I have this theory about the way that the twentieth century is going to relate the twenty-first century, and it’s a wild-eyed theory, and you can write it off as soon as I say because nothing that I say depends on its truth. And I’m not a prophet with any particular authority outside what’s in the Bible, and this isn’t in the Bible. And yet it will help make plain to you something that I think is so very, very needed. My theory is that the twentieth century, at least in the West and at least in the last half of the century, you could call the “Century of the Self.” Or you could call it the “Psychological Century” or you could call it the “Therapeutic Century.”

There ws a book written in ’66 by Phillip Rieff, maybe you remember, called the Triumph of the Therapeutic. If that was true in ’66, it’s tenfold today in the churches and in the world. The world of psychology, it seems to me, has a place — a very small place and not the place that it has presumed to take and to be in the twentieth century. The world of psychology is the world of the self, its states, its conditions, its relations. And that world is way too small to satisfy the human soul and what we were created for.

Vacuous Theory

In fact, I would say that as a limit and as a focus, the therapeutic world is crushing to the spirit and killing to the soul because of how small and restricted and constrained it is. Yet it has been the preoccupation of the twentieth century these many decades now, because the soul was made for something infinitely bigger than self. It was made for God, who is infinite. And therefore, the endless preoccupation of the twentieth century with the soul and its states; or with the psyche, and its conditions, and its self-regard, and its esteem, and its concepts of itself is a killing preoccupation for the soul; it is a shriveling, shrinking preoccupation for the soul — all the while in the name of health.

Let me read you a quote that really hit the nail on the head. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the magazine First Things here in Toronto, but William Kilpatrick wrote this article, “Faith and Therapy”, three issues ago I think it was, and closed like this.

The twentieth century has seen many attacks on Christianity, but the frontal attacks of militant atheists, Marxists, and Nazis have not resulted in as much lost ground for Christians as the more insidious attacks of the therapeutic culture. The sense of guilt, the sense of sin, the sense of the sacred, the sense that there is another order of authority by which we are judged — these have not disappeared entirely from Christian culture, but they have been eroded. If this is difficult to see, it is because of the fog that the culture of therapy emits — an empathic fog which surrounds us and confuses us and prevents us from seeing life clearly. We wander around in this fog thinking our enemy is our friend because he is so exquisitely concerned with our health.

The only thing powerful enough to cut through this fog is the light of revelation. Revelation reminds us that physical and emotional health is not the Alpha and Omega of existence. The Gospels tell us that if our hand offends us we should cut it off, it being better to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into Hell. Likewise, it may be better to enter the kingdom of Heaven with a repressed psyche than to enter the other place brimming with self-assertiveness. There is no ultimate consolation to be found in the theories propounded by psychologists. Psychology has very little to say to the majority of suffering people in this world, and absolutely nothing to say to the fact that all of us must one day die. The therapeutic culture’s well-adjusted person, for all his serene sense of self, has one overwhelming problem: he is blinded to the beatific vision.

Take your typical self-help book and carry it with you to southern Sudan and see how much use it will be. The most tragic thing in Minneapolis to me is when a seminary student at our church does a temporary apprenticeship at a hospital under a Jungian psychologist, who happened to be the chaplain at Hennepin County Hospital, dealing with dying people. I tell you, if you want to see the vacuousness of a theory, see what it says to a man who has a week to live in a hospice, and he will not let our young men talk about Christ. Your job is to help them get in touch with their feelings while they die. That’s wicked; that is wicked.

Now, I haven’t given you my theory yet for the relationship between the twentieth and twenty-first century. I’m just setting the stage for how I see the twentieth century. The twentieth century is consumed with self and blind to God. If God exists, he is only a teeny little speck to deal with in service of the self. I don’t think even our idolatries can stand this for another century because the human soul is made for something bigger than the self. It’s made for God and therefore it’s going to be an idol maker; it’s got to make a new one. It cannot last another century. We must have some new idols, and I think that they will be physics and astronomy. There’s my theory, for what it’s worth.

Bigger, Better Idols

I think that the world of physics and astronomy will begin to usurp the place of psychotherapy in various and sundry forms, to our good. If one idolatry is better than another, I think the bigger your idol can be, the better because at least you are bearing witness to the fact that your soul was made for something absolutely huge, not what you see in the mirror — believe me, not what you see in the mirror. And the soul knows that it was not made for itself and therefore the complete consuming passion of the twentieth century to deal with self as that which will be our portion has got to give way. We must have new idols in the twenty-first century.

So I’m watching; I’m cutting out articles as they come. So I bring them with me and here’s one from George Will. Now George Will, I do think is a believer, probably Catholic. But he’s reporting here on “The Gospel from Science” — namely, from the Hubble Telescope. What is the Hubble preaching these days? And it is preaching a different message than psychology. Listen to this paragraph.

The Hubble recently sent back to earth, to this strangely lush speck in one of perhaps 50 billion galaxies [before Hubble, they were guessing perhaps a million or maybe ten million; now they’re talking 50 billion galaxies] infrared images of the faintest, most distant galaxies ever seen. They could be more than 12 billion light years away.

That is, from 12 billions times 6 trillion miles away, the Hubble telescope is picking up infrared images of galaxies. That’s almost enough to make you bow down. I was driving in Minneapolis after taking my son to work at 5:45 Tuesday morning. As I was driving into town, the sun lipped up over one of the downtown hotels between two skyscrapers and filled the entire space and blinded me. I had to pull down the visor, and I thought to myself, “Did I not know the Maker, I would pull of to the side and get on my knees.” It is not hard for me to understand false worship, and we’re going to have lots of it, and it isn’t going to be psychology in the twenty-first century. There’s my little theory that is probably totally wrong, and nothing I say depends on it.

Eta Carinae is the biggest strangest object in our little galaxy, which is a hundred million light years across — one of 50 billion galaxies in the universe. It is five million times brighter than the sun. You can see it if you go out at night, one of six thousand stars that you can see.

Now I think we were made for God: our souls were made to know and embrace and enjoy and trust and get ourselves around, if you can imagine it, or at least get ourselves expanded up into God, to know him. The substitutes are always inadequate — whether it’s the self or whether it’s 50 billion galaxies.

Made to Esteem God

Now what’s this got to do with preaching? Everything — it’s got everything to do with preaching. It came home to me a few years ago when I read this quote about Albert Einstein. It was written by Charles Misner, a relativity theory expert. He said,

I do see the design of the universe has essentially a religious question that is one should have some kind of respect and awe for the whole business. It’s very magnificent and shouldn’t be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion although he strikes me as a basically very religious man.

Then this is the sentence that leapt off the page at me:

He must have looked at what their preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more Majesty than they had ever imagined and they were just not talking about the real thing.

I don’t think I’ve ever read anything the last eight to ten years that more fired me up for why I do what I do. Our mission statement at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis is: We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. That’s my life mission. I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God over the galaxies, over the self, over Einstein, over theories, over schools, over cultures, over history, over time. It’s my passion. It’s my life. I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God over all his substitutes in the universe for the sake of the joy of the nations forever.

Everywhere I go I’ve been asking this question for the last two years or so. This is my kind of awakening question. I know I’m in Canada, so I shouldn’t use an American reference, but I don’t know Canadian geography well enough to substitute. Does anybody go to the Grand Canyon to enhance their self-esteem? And if not, why do they go? I mean, self-esteem is the only way to health, right? I mean, that’s religion in America — at least in the US. That’s in every textbook; it’s in every class; it’s in almost every pulpit. Self-esteem is the answer to all crime; it’s the answer to all shortcomings in families; it’s the answer to every kid’s problem. So if it is an answer in the be-all and the end-all, what drives people to the Grand Canyon, where standing on the lip of it, you do not feel a sense that your self is being enhanced here?

The answer is very simple: the self was made to esteem God, and this is as close as you can get on the planet in a valley. This is big, and when you stand on the edge of it, your soul does not say, “Oh, give me a mirror. Give me a mirror.” Your soul says, “Wow,” and there’s something about that mammoth-ness. It drops a mile, it extends a mile, and you stand on the edge of it and everything in you, without any self-awareness, just expands out to get your arms around it, and it does the healing. It does the healing of the moment. So many petty little things in your life vanish on the edge of the Grand Canyon. It’s all a parable; it’s just a parable about God.

Einstein died in 1955. If this was true in ’55, think what he would say today. When he goes to hear preaching, what does he hear? Practical how-tos, psychological soothing, relational therapy, little help here, little help there. Help you get along at work. Help you get along with the wife or husband. Help with your rambunctious and ornery teenagers. Help you with this, help you with that, and we all feel good now. A little bit of help. Now w can get by with another week because we got a little more help today. Einstein walks out and he says, “I saw a million galaxies last night. I came here to hear somebody tell me about some reality bigger, greater, more glorious, more wonderful, more awesome than that, and what did I hear? I don’t need to go to church to hear this. I get this everywhere.” And that’s where I’ll end up this morning is: If preachers won’t tell us more than that, where are they going to go? Where are the people going to go?

Greatness of His Might

Listen to this word from Isaiah 40:25–26. If you need a place to go to have your heart expanded, go to Isaiah 40.

To whom then will you compare me,
     that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
     who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
     calling them all by name;
by the greatness of his might,
     and because he is strong in power,
     not one is missing.

Now Isaiah was also impressed like Einstein was with what he saw when he looked up, only he drew a different conclusion. He said, “God draws them all into existence, numbers them, and names them.” Just imagine it. We’re talking billions of stars in our galaxy. We’re talking 50 billion galaxies. One of the stars five million times brighter than the sun, which travels around the galaxy at 155 miles a second and will complete its first revolution in 200 million years, and God has a name for every one of them: “Mary, Joe, you go here, you go there. You stay in existence. You go out of existence. You explode.” The reason for names is so you can communicate, right? Names imply significance; they’re designated by the one who names, and then you can bid them to do what they should do. Now that’s our God, and he should get more on Sunday morning than he gets. He should be supreme in our preaching, differently than he is. Einstein said, “The preachers are simply blaspheming.”

I don’t want to blaspheme in the pulpit. I don’t want anybody to write on my epitaph, “He blasphemed. He was not talking about the real thing. He’d never seen it. He’d never tasted it. He’d never soared with it. He’d never been caught up into it. He’d never been drawn out by it. He had no taste for the majesty and for the glory. He just did what every other self-help book was doing in his culture.” I don’t want that on my tombstone.

Why We Must Preach the Supremacy of God

So let me take the minutes we have left here and talk about why I think God should be supreme in preaching and then how he should be supreme in preaching.

For God’s Sake

Why? Very simple. I had a phone call with Christianity Today, and they wanted to do an interview on the supremacy of God in preaching, and the first question they asked was, “Pastor John, why do you think God should be supreme in preaching?” The first answer that came to my mind was, “Because God is supreme to God, and if God is supreme to God, God should be supreme to me, because who am I to elevate something else to supreme, when God considers God supreme.” I don’t think that hits home to people as much as it ought to. Listen to Isaiah 48:9–11:

For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
     for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,
     that I may not cut you off.
Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
     I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
     for how should my name be profaned?
     My glory I will not give to another.

Six hammer blows of divine self-exaltation. Now who am I to hear God esteeming God like that and esteem anything else? “My glory I will not give to another.” That’s God’s opinion about God, and so I’m going to stand up in my preaching and do less in my assessment of God than God’s assessment of God? That was my first answer to them.

This is very, very important. It’s important for the nations. Oh, how important for the nations this is, which is why I wrote Let the Nations Be Glad I can’t remember the titles of my books.

Oh sing to the Lord a new song;
     sing to the Lord, all the earth!
Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
     tell of his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
     his marvelous works among all the peoples!
For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
     he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
     but the Lord made the heavens. (Psalm 96:1–5)

How are you going to do missions if you don’t feel that? How are you going to do missions? Or do you do missions? Is your church aflame for the nations? I know all the nations are in Toronto. I know that. But they have access now, at least proximity access, if not cultural access. But there are people groups still, depending on how you read the data from the Joshua Project, that are utterly, totally outside the access of the gospel. And the Bible says, “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.” Ten thousand times more greatly to be praised than can be praised in Toronto, with all of your glorious diversity.

Devoted to Knowing Him

Oh, for more tears for the perishing. But that won’t carry the day, because if you arrive in the presence of the perishing, and they have one hour to live after having their hands and legs cut off, what are you going to tell them? You’re going to tell them, “To die is gain if you know Jesus.” And they say, “What do you mean gain? I’m leaving my wife; I’m leaving my children. I gave my all.” And you say, or you don’t say, “God is worth everything.” If you have a half an hour with them, you talk to them about what? Their self? Their family? How sweet it was to be here these 35 years? No! You fill their dying soul with Christ and how glorious it will be to see him in 25 minutes. If you don’t feed it, what are you going to say? I think the biggest thing in all the world is to see the greatness of Christ.

We talk salvation, and we use the word so glibly, as though forgiveness of sins and having a life of peace and love and joy here is kind of salvation. It’s not the main thing. The main thing is that when my sins are taken away and the righteousness of Christ is imputed to me, I have access to — spiritually now and personally later — the most glorious, all-satisfying Being that ever was, ever is, or ever will be; that’s salvation. And if he will not be satisfying to my soul in personal face-to-face fellowship with him, nothing will — nothing.

And therefore, what we need to do as pastors and laypeople is devote ourselves mainly to knowing him and then exalting him in our preaching. He is preeminent and supreme in our preaching because he’s preeminent and supreme to himself. He establishes what is supreme.

A Model for Preaching the Supremacy of God

Now let me ask this last question here: How do we go about this? How do we do this? I think maybe the best thing I can do here is just quickly walk you through a sermon from Acts 13. I want to model for you a sermon by just drawing your attention to the way Paul, in Antioch of Pisidia, standing up preaching to both a few believers, perhaps, mainly unbelievers, talks about reality — and it’s God. I’m just going to walk through the next twenty verses or so, pointing out the centrality and supremacy of God, and a few things along the way that make it remarkable, and just leave you then with that sermon ringing in your ears to say, Do I do anything like that? Does the flavor of this sermon (not necessarily the style; we don’t need to preach in Paul’s style) and the dynamic and the impulse of this sermon make its way into our preaching?

So Paul is going to rehearse redemptive history now and he rehearses it in a way that is stunning in its God-centeredness:

• Verse 17: it was God who chose Israel from all the peoples of the earth; it was God who chose Israel.

• Verse 17: it was God who made the people great during their stay in Egypt; they weren’t just naturally fertile people. It says God increased them and made them great, made them grow.

• Verse 17: God led them out of Egypt “with an uplifted arm.” Why does he say that — “with an uplifted arm”? Because God is flexing his muscles in Egypt. Did you ever ask why there were ten plagues and not more? Why not stop at six, for goodness’ sake? Why ten? Answer: (accept this) God is a showoff. I say it with reverence. Only one Being in the universe has the right to be a showoff — one. You don’t; he does. You just read the text. Read chapters 4–14, and that will not be an overstatement. He made sport of Pharaoh, it says in chapter 14, in order to demonstrate his power for the sake of Rahab and her conversion.

• Verse 18: God bore with Israel in the wilderness. He carried Israel like a father carries his children.

• Verse 19: t was God who destroyed the seven nations in the land of Canaan; they were his and he had the right to do with them what he pleased. We know the Jews swung the sword. But “the horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord” (Proverbs 21:31) The Lord did it.

• Verse 19: it was God who gave Israel the land. It was his to give and he gave it. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). He gives it to whomever he pleases.

• Verse 20: it was God who gave Israel judges.

• Verse 21. it was God who gave Israel her first king.

• Verse 22: it was God who removed the first king, Saul, just like Daniel says. “He removes kings and sets up kings” (Daniel 2:21). Milosevic is not an accident. Neither is Clinton still being in office, which he shouldn’t be. Those are not accidents. The Lord puts up kings; he puts them down. He has his timing. They will get their day; sooner or later their foot will slip. That’s what the verse says. God removed Saul.

• Verse 22: God raised up David, a little nobody, plays a harp, uses a slingshot, writes songs. “That’s my man; he will be king.”

• Verse 23: God brought to Israel a savior, Jesus. God brought Him. This was no impersonal force working here. God brings Him.

• Verses 24–25: John the Baptist — “I am not he. No, but after me, One is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie” (Matthew 3:11). Jesus said no prophet was greater than John, and yet John couldn’t untie his feet, or untie his shoes.

And so it goes on through to the end. Perhaps that’s enough to give you a flavor. There’s some more remarkable things in that sermon — namely things like: “Because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him” (verse 27) — as though to say, “They didn’t cooperate with God to get it done. God got it done through them because they didn’t know what was written about what they were about to do.”

So I’ll just draw this to a close by pleading with you to reckon with the supremacy of God in your preaching. Don’t let Albert Einstein have the last say in your life and say, “They were blaspheming.” Don’t let him have the last say, and say, “The preachers didn’t really know what they were talking about.” Lift up God. Lift up everything. Yes, deal with children. Yes, deal with divorce. Yes, deal with drugs. Yes, deal with the pain of loss. Yes, deal with every kind of brokenness in your church. But do it in a way that lift people up into God so that they get a perspective on that that nobody else gives them — no newspaper gives them, no psychologist gives them, nobody gives them but a God-saturated pastor who’s riveted on and ravished by the glory of God.