©2004 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

12/05/04

Communicating To The Culture

12/5/04 Communicating To the Culture

Last week I shared with you

some thoughts I am just beginning to work through myself,

thoughts about this culture in which we live,

and about how it impacts our lives as Christians.

The response I received

to the things I shared

both surprised and encouraged me.

A number of you took the time following the service

to share with me your own thoughts and insights,

all of which have helped me a great deal in my own thinking.

And several of you even encouraged me

to consider sharing a little more on this topic.

That’s a dangerous thing to do, you know -

urging a preacher to say more,

but given the level of interest

that this whole cultural theme seems to have sparked,

I believe I will take just a little more of our time before we return to Ephesians

to try to offer a few more thoughts

on how we as Christians

can effectively both live in and respond to this culture in which our Lord has placed us.

We spent our time last week

looking at a major transformation

that has taken place within our culture during the past 30 or 40 years.

We saw the way our culture has set aside the belief

that there is a clear moral standard revealed to us by our Creator,

a standard we are all called to submit to,

and replaced that belief

with a belief system

in which we (as a culture) now believe that true moral good

is found in rejecting even the existence of any such universal moral standard

and granting to each individual

the right and the freedom to live by any moral standard and life style they choose.

We then looked at the void this loss of a revealed moral standard has created within us,

and the way it has forced us to create for ourselves

our own rules to govern the different areas of our lives.

And we saw that we quickly discovered

that the rules that seemed to work in one area of life

didn’t always seem to work in other areas,

and as a result we as a culture have developed for ourselves

a sort of layered approach to life.

We now see this in broad ways through out our society

as men in women in public life

boldly proclaim their right

to make a clear distinction between their “public” and their “private” lives,

affirming to themselves

and to the nation around them

that they have an absolute right to live by any ethics, and values, and morals they choose in their “private” lives

so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of their public duties and responsibilities.

Two distinct and separate layers of life - public and private.

That whole concept shows once again

how far we have come from the life principles laid out for us in Scripture.

When God talked with His people

about the process through which they should select men and women for leadership,

do you know what He said?

He said that if we want to know how a person will function in their public life,

we should look at their private life,

and look carefully.

When Paul wrote his letters to both Timothy and Titus,

instructing them about how to select leaders for the local churches in the first century,

he didn’t tell them to put the candidates up front

to see how entertaining their sermons were.

He told them to look closely at their private lives -

at the way they related to their marriage partner and their children,

at the way they handled money,

at they way they related to alcohol,

even at their reputation among non-Christians.

His message was clear -

find men and women who have integrity in their private lives,

and you’ll find men and women who can be trusted with public leadership.

Find a person who is corrupt in his or her private life

and you’ve found a person who will also be corrupt in leadership.

He was talking, of course, about leadership within the church,

but the principle is universal.

Yet we now live in a society

in which we firmly believe we have no right to test men and women for leadership or for public office

on the basis of their private lives.

We live our lives in layers,

with each layer operating under its own distinct set of rules.

And then last week we also talked a little

about the way this layered approach to life

had now become the basic approach to all of life within our culture,

not just limited to “public” and “private” layers,

but to virtually every other area of our lives.

We will establish one set of rules to govern our relationship to our work and our employer,

and another to govern our relationship to our family.

We’ll have a completely different set of rules that govern our relationship to the government,

and yet another set of rules that govern our relationship to insurance companies,

and still another set of rules that controls our interaction with retail stores,

and another that controls our approach to the internet,

and yet another that governs our relationship to the fish and wildlife regulations,

and still another that governs our approach to entertainment,

and on and on.

In one layer we may be honest and reliable,

and in another we are deceptive, deceitful, and rebellious.

But because we as a society no longer recognize any absolute moral standard,

or universal governing principles of life,

it doesn’t bother us a bit.

All that matters is whether or not we are consistent in our conduct

within any given layer of life.

We then ended our time last week

by seeing the way this layered approach to life

continues to impact us long after we come to the Lord,

and how we can so easily develop a “God layer” in our lives,

an approach to our Christian life

in which we keep our relationship with our Lord

isolated into yet another distinct layer of our lives,

without allowing it to impact and alter every other area.

Now, after talking with a number of you about this whole thing last week,

before we leave this discussion,

I think it would be of value

if we spent a little time with this topic.

Where do we begin in our efforts

to share our Lord Jesus Christ

with this culture in which we live?

And the place we start is always with ourselves.

None of us are born Christians.

Each one of us who have come to Christ

have done so as the result of the redemptive deliverance of our God.

I love the way Paul said it in his opening words to the Colossians.

COL 1:13-14 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

It is what He has been doing from the very beginning.

We all enter this world

with our spirits in league with the kingdom of darkness,

convinced at the spirit level of our being

that we really are qualified to run our own lives,

to be our own gods,

without our Creator in charge.

With every one of us

God then begins His personal campaign for our discovery of His love

and our acceptance of the forgiveness and grace He offers us through Christ.

And, for those of us who chose to listen and then to respond,

He... well, He rescues us from the domain of darkness, and transfers us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

But my point here is simply that

all of us bring with us a personal history

in which we were trained to think by the culture in which we were raised.

Which means that we, like everyone else around us,

are comfortable with a layered approach to life,

and even with the absence of a divinely revealed universal moral standard.

During the past 20 plus years

I have frequently taught a concept

that I worked through during the early years of my own Christian life,

and have recognized as absolute truth ever since.

But it has not been until recently

that I have begun to understand its significance

in the face of what’s happening in the culture around us.

For years now

one of the anchors of my own teaching

has been the presentation of the concept

of the way in which our Lord builds for us a protective moral framework.

It is a framework given to us

through the moral commandments in His Word,

a framework that gives us absolute protection

from those self-destructive consequences

that always come with immorality.

By now most of you are familiar

with the little diagram I use to illustrate this concept to myself.

Though I haven’t talked about that framework

in exactly these terms before,

what I’m really saying through this protective moral framework concept

is that there really is a universal code of conduct given to us by our Creator,

a code that transcends all layers of our lives.

We live in a culture that has told us

that true freedom in life

comes from having the right to live our lives

any way we choose to live them,

on the basis of any value system we select.

But that whole concept is a huge, hideous, tragic lie.

True freedom of spirit and soul

does not come from having the freedom to live any way we want.

It comes from knowing how life and especially how human relationships are designed by God to operate,

and then having the ability

to choose to live our own lives on the basis of that revealed pattern.

Any concept of “freedom”

that involves living any way we choose to live

will ultimately result in self-destructive behavior

that will intensify our pain and destroy our relationships.

For a number of years now

I have had the opportunity

to teach a number of teenagers how to drive,

and I’ve come to enjoy it tremendously.

Part of it, I suppose, is the adrenaline rush that comes

with being in perpetual near-death situations,

but most of all I have found it to be

a remarkable tool for saying things to a young person

about themselves,

and about life,

and about the true nature of relationships - what matters and what does not -

that cannot be said as easily any other way.

But I mention this because

I have seen that nearly every young male driving student I’ve ever had

has begun his driving with the belief

that true freedom in driving means

going as fast as he wants, wherever he wants, whenever he wants.

The only peddle that really matters

is the one on the far right,

and it should be used as much

and as often as possible.

And I’ve had my share of stuck trucks,

broken tail lights,

and damaged bumpers

and broken shocks,

and shattered frames because of it.

But hopefully,

if I can stay with my young friends long enough,

in the end they come to realize that true freedom in driving

comes from having both the skill and the judgement

to keep that car or that truck firmly between the lines

at speeds that guarantee absolute safety.

That’s the moral framework given to us by our God,

and that is the source of all true freedom -

not the right to do whatever I want,

but the knowledge and the ability to do what really works.

And I mention this again here

because God’s first step in preparing each of His children

to relate effectively to this culture in which we live

is to create within us

an unshakeable trust in and commitment to a life lived within that moral framework.

In other words,

our preparation for life in this culture

begins by our recognizing and then laying aside

our own personal layered approach to life.

Would it trouble you if I were to stand before you today

and attempt to convince you

that, as your preacher, I have an absolute right

to make a clear distinction between my public and my private life,

and that as long as I can keep cranking out decent sermons on Sunday mornings

it really is none of your business and not an issue

what life values I choose as I live out my life the rest of the week?

I hope it would bother you!

And the truth is

as Christians it is no different for any of us.

That’s why God begins where He begins

in His reconstructive work in our lives.

It’s been a while since we last looked at it,

but do you remember that passage in the first chapter of 2 Peter

in which Peter reveals to us the seven progressive steps of growth

that God seeks to lead each Christian through?

Do you remember what the very first step in the process always is?

2PE 1:5-7 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.

We all begin with faith -

simple trust in the death of Christ

as full payment for all of our sins.

And then, to our faith

the first step in our Lord’s growth program for us

is His building into our lives true moral excellence.

In the terms I’ve been using,

that is our rejection of a layered approach to life

and our discovery of

and then commitment to

a life lived within God’s protective moral framework.

And the thing that I am just now fully beginning to appreciate

is that, for those of us who come to Christ out of this culture,

in this generation,

that rejection of our layered approach to life

and that discovery of and then commitment to God’s protective moral framework

must come as a distinct,

conscious,

separate growth step in our lives.

It is not as it once was, forty years ago,

when we could simply accept the definition of a “good man”

handed to us by our culture

and then use it as our basic guide for effective living.

Now we must each see the cultural lies around us,

reject them,

and choose an approach to life

that will set us apart from the culture in which we live

and at times make us appear very strange indeed

both to the culture at large

and also to many of the religious folks around us.

And let me explain why I say that.

We will appear strange to culture at large

because we will live our lives

with a clear understanding of

and commitment to moral integrity as revealed to us by our God.

Our honesty,

our moral integrity,

our sexual purity,

our faithfulness to our marriage partner,

our commitment to what is right no matter what we could so easily get away with,

these are simply nonnegotiable pillars of our lives,

no matter what the cost to us financially or socially.

But at the same time

a healthy understanding

of the true nature of Biblical morality

will at times also cause us to be out of step

with much of what the religious world markets as Christian morality.

It is the nature of religion to aim at the exterior,

to create an external facade of piety

while avoiding the truly great moral issues given to us by our God

of learning how to love those He has placed into our lives.

Hair styles,

clothing styles,

jewelry,

no jewelry,

pierced or not pierced,

these are not in themselves moral issues.

Believe it or not,

when I grew my beard 35 years ago

there were some in my religious world

who felt I had publicly turned my back on God.

Given the culture in which we live,

we have a three-fold calling.

First, we are to understand and build our lives upon

an unshakable commitment to moral purity as defined by our God.

Second, we are to make a clear distinction between what is moral and what is merely cultural.

We are the voice of our God to this generation.

And there are two things we can do

that will destroy our credibility

with equal effectiveness.

The first is for us to fail to live a life of true moral integrity before our world,

the second is for us to attempt to turn cultural issues

into moral ones.

The first makes us look like hypocrites,

and the second makes us look like fools.

And then, the third part of our calling

is for us to reach out to the lost, hurting, hopeless people in the culture around us

and love them,

and through that love

show them the true heart of our Lord Jesus Christ for them.

JOH 3:17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

And He does not send us into the world to judge the world either,

but that, through us, those we touch might find His salvation.

We are the moral examples of the world

but we are not the moral policemen of the world.

Our calling is not to attempt to convert the world to Biblical morality,

our calling is to draw them into a submissive trust union with God Himself

and then let Him rework their morality from the inside out,

just as He is doing with each of us.

When the homosexual couple moves in next door

we do not scowl, and condemn, and turn away.

We reach out to them

with all of the love,

and kindness,

and compassion we have,

knowing that the only thing that will bring healing into their lives

is their discovery of the grace, and kindness, and love of the Lord Jesus Christ.

When God brings that young person into our lives wearing clothes that make no sense to us at all,

with everything pierced or tattooed,

we do not condemn him or her for being a product of their generation

just as we were of ours,

nor do we turn cultural issues into moral ones.

We love them

just as our God loves us,

just as they are,

just because they are also His creations

with the hope that through that love

they may graciously choose to grant us access to their lives,

and through that access we may be able to reveal to them

the reality of our Lord Jesus Christ.