In the sermon 'Evangelizing Hindus Part 3', Ash Noah addresses the challenges of witnessing to Hindus by comparing Christian and Hindu worldviews. He emphasizes the spiritual warfare Christians engage in, using the metaphor of pulling down strongholds to describe the need for truth to shine in the darkness of false religions. Noah discusses the pervasive influence of Hindu metaphysics and mysticism, noting how these philosophies have subtly integrated into Western culture, often through practices like yoga and concepts such as karma and self-realization. He highlights the dangers of these practices, especially when detached from their original philosophical contexts, and warns against the blending of scientific theories with metaphysical ideas to create a seemingly unified worldview. Noah advises Christians to start dialogues with Hindus by discussing creation and leading them towards the Christian understanding of God, sin, and salvation. He suggests emphasizing the certainty of salvation through Christ as a contrast to the uncertainty inherent in Hindu concepts of karma and reincarnation. The sermon concludes with a call to rely on the truth of the Gospel to guide interactions and conversations with those influenced by Hindu beliefs.

Good afternoon. I'll start with this verse again that our elder Trent Moody prayed on Wednesday as well. Second Corinthians 10, verses 3 to 6. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God, for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

Let's pray. Lord we thank you for this time you've given us. Thank you for feeding us so richly this morning as well in sound doctrine. Lord, we thank you that we are firmly planted on solid ground and on solid doctrine. Lord, we thank you that it helps us to identify the counterfeit, and it helps us to identify every high thing that exalts itself against you.

Lord, even as we spend time this afternoon looking at false religions, Lord, I pray that you would give us strength indeed to engage with the culture around us, to help us to shine the light of the truth, the truth of Jesus Christ. Amen. So understanding the Hindu worldview, As I have spent time on trying to spend more time in what I thought I knew, I really started to know more about the worldview of Hindu even though I was brought up in a Hindu household. Hindu philosophy is pernicious. It's one of these things that has raised itself up.

It is one of these things that indeed has masqueraded as truth in a very confused world. And so we need to be able to deconstruct this worldview while we're witnessing to the Hindus. But like I said last week, it's not just the Hindus. There are many who have taken in Eastern philosophy. And it is wicked, it's dangerous.

One thing to realize is that Hinduism is one of the largest worldview shaping humanity, just in terms of 1.2 billion people in India, and how the West has just taken in and drunk deep off these Eastern philosophies. I was preparing last night and Courage was standing in the kitchen and he asked me, Dad, you've been spending so much time studying Hinduism. He was worried. He said, I'm concerned. Do you have like a renewed feeling of faith in Hinduism?

Yeah, me and all of us, yes, we've been looking to some extent on things that are not right, things that are false, but we are doing that because we stand on the solid ground of Christ, knowing that everything else is sinking sand, God has had mercy upon us. We have been indoctrinated in solid doctrine, sound doctrine. We know the true thing. Praise God for his mercy and his grace that we that includes me my wife who we come from Hindu backgrounds and all of us from whatever backgrounds we who were once Gentiles in the flesh without Christ were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenant of promise having no hope and without God in the world but now in Christ Jesus we who were a once far off have been brought near. Hallelujah, by the blood of Christ.

And he also commanded us that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. We have to be able to let the light of Christ shine as we go out into these dark places and we will see that darkness flees before the light of Christ and that these people, they sit in deep darkness and they will see the light and they will see the light because we are the bearers of the light. So hope that's not too small. We start with solid ground. We start with our reality, a personal God who created the world.

We are made in the image of God. God breathed his spirit into us. Yes, there is a spirit realm and there is a realm of matter, of reality. That the soul of man is eternal, man sinned, rebelled against God, needs reconciliation. The problem is rebellion.

The problem is in our moral nature and sin. And we were reminded again that It is appointed for man to die once and then there is judgment. There is judgment for the sin and the rebellion. There is need for salvation. There is a need for restoration and salvation is forgiveness and us being reformed into the image of Christ, into God's image and being saved.

That's our salvation. There is an alternate worldview and we've been quite binary. There's been the Christian worldview, there's been the materialist worldview that only matter exists. There is no spirit. We are all a product of chance evolution.

Reality is purely material. There is no soul, there is no spirit. Humans are biological systems. Human behavior is shaped by evolution and genetics, not moral choice. Evil is a biological limitation.

It is not sin, it's not moral failure. The problem is in our design, not our decisions. And the solution is, well we can fix our genes, we can do some genetic engineering. We can redesign humanity. We probably make us kinder.

It alters the human condition. So In the materialist worldview, humanity is not redeemed. It can be redesigned and re-engineered. And now this worldview of the Hindu Eastern mystical worldview, which has been so pervasive, it borders on the metaphysical. So in contrast to the materialist worldview, this perspective does not see the human problem as a biological problem or our world view of a moral problem, but it presents it as a metaphysical problem.

And mysticism is attractive. The West have taken really big gulps of this mysticism. And so as we were going through last week, as I said, the question is not just dealing with Hindus. Yes, we are dealing with Hindu mysticism, but we are also dealing with people who in their thinking have been shaped by Hindu metaphysics without even realizing it. So we are not just engaging with Hinduism out there, we are actually engaging with ideas that are already in here, not in the church but in this country around us, not just with the Indians, but it has been shaping how the Western mind has been thinking about truth, about morality, and salvation.

So the ideas that have been rooted in Hindu metaphysics, in philosophy, have spread through yoga. And I'll introduce how yoga comes into the picture. But this yoga culture is detached from its original philosophy. So it is counterfeit, so thank goodness for that, but we need to be careful. Meditation, mindfulness.

I was in a meeting with a bunch of people and the instructor suddenly said, let's all just give two minutes and all just be quiet and let's all breathe deeply and let's all just connect with our inner self. In the middle of a business meeting this speaker who came in and Paul was telling me about Paul Carrington brother Paul was telling me about one of the speakers that came into one of their conference rooms similar but they are bringing in new age spirituality into the boardroom We are so familiar with phrases like good karma, energy, finding your true self, all parts leading to the same truth. These are not neutral. They come from a Hindu philosophical metaphysical framework. It really is also masquerading as science in some intellectual circles.

And I found this really interesting that when you think about Einstein's theory of relativity, where he presents that space and time are not absolute, they're relative and interconnected. Matter and energy, there was a separation between physics and chemistry and in his equation E equals MC square, matter and energy become interchangeable. And so this physical world is not as solid and as fixed as it appears. And again, this has led to some shift in thinking that reality is more complex, it's less intuitive, and less solid than we once thought. And some people have taken these ideas, they're really, they take relativity and make it relativism.

They take quantum uncertainty and try and introduce philosophical uncertainty. They've started to interpret them philosophically and they connect this to Maya. We talked about Maya saying, what we see is not reality, but what we see is what we perceive. They've brought in non-duality that everything is one. We are one and we are one with the universe and the universe is one with us.

That our consciousness shapes our experience and realities. So this kind of creates the impression that science and this Eastern metaphysical philosophy is saying the same thing, but it's not. Let's be very careful. They are blending this. It sounds very intellectually sophisticated.

It feels like a unified worldview. It allows someone to say I'm spiritual but I'm also very scientific at the same time. We need to be aware of this. This has come into a lot of the Western thinking. So the West has not become Hindu, but it has absorbed many of these metaphysical ideas.

People still identify as Christians or secular, and you hear a lot of them say, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. And that is that Hindu mysticism. Their thinking often includes karma, relativism, self-realization, and this inner divinity that's divine in all of us. At its core, they teach that the problem is not that we are sinful or broken and Hindu mysticism is trying to present that we're just ignorant of who we really are. You know we are, we were created One with God, we are in essence divine.

We are one with ultimate reality, but all of us have forgotten the truth. We've become preoccupied with ourselves, and we've been distracted by this material world around us. And so we've become spiritually ignorant. So the problem is not guilt, the problem is ignorance. And so salvation is not about forgiveness, it's not about redemption, it is about self-realization.

It is awakening to the realization that I'm not merely this body or mind, I'm one with ultimate reality. And this realization is not intellectual, it is experiential, so it's all about the experience. So That's how you can see this thinking, this Hindu mysticism, this alternate reality, this third worldview, has just taken over, especially in Europe and in America, in the Western world, it has been very attractive to imbibe from these fountains. So we talked about the, I'll just, a very quick review, and I want to show you where yoga comes in. So we talked about the Brahman, the ultimate reality, the universe, and then the Atma and how this Self-realization is all about us becoming one.

So the ultimate reality is the inner self, and we are all one, and we are going through this circle of life. One of the ways in how we become One with reality in the Hindu philosophy is through yoga. And this is about the different parts of self-realization. And that is the danger of yoga. There are various kinds of yoga.

And fortunately, the kind of yoga that is generally practiced in the West is a physical, it's about getting your body into shape, flexibility, etc. But The roots of yoga are very spiritual. There is a yoga called bhakti yoga, and that's about chanting, repetitive words being used. You might have heard of the Hare Rama, Hare Krishna. They just keep repeating the same words.

Transcendental meditation, that's about quietening the mind through this mantra and the repetition. There is physical postures and breath control. So it's trying to control and limit the flow of oxygen to our minds. It does produce feelings in our body which are physical and it changes our inner state and it's trying what they're trying to say to you that it will change the way you perceive yourself. So this involves turning inward, It involves altering your consciousness and it even influences our nervous system through disciplined practices of breathing or not breathing or breathing deep.

So be very careful about some of these breathing exercises which are introduced in yoga and some of the type of yoga's you need to be really careful what kind of yoga one is engaging in. So I was listening to Mangalwadi and his lessons he was really funny and he was talking about how women in the droves, who are feminists, all come to these gurus and are willing to submit to them, but they won't submit to their own husbands. So how this mysticism and how this Hindu philosophy has fooled even the Western women and led them astray. So yes, they may have some physical benefits, but we need to be discerning because at the core what this worldview is teaching that salvation comes from within, that truth is found by looking inward, not by revelation, that the problem, as I said before, is ignorance, not sin. And so what this is saying is, look within yourself to be saved, and we know that we need to look to Christ to be saved.

So the last time I was asked a question around morality and where does morality come from? And some of the text might be small, but Fundamentally, morality is a mixture of three spheres of dharma. There's three types of dharma from which morality is derived. So dharma teaches that morality in the Hindu context is not fixed nor is it universal. Morality is contextual and multidimensional.

So it has these three dimensions as you can see And it also depends on your situation. So it is situational. And there are these three circles of dharma. The first circle on the, let's see, on the left, the universal dharma. So that is what is called Sanatana Dharma, which is Dharma that applies to everybody, and these are just general moral principles.

And I don't think we'll have any issues with that which is there are moral principles like truthfulness, non-violence, self-control But these are not absolute in practice. So if you layer on a swadharma, which is your own dharma, which is a personal dharma, the personal dharma depends upon your role. So you could be a warrior, or you could be a priest. A warrior is allowed to kill, but a priest, for him, if he is at war and he kills, that is not allowed for a priest. So again, it depends on your personal circumstances.

A priest is expected to avoid violence, so the same act of a warrior is not correct. It's wrong for a priest. A householder has duties to family, to work, duties towards the society, whereas someone who is a sage and has withdrawn from this world doesn't have the same responsibilities. A married person has marital obligations, but an unmarried person has different obligations. And so what is right changes according to your caste or your role your age or your stage of life and so it's really dependent upon your personal duty that can actually override moral rules And then there is the social dharma, which is the rajah dharma.

That's where the laws of the land, the laws of the society come from. So you might think, okay, what about the real consequences for actions? So there is a dimension of Rajdharma, which is the local laws, and they will result in punishment. And they will result in consequences for things that we do wrong. Punishment, I've written in brackets there, it's, It's, I don't know if you can see it, but its punishment is danda.

Courage knows what danda is. It's the rod. So Different groups could be governed differently, but it's based on their social position. Duties and expectations are tied to maintaining this social order, and that's through that third circle, which is the social, the dharma, which is Rajadharma. Rajadharma means the Dharma of the law of the King.

So there's the law of the King, there's the self law, and then there's the universal law, And it is a blend of these three, which results in a very relativist, moralist type worldview. So when you put all three together, morality in the system is layered, it's context dependent, and it's role specific. So ultimately it's up to the individual to discern and decide what their duty is at a given time. So in practice, you yourself become the interpreter. You yourself become the interpreter.

And so that is fundamentally the challenge that we face and what we are up against when we are trying to preach to a Hindu, when we are trying to combat this worldview. So I thought we'd spend some time in trying to Find a starting point. Where do you start with the Hindu, given this complexity of relativism, not knowing what they actually believe in, thinking that there's no reality. If that's what you've been grounded in, how do you start to bring to this person the reality of God, sin, our soul, consequences, without actually confusing them. So I came up with a list of questions.

That's just for review. We can have a look at that. I'll send you the final slide deck so we have all of these things to hand and we can review them if required so a good place to start is, do you believe that God is the creator? And you will have no problem. Every Hindu believes that God created this world.

But what we introduce there is Genesis 1.1, and we introduce our worldview and what the Bible says about creation rather than their worldview of this created world that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. I think that is absolutely where we need to start with a Hindu or anyone who is steeped in Hindu mysticism. John 1, 1 to 5, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, he was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of man and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness doesn't comprehend it.

That's a great starting place. You remember the diagram about the atma, that is the soul, that goes through this repetitive circle of being born, dharma resulting in karma, resulting in maybe moksha if they can come to self-realization. What about the soul? Because they do believe in the Atma. So they believe in the God, a God that created this universe, but we need to introduce our God.

They believe in the soul, the Atma, but they believe that that soul becomes one with God and Once you achieve self-realization You become one with God however, there there are some problems and and just to review the the problems of karma, you know When you look at how the concept of karma and dharma come into place, like I said, there's no universal moral code and the only thing that they can recognize are moral examples of these avatars that we spoke about a few weeks ago. They will know about duty and sacrifice, about wisdom from Rama and Krishna and these are the Hare Rama Hare Krishna that's that's what they kind of propagate and those are avatars of of God and the stories about Rama and Krishna are the ones that guide their behavior and they can relate to Dharma but really introducing them to the uncertainty of karma and reminding them and asking them about how would you deal with your karma now? Are you actually living out the consequences of your previous life? Or are you going to pay consequences of what you're doing now in your next life? They accept that every action has results, so there's no problem there.

You can bring them to that. But what they are not sure about is the timing of the results. Will it be in this life? Will it be in the next life? The outcomes are uncertain, and the result is uncertainty.

And I think that's what we can really play on in terms of draw them to. How can you know what the ultimate truth is? And I think that's really key in bringing them towards ultimate reality. In terms of the soul, we can take them to Daniel 12, too. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.

I think we need to take them there. That there are consequences in this very life. It is for man to die once and to stand in the judgment. We have to take them there. So take them towards what is the ultimate truth.

Christ declares he is the truth, the way, the life. Take them there. Ask them about the debt of the karma, which they have no idea how they will pay that debt. There is no payment. There's only another life and another life and another life.

Introduce them to the concept that your debt has been paid or can be paid. My debt has been paid by the blood of Christ. And that is the way you can go towards freedom. How would you ever be free from this cycle of birth and rebirth, ask them the question, how can you be free of that? They don't have an answer.

But we can take them to the answer as to who purchased that freedom for us. What is true justice because Christ has fully paid for the debt and we are free from the burden of that sin, we are free from the burden, we are freed from that death. And Christ finished that work, that justice has been satisfied, God's justice has been satisfied, and that you can be forgiven. If you can lead them from God as the Creator to ending with yes you can be forgiven. I think that's That's the way I sat with Sona yesterday and just walked through what are the things that you can present to a Hindu.

And like I said, it's really hard now for both of us to think how we thought before we were Christian. It's really hard and praise God it's hard. But these are some of the things that I think will be really helpful for us to consider and us to walk them through in order to awaken them through the Spirit of God, but through these questions and through presenting some of these verses from the Bible, the Word of God, which breeds life. So that's everything that I wanted to cover. There were some brothers who raised the questions and I've incorporated that.

But I think as we go out and as we encounter Hindus and as we encounter their philosophies and encounter these philosophies in other places, I hope you find that this was helpful. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have opened our eyes because indeed I know I was once blind. Lord, it is your light which is in us now. And Lord, indeed you are in us but not in the way that we have seen the Hindus believe.

You are in us through Jesus Christ, through your spirit that lives with us. We thank you that you lead us. We thank you that you guide us. We thank you Lord that you have cleared up confusion, the confused state of my mind. Lord, you have given us truth, you have given us a rock to stand upon.

You have plucked us out of the miry clay. Lord our feet would have slipped and we would have been in the abyss but for you Lord. We are thankful that you have rescued us. Lord, I pray now even for those who have not perhaps seen that light, who haven't perhaps heard through years of understanding, Lord, that even now and even through what has been just shared and through this study that you have opened some eyes and you have caused knees to bow down and accept that you, O Lord, are all in all, that you, O Christ, are the King of Kings. Amen.