among the nations. That is what caused the nations wrath, more often than not. Israel, in her healthy days, and she had a lot of unhealthy ones, but in her healthy days, would have no compromise whatever against the idolatries of the pagan world. Indeed, she had been chosen by God from Abram onward to be God's special testimony in the world and stand for the truth of the one true God, proclaiming to all and sundry that there is but one God and that salvation is in him, in the words of their later prophet, I am God and there is none else. Look unto me and be you saved, all the nations of the world. And standing therefore as an explicit condemnation of all forms of idolatrous religion and all idolatrous interpretations of the universe. Israel got herself disliked, as you may understand. And Balaam was hired by Balak, king of Moab, to come and use his occult powers to destroy Israel. Foolish man, even his donkey could see better than he could. The reality of God and of the, the angels of God. First, then he's decided to destroy them, as I say, by occult means, and found the nature of the true God. Here is a most important lesson for us, still in our modern day. The difference between occult religion and the true God of heaven. I was listening just but a few hours ago to a report of an investigation done in Scotland, while a fearfully high proportion of young folks, by the time they leave their schools, have engaged in some form of occult practice. It has a fascination for men, doesn't it? And the fascination lies partly in this, that it's not all of it, though a lot of it is, it's not all of it mumbo jumbo. There is a real spirit world out there. It can be contacted. And so many people are fascinated by it, are they not? Because they say it's real, you know, it's real. What's real? Well, there was a real power there, and it works. People are fascinated by power, aren't they? They think that power is the ultimate thing in the universe. There's the tragedy. Of course, demonism is real. Of course it can work. The question is, is it true? That is, is it loyal to the supreme creator? The ultimate question is not power, ladies and gentlemen. There never has been a question of whether Almighty God is all powerful. The ultimate questions in this universe are moral questions, are questions of truth. Thus it was that when our blessed Lord Jesus stood before Pilate, and Pilate said to him, young man, you better speak to me. Don't you realize I have power? Christ brushed him aside and said, but I have entered this world to bear witness of the truth. Of course, in the universe, there are powers more than human, supernatural powers. Some of them are loyal to God, some are not loyal to God. But our salvation as men and women depends not simply on power. It depends upon the character of God and God's almighty truth. All thank God for that great episode when Balaam came with his, uh, occult menagerie, trying to influence the God of heaven to turn his back on Israel and to curse him. He was made to confess the very word, our God is not a man that he should lie, or the son of man that he should repent. Has he said it, and will he not do it? Has he promised, and will he not make it good? For God is a God who cannot lie. Oh, get hold of it, my dear young fellow Christian, before somebody or other bamboozles you and says, but look here, this occult thing works and it's real. Of course it's real. The question is, is it true? Is it loyal to the God, the Creator? Would it be loyal to you either? Real as though these things are, they will destroy men, body, soul, and spirit. Their concern is to defeat, if they can, if not to spoil God's handiwork, and thus show their spite against the great Creator. Adam was taught his lesson, therefore, that God is not a man that he should lie. In God's character, in his unchanging truth, in his word that cannot be altered, in his promise and oath that will be fulfilled. Here lie our salvation. When Balaam found he couldn't curse Israel, then he tried his other method, didn't he? To compromise them. How cleverly it was done. Our Lord, centuries later, commented upon the tactics. He said, Balaam, he put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, taught them to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication. You know how it was? Israel were encamped by some oasis or other. Uh, they couldn't always be on the moon on their pilgrimage, could they? And the young chaps went out for an afternoon stroll, and behold, all unexpectedly, there's some young ladies, uh, standing, uh, uh, to one of the palm trees. They did look different, a little bit different from all the other young ladies that Israel had ever seen in the Israelite camp. I say the colors were a little bit excessive, you'll say, uh, and the style a little unusual, but they said you are marvelously attractive. And they got talking to them, and presently, um, mm, they got asked home, you'll say, come and have, come, come and, come and meet mum and dad, and come and have a meal with us, you'll say. Uh, uh, so along they went, you see. Nothing wrong, is there, in having a meal with somebody. And when they got inside, uh, uh, said the young ladies, well, now you see, well, we, you know, just before we start, we, we offer the food to the god. The young men looked, and there was this old idol in the corner, you see, a god shelf, and, oh, but we don't want to do this. No, we don't, no, we shouldn't do that, offer, eat food offered to idols. Oh, they said, come off it, you know. Things have changed, you see. It's not everybody now takes notice of Moses like that, you see. Moses, he had the narrow-minded idea that, uh, that his God was the only God there is. Of course, well, now in this modern world, we know that there are many gods, and all religions are leading the same way. Oh, grow up and don't let people, uh, make you narrow-minded. Learn to see the good in all religions. And won over by talk like that, they joined in the worship of the god of Moab. And in the worship of the god of Moab, of course, fornication was not only allowed, it was part of the worship. You'll say that's a ancient story, isn't it? What could it have to do with us today? Our Lord, in two of his letters to the seven churches, asks us to remember it. He complains against those that hold the doctrine of Palim and were teaching the early Christians that idolatry and fornication were both permissible to Christians. What you say was the historical situation? Well, I suspect it was as follows. In the ancient Greek cities, various trades and professions would have had their trade guild. There would have been the guild of the goldsmiths, the guild of the silversmiths, the guild of the furniture makers, the guild of the bakers, and all the rest of them. If you wanted to be a successful goldsmith, you perhaps would need to be a member of the Goldsmiths Guild. Why not? If you wanted to be a good doctor, you're a member of the Doctor's Guild. So far, so good. Ah, but there was a difficulty with some of these ancient trade guilds. For at the annual dinner, or however often they held it, when the businessmen went to the annual dinner, or the monthly dinner, up in the corner of the room where they held their dinner would be the statue of the, of the patron deity of the guild. And the food would be first in token offered to the god whose statue stood in the corner, patron of the guild. Should you do it? If you didn't do it, you see, you would stand to lose in business. And there were some in the churches who taught the believers, but look, you cannot muddle up your assembly life and your business life. Business, after all, is business. And many have fallen for that argument, haven't they? Protestant Christianity, not Roman Catholicism so much. Protestant Christianity is riddled from the highest down with Freemasonry, that in their secret sessions worship the same old gods as Balaam and the ancient Greeks and the ancient Egyptians indeed are built upon the very same principle that there is good in all religions. Men of all religions or none can mix in their secret sessions because they worship Yabulon, a mixture of Jehovah, Baal, and On, and any other gods of any other nations. My bank manager is a believer. Nice to have a bank manager as a Christian. It hasn't swollen my bank account, but he invites me to dinner now and again. He's a very good Christian man and keeps an eye on me, we'll say, so that I behave. He reported to me at one stage how his principles in his bank were bringing enormous pressure to bear upon him. He must become a member of the aforesaid Freemasons because, not being a member, he was losing the bank business. David, said he to me, what shall I do? What must I do? Balaam advocate of what is technically called syncretism, the idea that it doesn't matter much what religion you are, all religions are aiming at the same thing, and what we ought to be doing is joining all religions together. It's going to become a problem in coming days, where there are cities in, in England where the schools have a majority of Islamic, of Muslims in them. Voices will be heard more and more and more to be saying, look, you mustn't suppose that Christianity is the only true religion. All religions are in part true. That is false. That is Balaamism. And it is not narrow-minded exclusivism, is it, that makes a stand for such a thing. Listen to the Apostle Peter, there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved. There is only one Savior. That's not a narrow-minded doctrine. Thank God there's only one Savior, because there only needs to be one Savior. The other religions tell you how you should be. There's not one salvation among them. There is only one Savior, and thank God there need only be one, because his one sacrifice for sin has covered the whole of man's guilt and can bring forgiveness to all who, in true repentance and faith, put their trust in him. Yes, if Christianity is merely one more way of telling people they ought to be good, well, then the serious religions are equal with Christianity. But Christianity is not just a philosophy or a morality telling people to be good. It's about a savior. There is one God and one mediator and one savior. There's no under name other than his under heaven, given amongst men, whereby we must be saved. And at the, uh, Greek businessmen's dinner parties, there would have been women. They wouldn't have been the businessmen's wives. They would have been provided by the host. Should Christians go to such a party? God give our Christian businessmen, whose business takes them to business conferences away in hotels, where, ladies and gentlemen, you know better than I that very often the pleasure is laid on for the businessmen in foreign countries, and a Christian man or woman has to learn to stand against current practice. Book of Je- Book of Numbers tells us that when Balaam, by his craftiness, caused Israel to compromise, and they joined in the worship of Baal Peor, then God was jealous. Now, to some people's ears, jealousy sounds a very bad thing. But there's a good type of jealousy as well as a bad type of jealousy, isn't there? The good type of jealousy is associated with true and genuine love. If your husband loves you, madam, he will not stand by and see someone else tamper with your loyalty. Or if it happens, if he really loves you, he will become exceedingly jealous. For jealousy is the other side of love. And the husband that could see his wife's loyalty tampered with and think it didn't matter and not get jealousy, get not get jealous, is a man who does not love his wife. God uses that illustration of the higher relationship between him and his people. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says, you cannot, my dear brethren, you cannot go and take part in the rituals of pagan temples and partake of the table of demons and mix Christianity with pagan religion and ceremony. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? By his very love for us, if we compromise him, he will be jealous and will stay at nothing to bring us back to complete loyalty to himself. Says Paul, writing to the Corinthians, two Corinthians chapter nine, I have espoused you as a chaste virgin to Christ. I fear lest the old serpent should corrupt your thoughts from loyalty to the Lord Jesus. It is not merely in the matter of morals, it is also in the matter of intellect that our blessed Lord requires of us to love him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Today, through his servant Paul, he appeals to us that we be intellectually loyal to the Lord Jesus. God give us grace, our young people particularly in their schools and colleges and universities, where so often they are of- offered theories that, if worked out to their logical conclusion, would deny the truth of God's word and the authority of the Lord Jesus. The places where that will happen more than any are in theological faculties of us, where theories will be taught that, when carried to their logical conclusion, deny the authority of God's word and the unique authority of our blessed Lord. Here too, our Lord calls us to be loyal, intellectually uncompromised. One day we must meet the blessed Lord. How wonderful it will be when we meet him we can say, Lord, in many things I came short, but by your grace, morally and intellectually, I tried to be loyal to you. The Lord bless his word for his name's sake.