Please stand for the public reading of God's word. Our New Testament lesson comes from Paul's first epistle to Timothy, chapter four. We'll begin reading in verse one. Now the spirit expressly says that in the latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. This is the word of the Lord. Let's turn now to our Old Testament lesson. and that is Genesis chapter four. We read this entire section in previous weeks. We'll be circling back to verses 19 to 22 of Genesis four. And Lamech took for himself two wives. The name of one was Ada, and the name of the second was Zillah. And Ada bore Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the harp and flute. And as for Zillah, she also bore Tubalcain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron. And the sister of Tubalcain was Nehemiah. May the Lord bless the reading and proclamation of his holy word. Amen. You may be seated. There is a conflict between our text, which describes the very early advent of advanced technology and art, with a narrative that's been proposed by Darwinian evolutionists. If you study Darwinian evolution, they will tell you that history is a long, slow march of progress, moving from molecules to man, from that which is rough to that which is smooth, from the simple to the complex, from the primitive to the civilized. And this evolutionary account of the slow progress of civilization is reinforced in pop culture by such things as Geico caveman commercials. They want to tell you that early man was primitive, uncouth, uncivilized. No technology of any kind that we could really relate to. Now, besides coming into conflict with what we just read in these verses, of metallurgy, of agriculture, and of music, does this secular myth correspond to the evidence that we have? I want to share with you an example to the contrary. In 2008, during an excavation of the Denisova Cave in Siberia, research scientists found something they did not expect, based on their evolutionary assumptions. They found, in addition to a ring carved out of marble, a beautiful green bracelet made of polished chloride stone. In the words of one of the researchers, they said, the bracelet is stunning. In bright sunlight, it reflects the sun's rays. And at night, by the fire, it casts a deep shade of green. Now, they dated this artifact to 40,000 years ago. which we would say and contend it's no more than 6,000 years old, but be that as it may, everyone agrees this bracelet in Siberia is remarkably ancient. It represents the earliest examples of human jewelry that we know of. Now here's where things get interesting. I'm going to quote again. What made the discovery especially striking was that the manufacturing technology is more common to a much later period. Indeed, it is not clear yet how the Denisovans could have made the bracelet with such skill. For example, according to one scholar, near one of the cracks was a drilled hole with a diameter of about 0.8 centimeters. Studying them, scientists found out that the speed of rotation of the drill was rather high, fluctuations minimal, technology that is common for much more recent times. The quote continues, the ancient master who made this green chloride bracelet was skilled in techniques previously considered not characteristic for the Paleolithic era, such as easel speed drilling, boring tool type rasp, grinding and polishing with leather and skins of varying degrees of tanning. In other words, On the assumption of Darwinian evolution, this green bracelet should not exist. The technology needed to produce it is simply too advanced. It's not consistent with evolutionary theories. That's just one example, but congregation of the Lord Jesus. This bracelet is consistent with the Genesis account. It's consistent with what we read in Genesis 4, 19 through 22, where we find the ancient development of art and technology. Last week, we looked at the beginning of the city of man, marked by worldly success, including city building, culture making, succession planning, and this morning I want us to focus on this first recorded example of culture making. Genesis 4, 19-22, we could call the cradle of civilization. I wanna explore this theme by asking four questions of our passage, four questions. First, what is culture? Second, where did culture come from? Third, how does the fall affect culture? And fourth, how should we as Christians relate to human culture? First, what is culture? Now here we find three illustrations of culture in our text. We read them, I'll read them again. Verse 20, it says, of Jabal, he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. Then it says of Jubal, he was the father of all those who play the harp and the flute. And then in verse 22, we have Tubalcain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron. Three examples of culture making. Agriculture, music, and metallurgy. And I don't believe this is an exhaustive list of all that man did in those early days, but an indicative list of the kinds of cultural achievements that Cain's line produced, especially in the realms of arts and technology. Those are the examples, but from that, what is culture? How can we define it? There's different ways to do this. We could talk about culture as nature transformed, nature glorified, as Tubal came, perhaps took iron ore and turned it into steel, or produced a kind of early tool, and from that tool was able to sculpt something. You take the raw materials of nature in God's world and you transform them. You glorify them into culture. Another way of talking about culture, a famous definition by Henry Van Til is, culture is religion externalized. Culture is where human beings take their immaterial convictions and give it material form. This would have affected Kane's sons, the lyrics, the melody of their songs, the shape of their statues. These were not neutral cultural artifacts. They were infused with religious significance value and meaning of building on that definition. Another person has said culture is religion poured over ethnicity expressed in a particular place over generations. In other words, we talk about culture. It is a many splendored thing. It's a set of shared values and characteristics including religion, ethnicity, geography, history, language, custom, food, drink, art, technology, literature, music, and even form of government. This includes subcultures. You've got the Yiddish in New York. You've got jazz in New Orleans. Gullah in the South Carolina low country. Everything from Shakespeare to shrimp and grits, it's all culture. And even if you're struggling to define it, we all can describe it. You know it when you see it, hear it, touch it, smell it, taste it. It's culture. And here in our passage, we find an early example of such culture. Well, that's what culture is. Where did it come from? Where did it come from? Are we going to go with evolutionary, atheistic, Darwinian science that tells us not only that it's much, much older in Earth than the Bible represents, but that culture developed much, much later in human history? Or do we go to the Bible? Because when we go to the Bible, we see that agriculture comes from Jabal, music from Jubal, metallurgy from Tubalcain, and although This is the first recorded instance of culture making. Congregation, the stage was set. The seeds were sown even earlier than that because the cultural mandate or the dominion mandate was given by God before the fall in Genesis 1, verse 28, where we read, Then God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. This cultural mandate was given by God, taken up by Cain, but originally given by God. Culture-making is as old as human history. Whereas the Darwinian evolutionists tell a secular myth of slow progress, Genesis 4 records the early development of art and technology, which is what we would expect, because what do we have here? We have intelligent people. not primordial apes, but intelligent image bearers of God with remarkably long lifespans, who within those lifespans can have compounding interest of discovery, development, and learning. And so right off the bat, immediately on the scene, we find advanced expressions of art and technology. And here, modern people are often guilty of what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. It's a great term, chronological snobbery. It's the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited. In other words, congregation, every generation is susceptible to this. You think that you're smarter. than your grandparents. You think that you're more developed and advanced than people who lived in the past, and so we tend to prejudice the past in favor of the present and the future, and we almost look askance at anything that came before us, that we've arrived in our own generation. This is chronological snobbery, and it not only contradicts the Bible, which has a high regard for human development early on in human history, but it actually blinds us to the evidence. We assume certain things are impossible. Think of those researchers in Siberia who, when they discovered the Denisovan bracelet with a bored hole using drilling techniques they didn't think were possible, they had to revise what they thought. Let me suggest another example. This is a little bit later in human history, but the Antikythera Mechanism. And here, I'm taking this not from Answers in Genesis or another creation science ministry. This comes from the BBC. In 1901, Spanish divers excavated a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea. And they found, among other things, like statues and coins, a mysterious corroded lump of bronze metal, the size of a dictionary, but severed into 82 different fragments. And at first, they weren't really sure what it was. Again, this is over 2,000 years old. It's very ancient, very old. It looks like a corroded lump of metal. And as they continued to look, They found something remarkable because inside there were gears. There were gear shifts. bronze gear wheels, precision gears with teeth only about a millimeter long. Not only that, but as I kept looking, there were thousands of Greek characters on this device. And then using x-ray technology, scientists finally figured out the mystery of the Antikythera Mechanism. It was an advanced calculating machine. It's the earliest known human computer. Apparently, the ancient Greeks designed it to calculate the cycles of the cosmos, including the relative position of the sun, the moon, against the stars. It could tell you what position the moon would be 10 years from the present. It could literally predict the future, including solar eclipses. As science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke suggested, if the ancient Greeks had understood the capabilities of the technology they'd created, then they would have reached the moon within 300 years. Now the important thing about the Antikythera Mechanism, besides just being a marvel of human ingenuity, is the admission of a secular scientist, Tony Freit at the University College London. Here's what he said. It brought back the history of technology to a much earlier time. We've had to rethink the history of technology completely as a result of this single object. The assumption was people at this point in history weren't capable of producing this type of culture. And really, they would have been on the right track if they'd gone, first of all, to the Bible and seen that the Bible records an accurate, faithful, truthful account of human history, including early advanced culture, technology, and art. I say all of this to confirm the authenticity of our text. The Bible leads us to expect to find such things. And this is just a side note, but from what I can tell, there are possibly thousands of shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea that we don't even know about. Who knows what marvels we might discover in the years to come, which will provide even more confirmation of what the Bible has already told us is true. We find culture from the beginning. That's where it comes from. Third question. Not just what is culture, where did it come from, the basis of this text, but how does the fall of man affect culture? It's one thing to think about God giving Adam and Eve the dominion mandate to subdue the earth and to make culture and technology and civilization prior to the fall, but then sin came in. In a state of sin and misery, how does that affect the way we produce culture? And congregation, the answer is the fall of man affects everything. It affects everything. It doesn't obliterate the image of God and man. We're still image bearers, however marred. But it affects everything, including cultural developments. And we see that, for instance, in this passage. We'll see it later on with the Tower of Babel, as technology and art and culture are produced, but not for the glory of God. They're produced on behalf of the city of man. Culture here emerges from the line of Cain. And I think the best way to make sense of, we have the image of God, we have cultural mandate in Genesis 1, but then we have this cataclysmic fall in Genesis 3. I think the best way to make sense of this is to keep two truths in mind, two truths. The first is the antithesis between belief and unbelief. the conflict, the war between belief and unbelief, that culture, as I said before, is somebody's religion externalized. There are two religions, those who worship God and those who worship idols. There are two seeds, the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. There are two lines in this passage, the line of Cain and the line of Seth. There are two city-building projects, the city of man and the city of God. There is a culture war. There is a culture clash. There is a cultural collision. And we would be naive if we didn't take that antithesis seriously. There's also a complementary truth, and that is the reality of common grace. God caused it to rain on the just and the unjust. Even though we are sinners, we're still made in the image of God. There is the light of nature in man. Even unbelievers have a conscience. They know something of right and wrong. And so we see both the line of Cain and the line of Seth producing culture. We've looked at Cain's line, but as we keep reading the Bible, Noah built an ark. Oholiab and Bezalel built the tabernacle. David played the harp and composed poetry. Solomon built cities. Although the manner, the motivation, and the content may differ at times, there's also striking similarities between, for instance, the artistic and technological endeavors of the unbelieving world and that of Christians. So to understand this, keep these two things together. Antithesis. between belief and unbelief, but also the reality of common grace. Fourth and final question, just for review, we've looked at what culture is, where it comes from, and how the fall affects it. But I want to end on a very practical note, and that is, how should you relate to human culture? How should you relate to human culture? For instance, I've heard this question before. Should Christians seek to transform culture? Should we try to redeem culture, sanctify culture, engage culture? Should the church seek to be culturally relevant? Schleiermacher, the liberal Protestant theologian, said that he was trying to make Christianity palatable to its cultural despisers. Well, all of these questions are timely and timeless of how Christians relate to the world, how to be in the world but not of the world. One famous answer to these questions was given by H. Richard Niebuhr in his 1951 book, Christ and Culture, in which he gives the following taxonomy. He talks about Christ against culture. Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and then Christ the transformer of culture. And however helpful those categories might be, I want to take a little bit of a different approach this morning. As we think about how does the line of Seth relate to the work of the line of Cain? How do Christians think about culture? I want to do this I want to do this in a somewhat roundabout way, by giving you four applications. Four applications, and I hope that there'll be an emerging vision of Christian cultural engagement, how you should relate to culture. Four things. First, things to reject. Second, things to beware. Third, things to avoid. And fourth, things to do. And if you heard those correctly, it sounds a little bit negative. The first three are negative, but I think that actually reflects the tone of this text. This tone is not just about culture simpliciter, this is about culture coming from the line of Cain. So let's close with these four applications. First, things to reject. Things to reject. Congregation, we need to reject cultural relativism. Cultural relativism. This is the idea that all cultures are equal. that it's not right for one culture to judge another culture. And against this, I would say, first of all, no one believes this. Not even cultural relativists who hate Western civilization are trying to pull it down. More than that, we believe as Christians that there are objective standards of truth, goodness, and beauty, which means there is a standard by which to judge cultures. Overall, some cultures are superior than others, especially those cultures influenced by Christianity in general and by Protestant Christianity in particular. More than that, we can say that If you look out at the different cultures in the world, every culture has its own strengths and weaknesses. That's why Paul could look at Cretan culture and say all Cretans are liars. That Cretan culture was marked by deception in a way that other pagan cultures were not, at least not to that degree. We might even see that there are particularly good German engineers and famous French cooking. Every culture has its own strengths and weaknesses, and it's not malicious. or vainglorious to notice these things and to evaluate various cultures, including our own, according to the objective standard of God's word. We must reject cultural relativism. After all, culture is religion externalized. Also, we need to reject multiculturalism. at least as it's presented to us by our secular elites today. Multiculturalism is the idea that cultural diversity and religious pluralism should be sought for their own sake, as ends in themselves. And in practice, this is almost always asymmetrical, according to to Paul Gottfried, multiculturalism is when the state glorifies differences in the way of life associated with the once majority population. It hands out rewards to those who personify the desired differences while taking away cultural recognition and even political rights from those who do not. Multiculturalism means privileging outside cultures at the expense of the native culture. As a result, as one person has put it, Western man has become his own in-group's out-group. He privileges outside cultures at the expense of his own. Against multiculturalism, it is proper to defend and preserve your own cultural heritage, your own way of life, especially when it aligns with Christian truth. So there's some things that we need to reject. Some idols of our age. Cultural relativism is an idol. It needs to come down. Multiculturalism is an idol. It's a golden calf. It needs to come down. Second, some things to beware. Things to beware. Beware passive consumption of pagan culture. This applies to every one of us, but I want to especially apply it to our young people in the congregation, our covenant youth, who are growing up with all sorts of baubles and things at their disposal through technology, where they're just surrounded by pop culture and pagan culture, and we need to beware the passive consumption of pagan culture. We need to realize that some things that are out there today need to be outright rejected. Others need to be enjoyed selectively and in moderation. But if we take the antithesis seriously, then we should be somewhat suspicious of culture produced by pagans. Whether it's at the local movie theater, or the local art gallery, or wherever, there should be a proper note of suspicion. As one wit put it, grateful suspicion, or suspicious gratitude. Gratitude for the good things of culture, but also suspicion that it might very well be embedded with pagan values. And so I want to encourage you, as a matter of wisdom, Not passively consuming, but actively discerning what you see, what you read, what you hear. Think about that, especially young people. Think about that the next time you mindlessly watch a Netflix show or download popular music or jump from app to app on your iPhone. In what ways are technology and culture shaping you into the mold of the world rather than you being transformed by the renewing of your minds? Beware this possibility. Beware naive attempts to Christianize pagan forms of culture, especially popular ones. I'll hear people blithely say, I'm going to redeem, I'm going to Christianize all genres of music, including ones which by their inception are dedicated to perverse values. I'm going to Christianize, I'm going to redeem all styles of fashion, even those which are, by its very design and intent, meant to be provocative, alluring, seductive, inappropriate. We need to beware naive attempts of saying, I'm going to simply Christianize every genre, every style. It underestimates the antithesis. Again, there's two seeds, two religions. There's a cultural war going on. The medium is the message. The how is often the what. And practically, it's often hard to abstract a cultural product from the worldview of its cultural producer. Let's not be naive about this. We also need to realize that sometimes people say they want to redeem a specific genre, but realize there's also broad areas of cultural activity. For instance, Christians making good music, making good Christian folk music, for instance, or whatever, that's different than saying we're going to try to produce a specific genre of music that's basically been co-opted by the world. We need to be wise about this and not foolish. foolish, distinguish music in general from specific genres and sub-genres. Distinguish clothing in general from specific styles. Distinguish art in general from specific schools of thought. Although there may very well be similarities, the manner, the motivation, the content needs to be shaped by a Christian worldview. Let's not be immature. Let's not be naive. Let's make the proper distinctions, rejecting that which is wicked, the idols of our age, but also being careful not to think that we can passively consume things without them shaping us, that we can blithely attempt to Christianize something that is at direct odds with the word of God. Third application, some things to avoid. I wanna encourage you to avoid the language of transforming or redeeming culture. And the reason I say this, it's very popular today, even in Christian worldview courses, but I'm concerned that this is misleading language. We talk about Christians trying to redeem or transform culture. My fear as a pastor is that we can lose sight of who is the redeemer. Who is the only Redeemer of God's elect? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. God is the one who transforms. God is the one who redeems. At best, we are instruments in the Redeemer's hands. He is God and we are not. He is the Savior and we are not. We are instruments. We are agents. He is the Redeemer. He is the Transformer. Also, one of my concerns with this language is we lose sight of the fact that what is the focus of redemption? We can almost, even as we try to have a good Christian worldview that's robust and holistic, one concern that I have is we can start to shift our focus and make redemption all about politics, cultural engagements, education, all good things, but congregation, what is the story of the Bible all about? What is the drama of the scripture all about? What is the focus? It is the redemption, not of culture, the salvation of a people. What does God say to Abraham? And you, all the families of the earth, shall be blessed. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. Of course, cultural institutions can be Christianized. Grace perfects nature. We know from the book of Revelation, the cosmos will be renewed, all things made new, including new heavens and a new earth. The kings will bring in their glory and their honor. into the gates of the new Jerusalem. But let us not lose sight of the fact that the focus of redemption is on people with immortal souls whose bodies will be raised incorruptible. That's to keep our eyes on the ball. You can come in here and talk about Christian worldview and culture, but at the end of the day, where will you spend eternity? Where will you spend forever? Will you spend forever in a place of torment called hell, in separation from the comfortable presence of God because of your unbelief, or by the sheer grace of God, by trusting in Jesus Christ alone, will you live forever in a new heavens and a new earth with an immortal soul and a body raised incorruptible with the saints and the angels and Emmanuel, all the glory, In Emmanuel's land, the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, where is our focus? Where is our priority? For these reasons, I would encourage you to avoid at least the unqualified language of transforming or redeeming culture. Remember that redemption is primarily about the salvation of a people by God himself. Fourth and finally, again, lots of negatives here, things to reject, things to beware, things to avoid, but I want to end on a positive note. with things to do, two things to do in particular. First, this will be review from last week, but subordinate earthly culture to heavenly worship. Culture, when it's done according to the Bible, for the glory of God, in love to our neighbors, is a wonderful thing. It's a beautiful thing. Christians should make great artists, politicians, tech, savvy, computer programmers, all of the above. But congregation, we need to remember to subordinate earthly culture to heavenly worship. And we even get a clue of that in our text. Although, there was common grace in Cain's line. It is instructive that culture arose among the wicked. Although there was cultural activity in Seth's line, it is instructive that the only thing mentioned in verse 25 and verse 26 of this chapter, when it comes to Seth's line, is that this is when men began to call upon the name of the Lord. That what marked the city of God and the line of Seth was prayer, was worship, was the glory of God, Even before the fall, we know from the book of Genesis, chapter one and two, that the lower is meant to serve the higher. Culture serves religion. The kingly serves the priestly. The secular serves the sacred. Adam worked six days of good, hard toil, but on the seventh day, it was set apart for worship. The climax of his week was worship, when he offered all of himself to God. Sabbath rest. Adam was destined to move from natural to spiritual, from earthly to heavenly, from dust to glory, and therefore he was called to subordinate earthly culture to heavenly worship. You should love your vocation, your calling in the world. You should pour yourself out in service throughout the week, but remember that your chief act of covenant service to God is worship with his people on his day, the highlight of our week. Let's have the proper priority. But with that in mind, A second thing you should do, and that is to dedicate your cultural labors to the glory of God. Dedicate your cultural labors to the glory of God. Although we may and should distinguish between the narrowly sacred and secular, as a Christian, everything you do should be unto the Lord. Whether you eat or you drink, or you do metallurgy, or you farm, or you practice law, or you produce music or art, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Cultural activities are not neutral. They always have a religious orientation, the manner in which you do it, the content of the product, the goal, the motivation, the purpose. It's all directed to God. I think instead of talking about Christians redeeming or transforming culture, we have a better paradigm in 1 Timothy 4, which we read a bit earlier, where Paul, speaking of those who depart from the faith, says, he says this, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth, For every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. Here we find an emphasis not so much on Christian transformation of culture as dedication of our cultural labors to the Lord. And we have a great example of this. How can we dedicate our cultural works to the Lord? This is a special case, but on the Lord's table. They find bread and wine. What are bread and wine? These are the fruits of man's cultural labor. The bread made from flour and other ingredients produced over time to make bread. The wine that has to undergo a fermentation process. These are fruits of man's cultural activity in the world, but here at the table they have been dedicated and set apart in an even more special way than common life. They are dedicated here to be pictures of spiritual realities. The bread points us to the body of Christ. The wine points us to the blood of Christ, set apart, dedicated to the glory of God. This points us to the last day, where we read through the eyes of John, The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated, the Lamb is its light, and the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day, there shall be no night there, and they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. That's how we should relate to culture fundamentally. The glory of kings dedicated to the glory of God. Singing with the seraphim, holy, holy, holy, the whole earth is full of your glory. Amen.