New Age vs. The Gospel: The View of Humanity

New Age vs. The Gospel: The View of Humanity

Okay, let's open our Bibles tonight, if you will, to Genesis chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3. This morning we saw the view of God as seen by the New Age movement. And this evening we want to see the view of humanity. This is by no means intended to be an exhaustive study at all of the New Age, but at the same time I hope that some of these things will stick in our minds and we'll be able to, when we see it, when we hear things, when we see things, we'll go, oh, okay, so that's where that's coming from. That's where that line of thinking is coming from. And then we would have better discernment as a result of the things we'll see in this study.

So Genesis chapter 3, if you'll look in verse 1 with me. Genesis chapter 3, verse 1. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, He shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened. And ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened. And when they knew that the… And they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. Let's conclude the reading there in verse number seven.

May God bless his word to our hearts in these moments we have tonight.

The basic view of the new age is that humans are divine, or humans have a spark of divinity. The basic view of the new age is that humans are divine, or humans have a spark of divinity. In them, because all is God, then humans are inherently divine. Because we're… Collectively, we comprise the divine. We comprise the God. The fundamental problem here that we see with this is… The idea in the… new age is that it's not sin that's our problem. Our problem is not sin. Our problem is lack of awareness of the divinity that we have. The lack of awareness, the lack of being awakened to and conscious of the potential that lies in us through the energy of the divine. And so salvation is not repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Salvation is not repentance toward God, faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Salvation is not God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Salvation is you need to unlock the full potential within you. You need to unlock the potential.

Now just listen to that on the surface of it. Doesn't that sound a lot more approachable and friendly I guess we can say than you're a sinner. It feels better right? It's more positive. It's more uplifting. It doesn't matter whether it is true or not, right? It feels, it's kind of like we read here in this passage tonight when the woman saw that the tree was good for food. It doesn't matter what the truth is. It looks good, right? It's kind of like choosing a political candidate because of what their hair looks like versus what they actually believe, what they actually vote on. I like his voice. I like her hair. I like, I like the personality. Well that's a pretty poor way to choose a spouse or a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a representative as a, as a plural. You know, if you look at a car and say that car looks nice, well how does it run? What is the, what is the actual truth about that car? Let's look at the Carfax report. No, it just looks good. Smells good. Sounds good. You know, you can get in a lot of trouble just based on the, the feeling you get or what, here's, here's something that comes from New Age Salt, the vibe that this gives me, right? It gives me good vibes. Well, that's essentially what Satan was trying and was successful in getting Eve to get away from the truth about the matter and become more subjective in her view of this tree of knowledge of good and evil. The devil is a good salesperson, we might say.

But salvation is really awakening, becoming enlightened, self-discovery of the potential within, the power of God within us. And that really runs so contrary to the scriptures.

But New Age thought is really, it's eclectic, it pulls from a lot of different sources. It's not just Hinduism, it's Buddhism. There's a lot of different strains of thought, but they're all counter to the gospel. They're actually New Age thinkers will often quote a man that's commonly called Rumi, was his last name, but his full name was Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, R-U-M-I. He was evidently… He was evidently a 13th century Persian poet, an Islamic scholar, and a Sufi mystic whose writings became some of the most widely read among New Agers. He says, the universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself. Everything that you want, you, is already there. So this is what he… He had to say. There's another, this man, this is obviously this next one I'm going to mention is a man that's been featured on Oprah Winfrey's show many times, Eckhart Tolle. He says, you are the universe expressing itself as a human for a little while. You are the universe expressing itself as a human for a little while. Marianne Williamson has also been on her show and she says, love is what we are born. Born with fear is what we learn. You know, there's a little, there's a little shred of truth in there that we learn to be afraid of certain things.

And yet, because of sin, we are, we were in bondage to fear, the fear of death all of our lifetime. But the lady, the lady we mentioned this morning, Henry, I'm sorry, Helena Blavatsky from back in the late 1800s, who started that along with two other individuals, started that theosophy or theosophical society. She said, there is no God outside ourselves. There's no God outside ourselves. Deepak Chopra, that was been featured on Oprah. I'm just jumping back and forth. These are not all in chronological order. He said, the only true authority, is your own inner knowing. The only true authority is your own inner knowing. Isn't this what Satan was appealing to with Eve? You know, God has said, but there's always this appeal to some kind, but there's some higher meaning. There's some higher knowing, even the idea, let your conscience be your guide. Follow your heart. That comes from that idea that you know best, you know best. You know better than God, is what Satan was telling Eve. You know better than God. If you will just see the potential, relying on your own sight, relying on your own feelings, follow your gut, you're going to discover your eyes are going to be open to things you didn't even realize.

You're going to see things you had the potential for. You're going to see things you didn't even know were possible. Your eyes will be open. It'll be an epiphany. It'll be a magical, a mystical experience. If you'll just, don't let that dogma limit you. Don't let that dogma, don't let that revelation, don't let that word inhibit you from expressing, from expressing yourself. Even that idea there is self-expression. It's very much tied into, now don't get me wrong, each one of us has, as we serve God, we express ourselves differently. We're not a monolith here, I guess we can say. I mean, you know, Brother Kiki and Brother Ronnie and Brother Andy and myself, we're all somewhat different personality-wise. So I'm not saying we all should, you know, we're not robots or anything, like that, but when I talk about self-expression, I'm talking about let the good in you just come on out, you know, kind of thing. You've got all kinds of good stuff inside of you, just let it out. There's some things inside of me, if it wasn't for the grace of God, if they came out, y'all be looking for another church.

If it wasn't for God's grace in our lives, we couldn't, we're tempered together in the body of Christ by Christ, Christ's love and grace that's to seize in our speech. And we're to think not more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, but to prefer others before ourselves. The Lord took a bunch of, really a ragtag team of disciples that came from varying backgrounds, fishermen and tax collector. You've got all these different people. They would not have naturally gotten along with each other. They would have probably been fighting like cats, cats and dogs. Even to that, they had some disagreements among themselves. But, you know, the Lord brought the grace of God changes a heart and continues to work on our hearts and lives, conforming us to his image. But this idea, we march under this banner of the word of God. We don't march under the banner of everybody just follow your heart the best you can. That's not how, that's not what we're called to. And when we, if we do have a disagreement among ourselves, this, this should be the authority for resolving it. It's not, it's not, well, my feelings matter more than your feelings. No, that's not, that's not how the Lord has told us to deal with these things.

Well, Buddha, Gautama Buddha said, do not believe in anything simply because you've heard it or because it is found written in your religious books. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything, agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it. So let, let your own reason, let your own thoughts be, be your guide. Don't necessarily follow any creed or any, any revelation. But let's think on the scriptures here. The Bible tells us that man is created in whose image? God's image. Man is created in God's image. We didn't, the creative power doesn't, we're not the source of any kind of creative power. We are the created ones. And we're created in the image of God. We've certainly taken the time, and I'm not going to go through all the scriptures tonight, but we've taken the time to look at what that means. That we are created in God's image. We are, we're eternal in nature. Not that we are, not that we are without beginning. We had a beginning. God created us. But we are without end. We will go on and on forever. Somewhere. Every human being will, will forever dwell with Christ, or will forever dwell apart from Christ. There will be an eternity, an eternal soul. God gave us, in his image, he gave us a mind with which we can reason.

We can understand. We can reason through things. We have intelligence. We're in the image of God. We're, we're different than animals. We're higher than animals in the sense that, that, you know, sometimes when people said, I was so foolish, I was like an animal. I was like a beast, you know. But no, we, we have intelligence. That doesn't mean that animals don't have, animals do have aspects to their characteristics about them that sometimes look like intelligence, but it's not on the surface. They're not on the same level as human beings. They're more instinctual, instinctive as creatures. That's, that's why we can take advantage of hunting them, you know, because, you know, I, I hunt for deer, and there's certain predictable things that you, sometimes they will frustrate you, but there's some things that you can always follow. Deer are going to do this 100% of the time. They're going to do certain things. Chickens, I can tell you from experience, chickens do certain things. Pigs do certain things. You know, pigs do certain things. All of them do. God, God gave us a mind with which we can reason through things. He gave us a conscience, knowing basic right from wrong. Animals don't consider the moral implications of their actions. They just do what they do.

Now, God may withhold a, a bear from attacking you if he wants you to live, and you're in a situation where otherwise the bear would attack you, but generally speaking, animals don't sit there and consider and ponder, I wonder what the implications of my actions will be here. No, they say, I'm hungry. I want to eat. You know, that's what they do. God gave man a will to choose, not merely instinct, but a will. Animals glorify God in following their instincts, but man can rebel against God's will. He can choose to refute. I mean, the scriptures replete with examples of this. You know, how, how the Lord would call upon Israel, but they stiffened their necks and they hardened their hearts against him. We have the truth in scripture that says God gave us the capacity to imagine in our imaginations, right? We have the ability to imagine things and to be even creative, not creative. In the sense that out of nothing we create something, but with the materials God has given us, he's given us the ability to be creative and to fashion things and to imagine things that we want to make, that we want to create. And he's given us that ability. Adam took that ability. Eve, Adam and Eve took that ability to choose and instead of obeying God, they chose to disobey God.

They chose and somehow justified in their minds what they were doing. Eve it says was deceived. Adam says was not deceived, but they chose with their eyes, chose with their emotions rather than choosing by faith. By faith, the things that God had told them to be so. Now, we know that God has given all the sons of Adam the same ability, right? We can imagine things. We can imagine shooting people in a rocket out into outer space, can't we? We can imagine, you know, putting a satellite up there and shooting beams down to the earth and being able to get TV signals out in the middle of nowhere. And Internet and all these kinds of things. Starlink, you know. All these amazing things we can come up with. Some of them are helpful. Some of them are not so helpful. But man is very creative and imaginative. And yet many times man uses his imagination to do some very horrific things, to do some very horrible things, to control other people and to hurt other people and to bring shame. There are many examples of that. We see that the love of money is the root of all evil. The love of money. People can imagine all sorts of evil things to do in order to get money, to get control, to gain power, to get what they want, even if it means killing and maiming and hurting other people along the way and ruining them.

We see the potential because of sin. Man, we're told this morning, we mentioned that passage in Ephesians where it talks about the children of disobedience in Sunday School Hour, the children of disobedience being empowered, energized literally by the God of this world in their creative, rebellion against God, in their rebellion against the Lord. Look in Genesis 6, verse 5. Genesis 6, verse number 5. It says there, And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. It had been building and building and building and now it had come to great proportion. And that every imagination, every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. What does that say? Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Have you, I've heard it, I've heard it even since I was a child. You can hardly find anything on TV anymore. You know, even, at least when I was small, we had, you know, not that it was perfect, but there's Looney Tunes, right? Now, I mean, do you look at, you look at these, there's, you know, maybe a good program here or there, but most of it's just demonic stuff that kids have to watch on television. It's, it's rough. There's a few programs, but it's just not a, it's not a whole lot.

And even when I say television, television is not even like it used to be anymore. I mean, you know, there's, there's different means. I mean, most of the time you can just stream stuff through the connection to the internet. Now, that's even changed. But God saw that the wickedness of the imagination, every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually. And we're told in Scripture that in Adam all die, but in Christ all are made. Alive, all are made alive. Well, here back in Genesis chapter three, what we read tonight, we see that God gave man a choice, didn't he? God gave Adam and Eve a choice, and the choice they made was to disobey. The choice they made was, when it's all summarized and boiled down, we'll do what we want to do. We'll do what feels good to us. We'll do what seems right in our own eyes. And having inherited the sinful nature of our father, Adam, we do the same thing naturally, don't we? We do the same thing. We say, well, we have a natural, we have a natural bent towards doing what feels good, right? Doing what seems good, doing what we want to do. But it, it's like we read in Romans, I think it's chapter 10. How shall they, how shall they hear without a preacher? How are they, how are we going to believe on some, on a truth we've not heard?

The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. They don't want to hear it. But nonetheless, we must not, we must, Paul told Timothy, he must continue to preach the word, be instant in season, out of season. Even when it's not popular to tell the truth, we must, to one another, we must speak the truth in love, but we must speak the truth in love to our neighbor, because to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves, that's, those are the two great commandments on which all of the law and the prophets hang. We must speak truth. The truth is we're not good. The truth is that human beings are not divine. We're actually fallen from our, our image bearing creation. We have a tainted status that we, that Adam had. We have fallen in sin. We're not even at the level that we were with Adam, because those characteristics, while they still, we still have the image of God, the image of God is marred because of sin in us. It's tainted. We are already, already have a bent towards doing the wrong thing and ultimately not loving our neighbor and ultimately being willing to, for the love of money and the love of power and control, doing the wrong thing and for pleasure, lovers of pleasure is more than lovers of God, doing the wrong thing because it feels good to us, rather than is that actually the right thing to do?

Is that good? Is it loving my neighbor? You know, and the lie of the devil is, well, if you just do what feels good to you, then you'll be loving your neighbor. No, that's not the truth. That's not right. Adam, Adam, Adam was, he failed, didn't he? The first Adam failed, but the second Adam prevailed. The second Adam ruled not by, not by suppressing all dissent and just, how can I put it, taking advantage of people. No, he ruled by serving. He conquered by dying on a cross for our sins and taking our sins upon him, the perfect servant, suffering servant. He came, he did the will of God, the perfect image of God, the image of the invisible God. If we've seen him, we've seen the Father and he came and he perfectly performed what Adam failed to do. He perfectly did God's will. And so in him, he is the way of life. He is the way to the tree of life that was lost in Eden. He is the way to God. There is no way to God or there's no discovery of God in ourselves outside of Jesus Christ. There is, what is it? He is the way. He's the truth. He's the life. No man cometh to the Father. No man comes to God but by me, by him, Jesus Christ. It's not through our own reasoning. It's not through any other way.

Not through some self-discovery that we come to God. But the devil has been experimenting, hasn't he, for millennia. He's been experimenting on human beings to see what are, what are we most, what most appeals to us, right? What most appeals? And it's really, if you think about it, the same, he's repackaging and rebranding his deceptions. But with, like we said about the new age this morning, but isn't it really, if you stop and think about it, isn't it fundamentally the same lies he's been telling since the beginning of time? Isn't it the same lies? Follow your heart. If it tastes good, if it looks good, if it smells good, do it. You'll be happy. And yet, as soon as Adam and Eve had sinned and that, their eyes were opened, but it wasn't all that they thought it would be, was it? It wasn't all that they had imagined it would be. It was actually their conscience engaged, didn't it? Their conscience engaged and they realized we sinned and so they covered themselves. We've sinned, we've broken God's law, and yet the devil, the devil even today, the devil has no problem if you say, I believe in God. He doesn't mind a hybrid. Well, you can believe in God, but you can also follow your heart, right? You can believe in God and follow your heart. No, you can't.

No man can serve two masters, right? You either love the one and hate the other one or vice versa. And so we cannot, we must have a pure faith. We must have a childlike faith in God's word. God spoke the very world into existence, the universe into existence with his word. We can trust his word because he's the one that created us. His word is quick, it's alive, it's powerful, it's sharper than any two-edged sword. He, if he created us, he knows what's best for us. He knows our needs. He knows how we are. You can't, you can't even in the desire of the new ages to bring all the religions together, know that Christianity is not compatible with the religions. There is, it is the truth. The truth is not, the truth is not found in various different forms. There is truth or it's a lie. If there's any admixture of something else in with the truth, it's a lie. If there's any admixture of something else in with the truth, it no longer remains truth. It becomes something else. And it's not, it's not the same. I've said before, we would not want to drink, you know, we want pure water, don't we? We don't want to drink water with just a little bit of cyanide. We don't want to drink water with a little bit of glass shards in it. Just a little bit, you know, it's not much.

It doesn't take much, does it? We don't want a little bit of, you know, a little bit of fentanyl. We don't want a little bit of something else in there because it could do great damage. So as the only way to get victory over Satan in our lives is not to follow our own heart, not to follow your own, believe that there's something good in you. No, the only way to get the victory over the devil is to full stop, reject anything other than the Holy Spirit. That's the whole armor of God that's been revealed to us in the Word. We must take to us the whole armor of God. We must take this shield of faith, which is the Word of God, whereby we may quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. If we somehow try to compromise the shield, it's not going to hold up against the wicked one. It's not going to hold up against the devil. It's going to be insufficient to stand against his, his ways. All of that, as I think on that, it reminds me of that animal in the Bible we read of in Proverbs 30. Proverbs 30, verse 26, and let's turn there. I want to close with this thought tonight. Proverbs 30, verse number 26. In our King James Bible, it calls this animal by the coney. Proverbs 30, verse 26 says, the coney's, Proverbs 30, verse 26, the coney's are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.

The coney's are, are feeble. They don't have any natural defenses. They're not, they're not, they don't have a thick skin of a crocodile. They don't have, the ability really to run very fast. They can't fly away. They don't have the spines of a porcupine. They don't have the teeth of a wolverine. They don't, they don't have any of these things. They can't really defend themselves. And so they make their houses in the rocks. These coney's are actually, what would be called in our, in our day, rock badgers or high rock hyrax. These are found in other places, in several places around the world, but they're, they're known to be found in Israel. The rock badger or the rock hyrax is a, they, they made their, they made their houses in the hillsides, rocky hillsides of the Middle East. And I know I've spoken about them once or twice before. And what's interesting about them is they have a sentinel, kind of like prairie dogs. They have one that goes out and it, or it stays on guard and it makes a certain pitch. If there's danger, like a, an eagle flying over or, you know, some other predator. I think there's like a, some type of mountain lion there. That can attack them. And they are safe as long as they don't venture far away from the rocks.

But when they get too far away, they may not be able to make it back without being taken advantage of by the predator, or by the predator before they can get back to those rocks. And so it is with us as Christians. We need to take to us God's word. And hide it in our hearts that we might not sin against him. We must, we must put on the whole armor of God. As we've said, we must find our sure defense in the word of God. Because if we, if we try to go up against the devil ourselves in our own strength, he's going to, he's going to twist us in so many different ways and attack us. And we won't know whether we're coming or going. But I know pastor, I know pastor Peacock used to say something to the faith. This is not a verse of scripture, but he said, take the word of God and stick it in the devil's ear. Take the word of God and stick it in the devil's ear. Um, we're told in the scripture that we are to resist him. How? Steadfast in the faith. Resist the devil, your adversary. He's like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour like those colonies. How do you resist him? In the faith. Lean not to your own understanding. If you lean to your own understanding, he's going to, you'll, he'll, he'll have taken advantage of you before you know what happens. You know what's happening.

So we need to stay as the hymn says, close to thee, close to thee, close to the Lord. Resist him. Steadfast in the faith. We're weak. He's strong. Our Lord is strong. He's our sure defense. He's our high tower that we can run unto. He's the one that we lean on, you know, and if what, what, what would have been the difference if Eve would have said, well, Eve even recited the words basically that the Lord had given her. But what if, what if she had just run to that high tower and said, I'm not going to listen to you, Satan, Satan appeals to a sense of pride within us. You know, best. He appeals to that pride. He's so successful many times because he appeals to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. It's what people want to hear. And then if you just put a little religious polish on it, make it sound, maybe use the same terminology of scripture and make it sound like God's involved in this. How much more easy it is to swallow it and think, well, there's nothing wrong with this. But no, we must hide God's word in our hearts that we might not sin against him. We must hide his word in our hearts. We know on this, if, if, if you see the raw naked version of the new age, it's obvious. We know we're not gods, right? We know. I mean, that, that's pretty elementary.

We know that we're not gods, but he can come across in such a way that it makes you feel good about yourself. You know, that we need to reject any of that, any of that thinking that can even come across as follow your heart. Let your conscience be your guide, go with your gut, you know, lean to your own understanding. That's how we get you, right? That's how we can get people thinking that it's going to be okay. It's all right. Well, thank God that we have been told the truth about ourselves, even though that truth hurts, even though the truth about ourselves, even though the truth about our sinfulness hurts initially. What, what a piece is mine knowing that the Lord, the Lord loved me enough to send his son to die on a cross for my sins. He told me the truth. He told me the truth that I might, that I might not be found having my own righteousness, but that I might be found in him. And our, not only our, our hope for eternity, but our, but our sure defense from day to day is found like the colony. Resist him in the faith. Hold up that shield of faith wherewith you may be able to quench those fiery darts of the wicked. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the moments we've had in your word tonight. We, we know that when it comes to the full bore, new age thinking that we would probably recognize it right off.

But Lord, sometimes Satan, all he tries to do is to get us to just maybe question whether or not we know better on something than what your word tells us. Uh, just, just the thought, just the question. Well, is that, is that really the case? Is that really true? Maybe, maybe it's one thing, you know, here, Daniel, you need to just kind of lean to your own understanding on this. You need to, you need to follow your heart on this because perhaps you know best about this matter. Help us, help us not to give into that tendency. Lord, help us not to give in, help us to, to take the whole armor, help us to not drift and be coaxed away from the rock, so to speak, because we know that the devil wants nothing more than just to, uh, nothing more than just to, to devour us like a roaring lion. And so help us to stand firm on your word. Bless us now as we conclude this service, uh, with a final hymn and help us as we go out. Lord, may we, may we share the truth with others as we go this week. May we have the love and the compassion upon those that we come in contact with to, to, to share what's been given to us. And just to let you do the work, let you, let you draw hearts in your way, in your way, in, in your timing. We pray and ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.