Christianity is Opium For People

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast, making Theology Central. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to make a comment that's going to be very offensive for many of you, too many of you. You're not going to necessarily like it, and you're probably going to disagree, But I'm going to say it anyway, because I think we need to be confronted with this at least being a possibility. Even if you want to push back, you have to at least look around and go, well, maybe in some ways there's some truth to it. Sometimes a controversial comment can be offensive and we may not like it, but there can be some truth to it if we're really willing to set aside our offense and listen, and I hope that you will, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it bluntly.

0:56 I believe for many Christianity is nothing more more than opium. Christianity is nothing more than opium. It is they they go to church. It's an opium house. It's a drug house. They go to church and they get a little bit of opium. They get a little bit, they get their fix. They get a hit and they they feel much better. But reality is they are not following Christianity and they're not following scripture. They've just turned Christianity into opium, a drug, just to make them feel better. That is my comment, and we're going to be talking about that, but first let me give you a proper introduction. Good morning everyone.

1:39 It is Monday, November fourth, twenty twenty four. It is currently nine twenty two am Central time, and I am coming to you live from the Theology Central Studio located right here in Abilene, Texas. Now, for some of you, you may not be familiar with opium, so let me play what opium is. Opium is a narcotic drug derived from the poppy plant that contains compounds such as more more coding morphine that can relieve pain and include feelings of relaxation and euphoria right when taken. It acts as it acts on the central nervous system to dull pain, create a sense of calm, and can lead to drowsiness and even sedation. All right, so let me read that again.

2:30 All right, this is very important, all right. Opium is a narcotic drug derived from the poppy plant that contains compounds such as morphine and coding that can relieve pain and induce feelings of relaxation and euphoria. When taken, it acts on the central nervous system to dull pain, create a sense of calm, and can lead to drowsiness and even sedation. Effects of opium on people pain relief, It reduces or blocks the sensation of pain, euphoria. It can produce a feeling of well being or mild happiness, sedation and relaxation. It can cause drowsiness, a calm feeling, and decreased stress dependency. With regular use, people can develop tolerance and physical dependence, leading to addiction. In essence, opium numbs physical and emotional pain and can create a temporary escape from reality, but it can also lead to dependency and serious health risk with prolonged use. That's opium, and I believe for many Christianity is nothing more than that. It's opium.

3:48 It gives a sense of pain relief, it gives a sense of euphoria. It sedates them to some level. But listen, this is very important. It numbs physical and emotional pain and can create a temporary escape from reality. Many people turn to Christianity they turn to church, they turn to scripture, and they really just want to escape reality. They don't want to face reality. So in a sense, they like, give me another hit of opium, I feel better. But in reality, they're not dealing with reality. They're escaping it. They don't want to face the truth. They don't even look to scripture to really face the truth of the text. They look to scripture to find a sense of peace, of calm, of being sedated, to bring them some sense of euphoria, some sense of pain, relief for their emotions, or their fear or their anxiety. Christianity is nothing more than opium. Now you're I know, you may be like that is crazy, that I completely disagree with this, but I'm going I'm going to start with that with my that's my basic HYPOTHESI is that Christianity is nothing more than opium for many people. And then we are going to see if I can demonstrate why I would say such a crazy thing. Now, obviously, when I say Christianity is the opium of the people or for the people, you know that I'm taking that phrase from someone else.

5:17 I'm taking it from a very very famous quote. The exact quote is from Karl Marx, who said religion is the opium of the people. The phrase appears in his work A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Here's the full context of his quote. All right, this is from eighteen forty four. I believe our Well, yeah, yeah, I believe it's eighteen forty four. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. Again, Karl Marx, the exact quote is, religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of a soul, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. Now, a lot of people will say, well, that's what Karl Marx said, it's ridiculous, it's crazy, it's and and just immediately reject it or say that's not true, and and he was so wrong, and Christianity is this, and typically it's if anyone gives the quote, they just immediately reject it and offer a counter argument. Well, I'm going to come along ago. I believe there's a little bit of truth to Karl Marx's quote. And I'm not forget religion. I'm going to focus in on Christianity. The Christianity is the opium of the people. You say, well,

6:50 how how can you say that? Well, buy almost any popular devotional work and read it. It's pure opium. Listen many sermons. It's pure opium. If you want to listen to sermons on Isaiah forty through fifty five, which we have been working on, and those sermons are nothing more than opium. They're just there to bring comfort, per se, to make you feel better, give you a sense of well being, a sense of hope, to remove your anxiety. But they don't want to actually, in any way, shape or form, deal with the actual words of the text. They're just offering people opium, and the people just sit there and go amen, Amen, Amen. Yeah, you're amening because you're getting shot up with opium and you feel great.

7:39 That's the issue. Now. Mark's statement that religion has the opium of the people reflects his view that religion functions as a tool of social control and a means of coping with suffering. For Marx, religion provided a kind of false comfort or escape for oppressed people living in difficult situations. And I believe that for many people, Christianity is nothing more than a false comfort and escape. And it becomes a false comfort and it becomes an escape when you take scripture to find your comfort when the comfort's not meant for you. We've talked about this, right, When is comfort not comfort? When does Christianity not provide comfort? Well, it clearly is not providing comfort when you go to scripture and you misapply, rip out a context, and you make it say something that it's not saying, and you're claiming promises they're not for you. You're just looking for some opium.

8:39 You're looking for a little bit of something to make you feel good. You're not actually worried or in any way, shape or form about the actual meaning of the text. See for Karl Marx, religion was a means of comfort and oppression. Marx believed that religion offered a sense of relief or comfort to people and oppressive, unjust societies. Just as opium was used in the nineteenth century to non pain and create a sense of escape, Mark saw religion as providing a similar psychological comfort for people enduring hardship or poverty. He argued that religion served to ease people suffering without addressing the underlying social and economic problems that caused it. Thus, religion could make difficult conditions feel more tolerable, but ultimately left those conditions unchallenged and unchanged. Well, I would say what religion does. Religion may make you feel make difficult conditions feel more tolerable, but in many cases it's making it feel more tolerable by people misapplying the religious texts to their own situation and finding some false comfort in it without looking at what the text actually says.

9:55 Marx also saw religion as a mechanism used by ruling classes to keep people submissive by offering promises of happiness or justice in the afterlife. Religion could encourage people to accept their hardships on earth without questioning the social or economic systems that cause their suffering. And Marx's view, religion kept people passive and docile, making them less likely to demand change or challenge systems of oppression. It created a focus on spiritual consolation rather than on material change or social justice. Well, I don't know about this control part, but I know this religion constantly offers you the supposed fix right, the comfort, the peace, to remove your anxiety.

10:36 And then what do you do? In a sense, you continue to go back and back and back and back. You buy the devotionals, you go to this, you read this, you listen to this, you listen to that, and so much of it is just pure opium. It's just false, it's fraudulent. It's not getting you to the real source and what it actually says. So, in that sense, is it controlling because you have to continue to go back? I don't know. I won't I won't make an argument about the control. I won't make an argument of how religion or Christianity in specifically speaking, is like opium. Marx believe that in an ideal society without class oppression or inequality, religion would eventually become unnecessary, and his view, when people are no longer oppressed, and when and when society is built on equality and justice, the need for religion as a coping mechanism would disappear. Religion, for Marx, was therefore a simp a symptomatic of a world that required transformation at a material level. All right, So he thought, hey, religion is going to keep us from actually fixing the problem.

11:41 Here's what I would say, this form of Christianity that is nothing more than an opium. What it does is it keeps people from the actual text. See, people who don't want to actually deal with the text then have this issue of Christianity as opium, and opium will keep people from the text, which then creates other problems. So I'm not gonna I don't agree obviously with everything Karl Marx is saying here, but there's an underlying principle that when it comes down to it, what do you think people actually want? Do you think people actually want truth? Do you think people actually want to understand the text? Or they just want a little bit of opium where they feel like they get a little bit of spirituality, a little bit of church, they got some nice little points and they feel better. They just want to feel.

12:31 They want comfort, they want peace, they want to escape. That's all they want. They want a little sense of spirituality to give themselves a sense of well being, a higher purpose, some type of meaning. Just Christianity has been selling itself basically as opium forever. I mean I talk about it all the time. To Christianity is like an infocommercial. Hey, you get Christianity. You get this, you get this, you get this, you get this, you get this, you get this, and the Bible is used as a means to sell it that way. Right, I look at this scripture, see see, this is about you. This is about you, This promise is for you. And what happens you never look at as Karl Marx would say, you don't look at the underlying causes, you don't want to fix the underlying issues. Well, I would say this just leads to a Christianity that nobody wants to actually look at the text, because if you actually look at the text, you may be like, oh, man, that was my opium. You just took my opium from me.

13:32 I'm sorry. And guess what Christians get really ticked off when you do that. Now, why am I saying all this about opium and Karl Marx? Why? Why? Why why am I starting this way? Well? I am starting this way because BBN Radio Bible Broadcasting Network, they air a devotional segment and tiered entitled Streams in the Desert. Streams in the Desert. It is a popular daily devotional written by lb Kalman co wm An lb Kwman and read by one of the BBN announcers. It was first published in nineteen twenty five. Miss Cawman's Miss Caleman, Stream in the Desert is a masterful compilation of inspirational writings from a variety of sources. She collected those works during the dark time in her life. Please note she put this together during a dark time in her life when her beloved husband was terminally ill. Her devotional has brought comfort and encouragement to millions of people around the world who also face difficult times. So she was going through a very painful situation. And I do not undermine that. I

15:03 do not minimize that, right I that is horrible. But here's the thing. When people are going through difficult times, painful times, tragic times, absolutely nightmarish times, if you turn to scripture, and if you turn to Christianity to find some peace and comfort, the danger is the peace and comfort you supposedly find is not real. It's your misapplying scripture and you're just looking for opium to make you feel better. Do you want comfort or do you want truth? Because the truth is it may not be that comfortable. Now. See, I'm going after a beloved devotional Streams in the Desert, Oh no, I'm going to offend people. I've already offended people by saying Christianity. In most cases it's just opium.

15:52 I've already offended who knows how many people. So what happened is, I don't know what time. It was three four, I don't know what time. Somewhere at some point I heard a to I guess it was today, maybe yesterday, I don't know. I heard the little segment for Streams in the Desert. I heard it, and as I was listening to it, I was like, well, this is an interesting devotional. It was about faith and holding onto a rope and anxiety and it was about all that type of stuff. I'm like, well, I could take this and I could probably use it and challenge people right a little bit. With this right, we could try to argue, whether we agree or disagree. It could be an interesting conversation.

16:40 So then I was like, okay, well let me see if I can find that particular entry and Streams of the Desert I've got to find I don't have a hard copy of the book. I'm like, let me look online. So I found the devotional for today, and I had nothing to do with what I heard on BBN. I don't know what which they were reading, but it was completely opposite. But what caught my attention was the entry for today was these words, are you ready? I'm gonna just read the scripture. It's based off based off of you ready, Here we go, Oh Zion, that bring us good tidings. Get thee up into the high mountain, Oh Jerusalem, that bring us good tidings. Lift up thy voice with strength, lift it up, Be not afraid say into the cities of Judah, behold your God. That's Isaiah chapter forty verse nine.

17:39 And as soon as I saw that it was Isaiah forty verse nine, I was like, You've got to be kidding me. Here's a devotional on Isaiah chapter forty verse nine. We've been working where we have been working on? I know we're way behind. We didn't get much done this weekend on Isaiah forty through fifty five. Why have I been doing so much work on Isaiah forty through fifty five? Why has that become such a big issue? Because I've become immediate, completely and totally distraught, frustrated, irritated, and want to just give up because of how the sermons handle Isaiah forty through fifty five. It's about you, it's about me. They insert us immediately into the text. It's about you. So when we were reading Isaiah forty verse one, comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God, They're like, hey, hey, that's for you, that's for me, and they and they just they take it and make it about us. And so basically like, hey, you've come to church today. You need some opium. You need to feel better. We need to ease that pain, we need to help you escape reality, we need to give you a sense of euphoria. Here we go, Here we go. I'm gonna give you your opium today, and we're gonna take it from Isaiah forty through fifty five. And I'm sick and tired of that because nobody wants to actually handle Isaiah forty through fifty five in any form of a historical textual context. It's not just to be taken and turned into opium. So you can make every when go home feeling better. Well, we already know that this famous devotional Streams in the Desert was written by someone who was going through a

19:09 horrible time to bring comfort. Well, how in the world is someone going through great difficulty going to go to Isaiah forty verse nine and find some comfort in that. How in the world are you going to do that, Oh Zion, that bring us good tidings, Get thee up in the high mountains O Jerusalem, that bring us good tidings. Lift up thy voice with strength, lift it up. Be not afraid say unto the cities of Judah, behold your God, not the cities of America, not you, not me, but them. It's about them. I don't know how many times I have to say that. So what happens. They take Isaiah forty and it becomes the opium for the people. Just like Karl Mark said, do you want to hear what Mss Cowman did with Isaiah forty nine and the famous devotional streams in the Desert? Do you want to would you like to see? Here we go? I'm gonna read direct exactly as it is found if you look up Streams in the Desert for today's entry, at least based on some websites. Again, I don't have a physical copy of the book. I don't know how it's broken down.

20:27 But if you have a physical copy of the book, you can look for yourself. But here we go. This is the quote, you who bring good tidings to Zion go up on a high mountain Isaiah forty verse nine. Then immediately under that we read these words. Toys and trinkets are easily one, but the greatest things are greatly bought. The top most place of power is always bought with blood. You may have the pinnacles if you have enough blood to pay. That is the conquest condition of the holy heights. Everywhere, the story of real heroisms is the story of sacrificial blood.

21:09 The cheapest value in life and character are not blown across our way by vagrant winds. Great souls have great sorrows. So it sounds like what I'm taking from this is if you want to be on the top, then there's gonna be pain, there's gonna be suffering, there's gonna be blood that's gonna have to be paid to get there, because great souls have great sorrows. If you want to be, if you want to have a great soul, you will experience great sorrow. Now immediately this is turning, This is not this is already already see it being shifted to about us. Then it says great truths are dearly bought.

21:51 The common truths such as men give and take front day today come in the common walk of easy life. Oh, got me read this again? Great truths are dearly bought, I should say, great truths are dearly bought. The common truths such as men give and take front day to day, come in the common walk of easy life, blown by the careless winds across our way. Great truths are greatly won, not found by chance, nor are rafted in the breath of summer dream, but grasp and great struggle of the soul, hard buffeting with adverse winds and steam or stream. But in the day of conflict, fear and grief, when the strong hand of God, put forth in the might, plows up the subsoil of the stagnant heart and brings the imprisoned truth seed to the light wrung from the troubled spirit and hard hours of weakness, solitude perchance of pain.

22:52 Truth springs like harvest from the well plowed field, and the soul fills it has not wept in vain the capacity for knowing God and largest as we are brought by Him and to circumstances which oblige us to exercise faith. So when difficulties beset our path. Let us thank God that he is taking trouble with us and lean hard upon him. Now that's poetic, that's wonderful. What have they got to do with Isaiah forty verse nine? What does any of them have to do with Isaiah verse forty nine? Basically saying, Hey, we go through suffering in this life, but hey, that's how we get the good things. That's how we get the great things. And the capacity of knowing God is enlarge when we are brought by Him into circumstances which oblige us to exercise faith. Now it turns about how we can know God greater when we're brought into difficulties. So difficulties are a means in which we can know God greater. It turns into so what is this trying to do and curry you? If you're going through a difficult time, Well, God brought you here so that well he can you can get the good things. No, I know, I kind of stammered through that poetic section, but I'd have to read it much slower, and I apologize for that, but you get the idea. The point is I stammered through it in some ways just to demonstrate what in the world I mean we could break

24:24 down each stanza. Right, great truths are dearly bought. Okay, so we have great truths, but how do we buy them? Well, it's gonna contrast the great truths with the common truths, such as men give and take front day to day. They come in the common walk of easy life, blown by the careless winds across our way. See. Hey, the common truths are just handed out here and there, and they just come. They just come across our path easily. You don't have to do anything for common truth. If you want great truth, something else is going to have to happen. Right, Oh, there's going to have to be suffering. There's gonna have to be pain, There's gonna have to be a price to be paid. Great truths are greatly won, not found by chance, nor wafted on the breath of summer dream, but grasp and the great struggle of the soul, hard buffeting with adverse winds and stream. But in the day of conflict, fear and grief, when the strong hand of God put forth in might, plows up the subsoil of the stagnant heart and brings the imprisoned truth seed to the light wrung from the troubled spirit and hard hours of weakness, solitude, perchance of pain. Truth springs like harvest from the well plowed filled and the soul fills it has not wept in vain. There is that much

25:56 better doing it with some form of trying to follow the rhythm of it. Right. If I read it that way, it works better. Okay, But the point is I can read it as poetically, I can read it as properly. I can read it with great emotion. I could read it with the right pacing. I can try to make you feel it. But it's all about emotion. It's all about Yes, I want the great truths. Yeah, people want the common truths, but I want the great truths. So if i God, if that means bringing me through suffering, if that means I have to pay, if I have to go through tragic times, then I get the great truths because the common truths are just handed out. They're easy, but take me through the difficult time. Because the capacity from knowing God enlarges as we are a brought by Him and to circumstances which oblige us to exercise faith.

26:45 Se is this is a way of trying to make you feel good and trying to trying to have some see some purpose, and your pain and suffering. That's how you can get the great truths. That's how your capacity to know God will be enlarged. This is all about making you feel better. What does any of that have to do with Isaiah forty verse nine. Literally, this is just a complete I don't know what this is. So then I'm like, well, maybe the devotional, even though it quotes a little bit from Debt, just part of verse nine, I don't even quote the whole thing. Maybe she was inspired by the totality of Isaiah chapter forty, so maybe we look at it from that perspective. Well, the devotional entry reflects a poetic meditation on suffering, sacrifice, and spiritual growth, drawing on the imagery of a hard, hard won truth and sacrificial effort to convey the value of enduring hardship in the pursuit of greater spiritual maturity. That's what the devotional really is about. Let me let me read this again.

28:07 It reflects a poetic meditation on suffering, sacrifice and spiritual growth, drawing on the imagery of hard won truths and sacrificial effort to convey the value of enduring hardship and the pursuit of greater spiritual maturity. Now, based on a historical, textual, cultural, and linguistic analysis of Isaiah forty, this entry does not directly align with the primary context and message of Isaiah forty and could be considered an in precise application of its themes. Streams in the Desert the beloved devotional for today's entry Isaiah forty verse nine, it is an in precise application of its themes. They're seeing it in a nice way. Let me say it in a much more blunt way. It's an absolute travesty what they're doing to Isaiah forty verse nine. And they're taking Isaiah forty nine, turning it into a little bit of opium to make you feel better when you go through difficult times. Now, if we analyze the devotional and line of Isaiah forty, well we're gonna look at some things. How about the historical and textual context of Isaiah forty. Isaiah forty opens a new section in the Book of Isaiah, goes from Isaiah forty to Isaiah fifty five. It speaks directly to Israel's future deliverance from Babylonian exile. This chapter begins with a message of comfort for a people who have suffered the consequences of their sins, and it emphasizes God's compassion, power,

29:40 and faithfulness. The tone and focus around God's redemptive action and his ability to renew and restore versus like Isaiah forty twenty eight through thirty one, emphasizes God's strength, his attentiveness to his people, and his power to renew the weary, underscoring God's strength rather than human endurance or sacrifice. Isaiah forty is not about It's not about our endurance or our sacrifice to get something. It's about God's strength. It's about God doing something. And not only that. It's not about you or me, It's about them. If we look at it from a cultural linguistic consideration, the language of Isaiah forty is designed to reinsure it uplift a downtrodden people.

30:26 Phrases like comfort, comfort my people, and the promises that those who wait for the Lord shill renew their strength focus on God's initiative and divine compassion rather than on human sacrifice or suffering as a prerequisite for God's blessing. So You can't go to Isaiah forty and go, hey, guys, if you really want the greater truths, if you really want to know God more, you need to go through suffering. Now, these people were going through suffering, not that they could learn more, but as a consequence of their sin. This is not designed to say, hey, if you really want to grow spiritually, you need to suffer. Then it would be like, Okay, here's what you need to do. If you really want to grow spiritually, you need to go sin and sin and sin until God sends you to Babylonian captivity. And when you come out, dun dun da duh, you're gonna know more. You're going to be more spiritual.

31:14 But was Israel truly more spiritual when they came out of captivity? Don't they initially have problems, Some people don't want to come back, and then when they come back they have to have profits sin to them to try to get them to go ahead and rebuild everything. Don't they still find themselves in apathy and complacency and spirit don't. And when you open up the New Testament, where's Israel? They're under the Hill of Rome, and a good portion their spiritual leaders are so blind they can't even recognize God himself when he shows up for the Israelite exiles. This shepter would have been heard as a promise of God's intervention, a reminder of his covenantal faithfulness, and an assurance that despite their current suffering, God himself would bring deliverance, not through their own efforts, but through His grace and power.

32:05 This is not about you paying you struggling, you know, This is about what God is going to do. The devotional speaks more to a personal sacrifice, enduring hardship, and the self driven pursuit of higher truths, emphasizing the idea that great, great souls grow through sorrow and that spiritual truths are wrung from the troubled spirit. However, in Isaiah chapter forty, it does acknowledge Israel's suffering, it does not frame the suffering as a primary path to spiritual growth. Instead, it emphasizes God's comforting, presence and renewal of strength as gifts given by God himself. The devotional focuses on a sacrifice and personal striving, and it misaligns with Isaiah's forty focus on God's mercy and power as the source of comfort and renewal miss aligns it. That's not even my words.

33:03 That's an analysis of the devotional. A lot of Isaiah forty, and the whole thing falls apart. Isaiah forty is rooted in a theocentric perspective focused on God's actions and character, where the devotional reflects an pacentic percentric view centered on human effort, struggle, and sacrifice. I want you to hear that again. The devotion the text is theocentric. It focuses on God's action and character. The devotional is anthro percentric which views which centers on human effort and struggle and sacrifice.

33:48 It's a complete misinterpretation, misapplication and misuse of Isaiah chapter forty. But you know how many people would read it and go, oh, I felt so encouraged today? Is it encouragement? Is it comfort? When it's an absolute and total travesty to the text. Once theocentric, the other one is anthropocentric, completely different, two different approaches. Theocentric is focused on God's actions and character. Anthropocentric is centered on human effort and struggle. Can you take a theocentric passage turn it into an anthropacentric devotional?

34:42 The hero of Isaiah forty is God himself, his strength, his compassion, his promise to restore it. In contrast, the devotional elevates human endurance and sacrifice, shifting the emphasis from God's work to personal resilience and self disco through hardship. This is an important distinction. Isaiah forty is about God's intervention and comfort for his people, not an invitation for people to achieve spiritual heights through suffering or sacrifice. The devotional can be seen as a misapplication of Isaiah forty.

35:23 It contains It may contain valuable reflections on suffering and personal growth, but these themes are not derived from Isaiah forty. This chapter is not about personal struggle as a meaning of spiritual growth, but rather about God's comfort, sovereignty of sustaining power offered freely to his people. Applying Isaiah forty to emphasize human sacrifice or self driven achievement overlooks the chapter's theological message or of divine comfort and renewal. This devotional approach risks diminishing the text focus on God's grace by making it appear as through spiritual achievement, it is a product of human effort rather than the gift of God's compassion. The devotional is a complete it just completely messed up. So that's just that's even And so that was even me attempting and looking for a way to justify it. So what I tried to do is that, well, maybe maybe I know it quotes Isaiah forty verse nine, that's not really Let's just pretend that she was influenced by the entire chapter. Even being influenced by the entire chapter, it completely flips it upside down. So then I thought, well, maybe if we narrow it to just Isaiah forty verse nine, maybe Isaiah forty verse nine by itself will be of some help, right, maybe it will be all right. So if the devotional is based on Isaiah forty nine, then it's focus on sacrifice, struggle, and heroic endurance is still misaligned with the primary meaning of the verse. Within its context, Isaiah forty nine is a call for Jerusalem to proclaim the good news of God's coming deliverance to the exiles,

36:56 an announcement of God's presence and power, not an emphasis on humans, sacrifice, or endurance. Isaiah forty nine from the ESV reads go up on a high mountain of Zion herald of good news. Lift up your voice with strength though Jerusalem, herald of good News. Lift it up. Fear not, say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God. So if we look at it within its historical and textual context, Isaiah forty begins a message of comfort to the exiles who would be taken to Babylon, promising that their period of judgment and suffering is ending and that God is coming to deliver them. Isaiah forty nine is a declaration Zion representing Jerusalem and Israel to proclaim the good news that God is returning to save his people. The verse emphasizes the announcement of God's presence Behold your God, as the ultimate source of comfort and hope. It's say, hey, guys, you've been suffering, You've been in pain. You may feel like God has abandon you, God has left you. But behold your God. God has not forsaken you. He has not left you. And this this is very much focused on the covenant God had made with a specific people within a specific historical setting. The Behold your God. The phrase behold your God directs the people's attention to God himself, highlighting his faithfulness and power to redeem them. It's a call to recognize that their deliverance is a work of God, not of human effort or Endurance has nothing to do

38:26 with their effort, has nothing to do with them, enduring has nothing to do with any It's God gave a specific time that they would suffer. That suffering has come to an end, and God himself is going to bring it to an end. Behold your God. God is going to be the one who does this. Isaiah forty verse nine employees the term herald of God all right, which carries the meaning of announcing or proclaiming important news, akin to the announcement of victory or deliverance. This announcement is not about human sacrifice or personal struggle, but about God's intervention. And the culture of ancient Israel, proclaiming the arrival of God's presence or the fulfillment of his promise would have been understood as an invitation to trust and rejoice, rather than a call to endure hardship for greatness is not about you enduring so that your capacity may grow, or that you may get the great truths. No, this is about hey, Hey, here's the good news. Behold your God He's coming to deliver you from your captivity. Now you can't just run and take that and make it about us. Now.

39:31 How does the devotional misalign Isaiah forty verse nine. Well, the devotional focuses on a sacrificial blood, personal heroism, and the struggle for greatness. It does not match the message of Isaiah forty verse nine, which is centered on God's strength and presence as a source of hope. While the devotional reflects valuable themes about spiritual growth through hardship, those themes are not derived from the intent of Isaiah chapter forty verse nine. It is an absolute travesty that these things exist within Christianity. And I'm telling you, I get sick and tired of This is how pastors approach text.

40:14 Isaiah forty nine is an invitation to witness and proclaim God's coming deliverance. It doesn't emphasize human achievement through struggle, but God's greatness as a deliverer of his people. The devotional entry shifts the focus away from God's initiative and compassion towards a self centered narrative. It shifts it from God's initiative and compassion, and it moves it towards a self centered narrative of heroic endurance, which can obscure the intended message of the passage. A more accurate approach to Isaiah forty nine would center on celebrating God's faithfulness and sovereignty. The passage encourages God's people to reclaim and trust in his power to save, rather than to focus on personal sacrifice or self driven growth, and the devotional application Isaiah forty nine could encourage believers to proclaim God's goodness, especially in times of trial, as a reminder that God's presence is with them and that He will ultimately deliver and sustain them. Now, I don't even know. I don't agree with that either, the devotional When we start trying to find devotional application to passages of scripture, we almost inevitably destroy the meaning of the text. This is not a reminder of God's presence with me. It's not a guy a reminder of God's ultimate deliverance of me and that God will sustain me. This is about them. Now. If we want to try to pull it over, we have to be very very careful, But we cannot just destroy the ultimate meaning of the text. Now, Christianity is the

41:55 opium of the people. That's how I started. We looked at Karl Marx's face quote. We try to interpret it how he would have interpreted it. The reason I use that Christianity's the opium of the people is because of streams and the desert. A famous devotional. The entry for that devotional today is Isaiah chapter forty, verse nine. We looked at how the devotional destroys the actual meaning of the text and actually turns it, flips it on its head, and makes it into something opposite than what the text is actually about. Now, I'm going to then try to demonstrate how this misinterpretation of Isaiah forty for comfort aligns with Karl Marx's critique that religion is the opium of the people. All right, So I'm going to show how the misinterpreting of scripture right over and over and over, especially through Isaiah forty through fifty five, aligned with what Karl Marx critiqued religion about in the first place. For example, comfort without addressing root issues. Marx viewed religion as numbing the pain of suffering without addressing its root causes, and a similar effect can happen when preachers misinterpret scripture to provide superficial comfort. It te if teachers consistently offered misapplied comfort without acknowledging why suffering exists, the complex realities of life,

43:27 or the true hope God offers. It can feel like spiritual basically, you know, you're just getting a spiritual drug. You're just getting a spiritual drug. You just kind of a sense of being put to sleep. It's soothing, but without any substance. This approach risks making faith a kind of an emotional pacifier rather than a transformative truth that with God's purpose and suffering and his promises, grounded and scriptural truth. So when you give comfort where there is no comfort, you're just kind of like giving them opium.

44:10 You're giving them a drug. You're just giving them a pacifier. You're just giving them a anesthesia. That's the way you just you're just trying to help them go to sleep and feel a little bit better. But you know you're underlying not only you're not addressing root issues, you're not addressing the actual text. The text isn't like you just open up the Bible and like, ooh, this is this is all the material I need for my good drug lab. Here and I'm gonna cook up some good drugs, whether it's meth opium, whatever it may be. And then on Sunday, I'm gonna give it to all the people, and they're all gonna leave going, Oh, that was a beautiful passive, a beautiful message. Pastor. Yeah, because you got a little bit of opium, you feel better, But you stayed a million miles away from what the text was actually about so far in all the sermons that we have reviewed.

44:56 In fact, I've got a sermon right here, I got a sermon right here, ready to go on Isaiah forty. It's called God's Comfort for the Weary. Maybe you can tell from that title what they're going to do. They're gonna make Isaiah forty through fifty five about you and me. So the first problem is, it's the first problem here. I can go back down to my notes here. If I can get back to where my notes start here, I'm sorry, where did my notes go? All? Right? Hang on? Yeah, So we have comfort without addressing root issues as we've never seen. Number two, it's encouraging that overlooks biblical context and purpose, misapplying verses to comfort people in a generic or human centered way. Ignores the context and intent of scriptures.

46:11 Isaiah forty nine focuses on proclaiming God's greatness and presence as the true source of hope, not enduring personal struggles as a path to greatness. When passages meant to highlight God's character or proclaim his actions are instead twisted to focus on personal resilience and sentimental comfort, it shifts the focus from God's promise to human experience. This risk turning faith into self soothing rather than authentic relationship with God, who is both comforter and redeemer. But I would state it differently. If you take Isaiah forty verse nine, which is about proclaiming a very comforting message to the people in that situation, you walk into that situation, slap them in the face, take it and go run off with it.

46:51 Then you're taking comfort mint for someone else and you're trying to apply it to yourself. Is there some possible application. We may be able to find that, But my issue now is and I'm tired of trying to focus on application for us when everyone forgets what it originally means, not only that it creates a passive response to suffering. Misinterpreted comfort can encourage a passive approach to suffering, where people are taught to accept hardship without seeking understanding of God's purpose or how to respond in faith in action. Karl Mark's critique suggests that religion, when used this way, keeps people docile and accepting of their condition without encouraging them to engage with I think reality. We got to be able to face reality. It's not an oh. Christianity should not be an opium that just makes us disengage with reality and we live in some fairy tale. We have to be able to go No, there's pain, there's suffering, and we have to be able to struggle with that.

48:01 How about superficial comfort versus true hope in God. When preachers offer comfort disconnected from scriptural truth, they reinforce a kind of surface level hope that doesn't anchor people in God's promise or help them understanding his faithfulness and sovereignty. This can make faith feel like a quick fix for emotional pain rather than a deep relationship with God who addresses both suffering and redemption. True scripture comfort is meant to be deep and rooted, grounded in the reality who God is. It's got to be grounded in reality. It can't be this superficial opium that just gives you a sense of thing. And I think this is why some kinds that kind of preaching. Look, I don't know why anyone is drawn to it. Maybe there's a brief moment where you feel like, Okay, this is great. But I think the longer you live and the more suffering you endure, you start realizing this is just garbage. This is junk medicine, this is a this is just a drug. In the church is nothing more than a drug house. True biblical comfort does not evade reality. Rather, it addresses suffering honestly and engages with God's promises. It helps believers find comfort in the assurance of God's presence, purpose, and faithfulness, which is rooted in the text. The Biblical comfort is not designed to dull pain superficially. It recognizes the brokenness of the world, but points to God's active work of restoration and encourages believers to find their strength in Him. When

49:33 teachers misinterpret scripture and offer a shallow comfort, it can indeed resemble Karl Marx's critique of religion as a means to pacify rather than to do anything else. True biblical comfort is not escapist. It is anchored in God's reality. Authentic teaching calls people to understand and engage with God's redemptive purpose, even in suffering, offering a hope that transcends circumstances rather than a superficial coping mechanism. One devotional for today takes Isaiah forty nine and literally destroys any meaning of the text. And it's this devotional mindset that infects small groups, it infects churches, it infects devotional material, it infects Bible studies where nobody actually can get to the text because everyone's, you know, in a sense, laying on the floor, you know, you know, stoned out of their minds because they keep getting all these injections or shots or however you want to get the drug inside of you.

50:56 They're getting their hit of opium, they're getting their hit of meth. You just the drug. And then they're like, oh, look at that. Yeah, because you didn't get anywhere near the actual text. Look at the sermons we've already listened to in Isaiah forty through fifty five. They've been complete travesties to what they've done to the text. Now I know we went through that relatively quick. I know it's been fifty almost fifty two minutes. I think I may have messed up. I think I said morphine. I could sit here and go through all the things. I probably messed up in this approach through this. No, not making any excuses for those who don't know. Yeah, Saturday night had some seizures, and so I'm still not one hundred percent.

51:47 So working through that was man who that was? That was tough going, that was that was struggling was I was struggling through all of that, right, So I think at the beginning morphine. I think I said morphine, right, I think I think I think I may have said it incorrectly at the beginning, but morphine, codeine, Okay, I think I got those correctly. And I think was it theocentric versus what was the other thing? When I read the poetry part of the devotional the first time, three was a that was all. I was just blowing past punctuation. I was not doing it in rhythm. I was not following the way the poetry was designed to be read.

52:28 Then I went back and read it a second time, and I think I did that a little bit better. And I think I said, you know, where was my other mess up? I'm going through the mess ups I kept in my head. Theocentric I got that right. Anthro percentric. Yeah, I think I was saying that correctly. A N t h R O P O C E N t R I c anthrow percentric. Okay, So theocentric and anthropercentric. I think that's very important. Theocentric anthro percentric. If a pastor is preaching a text that's theocentric and they make it anthropercentric, which means it becomes about human effort, human struggle, human sacrifice.

53:10 That's the probably when you read a devotional that takes a passage of scripture and streams in the desert on Isaiah forty takes a passage that's theocentric and makes it anthropercentric, that's not good. I think I did halfway okay there, So we'll see. We'll see when I go back and listen, I'll probably want to do I probably want to delete some of this, but that will make me very upset because I think the point here is of I think as a rather, I think the point I'm trying to make is very profound. I may not be making it in a profound way, but I'm trying to make a very profound point. Enough is enough with this. Look, we're nowhere near finished going through Isaiah forty through fifty five.

54:02 We've only basically done an introduction, but we've been reviewing sermons and reviewing the sermons on Isaiah forty through fifty five. So far has I mean if look, I mean I'm ready to just already give up because sermon after sermon after sermon, that's what they do with Isaiah forty and this devotion is just another example of it. There. At some point you got to say, look, what is this text about? We've got to stop making the text about us. I've been saying it. I'm gonna say it over and over again. We've got to stop being narcissistic textual hijackers. We want to make it about us. We find a text of scripture, we hijacket and we fly it wherever we want it to go. I know how people say, but whole scripture is given by inspiration of God. It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for all scripture is valuable. I'm not gonna deny that. But first and foremost, it's got to mean something in its original context.

54:58 What we take from it has to remain true to the original context. We can't just so disengage it from the original context so that we can make it about us. Isaiah forty through fifty five is about them, not about you and me. What we can take from it, we have to be very careful how we use it, and we got to make sure that we can clearly show that we are not violating its original purpose and meaning. But preaching is so much of that. It's just it just takes text and does whatever they want with it.

55:40 And it's amazing how many Christians love that stuff. They eat it up. And I think it comes down to this question, and I think it's something you really have to ask yourself. What do you truly want from Christianity? Do you just want comfort? Do you want a sense of purpose? Do you want a sense of peace? Do you want it to ease your anxiety, ease your word, ease your fear? Or do you want truth? Do you want Bible study that just makes you feel better and encourages you, or do you want Bible study that says, here's what the text means, and you may leave with I don't yeah, okay, I don't necessarily feel better. I don't feel I don't know what I feel. But that's what the text was about. Do you want preaching? It's all about trying it. That makes it about you, you you, you you, instead of making it about the text. Isaiah forty nine is what in the world. I mean, It literally identifies who it's talking to and about. I mean, I mean, if we can't handle those kinds of texts that are that clear, we'll continue to work on Isaiah forty through fifty five. But I guess what I'm trying to demonstrate is it doesn't matter what year I turn to.

57:07 It doesn't matter if I turn to a modern sermon, doesn't matter. If I'm looking at devotional material from the eighteen hundreds nineteen hundreds, doesn't matter. It's the same thing over and over and over. Because human beings, at our very nature are narcissistic and we want to make it all about us. I've said it a million times. God created us in his image, and we have returned the favor. It's not a quote from me, it's a quote from I think Voltaire. I think I think you'd have to verify who the quote actually is from, but it's just very true. God created us in his image, and we return the favor. We just recreate him in our image. We take the Bible and make it about us. How in the world do you have a devotional Isaiah forty nine and turn it into what they turned it into, this poetic explanation about suffering and enduring so that you can get greater truth and suffering enduring is the way to spiritual growth. Isaiah forty is nothing about any of that.

58:01 That's not what it's about. It's a forget. It's just a complete flipping the text on its head. But it sounds good, it sounds spiritual, and people who read it going through a difficult time may find great comfort in it, finding great comfort, and that which miss applies scripture is then a fraudulent comfort. All right, I will find no comfort in this episode because I don't know how well I think it came across. Not great, but we'll see, we'll see. I don't want to it's fifty eight minutes.

58:42 I don't necessarily want to record it all again. So maybe I'll find ways to use part of this somewhere else so that I can you know, I'll use this that you what you listen to with fifty eight minutes of my own, just my own prep for using it some somewhere else. So maybe it'll show up somewhere else in a much more, a better articulated, much better you know, clearer. So but for now, that's good, all right. And my neighbor's dog is now driving me crazy, so all right, we'll stop there. Thanks for listening, everyone, have a great day. God bless