Godliness against the Culture

Introduction

Lately I have been thinking about the weapons of our warfare. In the Bible we see that it is clear that there is a battle going on and we are called to fight in it even though we are not needed to win it. When we look at this battle and our weapons we see that they are few but mighty.

Many people will charge into the battle with the armor of Saul on and be worthless. They leave behind the smooth stones of the gospel that we are called to take up. I would say that we have three main weapons that we are to use; the first is the proclamation of the gospel, the second is prayer (I will be giving a whole sermon on this to kick off our youth revival Sunday morning November 3), and the final one is godliness.

By proclaiming the message that God gave us in the gospel, by spending time in prayer waging war and standing in the gap, and by living a life of godliness we fight in the battle.

Lots could be said about each of these and I wanted to make you aware of them all before focusing in on one. Today I want to hone in on godliness. So if you have your Bible or a phone turn with me to 1 Timothy 6. 3-10.

1 Timothy 6:3–10 ESV

If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

This is the full context but look again at verse 6, this will be our focus and launching off point.

1 Timothy 6:6 ESV

But godliness with contentment is great gain,

Pray with me this morning.

Godliness

Godliness is something that we should all strive for in life. This is living a life that reflects who we serve, living a life that reflects God. Walking in a way that is pleasing to him. In a day where we have so many things vying for our attention and wanting to influence us we must turn to the word of God and seek godliness.

Recently I was on the campus of Brown University, an ivy league school in Providence Rhode Island. While talking to the pastor of a church up there he told me something interesting and I am going to start by illustrating it for you. On orientation day at this college all the freshmen arrive for the first time and are all together out on the lawn of the school. Hundreds of students from all across the globe. This isn’t SWOSU where almost everyone is from western Oklahoma. This is a truly diverse group. When they arrive if you are paying attention you can notice something. They are all dressing the same, many of them listen to the same music, even though English is not all of their first language they use the same lingo and slang. This is a global group and everyone there is super similar in many ways. Interesting huh. How about this, what is k-pop? Korean pop music! Why do you know that?

This is a phenomenon coined as “global youth culture”. Because of the ties with the internet the culture of youth age and even up is meshing together. Many cultural things are the same everywhere and there are more and more coming together all of the time.

There is a problem with this though. We have to ask ourselves who are the importers and exporters of this? Obviously many of you here are importers, most everyone your age in the developed world are importers of this. The exporters are the ones that are setting the trends, the ones that are shaping this global youth culture. So the problem is that the exporters are not people concerned with godliness. Often times they are acting against God and are against Christians.

There is a lot I could tell you about living a godly life. There is being in the word constantly letting it shape you. There is being at church, this too is a crucial aspect for the Christian to live a godly life. The big thing I want to tell you today is that in the world we live in today, if you are going to live a godly life, you have to live against the culture.

There was a time in the history of this country where the culture was a predominately Christian one. If you were following the culture you were in church and read your Bible. The entertainment was clean and often even had a Christian base. This time is long gone. The culture is vying for your attention and wants to mold you into it, it does not want you to be molded to be more like Christ.

When we do not follow the culture but seek Christ and seek to be molded by him there is great gain. This gain is just like the passage says 1 Timothy 6:6 “But godliness with contentment is great gain,”. Notice how it says with contentment. This is yet another thing that the culture is against. There is the hustle culture, the culture that always seeks more and more. But if we live a godly life and are content with that life that God blesses us with then there is great gain.

So what can we do to take away the influence of the culture upon our lives so that we can live godly lives? I have a few thoughts for you today.

The first is to fill your life with godly influences. Spend time with people that are chasing after this like you are, you all can build each other up in this together. Listen to solid Christian music, not the worldly garbage or the unbiblical Christian music. Follow social media pages that post scriptures or sermon clips, things that can build you up instead of influence you negatively. You can give our youth page a follow for this and can even look at who I follow there for more inspiration. Have regular time in God’s word, even memorizing scripture so that it can constantly be on your mind. Be involved at church, take that time away from the world and spend it at church.

The idea behind this time is to take away the influence that the global youth culture has on you and add influence from God, after all he should be your favorite influencer.

The next this is to reduce your screen time. I know some of you probably have 8 hours a day of screen time, that is a full time job. If you have a ridiculously high screen time you are not trying to live a godly life. The only catch to this is if your screen time is on the Bible app but if it is come to church and I will give you a paper Bible. Redeem this time and give it to God. Imagine if you spent a quarter of your current screen time in the Bible? That would have an insane effect upon your godliness.

Conclusion

Godliness takes time. We live in a microwave culture. We seek instant gratification. We seek constant entertainment. When I was younger I wanted to make YouTube videos and I did for years, I still do. I used to get so mad because to get certain privileges on YouTube you had to have a certain amount of videos over 20 minutes long. There are now pages that do not have anything over 10 seconds long. Before TikTok there was Vine, there was nothing on vine longer than 6 seconds long. Even with all of this we still skip videos.

The average TikTok user watches 100-400 videos a day. It’s no wonder we are so influenced by the culture and struggle to sit down and read the Bible. The culture is trying to give you the attention span of a goldfish.

Take back your life. Live a life of godliness. Fill your life with things that influence you positively. Rid your life of things the influence you negatively. Read your Bible and do the things that God loves, and the things that he hates, avoid them like the plague. Let’s pray.