Muddying the Waters
ROMANS 12:1-2
INTRODUCTION: There are nearly 100,000,000 people in our country who claim to be church members. As professed believers, we are not having the moral and spiritual influences on our nation and in our world that, you would think that we would be able to make. Why isn’t the church having a greater impact on our culture? Why it is there so little commitment on the part of believers to church attendance, witnessing, and to become world changers? I believe that the main reason for our failure is that we have violated the teachings of God’s Word and particularly the command of Romans 12:2, " be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed". When we conform to this world, we muddy the waters of our lives and testimonies often with disastrous results.
I. What does it mean to be conformed to this world?
A. Conform - An external fashioning or shaping of one thing like another.
B. "Don?t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking."
C. "Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world."
D. As Christians, we have the responsibility not to pattern our lives after the world’s value system.
E. What is the basis of the world’s value system.
1. There are three main values summarized in I John 2:16 "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."
2. Possessions - the lust of the eyes - Materialism
a. Someone has said, "The essence of life today is not having--it is having to have."
b. Luke 12:15 "And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things, which he possesses."
c. One of artist Andy Warhol’s great pictures is his "Last Supper" in which he superimposes the General Electric logo and the wrapper from a bar of Dove soap over a dim drawing of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous work. Warhol meant no irreverence. He was rather making a statement that few will deny. Spiritual values are often overshadowed or hidden by materialism.
d. One day the department store manager left all the windows open and a great windstorm blew all the price makers around the store causing them to land in total disarray. The next day, the shoppers delighted to see socks for $149.95, suits for $1.19, shoes for 5 cents and a scarf for $1,299.99! This is how worldly Christians live every day. The put low value on spiritual things and high value on things with none.
3. Pleasure - the lust of the flesh - Carnality
a. II Timothy 3:1-5 "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."
b. Many of our adolescents and young adults cannot "just say no" to drugs because their whole approach to life has been shaped by television, the land where "no" does not exist.
c. A VERY HUNGRY FOX, seeing some bread and meat left by shepherds in the hollow of an oak, crept into the hole and made a hearty meal. When he finished, he was so full that he was not able to get out, and began to groan and lament his fate. Another Fox passing by heard his cries, and coming up, inquired the cause of his complaining. On learning what had happened, he said to him, "Ah, you will have to remain there, my friend, until you become such as you were when you crept in, and then you will easily get out."
d. Too often, Christians get caught up in the passions of their flesh that in the end they will have to pay for their sins. Therefore, no matter how alluring things may appear to us, we must simply walk away and avoid temptation.
4. Prestige and Position - the Pride of Life
a. The supplanting of sound values by the world’s methods of popularity and success is clouding the influence of the Bible in the lives of many Christians.
b. John 12:42-43 "Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: [43] For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God."
c. People are strange: they want the front of the bus, the back of the church, and the center of attention.
d. If you serve only for the approval of men, you will lose the approval of God.
II. What is the Effect of Conformity?
A. Loss of knowledge of right and wrong
1. Job 34:4 "Let us choose to us judgment: let us know among ourselves what is good." in other words "You should choose to follow what is right, but first you must define what is good."
2. When the waters are muddied, you cannot see clearly to discern what is in it. Likewise, when we muddy the waters of our lives with the culture and philosophy of this world we lose our ability to discern right from wrong.
3. When the "I" becomes dominant, the "spiritual eye" sees the entire world in a distortion.
4. The devil cannot take from the soul the light of faith: he, however, can and does remove the light of consideration; to the point that the believer does not reflect on what it believes. And just as it is of little avail to open the eyes in the dark, it is of no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed."
5. "It is said that in Japan there is a certain kind of spider which throws its web over the telegraph and telephone wires, sometimes from tree to tree, and frequently from the ground over the wire to the ground. When a sufficient number of these webs have been spun it is impossible to send a telegraph messages or communicate from one Japanese city to another, and so the linemen must go out and snap the webs which seem so insignificant in themselves, and instantly connection is again restored, but it is likewise true that things in our lives, as insignificant as the spider’s web, have caused us to lose both peace and power, while many of them together have shut us off from all communication with heaven. Not until we come out from the world and be separate, can we expect to know the secret of the Lord."
B. Loss of Influence of right over wrong in the world.
1. The early church had its greatest impact upon the world when it lived least like the world.
2. The Christian Communications Laboratory relates the story of a small Midwestern weekly paper which ran a story saying, "We are pleased to announce that the cyclone which blew away the Methodist church last Friday did no real damage to the town." Kind of scary! When we conform to this world’s value system we become irrelevant and without impact.
3. David Watson (1982, Called and Committed: World-Changing Discipleship, Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois, pp 2,3) "The vast majority of Western Christians --- Church-members, pew-fillers, hymn-singers, sermon-tasters, Bible-readers, even born-again-believers and charismatics, are not true disciples of Jesus. If we were willing to become disciples, the church in the west would be transformed, and the impact on society would be staggering."
4. I Peter 2:12 "Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation."
5. Philippians 2:15 "That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;"
6. We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.
7. Because we have been so willing to accommodate the message of the Bible to the limitations of contemporary culture, the modern world does not regard the church as a threat; I suspect that it regards us as merely boring. We are giving the modern world less and less in which to disbelieve because it senses no difference between what the church is saying and what is being said by a variety of secular voices. Thus, the modern world is not called up actively to decide for or against the church, because it sees so little against which to take a stand. The world which once imprisoned our ancestors now responds to an utterly enculturated church with mere indifference.
III. What is cure for muddied waters?
A. Transformation - complete change, expressed in character and conduct.
B. Renewing of the mind - the adjustment of the moral and spiritual vision and thinking to the mind of God through a revival of His power by a willing response to His Word and His ways.
C. Catherine Booth - There comes a crisis, a moment when every human soul which enters the kingdom of God has to make its choice of that kingdom in preference to everything else that it holds and owns.
D. Hebrews 11:24-26 "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; [25] Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; [26] Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward."
E. I John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
IV. What is the result of keeping the waters clear?
A. "Prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
B. Knowledge of right and wrong
1. Psalms 19:7 "The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple."
2. John 7:17 "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself
3. Knowledge of what sin is in inverse ratio to its presence; only as sin goes do you realize what it is; when it is present you do not realize what it is because the nature of sin is that it destroys the capacity to know you sin.
4. The proportion in which I know my Lord is the proportion in which I am prepared to serve Him. Is it not certain that when I know as I am known I shall be more perfectly prepared to serve?."
C. Maturation
1. Warren W. Wiersbe (1929- ) Many people think that a "spiritual Christian" is mystical, dreamy, impractical, and distant. When he prays, he shifts his voice into a sepulchral tone in tremolo. This kind of unctuous piety is a poor example of true spirituality. To be "spiritually minded" simply means to look at earth from heaven’s point of view. The spiritually minded believer makes his decisions on the basis of eternal values and not the passing fads of society.
2. Colossians 2:6-7 "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: [7] Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving."
3. Maturity is pressing toward the mark; immaturity is complacency and self-satisfaction.
D. Influence
1. I heard of a little Hindu girl brought up in a strict Hindu family, who had come across Christians. Somebody asked her one-day what she thought a Christian was. She thought for a few moments and replied, "Well as far as I can see, a Christian is somebody who is different from everybody else."
2. Matthew 5:13-14 "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. [14] Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid."
