How in the World Will We Live part 1

“HOW IN THE WORLD WILL WE LIVE?”

Series Introduction

"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world." 1 John 2:16 (KJV)

FOUR STRATEGIES

1.    EVALUATE EVERYTHING

       "Test everything.  Hold on to the good.  Avoid all evil."  1 Thess. 5:2:21-22

       "The truth is, although we live normal human lives, the battle we are fighting is on the spiritual level...  Our battle is to break down every deceptive argument and defense that men erect against the true knowledge of God."  2 Cor. 10:4-5 (Ph)

2.    DEVELOP STRONG CONVICTIONS

       "With Christ you have died to the elements of this world. Then why ... do you let others dictate to you?  Col. 3:20 (Beck)

       "Don't let the world squeeze you into its own old, but let God remake you so your whole attitude of mind is changed." Rom. 12:2

       "The world, and its desires will pass away, but the one who does the will of God lives forever."  1 John 2:17

3.    LOVE GOD

       "Do not love the world or anything that belongs in it.  If you love the world, you don't have the love of the Father in you!"  1 John 2:15 (GN)

       "Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your

       strength."  Matthew 22:37 (NLT)

       "You are like an unfaithful spouse, never realizing that to be the world's lover means becoming the enemy of God!" James 4:4 (Ph)

4.    INFLUENCE OTHERS

       "You are to live clean, innocent lives as children of God in a dark world ... shine out among them as beacon lights, holding out to them the Word of life."  Ph. 2:15-16 (LB)

       (Jesus) "My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them ... As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world."  John 17:15+18

       "For the free gift of eternal salvation is now being offered to everyone; and along with this gift comes the realization that God wants us to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures and live good, God-fearing lives day after day." Titus 2:11-12 (LB)

“HOW IN THE WORLD WILL WE LIVE?”

Series Introduction

This morning I want to begin a new Sermon series that is called a "Call in the world will we live?"  I'm quite pumped up to do this series because I've been priming this 1 for 7 months.

There are really only three basic world views in life.  We're going to look at them a little more closely over the next few weeks. 

·                     These world views are called hedonism, which is the desire for pleasure.  Pleasure is all important. 

·                     Then there is the world view called materialism, which is all about possessions -- possessions are all important. 

·                     And then a couple weeks we will look at narcissism, which is on pride, possessions, status -- "I'm all that's important".

These are not new philosophies.  In fact, God talked about them in 2 John 2:16 "For all that is in the world -- the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world." 

These are the three basic temptations that satan has been using since the history of mankind started.  Back with Adam the three temptations.  Jesus was tempted the same three ways. 

§ The key word in hedonism is "to indulge" -- if it feels good do it. 

§ The key word in materialism is "increase" -- get all you can, can all you get. 

§ The key phrase in narcissism is "to impress" -- I'm all that matters.

I saw an advertisement that embodies all three of them.  It was a Cadillac ad.  The guy pulls up to a stop light in an average looking sedan and looks over and sees this gorgeous babe sitting in a Cadillac.  A blond bombshell, stunning, exquisitely dressed in a brand new Cadillac.  He looks over at her longingly and as the commercial goes on she's setting there this supreme, smug, self confidence -- success just emanating from her face.  As the light changes she drives off and the announcer says in the background, "For some it's a goal, but for others it's a way of life."

That's it!  That's the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life all wrapped up into one commercial.  That summarizes the three greatest values for most people -- pleasure, possession and position. 

How do you live in a world like that without being controlled by those kinds of attitudes?  Today I simply, want to give you an overview of the series and give you four strategies on how to live in the world without living of the world.

1.  EVALUATE EVERYTHING

You need to use the mind God gave you.  Don't automatically buy into everything you see, everything you hear, every idea that's promoted on television or radio or whatever.  Question, challenge, properly assess popular opinion.  Does it make sense or not? 

Whenever you watch a tv show ask yourself, What are the ideas behind this show?  What values are being promoted here?

1 Thessalonians 5:21-22  "Test everything.  Hold on to the good. Avoid all evil."  Circle "everything".  Does that mean to test songs?  Sure.  TV programs?  Yes.  Novels?  Yes.  Magazines? Yes.  Appraise movies?  Absolutely.  Test everything!  Does that mean you ought to evaluate talk show hosts?  Yes.  Radio psychologists?  Yes.  Preachers?  Absolutely. 

There are a lot of false teachers out there.  There's a lot of junk being promoted over the airways and media that is absolutely off base.  The Bible says you need to evaluate everything.

What's the standard of evaluation?  The Bible.  The Bible has outlasted every culture throughout history.  It does have a track record.  We use this as a standard to evaluate everything that goes on.  Is it right?  Is it true?  Is it what God says? 

The fact is there are really only two sources for life priorities.  You will base your life either on the word or you will base your life on the world.  Those are the two options.  You'll base your life on what the word of God says or what the world says.  The Bible teaches very clearly that we are in a battle between the word and the world. 

"The truth is, although we live normal human lives, the battle we are fighting is on the spiritual level [circle that].  Our battle is to break down every deceptive argument and defense that men erect against the true knowledge of God."  He says we're in a battle for the minds of men.  There are deceptive arguments. People often construct mental defenses to keep God out of their lives.  People make up arguments. 

I remember talking one time to a guy.  He said, "I don't believe in God."  I said, so what?  I don't know whether he thought that would impress me or what.  I said "Why don't you believe in God?  I'm not interested so much in the fact that you don't believe in God but why don't you believe in God?"  He said, "I don't know."  I said, "Let me take a guess.  If there really was a God and if the Bible really is true like it says it is, would you have to make some changes in your lifestyle?"  He said, "Absolutely."  I said, "Then the real issue is not whether you believe in God or not. The issue is do you want to change or not?" 

When you don't want to change, you make up all kinds of defensive arguments and logical, "rationalizations" to put a wall between you and God, but that doesn't mean He doesn't exist.  We need to evaluate everything and use our minds.  Don't automatically accept what the world says. 

2.  DEVELOP STRONG CONVICTIONS

The people who have made an impact with their lives on the world are people who live by conviction rather than convenience.  The people who've made the greatest changes in the world were not the smartest, most educated or wealthiest.  They were the people with the deepest convictions. 

How many would agree there is great pressure in our culture to conform?  There really is.  To a large degree the expectation of others determine how we dress, how we talk, how we act, what we eat, what we buy, how we spend our money, how we spend our time. We are constantly pressured by the culture around us.  The number one question becomes, "What will other people think?" 

Once in a while, the magazines come out with a list of What's In and What's Out.  In is “low rider pants,” and “Save Tibet,”  That kind of stuff.  I wonder who really pays attention to Rolling Stone Magazine.  Are there people who actually cut it out and say this is my agenda for the year?  I live so I can be in, hip.

Colossians 2:20 "With Christ you have died to the elements of this world.  Then why do you let others dictate to you?"  There's so many people who base their self worth on the opinion of others, the approval of others.  I must be worthwhile for other people to like me.  If God accepts you and approves of you, what does it matter what other people think?  It doesn't really matter.

The Bible says, Don't let other people dictate to you how you're going to live, your lifestyle.  He's saying, following Christ sets you free from the expectations of others.  That's real freedom.  I don't have to be in.  I don't have to be out.  If God likes me, that's all that matters. 

Romans 12:2 "Don't let the world squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remake you so your whole attitude of mind is changed."  Circle "squeeze".  Have you ever felt squeezed by the world?  Have you ever done something, even though you didn't want to do it, but you did it because other people were doing it? Have you ever been in high school?  The world puts pressure on. God says, "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold." Living for the approval of others guarantees stress. 

How do you keep from being pressured by peers?  How do you keep culture from causing you to conform?  God says the antidote to that is to take the long view, to look at it in light of eternity.  1 John 2:17 "the world, and its desires will pass away, but the one who does the will of God lives forever."  He's saying all this is temporary.  So many people are living for today and it's not even going to last a week.  Today's paper is out of date tomorrow.  Who's on the cover of the Rolling Stones today is a has been next month.  It just doesn't last.

The point is this:  Is popularity worth selling your soul for? Absolutely not.  To lower my standards and do something I know isn't right just in order to be popular, is a very short sighted look. 

Here's the idea:  Which is going to have longer lasting benefit -- getting the approval of God or getting the approval of other people who five years from now won't even care about you? Getting the approval of God. 

Evaluate everything, develop strong convictions.

3.  LOVE GOD WITH ALL MY HEART

1 John 2;15 (Good News) "Do not love the world or anything that belongs to it.  If you love the world, you don't have the love of the Father in you."  Pretty strong statement.  What is he saying -- "don't love the world"?  He's not saying "Don't love the people of the world".  He's not saying "Don't be friendly to unbelievers".  In fact John 3:16 says, "God so loved the world..."  God loves the world.  He loves people.  And we are to love people in the world like God loves the world. 

What does "the world" mean here?  He's talking about the world's value system.  He's talking about the value that says pleasure is everything, power is everything, position is everything, possessions are everything. 

The word "world" here in Greek is the word kosmos.  Like Kramer off of 'Seinfeld.' We get the word "cosmetics" from it.  Cosmetics means "the arrangement of things".  Some of us are better arrangers than others.  He's talking about the value system, the organization.  He says don't love the values of the world. 

He's very clear here.  He says you can't have divided loyalties. You can't love God and love what the world loves at the same time.  They are mutually exclusive.  The point is this:  God wants my full allegiance.  He wants your full allegiance.  He wants me to love Him with all my heart.  In Matthew 22:37 that's the great commandment.  Jesus said, I can summarize the whole Old Testament in this "Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength." 

The problem is, even many believers want to love God half heartedly, not with all their heart.  They want to love God but not with their whole heart.  They want to love other things.  Yes, I want to have a relationship to God but I want to spend my time and my money and my energy in acquiring the good life too.  So I'm not going to love God with my whole heart.  I'm just going to love Him with part of my heart.  I want a relationship, but I don't want Him at the center of my life.

Can you imagine that?  That's not the way real love works.  How about if I'd married Lara and at our wedding I stood up to take vows and I told her, "I love you and I want to marry you.  I'll make you a deal.  I'm going to be faithful to you half the time. Aren't you lucky?  I'm going to be faithful to you half the time. But don't get the idea that this marriage is an exclusive relationship because I have every intention of having relationships with dozens of other women."  She'd probably decked me.  And she ought to. 

How about if I'd said to my wife, "I will be faithful to you every Sunday morning.  But you give me the rest of the week." Partial faithfulness is not faithfulness at all.  Unless you're faithful all the time, you're not being faithful. 

God wants my whole heart.  The fact is God has promised over and over in the Bible He loves us unconditionally.  He loves us completely.  He says I will never leave you, I will never forsake you.  He says, I want the same commitment from you.  I think that's fair.  He  says, "I love you unconditionally, and I love you completely, and I will never leave you or forsake you.  I want the same thing from you." That's pretty fair.

James 4:4 (Phillips translation) "You are like an unfaithful spouse, never realizing that to be the world's lover means becoming the enemy of God."  He says, even a believer can become an enemy of God.  How?  By loving the world. 

God has a term for believers who have allowed other things to become more important that their relationship to God.  He calls it spiritual adultery.  Strong words for a strong problem. Spiritual adultery.  Millions of so-called believers commit it all the time.  They're more interested in pleasure, possessions, and position.  They're saying, "Yes, I want a relationship with God but my time and my energy and my money are going to pursue the good life."  God calls that spiritual adultery.

Have you seen people who love one another turn into enemies because of adultery?  I have.  I've seen the pain that causes as I've talked to many people and the pain is almost unbearable.  It turns people who were once in love into absolute enemies many times. 

The point is this, spiritual adultery makes me an enemy of God. The kind of pain that adultery can cause in a relationship is the same kind of pain that a believer can inflict on God when we're not faithful to Him all the time.  It breaks His heart.  It's serious business.

I need to love God with all my heart.

4.  INFLUENCE OTHERS FOR GOOD

Rather than being influenced, the fourth strategy in getting on in the world is to influence others for good rather than being influenced.  Everybody is either a thermostat or a thermometer. You know the difference.  A thermometer simply reflects the environment.  A thermostat sets the environment.  A thermometer says, "This is what's going on in the world.  Here's the temperature."  A thermostat controls the environment.  It sets the agenda. 

God says that's what I want you to do.  I want you to go out and penetrate society and set the agenda.  Influence others for good rather than being influenced by others. 

Philippians 2:15-16 (Living Bible) "You are to live clean innocent lives as children of God in a dark world.  Shine out among them as beacon lights, holding out to them the word of life."  Like stars stand out on a dark night, that's how my lifestyle is to be as a Christian.  We are to be distinctively different than the culture.  My lifestyle is to be such a bright contrast to the culture that I shine out like a star. 

If you've ever studied the parables of Jesus, the stories of Jesus, many of them have to do with this concept of penetration. He says, "You are the sale of the earth"  Salt penetrates meat. Have you ever tried to get salt out of meat once it's in? Difficult.  "You are the light of the world."  Light penetrates the darkness.  "You're leaven."  Leaven penetrates the bread. 

The point is this:  God wants you to make an impact with your life for good.  How do I do that?  By sharing the Good News with others.  Not by trying to make non Christians act like Christians, but by sharing the Good News with others.  He says "Holding forth the word of life."  John 17:15+18 "Jesus said, `My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them.  As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.'"  When you became a believer, when you put your faith in Christ, you became an agent of God.  You became God's agent in the world.  He doesn't want you to be a secret agent. He wants other people to know it.  He says "I want you to influence others." 

Every once in a while I have somebody come into my office and say, "I'm so tired of working with unbelievers.  I want to get a job where I only work with believers.  Where I can be with Christians and fellowship at work."  I can imagine God in heaven saying, "No!  You missed the point!  I don't want you to get off in some little Christian ghetto, isolating yourself in some commune.  I want you in the world.  I want you making an influence, knowing unbelievers, having some of them as your friends so you can help them, you can love them, you can show that God cares for them.  You can reach them with the Good News."

I had a friend who used to work in a Bible college any quit the place to get a job working with people who didn't know the Lord. It was a good job equipped with good money and ask him why he did that he said "I felt like a candle and a candle shop and nobody could see my light shine." that's the guy who understand God's priority.

In many ways, Christians today have created an alternative parallel culture.  The world has rock music so we have Christian rock music.  The world has novels, so we've got Christian novels. The world has soap operas, so we have Christian soap operas on Christian tv.  The world has Jane Fonda, so we've got Becky Tribiasie.  We've got a parallel culture that's identical, it's just done by Christians.  Somehow we've got to reverse instead of being in the world but not of the world as Jesus said, we're of the world but not in it.  We're just like them, we've got another track -- we're just not in it.  God says, "No!  You missed the point!"

I just imagine God wanting to say to many Christians, "It's time for you to get out of the bubble. It's time for you to come out of isolation and quit trying to get away from it all.  Instead, you be an influence on them by sharing the Good News.  Be different."

Let me summarize what I've been planning to say for 6 months in this series.  How does a Christian live in a culture that many times is the exact opposite of what God tells us to do?  The answer is not isolation, which means get away, hide yourself, become a monk, don't have any contact with the rest of the world. The answer is not imitation, buy into the system and become just like them, live, talk, act, have the same values. 

The solution is insolation and infiltration.  If you go out to the ocean and catch a fish that's lived in the ocean all of its life.  You take it out, cut it up, fry it.  But before you eat it, you've got to put salt on it.  If God can keep a fish in a salty ocean all its life, without getting salt in the fish, He can keep a believer in a corrupt society without that believer becoming corrupted.  That's called insolation.

God is saying, You need to insolate yourself with God's word,

1.      Evaluate, check it out,

2.      Develop some convictions. 

3.      Love God with all your heart and then,

4.      Get out there and influence the world. 

  We've got the secret, the key, to life eternal.  We've got the key that gives life meaning and purpose and significance, the answer to the basic problems that people are experiencing in their marriages, in their families, at work.  The world is far more ready to receive the Good News than most Christians are ready to share it. God says, Share the Word!

Does God have your whole heart? 

This message today has been to believers.  I realize that there are some of you here who haven't yet made your decision for Christ and you've kind of listened in on a little conversation between me and them.  I want to say to you if you have not yet made your decision for Christ -- I don't want to kid you -- when you come to Christ, you give up everything you've got and then you've never had it so good.  Because He takes it and changes it and uses it and gives it back to you with new meaning and new significance and new joy.  Life takes on a whole new purpose.  If you've never said yes to Jesus Christ, the Bible says the free gift of eternal salvation is being offered to everyone.  You can accept that gift right now.  But along with that gift comes the realization that God wants us to live a different way. If you've never opened your life to Christ, do so today. Say, "Lord, I realize the emptiness of living just for pleasure or for possessions or for power and position.  I want my life to count.  I give it to You."

Titus 2:11-12 "For the free gift of eternal salvation is now being offered to everyone, and along with this gift comes the realization that God wants us to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures and live good, God-fearing lives day after day."

Does God have your whole heart? 

Prayer:

       Would you pray that in your heart this morning?  Would you say, "God, help me to evaluate the ideas and the experiences around me according to Your word, not whether they're popular or not.  Help me to develop strong convictions based on Your word.  Father, help me to love You with all my heart.  I'm sorry that I've loved You half heartedly.  And I've allowed other things to replace and crowd You into a corner of my life.  I know that has hurt You.  I ask You to forgive me.  I ask You to help me to be an influence for good, to share the good news, to realize that I am an agent, a communicator, and that You've put me here for a reason.  Help me to care about those people that I work with, go to school with."