Between Weird And Worldly Series

BETWEEN WEIRD AND WORLDLY

Bob Marcaurelle

meadowbrookbaptist.cc

“The Lord says, ‘Come out from among them and be separated from them. Then I will receive you and be a Father to you. You will be my sons and daughters.’”

(2 Corinthians 6:17-18)

PART 1:

In Grammar School I was walking down the hall with everyone else to watch “Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain. Two girls were sitting in the hall. I found out why. They were “Christians” and were not allowed to go to movies. I remember thinking - Man, that’s weird! I went to church every now and then and never heard anything like that.

Thirty years later, as a pastor, I was interested in a certain movie and it was rated “PG-13.” Wanting to be careful I asked one of our finest young people about the movie. He said, “Preacher Bob, it wasn’t that bad. There was hardly any cursing. The PG-13 rating was probably for the violence.”

I went and every other word, it seemed, was a filthy curse word. God’s name was dragged through the dirt. I quietly slipped out hoping no one would see me. And I thought of that young person any why he lied to me. I realized later he didn’t.

Our generation is so saturated with sex, profanity and violence that we are immune to it. Somewhere between the weirdness of the first two girls and the worldliness of that young man, we must learn what to do to be a good witness for Jesus to the world around us. We must have a balance between INSULATION from the people without IMMITATION of them.

Both extremes have their problems for the Christian who is serious about being a witness. While I am sure God prefers the first extreme over the second, we can be so weird that our witness is weakened. We CAN be “so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good.”

But likewise, we cannot pull people out of the filth of sin if we wallow in the filth ourselves. Listen to Paul in

Ephesians 5

“Take no part in the worthless pleasures of evil and darkness, but instead, rebuke and expose them. . .when they see how wrong they really are, some of them may even become children of the light” (5:11, 13, LIVING BIBLE).

This is the problem we face every day as we go out into our filthy Canaan culture to school, to work, to play and even to worship. No greater problem and no more difficult challenge faces us than our relationship with the world and its non-Christian culture, value and lifestyle. What are our choices? First. . .

I. THE WORLDLY STANCE

The most popular and prevalent Christian reaction to the world is to be like it or, at least, to keep our faith a secret, so we won’t be different. A Gallup poll in the late 1980's, revealed very little difference in the ethics and behavior of people who went to church and people who did not. The same result was in the “Barna Report” of the 1990’s. The people of the world see us go to church and sing:

They go to church on Sunday

In fine clothes attired

They’ll be alright on Monday

Its’ just a little habit they’ve acquired

The “world” that crucified Jesus sits IN OUR PEWS and preaches from our pulpits. Most Pharisees and many Rabbis (Scribes) tithed, prayed twice daily, fasted, attended synagogue (church), gave alms to the poor, studied their Bibles, witnessed publicly to let everyone know they were servants of God, killed Jesus and went to hell.

When I pastored a small country church, Martin Luther King was assassinated. One of my “finest?” members said the man who killed him should get a medal.” This is an outrage. No wonder we can’t get people in church. All we have to offer them is what they already are. Why is this happening?

1. The Searing of Conscience (1 Cor. 8:7; 1 Tim. 4:2)

The Bible talks about weak and defiled consciences (1 Cor. 8:7) being seared (1 Tim. 4:2) by sin. That was the problem of that young man. For us to get away from illicit sex, violence, profanity and materialism would be like a fish getting away from water. When everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, is doing something, we CAN keep our kids from doing it for a while but it’s almost impossible to get them to really believe it is wrong.

There are the teens in our churches who see nothing wrong with singing hymns on Sunday, speaking on Youth Night and watching the worst kind of videos and listening to heavy metal rock that glorifies sex and violence during the week. Their motto is, “When in Canaan, do as the Canaanites do.” (The same is true of many adults.)