To the man who says ‘I find God in nature.’

The man who says that he does not need church in order to worship God is disingenuous. He claims that he finds God in nature–in the sunset, in the bloom of a violet, but his quest is only half the store. A violet in not nature.

You see nature has both violets and vipers; both the fragrance of a rose and the fangs of a reptile. You cannot have one without the other. To find worship in nature one must worship both and not just one. There is too much violence in nature to claim there is enough God to worship there.

Nature says to us–“There is a God–and you are without excuse!” But man needs more than that. He needs a personal Redeemer, and nature cannot satisfy that need. Nature knows nothing of forgiveness. You need a church which raises high the message of that Redeemer who gives forgiveness of sin.

Some people say they like to worship God in nature instead of a church. To them I say:

Nature knows nothing of forgiveness.
Its rules are relentless and ruthless
It brings swift retribution upon those who break its laws.
It teaches no moral codes
Savage tribes have lived with nature for centuries only to produce cannibals.
Nature has a voice but it has no heart.
It offers no solution to man’s greatest need–sin
It makes no mention of a Savior.
Really there is no comparison between God’s witness to Himself in creation and His witness to himself in Redemption. Creation tells us something about the work of his hands–but Calvary tells us about His Heart!

Michael A. Smith
(Thank you, Mr. Smith for allowing me the privilege of posting your weighty and true statements. May GOD receive the glory…!)

The context of the Gospel

The spiritual blindness of this world is a willful blindness. Anthropologists have never discovered a culture no matter how remote who do not have a concept of God. Even in the most primitive tribes they realize they have sinned. When approached by a Christian the most seasoned of these tribesmen readily admit their sin. They all have a sense that sin must be paid for. They share both a fear of punishment and a fear of death. They share a common sense that sin must be atoned for and they seek ways to appease the anger of their gods.

People in western culture are different in one respect. They have been exposed to the truth repeatedly. Truth makes you extremely guilty, more so because you are exposed to the cure for the sin problem. You have heard that there is a Savior who came to die and pay the sin debt. A person who rejects Christ and goes to hell from America, for example with face a harsher judgment than the man who has never heard.

When we think today of the term “Paganism” we most often think of a crude paganism in which unblushingly man worships an idol or idols. But what we fail to realize is there is also a cultured paganism in which man worships his own godless imagination. There is little difference between those who grovel at the foot of an idol and those who grovel at the foot on an ideal. When Paul wrote the book of Romans he was probably in Corinth and it was a common occurrence to see all manner of paganism and all manner of sins being carried out before his eyes.

The “heathen” are not limited to those who bow down to wood and stone. All who have no knowledge of the Lord Jesus are in a sense, heathen. Many people in enlightened western lands who have only a vague knowledge of the things of God and who leave Him out of their lives are in effect practicing heathen. We even have these practical heathen on the rolls of churches.

Michael A. Smith

Salvation in Full Color (Suppositions continued)

3) A Right View of Sin
This “high view of sin invariably leads to a distorted view of sin.”(xii) The proud sinner:
– demands the right to determine what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior
– forbids him to bow the knee
– enables him to snub the nose at GOD’s Law, His threatenings and warning at disobedience and ultimate destruction for those that do not repent.
– unable to yield to GOD’s terms of determining what is actually right or wrong.
– unwilling to listen to another man, past or present.
– disdains the dreadful consequence of sin
– disregards all truths both wiser and better men of past centuries have discovered.
– is imitated by others who think he has gotten away with something because GODs wrath has not fallen on him with ultimate severity.
– doom is delayed while he is filling up the measure of his sins (1 Thessalonians 2:16).
– and all the while does “store up wrath for [themselves] on the day of wrath when GOD’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5b).

4) A Right View of Salvation
“A distorted view of sin naturally leads to a corrupted view of salvation” (xii)
– If sin is thought of as a minor consequence than the need of a GOD-sized salvation is eliminated.
– If sin is an insignificant issue, then a small measure of salvation is thought to be sufficient.
– A “little dab will do ya” will not stick to ya when you stand before the King, it is not salvation at all because it does not match the NT or OT salvation.

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