Problem #7: Science Instead of Morality

Good morning.

There was a TV show, started in the 1960s. Actually, still is kind of,

some iterations of it are going on today.

Still, it's called Star Trek. Some of you probably remember it.

Yeah, I grew up with like The Next Generation, which was like the best one of

the series, in my opinion.

Wow, I did not expect that reaction. That was great. That was wonderful.

Yeah, so I grew up with that. So in Star Trek, you have this story.

You have people who are out there exploring space. And sometimes they have,

you know, alien crew members on their ships and everything.

And they're out just exploring the cosmos, seeing what's out there,

discovering new species and, you know, new organisms and new life forms and

new planets and all of these different things out in the galaxy.

But all of this came about in this fictional world of Star Trek.

Because after World War III, basically science and technology got to a point

where it brought about a universal morality in a way.

We hit a place where we could, we got rid of wars, we got rid of famine,

we got rid of poverty, and everybody agreed to this system.

And so you have this world peace that happens.

And it's out of that that apparently we discovered light speed and were able

to go like out into the universe with that.

That's the whole reason. And so while they're traveling there,

they have this guiding principle called the Prime Directive,

which says that they're not to interfere with another culture's growth and progress,

especially those cultures that haven't discovered light speed technologies yet.

So we're supposed to let them alone so that they can grow and find their own

way into this universe. They can discover all of these things for themselves

because that is essential to their growth.

But the problem is, as they travel this galaxy and they start encountering these

species, they start looking and going, what is the greater good?

Well, maybe we should help these people out. Maybe we should change things.

Maybe we should interfere.

Like we're not supposed to with a prime directive, but maybe we should because

I think that's the greater good that's here.

And it's kind of funny to me that this society that somehow achieved global

peace through the greater good and is now wrestling with the greater good out in the galaxy.

But I think it brings up an interesting debate, this topic of morality.

And this question of morality has been a quest of sorts really since the dawn

of time. And it's still a hotly debated topic today.

What is morality? Where does it come from? How can we determine what is actually

moral? Why is it so important?

And is there a morality that we can definitively lean on?

In Star Trek, they really heavily lean on science. That's their guiding principle.

And I think that they do that in the show because that's our culture.

That's kind of our guide that we have today.

Back in 2020, there were a few global things that were going on that I'm sure

none of us remember at all.

It was Boris Johnson, who was the prime minister of the United Kingdom,

who said, we are shining the light of science on this invisible killer,

and we will pick it up where it strikes.

We are going to be driven by the science. We are going to be driven by the science.

And so as we continue this morning, I want to just kind of set some expectations.

Because science is a huge, huge topic. And there are many subcategories within science.

So we're going to have to speak about it more generally this morning.

There's no way we can just dive into all of the different fields of science.

But we're also going to have to put on our thinking caps a little bit because

we've got to approach this in a number of different ways.

We've got to look at it from a historical perspective, a philosophical perspective.

We've got to dip our toes into the waters of apologetics. and we've got to lay

a theological grounding as well for all of this.

So that's a lot. Buckle up. Here we go.

So as we said, the title of this morning is Science Instead of Morality.

But to be clear, really no one is looking at science as morality.

But what they are looking at is science can lead us to morality.

And that's really a prevailing view today is that the science can ultimately guide us to a moral life.

And if we're going to talk about morality, we also have to define that as well.

So we could say that it is a system of values and principles of conduct that

are held by a person, a society, or a culture.

It's really how we believe we should live our lives that's going to bring about

human flourishing in our world.

It's that belief that's there. We have a morality that is our guide to right

living in this world and is going to bring about what is in the best interest of humanity.

But as you might pick up rather immediately we all have different ideas of what

human flourishing is and what's best for humanity we all have different views

on that and we watch this clash in our news and our social media feeds and even

at our dinner tables every day,

we all have differing opinions and beliefs about what this good life is and

how are we going to get there but whatever that belief is wherever that system

is that we have in our lives, whatever we look at as that good life,

it's going to direct our actions,

it's gonna direct how we vote, it's gonna direct how we treat our neighbors,

it's gonna affect how we live our lives and what we view as moral.

So what does science have to do with that? Well, let's begin.

I want to talk about, kind of begin with Christianity's relationship to science.

And really the modern view of where we are today in all of this.

Because I think when we look at Christianity's relationship to science,

especially from a world's perspective, the relationship's a little bit rocky.

So in many ways, Christianity and the church have been a resistant force to

much of science through the ages. some justifiably, others not as justifiable.

So in our modern debates, we find ourselves as Christians at odds with the science

of gender, the science of sexuality and abortion.

And there's a host of other issues that are out there as well.

Darwinism still permeates a lot of the scientific world in which Christians

have just outright rejected as lunacy and silliness.

But it has not been forgotten that Galileo was also cast out as a heretic from the church.

For promoting the view that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system.

And that's just scratching the surface.

It's easy to see why the scientific community might look down on the church

as simply dismissive and superstitious from their perspective.

As we look back, though, at the history of science, what we find is at the very

beginning of science, it was Christians who were looking at the world and saying,

well, how can we explain this world that God created?

How can we explain all of these things that happened? If he created this world,

maybe there's more to discover about God by discovering the world around us.

And so they started looking into that. And as they did, they found they were making discoveries.

And those discoveries led to more discoveries and more explanation and more

discoveries and more exploration, and on and on, it is gone.

Before that, though, the world really had a different view of all of this.

Science and nature, and really didn't have science, but nature and the phenomenon

that happened in nature was largely a result of religion and superstition and things like that.

The gods were the ones who controlled the rain and earthquakes,

not natural conditions.

Only gods were thought to be able to control the weather and other natural phenomenon.

But as science began to progress you have other voices joining the mix who were

not christians who did not put their faith in jesus and science was showing

them that it was not the gods that controlled things but the natural order of

the earth which would be the prevailing belief today as well that's where we live,

There's a book that came out probably about 15 years ago called Science and the Good.

It was written by James Davison Hunter and Paul Nedaleski, who's actually from Ocala.

And they talk in there about the history of how we've gotten where we are today.

And that really civilizations at the beginning, when they're together,

they have their own belief systems.

And they're together in these belief systems. They're looking at the way the

world works around them.

And they thought that everybody believed that way. They looked around and went,

well, this is the way it is. Everybody's got to believe this way.

But then as technology increased and scientific advancements were made,

they began traveling outside of their bubbles that they lived in,

and they found that not everybody agreed on these things.

There were different opinions that were out there, different ways to explain

the world, and it was a little bit confusing.

But as science began to take center stage, they began to find a truth that transcended

these cultural and religious beliefs.

The different branches of science seemed to work exactly the same anywhere in the world.

Didn't matter where you were, you could be in China or Brazil,

you could be in Africa or North America, and light and gravity and heat and

temperature, these all seemed to work the same way, doing the same things.

This is pretty compelling. It's still driving people today. And so the prevailing

thought is that maybe if science is so universal and transcends the religious

rules that have governed life since the beginning of humanity,

maybe science can lead us to the all-elusive quest towards a global moral system

that isn't speculative or based on differing religions, but based on scientific discoveries.

And if found, This would remove the need that we have for God.

Or anything else in our lives that would be telling us how to live our lives,

because science could do that for us.

If you're not a fan of God and his ways, this would be a pretty motivating goal to pursue.

And so this has led to major institutions today devoting millions and millions

of dollars to try and study and find proof of this theory, that science can

tell us how to live our lives, how to live morally, and what morality is.

There's the Moral Psychology Research Lab at Harvard, the Morality Lab at Boston

College, and a host of other institutions that are studying this very fact.

In 2010, Sam Harris, who is an American philosopher and neuroscientist,

he's also a central figure in the new atheism movement, went viral for a TED Talk that he did.

And the title of that TED Talk was Science Can Answer Moral Questions.

And in this talk, he claimed that through science, right and wrong can be determined

by looking at how actions and systems either increase or decrease human flourishing.

He said that moral questions are ultimately empirical questions about suffering,

happiness, and the states of the human mind.

And maybe we can have a little bit of grace rather than storming the gates of

science with our torches and our pitchforks because we can look and they are

trying to eradicate human suffering.

They are trying to make the world better.

We might disagree with them on how that happens, but they're at least trying in some way.

But at the root of this quest is something that we can agree with science on,

the acknowledgement that there is a problem, that something is wrong with us

on a fundamental and foundational level.

So that said, the arguments of science in the case of morality aren't as ironclad

as they might try to make them out to be.

There are some problems with it. In the case of Sam Harris and his TED Talk,

as has been argued by numerous critics around both Christian and non-Christian,

in order for him to make the claims that he does, there has to be a moral baseline

of some sort that he's calculating all of his data on.

There has to be a basis for his arguments on what he has deemed to be human

flourishing and human suffering.

And so the question is, who told him to define what human suffering and human

flourishing is in the way that he does?

For instance, he criticizes Islamic jihad because that clearly doesn't lead

to human flourishing. And I would agree with him on that.

But there are a lot of Muslims in the world that would say human flourishing

is exactly what jihad is doing.

So, which moral baseline do you choose and why? Science hasn't provided a clear

answer to that question.

The most compelling problem, the most compelling really solution is outlined,

or the problem with science is outlined quite extensively in the book that I

mentioned earlier, Science and the Good.

And they talk about the argument made by philosopher and historian David Hume

in his book that was written in 1739, titled A Treatise of Human Nature.

And from that work, we get what has been dubbed as Hume's Law,

or Hume's Guillotine, as it's been called.

And in there, he argues that you can't get an ought from an is.

You can't get an ought from an is. So in other words, science provides us the

data as to what is, but it can't tell us from that what we ought to do.

Science can tell us quite well what is over and over and over and over again

with pretty mind-blowing accuracy when you start looking at it,

but it can't necessarily tell us what we ought to do because of what is.

So for instance, if I was to take a step to the back of the stage here and run

as fast as I could and then jump as far as I could.

So before I do that, you ready? Great. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah.

So what science could do is they could say, okay, give us the data.

So they could say, how fast are you going? What's your velocity that's going right here?

And what's the temperature of the room? Because that's going to matter.

And what about the force of your foot planting on the edge of the stage as you

jump and your trajectory, the angle at which you're jumping.

And science could take all of this data and they could predict pretty darn accurately

where I'm going to land and how many bones I'm going to break.

And maybe some of your bones as well, if you're sitting in.

That's the is of science. This will happen considering all of those factors.

But what science can't do is tell me whether I ought to do that or not.

Many of you would say, well, clearly you shouldn't do that. It wouldn't be right

to do that if you knew you were going to hurt yourself and others.

But again, we come to the question, who told you that it wouldn't be right?

Who told you that was wrong?

Science didn't tell me not to do that. science just tells me what will happen.

But it's understandable why we might give science a God-like quality.

Because science can look at the past and explain the past to us in many ways.

It can inform our present. And it can predict our future.

And while it can do all of those things, it still can't prescribe to us what

we ought to have been or we ought to be.

When we look at history, there's still debate.

We have all of this knowledge at our fingertips, and there's still debate on

whether this was right or that was wrong. We still don't know.

So where can we find what we ought to do?

Maybe the Bible might have something to say about this. So we're going to look

at Mark chapter 10, as well as we're going to jump from there to Romans chapters 2 and 3.

Mark 10 · chapter mention Romans 2 · chapter mention

But let's begin with Mark 10, 17 through 22.

As he was setting out on a journey, so this is Jesus who's setting out on a journey here.

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him,

and asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Why do you call me good? Jesus asked him. No one is good but one, God.

You know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother.

And he said to him, teacher, I have kept all these from my youth.

Then looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, you lack one thing.

Go sell all you have and give to the poor and you'll have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.

But he was stunned at this demand and he went away grieving because he had many possessions.

This story refers to, is often referred to as the rich young ruler.

It doesn't say that in what we just read, but if you go and read Matthew 19

and Luke 18, which have the exact same stories in them, one of them says that

he was young, and one of them says that he was a ruler.

And then all of them say that they kind of show that he was wealthy.

So we get the rich young ruler out of that.

And he comes to Jesus, and he says, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And he comes, and it says that he kneels down. He runs up to him,

he kneels down, showing honor and respect.

And so maybe his idea of saying good teacher is almost an idea of flattery that he's doing there.

But it really doesn't matter because Jesus takes a statement,

and as only Jesus can do, it kind of flips it on its head. He says, why do you call me good?

No one is good but one, God.

Now, Jesus is not saying here that he's not good or he's not denying his divinity

or anything like that, like some people have said before.

No, instead what Jesus is doing is he's trying to reframe what this man thinks of as good.

I mean, look what he does here. He tells him straight up, no one is good except God.

There is no hidden meaning in what Jesus is saying here.

We don't have to interpret that in some way and go read different things.

He's just saying it. No one is good except God, no one.

And then he recites the second half of the 10 commandments to him and says,

how are you doing with these things?

And the man goes, who's just been told no one is good except God, Oh, I'm doing good.

I'm doing great with these things. Fantastic, in fact. I've been doing this

since my youth. Look at me.

And I think this is just a fantastic example of the battle that wages in all of us.

When you talk to your average Christian today, we would all acknowledge that we're sinners.

But we oftentimes don't do the work of looking at ourselves and asking how we are sinners.

We acknowledge it as a truth, but do we allow Jesus to really examine what is

in our hearts, which is what he begins to do with this rich young ruler.

That's where he is at this moment. Jesus has just told him, no one is good except for God.

And he responds with, well, look at my good works. Look what I've done.

Tim Keller, who was a pastor out of New York City, said quite often that it's

obvious that we need to repent of our sins, but we also need to repent of our good works.

What did he mean by that? What he meant was that we often, like this rich young

ruler, are doing the right things, but for the wrong reasons.

We can be moral.

We can do all of the right things and yet still miss God.

The scripture said that Jesus loved this man, but Jesus didn't love this man

because he had done right things.

He loved him in spite of the things that he was doing and putting his trust

in that he believed would save him.

He's looking to his own self-righteousness as his ticket to eternal life.

We're gonna come back to the rich young ruler in a moment, but I wanna turn

over to Romans really quick because Paul reiterates so well,

I think what we're talking about here.

And this book of Romans, in many ways, is Paul's gospel presentation.

It's brilliant when you read it.

Chapters 1 through 4 really lay this amazing foundation that's there for us.

And you also had these Jewish believers and these Gentile believers.

The Gentiles were basically non-Jewish believers. And they're there,

and there's apparently some friction between the two. And so Paul's kind of addressing that.

And so in chapter 1, Paul gives a greeting, and then he really goes hard at

the Gentiles. And I mean, it's pretty hard.

You have depraved minds. You are not wanting the things that God wants.

You're not living the way that God wants you to live.

You're doing really terrible things, to which the Jewish believers would have

sat there and said, like, that's right, Paul, you tell them.

Thank you. We have been wanting somebody to say this, and somebody's finally saying it.

And then we get to chapter two, where Paul says to the Jewish believers,

eh, not so fast, my friends. You aren't so squeaky clean either, are you?

No, you're doing the exact same thing that they're doing. You're not clean either.

They're sinners, but so are you. Get off your high horse.

And then we get to verses 12 through 16, in which Paul talks about the law.

And the law is, what he's talking about here would have been the Mosaic law,

basically Genesis through Deuteronomy that he's looking at.

And it's these rules that have been given to the Jewish people of how to live their lives.

And there's all sorts of different rules. There's moral rules,

ceremonial rules, judicial rules that the Jewish people would have had.

And so that's kind of the backdrop to when he talks about the law here.

And so he says, all those who sinned, starting in verse 12, all those who sinned

without the law will also perish without the law.

Talking about the Gentiles, the Jewish people had the law.

The Gentiles did not have the law to read.

And all those who sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the

law will be declared righteous.

So he's repeating this theme that whether you are a Gentile who doesn't have

the law, or whether you had the law this whole time, sin is still sin.

And you'll find condemnation for sin either way. You're going to have sin.

It's all those who do the law that are righteous before God.

But he's already made the case that, like, you're all sinners as well.

Okay, so, but I just said there are people who didn't have the law.

So how are they supposed to even know what the rules are if they don't have them?

That might seem unfair to us.

And so Paul continues. So when Gentiles who do not have the law instinctively

do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

Their law to themselves. Okay, can you explain that a little bit more to us, Paul? He can.

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.

Their consciences confirm this. Their competing thoughts will either accuse

or excuse them on the day when God judges what people have kept secret,

according to my gospel, through Christ Jesus.

Paul is saying here that because of the way that God has created the world,

and because of the way that we are created as image bearers of God.

We're created in his image. There's a moral law that's been written onto each one of our hearts.

So as chapter one of Romans says, we are without excuse.

Whether we have the law or not, we know at least on some foundational level

what the moral and right things are that we should be doing.

We know that taking another human life is wrong.

We know that committing adultery is wrong. We know that stealing is wrong because

it's been written on our hearts.

This isn't hard data. This is written onto our souls.

There was a New York Times article last month. Someone wrote in,

I guess it's like you can write in and get the opinion of, there's an ethicist

at the New York Times, which I was unaware of, but apparently he responds to questions.

And so there was a question, a situation that somebody wrote in,

and I'm not going to read the ethicist's response, but I want to read the situation

that was written in because I think it's telling.

So this person wrote, I have been married for many years, and I still love and

care deeply about my partner.

Over the past year, she had an affair, and I knew about it from the beginning.

She said that she needed it, that it gave her vitality, that she enjoyed a sexual

freedom she had longed for, and

that she felt it was wrong to do this in secret and without my consent.

I agreed. What she said made sense to me, and she convincingly assured me this

was no threat to our relationship.

At the same time, I always suffered when she was away with her affair partner.

And could not find a way to take this easily.

She recently decided to break it off because the overall emotional burden for both of us was too great.

But while she is grieving about it, I feel relieved.

Even though I wish that I could have better coped with a situation I rationally

and ethically consider okay, it conflicted with something deeper inside me that I can't easily change.

Do we see the moral wrestling that's happening here but on all of them she's

trying to do the right thing by coming to him in advance and saying hey i'm

going to have an affair and i want to let you know so this isn't in secret trying

to do the right thing and the good thing,

but as he says it conflicted with something deeper inside me.

Even if we don't have a moral law that's written down for us,

there is a moral law that's written down in us.

And that is what's telling us what we ought to do.

This is where Sam Harris and others get their baseline to even begin collecting

his quantifiable data about morality.

That there is an underlying foundation of an ought.

How does he even know that genocide and rape and murder are bad?

It's because there's a moral code that's been written down within us.

But here's the thing. Even if we know what we ought to do, if we suddenly realize

that we do have the moral code, that we do know what's right and wrong,

it's right here for us to see.

This still comes with a problem.

Morality still fails.

Paul points this out to us in Romans 3.20 for no one will be justified in his

sight by the works of the law because the knowledge of sin comes through the law,

regardless of whether the law is written down plainly for us to see or whether

it's written down in our hearts this law that we have isn't here to show us

how good we are it's here to show us our need that we don't measure up,

that we're sinful.

We fail all the time when measured against this law.

We get it wrong no matter how hard we try again and again and again.

And even if science could show up today and say we have a universal moral way

we found it, we'd still fail at actually keeping it. We wouldn't be able to do it.

So what am i saying here am i saying that living a moral life is hopeless.

Well if the goal is morality yes it is 100 a hopeless dream that we could have,

the subtitles for the book that i referenced earlier science for the good is

the tragic quest for the foundations of morality in other words they're giving

us their conclusion right in the title there.

The quest for a moral standard being given to us through science is a tragedy.

So what are we to do? If science fails at morality, and if we fail at morality, what's left?

Let's turn back over to Romans 3, beginning in verse 21.

But now apart from the law, God's righteousness has been revealed,

attested by the law and the prophets.

So righteousness and moral living, it's being revealed to us,

attested by the law and the prophets.

It's being shown to us. And this isn't just our righteousness.

This is God's righteousness.

That is God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe,

since there is no distinction.

Morality, righteousness comes through faith in Jesus. For all have sinned and

fall short of the glory of God.

Paul repeating again that we don't measure up. We are all sinful,

utterly sinful. and yet they are justified freely.

Who is the they? It's those who put their faith in Jesus.

They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

God presented him as a propitiation through faith in his blood to demonstrate his righteousness.

It says that we are justified, that we find redemption and Jesus becomes our propitiation.

What does all this mean? What do those three things mean? Justified.

This is basically a legal standing, that you're standing before the judge,

and we might know that we're guilty, but we're declared innocent.

We're justified, not by our works, not by what we've done, but by what Jesus has done.

And this word redemption, this term being redeemed, is used in scripture in

reference to the purchasing of freedom for a slave, redeeming a life that isn't free.

We see this in the Bible in other places too. If we go back to the book of Ruth,

we find that Ruth was redeemed by Boaz.

She was of low standard. She was of low estate. She had nothing.

She had hardly any rights in the world that she lived in, but Boaz comes along

and redeems her, pulls her up to a new status in life.

This is what Jesus does for us.

He redeems us from the.

To demonstrate God's ultimate righteousness, God's ultimate morality,

God presented Jesus as a propitiation through faith in Jesus' blood.

That's a word we don't use a whole lot in our English language.

What does propitiation mean? Well, I'm glad you asked.

It's a term that was used in the Jewish sacrificial system in the Old Testament.

And on the Day of Atonement, which happened every year, there was ceremonial

laws that took place and ceremonies that happened, and they would sacrifice animals.

And the priest would then come along and take the blood of those sacrificed

animals and he would sprinkle it on the top of the Ark of the Covenant at that time.

And as he did that, the people of God, Israel, were considered atoned for.

The sins that they had done that year were considered atoned for.

And they returned to right standing with God.

But this wasn't a perfect system because our sins as humans can't just be taken

away for good because an animal was sacrificed.

Hebrews 10, 1-4 tells us this. Since the law has only a shadow of the good things

to come and not the actual form of those realities,

it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year.

Otherwise, wouldn't they have stopped being offered since the worshipers once

purified would no longer have any consciousness of sin?

But in the sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year for it is impossible

for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

But that's where Jesus comes in. Because he came and died on the cross to fully

satisfy God's requirement for atonement, which no animal could ever accomplish.

2 Corinthians 5.21 tells us this, that God made the one who did not know sin

to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

On the cross, we come to the cross, and we heap all of our sin onto the shoulders of Jesus.

We heap all of our brokenness onto him. We load it up on him.

We just pour it on top of him.

And in return, he gives us his perfect, righteous, moral record.

We give him our mess.

He gives us morality.

He takes our sin, we get his righteousness.

God presented him, Jesus, as a

propitiation through faith in his blood to demonstrate his righteousness.

Because in his restraint, God passed over the sins previously committed.

God presented him, Jesus, this Jesus, to demonstrate his righteousness at the

present time so that he would be righteous and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus.

Declare righteous. Declare to have lived a perfectly moral life to those who have faith in Jesus.

Jesus is our morality. He is our source.

He's the only one who is good.

And no science book is ever going to be able to tell us that.

So let's jump back over to see how our rich young ruler friend is doing with Jesus here.

So Jesus has just told him the second half of the Ten Commandments there.

And then he says, he said to him, Teacher, I have kept all these from my youth.

Then looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, You lack one thing.

Go sell all you have and give to the poor, and you'll have treasure in heaven.

Then come follow me.

But he was stunned at this demand, and he went away grieving because he had many possessions.

Do we see what Jesus is doing here? It's pretty amazing.

Jesus reads off this list of commandments to him, but they're all from the second

half of the 10 commandments that deal with human relationships, human interactions.

So how do the 10 commandments begin? What's the first commandment?

Do not have any other gods besides me.

Even if this man had been able to accomplish all of those other commands,

Jesus goes right for what this man's true God is.

He invites him to come, follow me. The only one, I'm the only one who is good.

I am God, come and follow me.

But something else has a hold of his heart.

You've gotten everything in the law right, but you lack one thing. I'm not your God.

Your stuff is. Your behavior is. Your right and moral living is your God.

If you want to live a moral life, go and sell everything.

Get rid of all of this stuff that you have that you're worshiping that isn't

me because that's what really has your heart.

That's what you're aimed at in life.

The temptation is there for all of us to grab hold of other things because they

make us feel good, they make us happy, they bring us pleasure,

they promise us the good life.

But Jesus says, you lack one thing. And whereas this rich young ruler lacks

one thing, I love what David says in Psalm 27.

He says, I have asked one thing from the Lord.

It is what I desire, to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

gazing on the beauty of the Lord and seeking him in his temple.

David could have asked for better behavior. He could have asked to be granted

the ability to live a more moral life. He could have been asked just about anything.

But the reason that this scripture is right here in the Bible is because David's

gotten a taste of the good life.

He knows the secret to human flourishing. And it's not science.

It's not even his behavior.

It's one thing. It's Jesus.

Let's pray.

Jesus, we're confronted every

day by the things of this world that tell us what's right and what's good.

They promise us that if we'll just do this thing or believe that thing or go

here, that that will make us truly happy.

And how often, Lord, do we obey those voices?

Jesus, how often, Lord, do we go after things that we know we shouldn't go after?

We know it because you've written it on our hearts.

But God, we do it anyway so often.

Jesus, would you help us? would you help us to make you the one thing,

that we're going after,

God would you help us to see ourselves in all of our sins so that we can see

you in all of your righteousness.

Jesus, we need your help to walk this out.

I thank you, Jesus, that you offer yourself to us.

That you did die for us.

So that we could know a life that we could never live ourselves.

God, would you help us to gaze upon your beauty every day would you remind us

every morning when we wake up every night when we go to bed of who you really are for us,

in the name of Jesus,

amen let's close with this passage from 2 Corinthians 5,

2 Corinthians 5:21

verse 21, he made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us so that we might

become the righteousness of God in him. That is good news.