Living as Exiles – Embracing our Weirdness
TCF Sermon
January 3, 2016
Does anybody really make New Year’s resolutions anymore? It can be a helpful exercise, but for many of us, they just end up being a to-do list for the next week or two, that quickly falls by the wayside in the face of everyday life.
Or some of us are like this cat, and we give ourselves options with our New Year’s resolutions:
Option A: Lose some weight
Option B: buy a bigger basket
Or we fail to make challenging resolutions and make our resolutions too easily achievable: Such as this one: eat more cake, watch more TV
Others of us are like this rooster, who’s illustrates how Joel Vesanen thinks:
“No matter how badly life treated you last year, just walk tall with your head held high…this is a brand new year baby.”
For a long time, I didn’t understand why people would stand with hundreds of thousands of other people in Times Square on New Year’s Eve just to see one year turn into the next.
But I think the desire, and for some the need, to celebrate a New Year is inherent in us as human beings. Whether we’re believers in Christ or not, I think we understand innately that life is often made up of fresh starts and new beginnings.
In Christ, of course, we understand this in a deeper way. His mercies are new every morning. We have the gift of repentance and renewal that we can access day by day in Christ. There is redemption from our past.
If we look back at 2015, and begin to think about these things on the first Sunday of 2016, I think most of us will agree that it was a particularly challenging year for us as believers in our culture. In many significant ways, 2016 dawned as a new world for us.
In 2015, we saw thousands of years of a mostly common understanding of what marriage is, and what it means, completely redefined. We’re now seeing that what it means to be a male and a female is also being completely redefined, based solely on what a person thinks and feels, exclusive of biological reality.
We saw exposed the evil practice, of unborn babies’ body parts being sold, and not only did our nation respond with mostly a collective yawn, but many responded by defending this barbarism. And the cultural change seemed to happen so fast.
What’s more, we’re seeing hints of things to come for the church. Tell me if you don’t see our Western culture in these words from Paul to the Romans:
Romans 1:20-32 (NIV) 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Think about that last verse, verse 32: …they not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practice them.
We’re seeing this today – not just approval, but even celebration, of things that the vast majority of people just a decade ago could not approve of. The Greek word here for approval implies taking pleasure in. So it’s not simple tolerance – it’s affirmation.
And because we as believers in the Word of God, cannot, must not, give approval to, or affirm, the sinful behavior of segments of our culture, we’re seeing hints of our future as believers in exile, strangers in our own land – which is the same reality that our forefathers in the faith faced in different contexts in scripture.
We’re facing the reality that, in many ways, we’re a minority now. According to one recent Gallup survey:
The overall trend clearly points toward a higher level of acceptance of a number of behaviors that the Bible clearly condemns. In fact, notes Gallup, the moral acceptability ratings for …the issues measured since the early 2000s are at record highs.
Today, a majority of Americans believe that what the Bible calls sexual immortality between adults, and homosexual behavior, and having a child outside of marriage, and doctor-assisted killing, and the killing of humans in the earliest stages of development, to be “morally acceptable.”
That a majority of Americans find no sin in these behaviors, stands completely at odds with the same polls, which show that the vast majority of Americans, 7 out of 10, continue to identify with some sort of Christianity.
What’s wrong with this picture? It means a large percentage of people, who consider themselves to be Christians, also think that behavior that the Bible clearly identifies as sinful is OK.
The root issue is an unwillingness of Bible-believing Christians to simply state, “You can’t be obedient to Christ and consider behavior he abhors and condemns to be ‘morally acceptable’.” Joe Carter
So, another thing we’re seeing today is that there’s a more clear separation between Christians who believe and practice what the Word of God teaches, and those who decide to pick and choose which parts of the Bible they will not only believe, but follow in practice.
And that clarity of separation is a good thing. Here’s Russell Moore:
Play video clip 1 (available at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bmsov193rh9e6z/Clip%201%20for%201-3-16%20sermon.wmv?dl=0)
So, now, there is a conflict between what the Bible declares, and what our culture decides, is right or wrong, and again, that’s a good thing.
But that doesn’t make it easy. What it does is force us, as believers, to make some decisions about how to relate to the culture that surrounds us.
Now, if it was all just “out there,” perhaps it would be easier. It if was all just ‘out there,” that is, not really affecting any of us personally, perhaps we could just shake our heads, lament how our society is sliding more and more into the sewer, thank God we’re redeemed and not like them, and go on with our lives.
But in reality, as attractive as that might seem, that’s not a real option. The world will impose itself on us, try to squeeze us into its mold, and we will have to make decisions about how we relate to the world.
I have some friends who have faced difficult decisions this past year, because they’ve had family members who’ve forced them to figure this out. One of these friends has a family member who’s a lesbian, and invited my friend to her wedding to her female partner. My friend made the choice that, because of what he believes about marriage, he could not attend the wedding.
He didn’t reject this woman, didn’t say he wanted nothing to do with her. He just said, as winsomely as he could possibly say so, that he couldn’t affirm the marriage by attending the wedding. In fact, he agonized for days, praying, writing and rewriting, his response, so that he would do his best to say the right things in as loving and winsome a way as he could.
But that wasn’t enough. In the mind of this woman and her family, my friend was rejecting her and being hateful and judgmental. They didn’t want an explanation. They wanted full affirmation. And now there’s a rift in this relationship.
It reminded me of this passage of scripture:
Romans 12:14-18 (ESV) 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
Did you get that, in verse 18, the last verse:
If possible, Paul wrote to the Romans. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. The implication is clear. Sometimes it’s not possible to have peace. Sometimes you can say everything right. You can have the perfect approach, the perfect demeanor, the right words. And still, despite all that, some will not allow peace in a relationship, and will take offense.
Now, there’s a clear admonition to us as believers to do everything right, as far as it depends on us. We do have a responsibility here. This is where many Christians have fallen short. There has been no real love extended in those relationships where we have serious disagreement about right and wrong.
So, we must always, always, examine our hearts, choose our words carefully, and choose to bless rather than curse them. Yet, this passage is also just as clear that even when we do bless, peace doesn’t depend entirely on what we do or say. It doesn’t all depend on us.
It’s a fact that the old adage: love the sinner but hate the sin, doesn’t fly anymore, whether it’s true or not. That’s because, in the case of so many sexual sins, and especially homosexual behavior, in the minds of those caught up in those sins, what we call the sinner and the sin are one and the same. Their identity is so tied up in the sin that they are unable to see it as a behavior alone. It’s who they are. Thus, when we hate the sin, in their eyes, we’re hating the sinner, too.
As a result, Christians who stand firm on sin issues like this are now, in the minds of much of our culture, no better than racist bigots.
So, where does that leave us? How are we to respond to these new realities in our society? Over the past many months, as these new realities have played out in our culture, I’ve read quite a bit about suggested ways to respond.
One seemingly popular suggestion has been labeled the Benedict Option, by a writer named Rod Dreher. It’s named after Benedict, the Saint Benedict of Nursia, who lived from 480-543. He left a falling and decadent Roman empire, and founded a community of men dedicated to prayer. This became the Benedictine order of monks, and over the next centuries they kept the faith alive throughout Europe, as Europe became a darker and more barbarian continent.
The Benedictines laid the groundwork for the rebirth of Christian society in the former Western Roman Empire. Essentially, they preserved the Christian faith for the future.
As applied to our modern culture, the Benedict Option is not necessarily suggesting that we retreat into monasteries to escape our culture.
Dreher writes that:
My argument is that Christians had better prepare for this. We are fighting a losing game. The country is not ours anymore. This is not our culture anymore. Maybe it never was our real home, but we have got to prepare ourselves and our families and our churches through intentional living, through disciplined living, and through an awareness of the cultural moment to deal with perhaps even persecution. We don’t have the luxury of disengagement. We’ve got to protect our institutions as best we can. What I’m trying to say, to tell Christians, is it’s not enough to be a knight. You have to be a gardener, too.
By gardening, he means we must cultivate our faith to be a strong and vital faith, or it won’t withstand the cultural influences. The cultural influences will come to own the church, too. There are other approaches to our declining culture with different labels. There’s the Jeremiah Option, for example. It’s taken from the people of Israel in exile as recalled in the book of Jeremiah. They were exiled because they were under God’s judgment.
Jeremiah 29:1 (NIV) 1 This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
Jeremiah 29:4-9 (NIV) 4 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."
So, the idea here, with the so-called Jeremiah option, is that we behave as God instructed the Israelites to do in Babylon. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city. Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens. In other words, continue to be productive, useful citizens, even under pagan rule.
Now, if you compare the two approaches we’ve mentioned, the main difference seems to be one of tone: the Jeremiah Option is optimistic and relaxed, but the Benedict Option could be seen as more pessimistic and (more or less) defensive.
In the Benedict Option, the concern is that Christians will lose a sense of holiness as the world invades our Christian culture too, making it indistinguishable from the world.
Dreher believes that the primary difference between the Benedict and Jeremiah options is that the Jeremiah option is more optimistic, that the exiles can avoid assimilation.
Our culture does have some of the Borg going for it. The Borg, for those of you uninitiated in the Star Trek universe, are a race of hybrid humanoid and cyborg,
whose only goal is to assimilate or destroy other peoples and worlds, taking only the best of their knowledge and technology, and moving on to other conquests.
The Borg would always introduce themselves in this genial manner: Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
And, apart from Christ, we will be assimilated by our culture. Even when we’re in Christ, it’s something we must be on guard against. As we noted earlier, the world will squeeze you into its mold. Without the armor of God at our disposal, we’re never immune from being owned by the world and its values, its attitudes, rather than God’s Word and His character, His love, His mercy, His Spirit.
So, I’m not dismissing either of these approaches, or most of the other ones I’ve read about in recent weeks. I think there’s Biblical truth and needed elements in most of them.
Here are some of the other labels writers have applied to the various approaches of how Christians respond in this new reality.
There’s Retrenchment, there’s isolation, outrage, Bomb Shelter, Ultimate Fighter, Chameleon, Alternate Kingdom.
And most of them have good points. Well, maybe not bomb shelter. That’s a survivalist approach – in other words, let’s totally abandon our culture to its own devices, let them lead each other to hell and go find a place that’s immune from the culture and its values. At least we’ll be safe.
And I can dismiss that one with these words of Jesus. He was praying to God the Father, and praying for His disciples and us.
John 17:15-16 (ESV) I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
Ultimately, I believe what we all want, as we learn to live as exiles in a culture that’s not changing for the better, is four things:
1. to respond faithfully to God, with trust in His perfect plan
2. to be guided by scripture in all we do and how we live
3. to be His instruments in seeking and saving the lost
4. to have courage and stand firm in the face of at least criticism and ostracism, and at most persecution.
Those things are things which have not changed, and should not change, regardless of the cultural winds that blow hard all around us. They are true today, and they were true when Jesus walked the earth. They were true when the New Testament church was facing a world in many ways much more decadent than ours, as hard for us to believe as that may be.
Jesus said in
John 7:7 (ESV) 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.
We read just a few verses earlier in John 7, that Jesus spoke these words to his biological brothers, meaning James, Joseph, Judas and Simon. At this point, His brothers didn’t believe in Jesus, which is why Jesus could say here that “the world cannot hate you,” and then say in
John 15:18 (ESV) “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
But here’s the point. The gospel is the good news that Jesus has purchased our pardon with His own blood, and we cannot earn our salvation. But the purchase of our salvation required the shedding of His blood, because we have all sinned and fall short of God’s glory.
That’s why the world hates Jesus – at least they hate the Jesus that’s fully revealed in the Word of God. He exposes and reveals our sin.
They don’t hate the Jesus who says love one another, forgive one another, let the little children come to me, the Jesus who said, neither do I condemn you, to the adulterous woman.
They do hate the exclusive Jesus, who said:
John 14:6 (ESV) 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
They do hate Jesus the judge, who said:
Matthew 25:32-34, 41, 46 (ESV) 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
So, which Jesus will we believe? Which will we follow?
The world hated Jesus, in other words, because of the implications of His witness. If His life was true, then theirs was false. If His life were wholesome, then theirs was corrupt. Douglas Wilson
We see Paul and Peter, in their letters to the early church, addressing these same issues we face today. They spoke to a Christian church which knew from experience what it means to be exiles, strangers – what it was like to be totally at odds with the morality of the culture in which they lived.
And there was no hint of retreat or isolation in their words. There was a recognition that the culture was the polar opposite of how they were to live. But then it was always followed by admonitions to live differently in Christ.
1 Peter 4:3-5 (ESV) 3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. 4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; 5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
So, Peter says that the unbelievers live lawless lives, and are surprised that the Christians don’t.
The word here for surprised is translated “strange things” in Acts. The word translated malign is the same word from which we get our English word blaspheme. It means slander, revile, defame, or to speak irreverently or disrespectfully about.
Because we as believers in Christ are no longer slaves to sin, we have new desires – desires to please God and be obedient to Him. And that’s just strange to the world. They can’t understand it. It’s weird.
We’re exiles, we’re aliens, folks. We’re just weird. It’s not cool to be a genuine believer, whose life reflects that belief.
I was once asked by some business colleagues why I didn’t want to go with them to the topless bars they went to when we were traveling on business. They really didn’t understand why I wouldn’t or couldn’t do that. It was strange and weird to them.
So, we see here and in other places in the New Testament that this perspective the world has about believers is to be expected. We’re past the era where most people will like us most of the time and that shouldn’t surprise us.
But it also cannot change us or what we believe.
Play 2nd Russell Moore video clip (available at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sgmb29lr4ptoj2r/Clip%202%20for%201-3-16%20sermon.wmv?dl=0)
So, the New Testament Church never had an era when they were liked. Because they were committed to Jesus, they were socially ostracized and isolated, and often physically attacked. The apostle Paul was particularly concerned about the Thessalonian church he founded, and wrote in:
1 Thessalonians 3:1-5 (ESV) 1 Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, 2 and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, 3 that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. 4 For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know. 5 For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.
Note a few key verses here: We were destined for this, he wrote in verse 3. In verse 2, he wanted to be certain they were established and exhorted in their faith, so that no one would be moved by these afflictions.
We, too, are destined for this. Because most of us haven’t experienced this kind of resistance to our faith in any real way yet doesn’t mean that we never will.
Yet, we also see clearly that Paul’s goal was that they stand firm. Peter’s goal in 1 Peter was the same, but it was more than that. It included the idea that, though we were to be considered strange, though we were to be maligned, that we be so active in good deeds, that it attracts the attention of the world.
“This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.” (1 Peter 2:15)
“Have a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” (1 Peter 3:16)
So, we believers are to be two things:
1. Weird, and totally out of sync with our culture in terms of our faith and practice.
2. But we’re also to be winsome – standing firm not just on the truth that the Word teaches us, but to be standing strong in good deeds. And not just good deeds that avoid bad behavior, and that’s certainly important, but proactively reaching out to bless those who persecute us, whatever that persecution looks like.
What the apostle Peter contributes to this debate, among other things, is this: Baby Boomers (like me) who grew up with an assumed overlap between Christian morality and cultural expectations, and Millennials, who desperately want to be hip and cool, must both joyfully embrace the calling to be weirdos. It is not our culture. And we are not cool. And, with just as much resolve and joy, we must set our faces to be winsome. Not by cowering before the slander, or desperately trying to avoid being maligned, but by getting up every morning dreaming of what new good deeds can be done today. What fresh way can I “bless” my enemies (1 Peter 3:9) or anyone in need? The apostle Peter is calling for a special breed. Not the kind of conservative who gives all his energy to defending his weirdo status. And not the kind of liberal who will embrace any compromise necessary to avoid being a weirdo. But rather a breed that is courageous enough to be joyfully weird, and compassionate enough to be “zealous for good deeds. John Piper
How do we live as exiles? Let’s give the last word to God’s word. Of course this isn’t the whole answer, but it’s an important part of the answer.
1. We believe and live righteously – not bowing to the molding and shaping influence of our culture.
2. we love and serve our culture with unmistakably good deeds, hoping and praying that these deeds will be noticed by the world, and glorify God.
That’s the strategy Peter admonished the early church to adopt. So, let’s close with this:
1 Peter 2:11-12 (ESV) 11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Pray
