The Arm of the Lord II

Who has believed what we have heard?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

                                                — Isaiah 53:1

Yesterday, I spoke of  two worldviews, two different understandings of how the world operates: the secular and the sacred. That description may be a little too vague. The truly accurate divide between opposing worldviews is the Biblical explanation: one worldview represents believers and the other, non-believers, Christians and heathen, saved and unsaved.

In the KJV, the first part of the verse is rendered "Who has believed our report?" I use the RSV Bible and the Hebrew word for "report" (shemuah) is translated as "heard," but it too is translated "report"  (in the RSV) when it is quoted in the passage in John where the prophecy was fulfilled. Other facets of the word are: doctrine, fame, news, rumor, tidings.

In the second part of the verse, the word "revealed" is derived from the Hebrew word "galah" and contains the idea of discovering, plainly publishing, and to denude or strip, as in stripping away the covering to reveal what is underneath or inside.

The phrase "arm of the Lord" is used several times in the Old Testament, but is only used once in the New Testament in the passage we looked at yesterday, John 12:38, where it is quoted from Isaiah. Perhaps it is because after Jesus ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father, believers became his hands and feet (I Corinthians 12:15).

Getting back to the idea of opposing worldviews — the question arises, Are both views valid? Can both be true? Is one as reliable as the other? If you do not answer, No, no and no, consider the following.

If God truly is the Creator of the world, then He has something to say about everything in it. As I said yesterday, there is no neutral ground. It is a binary universe: on or off, yes or no, God or no God. Therefore, any attempt to explain our world without reference to it's Creator is a prejudicial distortion of reality. In other words, even before attempting to explain the universe, the individual has already answered the question in his own heart about whether he believes there is a God Who created it.

The reason why the church and our culture are in such a mess today is because Christians have acted as though the worldview of the ungodly is just as valid as the believer's. We have acted as though God has nothing to say about science or history or education or law or music or math or — you fill in the blank.

In, for example, the realm of science, the godless say, "There is no god; life formed from a big bang and a puddle of slime." The believer says, "The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." (Genesis 2:7) Who has believed what we have heard? So the question arises, If the unbeliever is wrong about his idea of beginnings, why do we send our children to sit under his tutelage?

What about the subject of history? Can a narrative of past events that excludes how God has moved in time be considered valid? At the very least, if God is never mentioned, the message is that He is not important part of the account or, more likely, He does not even exist. "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31) Who has believed what we have heard? If historians deny that the faith which produced the reformation, the development of the English translation of the Bible, and the effect it had on the development of freedom in America, by ignoring or refusing to write about it, are they not hostile to your faith?

How does the unbeliever explain mathematics? Numbers are an entirely abstract concept. You cannot go anywhere and pick a number five in a field. Why should the physical world show an absolute correspondence with measurements found only in the mind of man? How does the unbeliever define the term infinity and can he truly understand it? Who has believed what we have heard? Even the godless completely rely on the precision of numbers in all of their reckoning, but they steal their ideas from the believer's worldview.

Is it any wonder the children of Christians turn their backs on the faith by the time they leave high school? We have entrusted them to learn the doctrines of the world we live in sitting at the feet of the ungodly most of their young lives rather than beneath the shadow of the Almighty. And because of that, the arm of the Lord was never revealed to them, and they are now in the camp of those who have never believed what we have heard.

May God open the eyes of parents and empower them to become doers of the word.