Marxism and Christianity's Interaction

Okay, so if you've got a Bible with you this morning, or a Bible app or whatnot, if you don't have a Bible and you would like one, there's some hard copies out there on the registration table. Feel free to take one. We're gonna be in several passages today, and I'll name off each one as we get to them. So Exodus 20, 15, and 17, Ecclesiastes 2, 25, and 26, Micah 6, 8, 1 Corinthians 12, 12. through 13 and 27, and Revelation 21, 5 and 6. And as we go through our time today, you'll see why these specific passages were chosen. So let's go first to Exodus chapter 20, verses 15 and 17. Let's hear God's word together. Exodus 20, 15 says this, you shall not steal. And then 20, 17 says this. You should not covet your neighbor's house. You should not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything else that is your neighbor's. Now, if you'll flip over to Ecclesiastes with me, and I know Ecclesiastes can be kind of a tough one to find and your Bible's a pretty short book, but Ecclesiastes chapter two, I said 25 through 26. I actually didn't mean that. I meant 24 and 25. Sorry about that. There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God. For apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment? Now Micah 6.8, 6.8 with me. He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? Now, 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 12, let's do 12 and 13, and we'll skip down to 27. For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. And then down to verse 27. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And then finally, Revelation chapter 21. Revelation 21, it's actually, I don't know, again, I apologize for why I put that. I said 5 through 6, it's actually 1 through 5, 1 through 5 of Revelation 21. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Also, he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. We pray for us. Father, would you please, please help this morning. We need your grace. We need your understanding. We need your wisdom. Please give me clarity as I speak. Help all of us to hear and understand the things that you have for us today, particularly on complex topics. And so we ask for your help again, and we pray in Jesus'name. Amen. Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea, may be the most repressive city on earth, and is home to one of the world's most cruel regimes, maybe one of the cruelest in history. It was once known, however, as the Jerusalem of the East. Cuba is a nation of vast natural resources and industrious people, and yet they languish in poverty and crippled infrastructure, and its citizens suffer beneath the boot of authorities that have systematically destroyed them over the last several decades. Venezuela was a relatively short time ago one of the wealthiest nations in the Western Hemisphere. In recent years, though, they have faced a degree of poverty and famine that has shocked the world. Russia once saw itself as the world's hope, the hope of the world for the spread of Christianity. You can read about this in ancient documents. Specially chosen to maintain the gospel and to spread it around the world, now it is a land generally marked by hopelessness and corruption. What do all of those countries share in common? Every single one of them embraced a worldview known as Marxism at some point. Now, hearing the word Marxism is kind of like hearing cancer. You know it's bad, but you just don't understand all the mechanics of it. And like cancer, what you don't know might just kill you. Today's the seventh week in our series, The Universe Next Door, where we're looking at different worldviews, different ways that people see reality. So our task today is understanding Marxism, the worldview that says the state is supreme above everything else. So let's break down our time like this today. First, a look under the hood of Marxism. Next, where Marxism shows up today. And finally, Christianity's response to Marxism. Okay, so a look under the hood of Marxism, where Marxism shows up today, and Christianity's response to Marxism. Let's jump in together with a look under the hood. Recently, we've been looking for a vehicle for Joaquin. He had some money saved up and he's working now. And so we took the plunge and we looked at a bunch of candidates, you know, as you do on auto trader and whatnot. And so we found one vehicle. that we thought, man, this is really, this looks like this is checking all the boxes, like price-wise it's good and it looks okay and you know, all things, but you're, well, what's that? Match box car, yeah, thanks. No, this is actually a real one you can drive, but we were like, yeah, this will work, this will work, maybe, and so I called my mechanic and so for $155, my mechanic will do like a super deep dive on any vehicle and let you know whether or not it's really worth it, and so I said, hey, can I bring it over? They said, yeah, bring it. And so I took it over there and sat down on one of the couches in the reception area. And about an hour later, my buddy Bob comes out from the back, and he's kind of shaking his head a little bit. And he sat down with me, and he hands me this yellow sheet of paper. And it's like this huge list of stuff that needs to be done. And he said, Brian, it would cost about $4,000 to fix all of this. I'd stay away from this car if I was you. So, you know, looked great on the outside, but under the hood, when they got to really looking around, it was a different story. Well, over the next few minutes, I want us to do the same thing regarding the Marxist worldview, because to some, over the last several decades, and its precursors even before that, it looked really, really good. But there's something else going on entirely when you start looking around. To better understand this system of thought, let's go back, go back with me to Paris, 1844. Two young philosophers, thinkers, writers, agitators meet a guy by the name of Karl Marx and a guy by the name of Friedrich Engels. The two were already enamored with the idea of socialism, so the philosophy that teaches that a society should function without private property. Rather, a central government controls the means of production. In other words, like what gets made, everybody works, and then everyone theoretically gets an equal share. of everything distributed from the government. So they're controlling both the supply and the demand, so to speak. As Marx and Engels saw it, the capitalism, so in other words, buying and selling things, business, that had come to dominate the West with its profit incentive and its private property was the fundamental problem of society. This economic system, they said, was predicated upon the rich and the powerful exploiting the poor and the weak. In fact, as they saw it, capitalism's major sin was the creation of classes. The rich and powerful, which was basically anybody who owned much of anything, who they called the bourgeois or bourgeoisie, and then those who were just the common working man. That's the proletariat. The situation can really be summed up like this. Everything is oppressor versus oppressed. Now, that's going to be very important in a moment as we go through, so hang on to that, okay? Furthermore, the working poor, who made most of the goods and services in an economy, were rarely able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. So they might spend all day making a widget in a factory, but when it came time to sell the widget, the glory and the profits went to the factory owner, not to the worker. But if the state administered everything, then such exploitation wouldn't occur. And neither would the social strife that came along with it. And if a person made a product, he or she will be able to enjoy the process. they'd know that they'd at least have a living wage at the end of the day. Or so the theory went. However, these men conceived of something more than socialism. Marx, who had been influenced by earlier philosophers, said that the world was moving inexorably, in other words, inevitably, from an inferior economic system to the superior system. So from feudalism, okay, we have the lord of the land and the people working the land. To capitalism, so businesses, to socialism, to the final step, communism, which would usher in a classless society where everybody worked for the enjoyment of it and no one went without. Marx put it like this, in communist society where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production And thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow. To hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman, or critic. In short, Marx and Nietzsche dreamed of a utopia, a paradise on earth. However, they were also clear in their writings that utopia couldn't come. without a price. In their book, The Communist Manifesto, an earlier version of that book, an earlier draft, was actually The Communist Confession of Faith. They eventually changed the name. So in The Communist Manifesto, they made it clear that for socialism to give way to communism, the common people would have to stage a great revolution and overthrow those in power. So the oppressed would rise against their oppressors. So while class was ultimately a bad thing, class struggle was the key to success. Now, this would lead to massive, though warranted, they said, bloodshed. And so a dictatorship would become necessary to make the required economic changes, which would in turn lead to this hoped-for classless society. To make that plan work, though, more bloodshed would be required, as property and position would be wrested away from those who owned property and then redistributed through the apparatus of the state. Marks put the matter bluntly, quote, The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence, abolition of private property. But what about the moral issue of taking private property from people? I mean, what about killing people? that all that would inevitably take place. Weren't those things wrong? While both Marx and Engels had very specific views about the evils of capitalism, they were staunch atheists. They were steeped in the naturalistic worldview that we looked at just a couple of weeks ago. Because there was no divine lawgiver to lay down moral rules or to judge them for what they did, they really didn't feel any apprehension about the appropriateness of their plan. Now, of the two, Marx was the front man, Engels was kind of more the money guy, so the worldview they promoted ultimately came to be known as Marxism. In practice, though, in real time, it's known as communism, which is a more virulent version, a more deadly version of socialism, as I've already noted. So those terms are going to be used interchangeably throughout the rest of our time today. Now, while Marx and his theories were ultimately seen by a lot of people as poisonous or as absurd. He was kicked out of one country after another after another in Europe for trying to stir up communist uprisings. Some people were positively enamored by the idea. It was first put into place, communism in Russia, in 1917 under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, immediately following World War I. The results were the formation of the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Marxist teaching quickly spread to other European countries, of course went into Germany as well, which was taken over by the National Socialist Workers'Party, otherwise known as the Nazis. And with time, Marxism would spread to countries all over the globe on virtually every continent. Now, it's easy to see why Marxism would appeal to so many people, at least at first glance. We have to admit that, okay? After all, Marx made some valid observations that spoke to people's real experiences in life. As we've said before, and we've said this several times, we should expect, because people are made in God's image, And because of God's common grace, His kindness to everyone, we should expect that every worldview is going to touch on some real things, some true things. And that's the case for Marxism as well. The truth is that the rich and powerful do often exploit the poor and the weak. We've seen that. Scripture talks about that a lot, in fact. In the same way, work for many people is a dehumanizing experience. Maybe you've been there. You're backbreaking or tedious labor and receive very little reward for it, often not even enough to live on. And Marx was right to be disturbed by the poverty he saw around him. And think about it. If you were a person who had been accustomed to living hand to mouth, and someone said to you, hey, we can empower the state to pool our resources so that no one gets out, and you're looking at your child who hasn't eaten in three days. This starts sounding appealing, right? You can see that. Finally, Marx was right to long for a time when there would be no more injustice or exploitation or poverty. So Marx saw a number of things that Christians are concerned with as well. In fact, Marxism has actually been called a Christian heresy. It's been called that. And it's seduced a lot of Christians because of its stated concerns. For instance, Brazilian Paulo Freire One of the leading Marxist thinkers of the 20th century actually said that love for Christ is what drove him to Marxism. Taken together, you can see how enticing that could be. However, for the nations that adopted Marxism, the fallout was absolutely catastrophic. In the 20th century alone, Marxism has claimed between 100 and 150 million lives. Horrific government oppression. theft, murder, exploitation, starvation, and every other form of evil you can imagine has come along with it. But why? How could this worldview have led to such devastation? Primarily because it was based upon two massively wrong core principles. The first was about God. As Lenin wrote, communism begins where atheism begins. And if you look at the writings, of Marx, of Engels, of Bukharin, who was an early Soviet propagandist, of Lenin. All of them said that the goal, one of the big goals of communism, was to destroy religion, in particular Christianity. They were very open about this. This is not anything hidden. This was not anything in the shadows. Atheism and communism have always been intertwined. Everything, remember we said several weeks ago at the start of our series, the idea of... that every worldview outside of Christianity is fundamentally what we call one-est. In other words, everything is just one. So the Bible, you have the Creator God and the creature, everything else, right? So that's what we call two-ism. So there's two fundamental realities. In every other worldview, everything is ultimately one. It's kind of a mix of the universe, a mix of spirit, a mix of whatever. So what's going on here is in communism, everything is essentially one. Creative matter. with nothing transcendent by which to measure everything else. So if the state says it's right to take someone's property, guess what? It is. If the state says that it's right to forbid speech against it, guess what? It is. Likewise, salvation lay in correcting problems of this life through human effort in communism, because there's nothing greater than the stuff of this world. then the only salvation you could ever hope to experience is related to what? The stuff of this world and the only hope of heaven. was found in a this-world utopia, a word which literally means, by the way, no place. That's what utopia means. The other principle they were committed to that was so wrong concerned people. Despite what he may have said about the dignity of human beings, Marx essentially saw people as widgets, bricks in the wall having no inherent dignity or value. And when they got in the way, they were disposable. Stalin, one of Marx's most famous disciples, said this, quote, kill one person, it's murder. Kill a million, it's a statistic. Marxism further taught that family was disposable and a hindrance to the goals of the state, cutting across the most foundational and fundamental relationships that humans ever have. So mother, father, husband, wife, son, daughter. are all ultimately meaningless. In fact, one of the major things that the communist government did in Russia in the 20s and 30s is they replaced all church marriage services with state marriage services. Instead of baptizing children, the Orthodox Church, instead of baptizing children in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, they were baptized in the name of the state and given to the state officially in that act. Most importantly, Marx and his followers taught that people could find satisfaction in this life with the state as ultimate source of meaning and giver of all good things. In other words, the state was set up as a false god. Marxism was simply another form of idolatry, y'all. Because of their rejection of God, they were going to get the people part wrong as well. In the end, Marxism is a worldview fueled by hatred of God, and despite what it claims, hatred... of humans. So where does that leave us? Was I just, you know, wanting to do a history lesson today? Is Marxism a thing of the past? Or is it something that we need to be concerned about in the here and now? Well, that's what we're going to look at now very briefly, where Marxism shows up today. We're not interested in theory. We want to see where things come in practice. Author Larry Alex Taunton told a story of his time in graduate school in the early 90s, only a few years after the fall. of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall coming down. He wanted to pursue graduate studies in Marxism and Communism, understanding the history of those things. And his advisor said, Larry, that's going to be a useless degree. Marxism is a thing of the past. It's gone. But Taunton understood the very thing about worldviews that we've said several times in this series. What is it? Worldviews don't usually disappear, right? They don't disappear. They simply fade away, morph, and then reappear under a different name. So 30 years since Larry had that experience in grad school, Marxism is alive and well. In most places, it's not as focused on economics as it once was, but it's still destroying lives, even if not as dramatically as in the past. So briefly, here's what I want to do. I want to note just a handful of telltale signs of Marxist influence and then name a few places where it shows up today. Now, we don't want to be the boy who cried wolf here and see everything as one thing because you end up missing the real thing when it comes up, all right? So not everything in the world is Marxism, not everything in the world is Marxist. There are some things that are definite telltale signs and that are very easy to see as you learn the history of it. So I'm kind of giving you a Cliff Notes version of some things here. So as we look at signs of Marxist influence, it's possible that you're going to see some of these things show up in settings that are not influenced by Marxism. But in settings influenced by it, you'll almost always see one or more of these. And the more you see in a given scenario, in a given organization, the more sure you can be of what it is that you're dealing with. Okay, so here we go, just a handful of things. First, a hallmark of Marxism is pitting groups of people against one another. That's a hallmark. Historically, that was, of course, the bourgeois versus the proletariat. In America today, it's often seen in pitting ethnic groups against one another or pitting socioeconomic groups against one another. So poor versus rich, urban versus suburban, versus rural, etc., etc., etc. This is especially true when you hear hints of envy. If one group is saying, they have this and we want it, okay? Because very old Marxist playbook tactic going along with that. is the idea of perpetual grievances. So when you see groups who are at each other's throats, and this keeps groups at each other's throat, you'll have one group here who is the irredeemable oppressor. versus another group who is the eternally oppressed. There's never any reconciliation. There's never anything that's actually pointed to specifically. It's always very vague. It's always very general, and it keeps people at each other's throats. A lot of folks have made a lot of money off this, frankly, over the years, and that's why it tends to never go away. I was even listening to a book last night that deals with Yasser Arafat, who is from the PLO, Palestinian Liberation Organization. Certainly had some Marxist influence, and the guy who wrote this book, who'd been in Hamas for many years, said, I traveled with him all over, and I saw that essentially he had gotten very rich off of continually being aggrieved. Happens all the time. Next thing, redefinition of terms. If groups or individuals regularly redefine long accepted terms to fit their agenda, they are using a well-worn Marxist tactic. Several years ago, When the self-professed Marxist group Black Lives Matter really gained a lot of popular traction, I was talking to someone about concerns I had and they gave a quote from one of their scholars from Ibram X. Kendi who has now been widely discredited even in the Ivy League where he was working at. He had redefined the term racism and like from the historic definition and I just asked him very simply I said, Why do you think that he would feel the need to redefine a term that's been defined from time immemorial? Even Martin Luther King and all these other great civil rights leaders from the past defined racism the way I'm defining it, you're defining it in this other way. Why do you think that's okay? That's a classic Marxist ploy and has been done forever, practically. Downplaying the necessity of family is another big one. Infamously, again, years ago, Black Lives Matter. Had on their website, on their website, that one of their goals was the, quote, the destruction of the nuclear family. That is a historic Marxist commitment. They're not the only group who's done that. They were one of the few bold enough to put it in writing. Next, flattening distinctions because humans are just cogs in the machine. Their distinct gifts, abilities, personalities don't really matter. Nobody should be more talented or wealthier or better than anyone else. It's somehow wrong. And finally, this is a very practical, easy to see one, the communist fist. So you've seen that logo, lots of organizations use that logo. Labor unions use it, protest groups use it, Antifa uses it. That has been the symbol of struggle or warfare that Marxists have been using for decades. So it's all over the place, easy to see. They don't try to hide that. That's part of who they are. And we could say more, but those are just some easy signs to identify. All right. where Marxism shows up today. Now, here's some places where it's still alive and well, and let me say this, I'm not saying that every single person involved in these arenas are Marxist or whatever want to be. Many of these people really do care about people, and they're trying to do the right thing. And even if they are committed to Marxism, guess what? They're still not the enemy. Satan's the enemy. They're people that need Jesus just like we do, okay? So I'm not making personal attacks at people. So here we go. Number one, progressive Christianity. Now that term is almost an oxymoron because folks within progressivism don't really believe much about God, Jesus, or the Bible. We recognize historically, though, this is very similar to the liberal Christianity of the early 20th century that destroyed a lot of mainline denominations. Interestingly, the Communist Party USA specifically targeted progressive and liberal denominations in the mid-20th century. Number two. Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Now those dominate academia and the corporate world, and on the surface they sound good. It sounds like a way to ensure that everybody gets a seat at the table. But in practice, they end up separating people and creating unending grievances and strife among groups. I've talked to a DEI officer in a local school district about this very thing before. By the way, equity is not the same thing as equality. It's kind of a sleight of hand. It's often used. Equity means equal outcome. Equality means equal opportunity. It's two very different things. Three, political progressivism. Now, typically these folks are not people just on the political left. Progressivism isn't the same thing as the political liberalism you may be familiar with. Political progressives are usually self-consciously in favor of Marxist teachings. That tends to be the case at a national level in particular. And finally, globalist organizations, most well-known of those will be the World Economic Forum. They tend to push, these kind of groups tend to push abolition of private property and heavy, heavy centralized control. One of the World Economics Forum's own slogans is, you will own nothing and you will be happy. So we can name many others, but this shows you that this underlying Marxist worldview is still doing its thing seemingly everywhere. So against such a juggernaut is Christianity silent. That leads us to our final point, and I'm excited about this. Christianity's response. to Marxism. Hang with me for 10 more minutes. After being expelled from one country after another, Marx ended up in London. He and Engels were convinced that Great Britain was primed to undergo a communist revolution. However, it never came to pass. Why not? Why didn't it happen? Engels gave the word in one answer, or gave the answer in one word, Spurgeon. Spurgeon. You see, at the same time that Marx was spreading his teachings on one side of London, Charles Spurgeon, perhaps the greatest preacher in the history of Christianity, was pastoring a church on the other side of town, and he preached regularly against the evils of the nascent communist movement, what he simply referred to as socialism. Once communism came into full bloom in Europe and made inroads in the United States, the Catholic Church, most notably Bishop Fulton Sheen. In the U.S. and later Pope John Paul II in Europe went to war against Marxist teachings, as did lesser-known Protestant pastors like Richard Wurmbrand in Eastern Europe. So the church has not been silent on this matter. As it turns out, Scripture has a lot to say in response to Marxism. So in our remaining time, I'd like to point you to a few passages, just a couple of verses that contradict Marxist teaching outright, and then others that show how the gospel actually delivers. on the empty promises that Marxism makes. All right, first, look with me again. Exodus 20, 15, and 17 from the Ten Commandments. Verse 15, you shall not steal. Verse 17, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything else that is your neighbor's. Both of those verses assume what? The reality of private property, right? The reality of private property. God puts humans in... stewardship over things. Of course, not everything in verse 17 is property. I talked about your spouse, your wife, but most of the things there are. So any system that says that private property is inherently wrong or can just be taken with impunity is going against the very fabric of creation, the way that God set things up to work. But scripture doesn't simply contradict what Marxism says. It actually offers a different and profoundly satisfying answer to the questions and concerns that Marxism raises. So let's look at a few of those. All right, Mark said that people were often separated from the enjoyment of their labors, which he saw as a travesty. He was right about that, right? Totally right about that. But look at how God's Word responds to that valid concern. Ecclesiastes 2, there is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment? So instead of the state providing enjoyment from work, something it could never do, Scripture tells us that it's God's kindness that allows somebody to enjoy his or her work. And for those that trust in Christ, it gets even better. Colossians 3, 23 and 24 says this, Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. What more meaning, what more dignity could you have from your work than that? Enjoy your work, do your best, knowing that you are ultimately working for the one who would lay down his life. Marx was, theoretically at least, concerned about justice for the poor and oppressed. As I said earlier, that is a massive biblical concern. Micah 6a, one of the Old Testament's most famous verses, says this, He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? Likewise, Proverbs 14, 31 says this, whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker. It's big. Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker. Those are just two of countless verses dealing with justice and dealing with the concern for the poor. Like if those things never come into your mind, you haven't wrestled with what scripture is saying about this, you do need to care about these things. But you see, that concern in Scripture is not rooted in some kind of faceless state or in a morality just rooted in nothing, just kind of, you know, whatever you want it to be. It's rooted in the person of God Himself, who's the very foundation of justice and who cares about the poor and needy more than we can ever imagine. See, the God who would both show His justice and His care for needy people like us. by sending Jesus to take the justice that we deserve for our sin. Marx sought unity in the collective, the state. Marxism encouraged people to become comrades. You've heard that a lot if you've ever read about Marxism, comrades and comrades, workers in a common cause. And those conditions would theoretically provide deep community. And in fairness, working for a common cause does provide a large degree of meaningful community for a lot of people, okay? So again, Mark says, I don't want people to be alienated from each other. Great! That's great. But he was seeing it totally the wrong way. See, in Christ, we're not united simply as holders of a common cause and certainly not as members of a sovereign state. We are united as a body. As a body. Listen again to that passage in 1 Corinthians 12. For just as the body is one and has many members... and all the members of the body, though many are one, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. See, Jesus offers a depth of community that can be found nowhere else where we're members of God's family. part of Jesus's own body, spiritually speaking. You can't conceive of greater unity than that because it's not based on anything we do, but upon what God's done for us in Jesus. And Marx proposed utopia. He proposed utopia, right? And he promised it based upon human intervention. But here's the problem. Every human attempt at utopia ever has ended in a bloodbath in the history of the world. It always does. Instead, this is the picture we see in Scripture. Revelation 21, 1 through 5. We're going to read it all again. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be with His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And He who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Also He said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and true. Y'all, the desire for a perfect world is right. It's right. We were built for that. But our hope can never be realized in anything that we can do. And a moment's glance at human history should tell us that. But because of what Jesus has done for us in his life and death and resurrection, Everybody who trusts in Him has that sure hope of that perfect world where all the sad things come untrue once and for all. That's the hope of the gospel that we have. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank You again for this time this morning. We thank You that against such powerful forces like Marxism that have just wrecked this world in so many ways, that it does not compare, it does not... stand against the gospel. It offers a lot of false hope, a lot of false hope. So, Father, I pray that today you would convince our own hearts even more of the all-sufficiency of Christ, what you've done for us in him. And we pray, Father, for our friends who may be influenced by these teachings in one way or another, that, Father, you would show them the beauty of the Lord Jesus as you've done so many times. So Father, those folks are not our enemies. They're people just like us who need you. And so please, Lord, would you send your Holy Spirit. to be at work even in this, Lord, we ask. And we pray these things in Jesus'name. Amen.

So Exodus 20, 15, and 17, Ecclesiastes 2, 25, and 26, Micah 6, 8, 1 Corinthians 12, 12. through 13 and 27, and Revelation 21, 5 and 6. And as we go through our time today, you'll see why these specific passages were chosen. So let's go first to Exodus chapter 20, verses 15 and 17. Let's hear God's word together. Exodus 20, 15 says this, you shall not steal. And then 20, 17 says this. You should not covet your neighbor's house.

You should not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything else that is your neighbor's. Now, if you'll flip over to Ecclesiastes with me, and I know Ecclesiastes can be kind of a tough one to find and your Bible's a pretty short book, but Ecclesiastes chapter two, I said 25 through 26. I actually didn't mean that. I meant 24 and 25. Sorry about that.

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God. For apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

Now Micah 6.8, 6.8 with me. He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? Now, 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 12, let's do 12 and 13, and we'll skip down to 27. For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body.

Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. And then down to verse 27. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And then finally, Revelation chapter 21. Revelation 21, it's actually, I don't know, again, I apologize for why I put that. I said 5 through 6, it's actually 1 through 5, 1 through 5 of Revelation 21. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Also, he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. We pray for us. Father, would you please, please help this morning. We need your grace.

We need your understanding. We need your wisdom. Please give me clarity as I speak. Help all of us to hear and understand the things that you have for us today, particularly on complex topics.

And so we ask for your help again, and we pray in Jesus'name. Amen. Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea, may be the most repressive city on earth, and is home to one of the world's most cruel regimes, maybe one of the cruelest in history.

It was once known, however, as the Jerusalem of the East. Cuba is a nation of vast natural resources and industrious people, and yet they languish in poverty and crippled infrastructure, and its citizens suffer beneath the boot of authorities that have systematically destroyed them over the last several decades. Venezuela was a relatively short time ago one of the wealthiest nations in the Western Hemisphere.

In recent years, though, they have faced a degree of poverty and famine that has shocked the world. Russia once saw itself as the world's hope, the hope of the world for the spread of Christianity. You can read about this in ancient documents. Specially chosen to maintain the gospel and to spread it around the world, now it is a land generally marked by hopelessness and corruption.

What do all of those countries share in common? Every single one of them embraced a worldview known as Marxism at some point. Now, hearing the word Marxism is kind of like hearing cancer. You know it's bad, but you just don't understand all the mechanics of it.

And like cancer, what you don't know might just kill you. Today's the seventh week in our series, The Universe Next Door, where we're looking at different worldviews, different ways that people see reality. So our task today is understanding Marxism, the worldview that says the state is supreme above everything else. So let's break down our time like this today. First, a look under the hood of Marxism.

Next, where Marxism shows up today. And finally, Christianity's response to Marxism. Okay, so a look under the hood of Marxism, where Marxism shows up today, and Christianity's response to Marxism. Let's jump in together with a look under the hood. Recently, we've been looking for a vehicle for Joaquin.

He had some money saved up and he's working now. And so we took the plunge and we looked at a bunch of candidates, you know, as you do on auto trader and whatnot. And so we found one vehicle. that we thought, man, this is really, this looks like this is checking all the boxes, like price-wise it's good and it looks okay and you know, all things, but you're, well, what's that? Match box car, yeah, thanks.

No, this is actually a real one you can drive, but we were like, yeah, this will work, this will work, maybe, and so I called my mechanic and so for $155, my mechanic will do like a super deep dive on any vehicle and let you know whether or not it's really worth it, and so I said, hey, can I bring it over? They said, yeah, bring it. And so I took it over there and sat down on one of the couches in the reception area.

And about an hour later, my buddy Bob comes out from the back, and he's kind of shaking his head a little bit. And he sat down with me, and he hands me this yellow sheet of paper. And it's like this huge list of stuff that needs to be done. And he said, Brian, it would cost about $4,000 to fix all of this.

I'd stay away from this car if I was you. So, you know, looked great on the outside, but under the hood, when they got to really looking around, it was a different story. Well, over the next few minutes, I want us to do the same thing regarding the Marxist worldview, because to some, over the last several decades, and its precursors even before that, it looked really, really good.

But there's something else going on entirely when you start looking around. To better understand this system of thought, let's go back, go back with me to Paris, 1844. Two young philosophers, thinkers, writers, agitators meet a guy by the name of Karl Marx and a guy by the name of Friedrich Engels. The two were already enamored with the idea of socialism, so the philosophy that teaches that a society should function without private property. Rather, a central government controls the means of production. In other words, like what gets made, everybody works, and then everyone theoretically gets an equal share.

of everything distributed from the government. So they're controlling both the supply and the demand, so to speak. As Marx and Engels saw it, the capitalism, so in other words, buying and selling things, business, that had come to dominate the West with its profit incentive and its private property was the fundamental problem of society.

This economic system, they said, was predicated upon the rich and the powerful exploiting the poor and the weak. In fact, as they saw it, capitalism's major sin was the creation of classes. The rich and powerful, which was basically anybody who owned much of anything, who they called the bourgeois or bourgeoisie, and then those who were just the common working man. That's the proletariat. The situation can really be summed up like this.

Everything is oppressor versus oppressed. Now, that's going to be very important in a moment as we go through, so hang on to that, okay? Furthermore, the working poor, who made most of the goods and services in an economy, were rarely able to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

So they might spend all day making a widget in a factory, but when it came time to sell the widget, the glory and the profits went to the factory owner, not to the worker. But if the state administered everything, then such exploitation wouldn't occur. And neither would the social strife that came along with it. And if a person made a product, he or she will be able to enjoy the process.

they'd know that they'd at least have a living wage at the end of the day. Or so the theory went. However, these men conceived of something more than socialism.

Marx, who had been influenced by earlier philosophers, said that the world was moving inexorably, in other words, inevitably, from an inferior economic system to the superior system. So from feudalism, okay, we have the lord of the land and the people working the land. To capitalism, so businesses, to socialism, to the final step, communism, which would usher in a classless society where everybody worked for the enjoyment of it and no one went without.

Marx put it like this, in communist society where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production And thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow. To hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman, or critic. In short, Marx and Nietzsche dreamed of a utopia, a paradise on earth.

However, they were also clear in their writings that utopia couldn't come. without a price. In their book, The Communist Manifesto, an earlier version of that book, an earlier draft, was actually The Communist Confession of Faith. They eventually changed the name.

So in The Communist Manifesto, they made it clear that for socialism to give way to communism, the common people would have to stage a great revolution and overthrow those in power. So the oppressed would rise against their oppressors. So while class was ultimately a bad thing, class struggle was the key to success. Now, this would lead to massive, though warranted, they said, bloodshed.

And so a dictatorship would become necessary to make the required economic changes, which would in turn lead to this hoped-for classless society. To make that plan work, though, more bloodshed would be required, as property and position would be wrested away from those who owned property and then redistributed through the apparatus of the state. Marks put the matter bluntly, quote, The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence, abolition of private property.

But what about the moral issue of taking private property from people? I mean, what about killing people? that all that would inevitably take place.

Weren't those things wrong? While both Marx and Engels had very specific views about the evils of capitalism, they were staunch atheists. They were steeped in the naturalistic worldview that we looked at just a couple of weeks ago. Because there was no divine lawgiver to lay down moral rules or to judge them for what they did, they really didn't feel any apprehension about the appropriateness of their plan. Now, of the two, Marx was the front man, Engels was kind of more the money guy, so the worldview they promoted ultimately came to be known as Marxism.

In practice, though, in real time, it's known as communism, which is a more virulent version, a more deadly version of socialism, as I've already noted. So those terms are going to be used interchangeably throughout the rest of our time today. Now, while Marx and his theories were ultimately seen by a lot of people as poisonous or as absurd. He was kicked out of one country after another after another in Europe for trying to stir up communist uprisings.

Some people were positively enamored by the idea. It was first put into place, communism in Russia, in 1917 under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, immediately following World War I. The results were the formation of the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Marxist teaching quickly spread to other European countries, of course went into Germany as well, which was taken over by the National Socialist Workers'Party, otherwise known as the Nazis.

And with time, Marxism would spread to countries all over the globe on virtually every continent. Now, it's easy to see why Marxism would appeal to so many people, at least at first glance. We have to admit that, okay? After all, Marx made some valid observations that spoke to people's real experiences in life.

As we've said before, and we've said this several times, we should expect, because people are made in God's image, And because of God's common grace, His kindness to everyone, we should expect that every worldview is going to touch on some real things, some true things. And that's the case for Marxism as well. The truth is that the rich and powerful do often exploit the poor and the weak.

We've seen that. Scripture talks about that a lot, in fact. In the same way, work for many people is a dehumanizing experience. Maybe you've been there.

You're backbreaking or tedious labor and receive very little reward for it, often not even enough to live on. And Marx was right to be disturbed by the poverty he saw around him. And think about it.

If you were a person who had been accustomed to living hand to mouth, and someone said to you, hey, we can empower the state to pool our resources so that no one gets out, and you're looking at your child who hasn't eaten in three days. This starts sounding appealing, right? You can see that.

Finally, Marx was right to long for a time when there would be no more injustice or exploitation or poverty. So Marx saw a number of things that Christians are concerned with as well. In fact, Marxism has actually been called a Christian heresy.

It's been called that. And it's seduced a lot of Christians because of its stated concerns. For instance, Brazilian Paulo Freire One of the leading Marxist thinkers of the 20th century actually said that love for Christ is what drove him to Marxism. Taken together, you can see how enticing that could be. However, for the nations that adopted Marxism, the fallout was absolutely catastrophic.

In the 20th century alone, Marxism has claimed between 100 and 150 million lives. Horrific government oppression. theft, murder, exploitation, starvation, and every other form of evil you can imagine has come along with it.

But why? How could this worldview have led to such devastation? Primarily because it was based upon two massively wrong core principles.

The first was about God. As Lenin wrote, communism begins where atheism begins. And if you look at the writings, of Marx, of Engels, of Bukharin, who was an early Soviet propagandist, of Lenin.

All of them said that the goal, one of the big goals of communism, was to destroy religion, in particular Christianity. They were very open about this. This is not anything hidden. This was not anything in the shadows.

Atheism and communism have always been intertwined. Everything, remember we said several weeks ago at the start of our series, the idea of... that every worldview outside of Christianity is fundamentally what we call one-est. In other words, everything is just one.

So the Bible, you have the Creator God and the creature, everything else, right? So that's what we call two-ism. So there's two fundamental realities.

In every other worldview, everything is ultimately one. It's kind of a mix of the universe, a mix of spirit, a mix of whatever. So what's going on here is in communism, everything is essentially one.

Creative matter. with nothing transcendent by which to measure everything else. So if the state says it's right to take someone's property, guess what?

It is. If the state says that it's right to forbid speech against it, guess what? It is. Likewise, salvation lay in correcting problems of this life through human effort in communism, because there's nothing greater than the stuff of this world. then the only salvation you could ever hope to experience is related to what?

The stuff of this world and the only hope of heaven. was found in a this-world utopia, a word which literally means, by the way, no place. That's what utopia means.

The other principle they were committed to that was so wrong concerned people. Despite what he may have said about the dignity of human beings, Marx essentially saw people as widgets, bricks in the wall having no inherent dignity or value. And when they got in the way, they were disposable.

Stalin, one of Marx's most famous disciples, said this, quote, kill one person, it's murder. Kill a million, it's a statistic. Marxism further taught that family was disposable and a hindrance to the goals of the state, cutting across the most foundational and fundamental relationships that humans ever have. So mother, father, husband, wife, son, daughter. are all ultimately meaningless.

In fact, one of the major things that the communist government did in Russia in the 20s and 30s is they replaced all church marriage services with state marriage services. Instead of baptizing children, the Orthodox Church, instead of baptizing children in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, they were baptized in the name of the state and given to the state officially in that act. Most importantly, Marx and his followers taught that people could find satisfaction in this life with the state as ultimate source of meaning and giver of all good things.

In other words, the state was set up as a false god. Marxism was simply another form of idolatry, y'all. Because of their rejection of God, they were going to get the people part wrong as well.

In the end, Marxism is a worldview fueled by hatred of God, and despite what it claims, hatred... of humans. So where does that leave us? Was I just, you know, wanting to do a history lesson today?

Is Marxism a thing of the past? Or is it something that we need to be concerned about in the here and now? Well, that's what we're going to look at now very briefly, where Marxism shows up today. We're not interested in theory.

We want to see where things come in practice. Author Larry Alex Taunton told a story of his time in graduate school in the early 90s, only a few years after the fall. of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall coming down. He wanted to pursue graduate studies in Marxism and Communism, understanding the history of those things. And his advisor said, Larry, that's going to be a useless degree.

Marxism is a thing of the past. It's gone. But Taunton understood the very thing about worldviews that we've said several times in this series. What is it?

Worldviews don't usually disappear, right? They don't disappear. They simply fade away, morph, and then reappear under a different name. So 30 years since Larry had that experience in grad school, Marxism is alive and well. In most places, it's not as focused on economics as it once was, but it's still destroying lives, even if not as dramatically as in the past.

So briefly, here's what I want to do. I want to note just a handful of telltale signs of Marxist influence and then name a few places where it shows up today. Now, we don't want to be the boy who cried wolf here and see everything as one thing because you end up missing the real thing when it comes up, all right? So not everything in the world is Marxism, not everything in the world is Marxist.

There are some things that are definite telltale signs and that are very easy to see as you learn the history of it. So I'm kind of giving you a Cliff Notes version of some things here. So as we look at signs of Marxist influence, it's possible that you're going to see some of these things show up in settings that are not influenced by Marxism.

But in settings influenced by it, you'll almost always see one or more of these. And the more you see in a given scenario, in a given organization, the more sure you can be of what it is that you're dealing with. Okay, so here we go, just a handful of things.

First, a hallmark of Marxism is pitting groups of people against one another. That's a hallmark. Historically, that was, of course, the bourgeois versus the proletariat. In America today, it's often seen in pitting ethnic groups against one another or pitting socioeconomic groups against one another. So poor versus rich, urban versus suburban, versus rural, etc., etc., etc.

This is especially true when you hear hints of envy. If one group is saying, they have this and we want it, okay? Because very old Marxist playbook tactic going along with that.

is the idea of perpetual grievances. So when you see groups who are at each other's throats, and this keeps groups at each other's throat, you'll have one group here who is the irredeemable oppressor. versus another group who is the eternally oppressed.

There's never any reconciliation. There's never anything that's actually pointed to specifically. It's always very vague.

It's always very general, and it keeps people at each other's throats. A lot of folks have made a lot of money off this, frankly, over the years, and that's why it tends to never go away. I was even listening to a book last night that deals with Yasser Arafat, who is from the PLO, Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Certainly had some Marxist influence, and the guy who wrote this book, who'd been in Hamas for many years, said, I traveled with him all over, and I saw that essentially he had gotten very rich off of continually being aggrieved. Happens all the time. Next thing, redefinition of terms.

If groups or individuals regularly redefine long accepted terms to fit their agenda, they are using a well-worn Marxist tactic. Several years ago, When the self-professed Marxist group Black Lives Matter really gained a lot of popular traction, I was talking to someone about concerns I had and they gave a quote from one of their scholars from Ibram X. Kendi who has now been widely discredited even in the Ivy League where he was working at. He had redefined the term racism and like from the historic definition and I just asked him very simply I said, Why do you think that he would feel the need to redefine a term that's been defined from time immemorial?

Even Martin Luther King and all these other great civil rights leaders from the past defined racism the way I'm defining it, you're defining it in this other way. Why do you think that's okay? That's a classic Marxist ploy and has been done forever, practically. Downplaying the necessity of family is another big one. Infamously, again, years ago, Black Lives Matter.

Had on their website, on their website, that one of their goals was the, quote, the destruction of the nuclear family. That is a historic Marxist commitment. They're not the only group who's done that. They were one of the few bold enough to put it in writing.

Next, flattening distinctions because humans are just cogs in the machine. Their distinct gifts, abilities, personalities don't really matter. Nobody should be more talented or wealthier or better than anyone else. It's somehow wrong. And finally, this is a very practical, easy to see one, the communist fist.

So you've seen that logo, lots of organizations use that logo. Labor unions use it, protest groups use it, Antifa uses it. That has been the symbol of struggle or warfare that Marxists have been using for decades.

So it's all over the place, easy to see. They don't try to hide that. That's part of who they are. And we could say more, but those are just some easy signs to identify.

All right. where Marxism shows up today. Now, here's some places where it's still alive and well, and let me say this, I'm not saying that every single person involved in these arenas are Marxist or whatever want to be.

Many of these people really do care about people, and they're trying to do the right thing. And even if they are committed to Marxism, guess what? They're still not the enemy.

Satan's the enemy. They're people that need Jesus just like we do, okay? So I'm not making personal attacks at people. So here we go.

Number one, progressive Christianity. Now that term is almost an oxymoron because folks within progressivism don't really believe much about God, Jesus, or the Bible. We recognize historically, though, this is very similar to the liberal Christianity of the early 20th century that destroyed a lot of mainline denominations. Interestingly, the Communist Party USA specifically targeted progressive and liberal denominations in the mid-20th century. Number two.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Now those dominate academia and the corporate world, and on the surface they sound good. It sounds like a way to ensure that everybody gets a seat at the table. But in practice, they end up separating people and creating unending grievances and strife among groups.

I've talked to a DEI officer in a local school district about this very thing before. By the way, equity is not the same thing as equality. It's kind of a sleight of hand. It's often used.

Equity means equal outcome. Equality means equal opportunity. It's two very different things. Three, political progressivism. Now, typically these folks are not people just on the political left.

Progressivism isn't the same thing as the political liberalism you may be familiar with. Political progressives are usually self-consciously in favor of Marxist teachings. That tends to be the case at a national level in particular.

And finally, globalist organizations, most well-known of those will be the World Economic Forum. They tend to push, these kind of groups tend to push abolition of private property and heavy, heavy centralized control. One of the World Economics Forum's own slogans is, you will own nothing and you will be happy. So we can name many others, but this shows you that this underlying Marxist worldview is still doing its thing seemingly everywhere.

So against such a juggernaut is Christianity silent. That leads us to our final point, and I'm excited about this. Christianity's response. to Marxism. Hang with me for 10 more minutes.

After being expelled from one country after another, Marx ended up in London. He and Engels were convinced that Great Britain was primed to undergo a communist revolution. However, it never came to pass.

Why not? Why didn't it happen? Engels gave the word in one answer, or gave the answer in one word, Spurgeon.

Spurgeon. You see, at the same time that Marx was spreading his teachings on one side of London, Charles Spurgeon, perhaps the greatest preacher in the history of Christianity, was pastoring a church on the other side of town, and he preached regularly against the evils of the nascent communist movement, what he simply referred to as socialism. Once communism came into full bloom in Europe and made inroads in the United States, the Catholic Church, most notably Bishop Fulton Sheen. In the U.S. and later Pope John Paul II in Europe went to war against Marxist teachings, as did lesser-known Protestant pastors like Richard Wurmbrand in Eastern Europe. So the church has not been silent on this matter.

As it turns out, Scripture has a lot to say in response to Marxism. So in our remaining time, I'd like to point you to a few passages, just a couple of verses that contradict Marxist teaching outright, and then others that show how the gospel actually delivers. on the empty promises that Marxism makes.

All right, first, look with me again. Exodus 20, 15, and 17 from the Ten Commandments. Verse 15, you shall not steal. Verse 17, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything else that is your neighbor's. Both of those verses assume what?

The reality of private property, right? The reality of private property. God puts humans in...

stewardship over things. Of course, not everything in verse 17 is property. I talked about your spouse, your wife, but most of the things there are. So any system that says that private property is inherently wrong or can just be taken with impunity is going against the very fabric of creation, the way that God set things up to work. But scripture doesn't simply contradict what Marxism says.

It actually offers a different and profoundly satisfying answer to the questions and concerns that Marxism raises. So let's look at a few of those. All right, Mark said that people were often separated from the enjoyment of their labors, which he saw as a travesty. He was right about that, right?

Totally right about that. But look at how God's Word responds to that valid concern. Ecclesiastes 2, there is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him, who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

So instead of the state providing enjoyment from work, something it could never do, Scripture tells us that it's God's kindness that allows somebody to enjoy his or her work. And for those that trust in Christ, it gets even better. Colossians 3, 23 and 24 says this, Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

You are serving the Lord Christ. What more meaning, what more dignity could you have from your work than that? Enjoy your work, do your best, knowing that you are ultimately working for the one who would lay down his life.

Marx was, theoretically at least, concerned about justice for the poor and oppressed. As I said earlier, that is a massive biblical concern. Micah 6a, one of the Old Testament's most famous verses, says this, He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?

Likewise, Proverbs 14, 31 says this, whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker. It's big. Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker. Those are just two of countless verses dealing with justice and dealing with the concern for the poor. Like if those things never come into your mind, you haven't wrestled with what scripture is saying about this, you do need to care about these things.

But you see, that concern in Scripture is not rooted in some kind of faceless state or in a morality just rooted in nothing, just kind of, you know, whatever you want it to be. It's rooted in the person of God Himself, who's the very foundation of justice and who cares about the poor and needy more than we can ever imagine. See, the God who would both show His justice and His care for needy people like us. by sending Jesus to take the justice that we deserve for our sin. Marx sought unity in the collective, the state.

Marxism encouraged people to become comrades. You've heard that a lot if you've ever read about Marxism, comrades and comrades, workers in a common cause. And those conditions would theoretically provide deep community.

And in fairness, working for a common cause does provide a large degree of meaningful community for a lot of people, okay? So again, Mark says, I don't want people to be alienated from each other. Great!

That's great. But he was seeing it totally the wrong way. See, in Christ, we're not united simply as holders of a common cause and certainly not as members of a sovereign state. We are united as a body. As a body.

Listen again to that passage in 1 Corinthians 12. For just as the body is one and has many members... and all the members of the body, though many are one, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. See, Jesus offers a depth of community that can be found nowhere else where we're members of God's family.

part of Jesus's own body, spiritually speaking. You can't conceive of greater unity than that because it's not based on anything we do, but upon what God's done for us in Jesus. And Marx proposed utopia. He proposed utopia, right?

And he promised it based upon human intervention. But here's the problem. Every human attempt at utopia ever has ended in a bloodbath in the history of the world. It always does. Instead, this is the picture we see in Scripture.

Revelation 21, 1 through 5. We're going to read it all again. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be with His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And He who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. Also He said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and true.

Y'all, the desire for a perfect world is right. It's right. We were built for that.

But our hope can never be realized in anything that we can do. And a moment's glance at human history should tell us that. But because of what Jesus has done for us in his life and death and resurrection, Everybody who trusts in Him has that sure hope of that perfect world where all the sad things come untrue once and for all. That's the hope of the gospel that we have.

Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank You again for this time this morning.

We thank You that against such powerful forces like Marxism that have just wrecked this world in so many ways, that it does not compare, it does not... stand against the gospel. It offers a lot of false hope, a lot of false hope. So, Father, I pray that today you would convince our own hearts even more of the all-sufficiency of Christ, what you've done for us in him. And we pray, Father, for our friends who may be influenced by these teachings in one way or another, that, Father, you would show them the beauty of the Lord Jesus as you've done so many times.

So Father, those folks are not our enemies. They're people just like us who need you. And so please, Lord, would you send your Holy Spirit.

to be at work even in this, Lord, we ask. And we pray these things in Jesus'name. Amen.

Transcript for:Marxism and Christianity's Interaction

Transcript for:
Marxism and Christianity's Interaction