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Called to Freedom

Floating along with the current of culture, the church fell asleep in its complacency and compromise as the stream changed direction.  Christians began to accept the world’s restrictions on our freedoms to worship and proclaim the gospel, and instead of awakening, we withdrew into the walls of our buildings.

I.  1 Corinthians 10:23-33.  God, of course, puts limits on our freedoms.  We must not sin.  Rather, in obedience to His commands, we must choose to be helpful, build others up, seek the good of others and not ourselves, and glorify God in all that we say or do.  Our humanistic culture we live in, though, seeks to externally regulate us and persecutes us if we do not submit to its dictates.  Now, as Christians, we know we should submit to our governing authorities (Romans 13:1), but Jesus said we should not give to the culture what is God’s (Matthew 22:21).  Our primary allegiance is not, then, to the current that has changed directions, but to where we are citizens (Philippians 3:20).

II.  Romans 12:1-2.  Sadly, many live lives conformed to the world rather than transformed by the gospel.  Asleep while the current of culture sweeps them to their destruction (Matthew 7:13-14), they have accepted the walls the world has erected for us: the gospel is too outdated or can’t compete or is hate speech.  Or perhaps the restrictions are personal: I’m too old or out-of-touch or have circumstances to overcome.  When we use our freedoms for ourselves, we retreat within those walls by dwelling on the past, complaining, or just playing church.  We know that all things are possible with God (Mark 10:27) and declare that if the church is not doing more, then it must be God’s will.  But, God wants us using our freedoms for Him (John 14:12-14), and then He will do more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21).

III.  Galatians 5:13-15.  When we, through love, choose to use our freedom in Christ to serve others instead, we turn our focus outward rather than inward where we will destroy one another.  The very nature of the church is to step outside of the walls where we have been driven by the culture to serve instead in deed and truth (1 John 3:16-18).  Using Jesus as our example, we choose to serve in whatever station in life that God has placed us (Titus 2:1-8) and reaching outside the walls of the world and waging war against it with very different weapons (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

You may be using your freedom in Christ to fight, but what or whom are you fighting?  Where is your focus?  Inward for self or outward to serve?

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From the Beginning

Since God is eternal without time, then what we know of time from creation to consummation is the smallest speck of dust on forever.  And yet, the humanists of our culture have cancelled creation to rid our existence of sin and consummation to rid us of judgment.  In their arrogance, they have declared themselves gods over a never-ending present time when we can all “do what feels good” without repercussions. Anyone who disagrees with them is cancelled or persecuted in other ways.

I.  Matthew 19:3-9.  When the Pharisees tested Jesus on the subject of divorce, He gave us a strategy of how to deal with the humanists in our culture today.  Twice, He referred them back to how God intended for things to be “from the beginning.”  For all of their insistence that their legalistic righteousness and standards they had established were the ones to follow (Romans 10:1-4), Jesus let them and the Jews who had believed Him know that slavery was found in sin and freedom in truth (how our culture has this backwards!).  Though they insisted that God was their Father, Jesus told them that their works and their inability to bear His words revealed their true parentage (John 8:31-47).

II.  Matthew 24:36-39.  The One who is from eternity confirms in these few verses the attitude of the culture before Noah and how similar it is to the attitude of the culture before He comes again.  He confirms the judgment on Noah’s world by a global flood by comparing the judgment to come on this present world.  Thus, Jesus confirms the salvation and covenant God made with Noah and his family we read about in Genesis 6-9 by comparing it with the salvation and covenant He makes with us through the water of baptism into Christ (1 Peter 3:18-22).  And yet through Peter, God also tells us that scoffers–mockers, humanists, evolutionists–will cancel us in the last days (2 Peter 3:3-7).

III.  John 1:1-3.  The eternal Christ is in the perfect position to tell us how things were “from the beginning.”  After all, He is God while being with God, and it is through Him that all things were made.  He was there “from the beginning” because He was “in the beginning.”  Here’s where the Pharisees or certain Jews of Jesus’ time on earth in the flesh are so like the humanists of our culture today.  Although they are finite in their limited existence, they nevertheless shake their fists at God when they declare themselves to be gods.  In their arrogant attitudes, they make earthly standards and then insist that all others adhere to them–or else (Romans 10:1-4).  It will not go well for them in the end.

Still, we need to know that the everlasting God (Psalm 90:2) is in control of our seemingly out of control world.  And we need to let Him and His Word control our attitudes more than the culture does.

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You Troubler of Israel

Are those striving to live for God the problem in today’s world or those who have left His standard for their own?  The wicked king Ahab tried to label the prophet Elijah a “troubler” but was quickly told that it was his evil that was troubling the nation.  Who’s the real troubler in our humanistic culture today?

I. 1 Kings 18:17-19.  In his 1989 hit, Billy Joel famously sang, “We didn’t start the fire.”  This is where Ahab and the leaders and influencers in our humanistic culture believe they can call those who live by the Lord’s commandments “troublers.”  After all, Ahab didn’t introduce the worship of foreign gods; that was Solomon and Jeroboam before him.  He was just a product of the culture he inherited (1 Kings 16:30-33).  In the same way, humanists believe that Christians stand opposed to their commandments to live within the fire we’ve all inherited.

II. 1 John 1:5-10.  Billy Joel’s song continues, “No, we didn’t light it, but we’re trying to fight it.”  Ahab and today’s humanists excuse their actions because their intentions are good, but they do not step into the light to let their deeds be known for their darkness (John 3:19-21).  Thus, they judge evil as good and good as evil (Isaiah 5:18-23).  No excuses will do (Luke 14:18-24), and they truly believe that they render a service to the gods of their making (John 16:1-3) while they persecute God’s people.  We can know them by their fruit (Matthew 7:15-20).

III.  Romans 1:18-32.  Judgment is coming for our humanistic culture whether they acknowledge it or not (Matthew 7:13-14).  As those who profess to follow God, we must be careful not to get caught up in it and live a compromised, lukewarm faith like Ahab believed about himself in his time.  The “tolerant” who follow the false religion of Humanism today believe that only man can be man’s savior and so government is god, and so they are intolerant of any who deviate from their politics and edicts, labeling them like Elijah was–troublers!

Are you a proud “troubler” according to the culture?  Or does the world not even know that you once professed to oppose them when you obeyed the gospel?  Have you compromised with the culture and think yourself better than those around you by degree of worldliness?  What would you have to change to no longer live by the excuses you make and be called a “troubler” by the world?

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When in Rome, DON’T Do …

For much of our nation’s history, Christians could float with the current of culture as it was going generally in the same direction we wanted to go.  Christianity was ‘mainstream’–literally!  But, several decades ago, while complacency and compromise with things in the culture that didn’t fit with the Bible let us drift asleep, the current swept us down the wider branch that leads to destruction instead of the narrow creek off to the side that few find (Matthew 7:13-14).  Many are just now waking up to our danger and wanting to fight upstream but don’t know how.

I.  1 Peter 4:12-19.  We must know the current.  In the first century, Christians were persecuted because the paganism of ancient Rome insisted that they worship the emperor as a deity.  Terrible things occurred to those who trusted in no other God and wouldn’t bow to the affairs of the state.  Today, humanism that tolerates no god but man himself, seeks the state as man’s savior and demands fealty to doctrines contrary to biblical teaching, such as gender identity, homosexual marriage, abortion until birth, etc.  It’s no wonder that Christians today find themselves in the rapids and up against the rocks of persecution like those twenty centuries before (Philippians 3:10-11; Hebrews 2:10-11).

II.  2 Corinthians 10:2-6.  We must know our equipment.  To fight upstream in this spiritual battle, we must know that we will lose if we wage war as the world does.  We have spiritual weapons that can demolish strongholds.  Among many methods mentioned in Colossians 3:12-17, love is foremost to bind all these efforts together and should be used while leaning on God’s understanding (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).  The full armor of God with all of its various functions is essential as a true “life” preserver in determination to regain the narrow fork.  We must recognize the attitudes, beliefs, values, and practices of the world that we’ve accepted into our lives and put in the hard effort of paddling upstream to return to God’s Word in all things for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3-11).

III.  1 John 3:1-3.  We must know our destination.  As individual Christians we must know to avoid the world (2 Timothy 3:1-5), but we must help others keep the focus of walking as children of light (Ephesians 5:8-11).  Fixing our eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, we won’t grow weary and lose heart in the hard work that will be required to set ourselves back on the narrow fork (Hebrews 12:1-4).  Jesus is that hope through the temporary trials of the rapids and rocks (1 Peter 1:3-7) until we reach our goal.  It will take great determination to purify ourselves and encouragement of others to fight our way upstream.

The pull of the humanistic current of culture is strong and hard to resist.  Awakening to the spiritual battle, we must understand the danger, equip ourselves with the weapons God has provided for us, and fight upstream to the destination promised to us.  Who can you get to fight against the current with you?