Life’s Too Short To Follow the Crowd
Part 9 in series, “Life’s Too Short To…”
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
May 29, 2005
I have said over and over and over again that I believe any version of Christianity that does not contain a strong counter-cultural element is not really Christianity. As I have also said before, Jesus did not come to this earth to teach us how to get more money, or to be more comfortable. Jesus didn’t even come to this earth to help us be nicer people or better citizens or parents or wives or husbands. Jesus didn’t come to this earth fundamentally to make church-goers out of us. Jesus did not come to create a little Jesus-world right here in the USA where Christians have their own little bookstores and their own music and their own t-shirts and books and magazines and leadership conferences. In fact I am continually torn between what I feel is the shallowness of the Christian ghetto and the fact that many of the books and much of the music that has influenced my thinking the most was purchased in the ghetto I complain about. Ironically it is the Christian ghetto – our own little sub-culture – that has given powerful thinkers the platform to write books that condemn that same sub-culture and insist that Christianity should not be a sub-culture, but a COUNTER-culture.
Wildwind was started to counter the culture, and that includes the cultures of churches all over America who have allowed Jesus’ teachings to become too connected to American values. It includes the fact that Christianity in America is aligned too closely with the Republican party. I’m not trying to offend you Republicans here today, because I definitely don’t think we’d be in better shape if American Christianity decided to align more with the Democratic party either. Anytime our Christian faith accommodates and adopts the ideologies of our cultural surroundings so that we don’t sense a fundamental clash of values between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdoms of this world, we have lost the plot and missed the point.
Are you mad at me yet? I haven’t introduced scripture yet, but I’m actually on very solid ground here, folks.
James 4:4 (NLT)
4 You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with this world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again, that if your aim is to enjoy this world, you can’t be a friend of God.
Context is essential here. This is not saying that we make ourselves an enemy of God simply by enjoying the things of this world. God made this world and desires that we appreciate and enjoy its beauty. It’s not enjoying the world that sets us at odds with God, it’s AIMING at enjoying this world. When the sole purpose of our lives is to go for the gusto, to simply have fun, make money, and climb the ladder in this world as high as we can, we drive a wedge between ourselves and God. And my friends for heaven’s sake is that not what the vast majority of people in this world are doing? Aiming at simply getting all they can out of life?
Christians need to be careful not to align too closely with any political party, with any system or cause that proposes to have a corner on what is best for our world. God, though Jesus Christ, has made it clear that there is only one solution to sin, to evil, in our world, and that is for each one of us to address sin and evil in each of our own hearts. Let’s stay with politics here for a moment since that will make my job easy. How often has it occurred to politically active Christians (and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being politically active!) that it is more important to God that we love and serve those on the other side of the aisle than it is which side of the aisle we choose to stand on? When Christians start to think one party has a corner on all the good ideas, on the truth, they have gotten off base – they have aligned the world’s values too closely with Christ’s, and they shouldn’t always be very similar – in fact we should see many ways in which they are different.
How about when we take the world’s values too deeply into the church? What does the world think is the way to run our churches? The world seems to say we should put our finger to the wind and find out what “people out there” are thinking, and then adjust our teaching accordingly. Jesus tells us exactly the opposite. Last week we saw that Jesus taught us we are to build our lives on the firm foundation of his teachings, which are like rock and not like shifting sand.
Ephesians 4:11-15 (NLT)
11 He is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.
12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ,
13 until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.
14 Then we will no longer be like children, forever changing our minds about what we believe because someone has told us something different or because someone has cleverly lied to us and made the lie sound like the truth.
15 Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.
Truly, a foundation is not a foundation if it is made of weak material. What is the purpose of a foundation? Is it not to support what is built on it?
How about when we use the world’s methods to solve relationship issues in the church? How are relationship issues dealt with in most secular workplaces? Gossip, backbiting, ignoring, backstabbing – these are standard fare in most organizations, are they not? Is the church called to that standard, or to a standard far, far higher? You know the answer to that. When the church uses the world’s methods to handle relationships, we lose most of what sets us apart as the church.
What about when the church uses the culture’s methods of deciding who is and is not valuable? Who are the people who are deemed most valuable in American culture? Well, I’d say the most valuable people in American culture without question are, and I put these in order from most to least, and I say this only slightly tongue-in-cheek:
1. Rich people
2. Beautiful women with large breasts
3. Famous people, who are probably only famous if they are rich, or happen to be a beautiful woman with large breasts. If they are rich, female, AND have large breasts, so much the better.
4. Guys with six-pack abs, preferably rich guys with six-pack abs, accompanied by a famous rich women with large breasts.
5. Powerful people – who are nearly always powerful because they are rich, or famous, or sometimes they just have large breasts or six-pack abs.
6. Extremely smart people, especially if they have used their brains to become very rich and then used their money to become very good-looking and therefore very famous.
7. All the rest of us.
You can tell what a culture values by what sells in that culture. Based on that, you know what I’m saying is truer than it ought to be.
So now let’s look at what Jesus valued, shall we? For purposes of comparison and contrast --
Mark 2:15-17 (NIV)
15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.
16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?"
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
So it’s not people who think they have it all together but those who recognize their own sin and need for God who are close to the heart of Jesus.
Luke 14:16-24 (NIV)
16 Jesus replied: "A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.
17 At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ’Come, for everything is now ready.’
18 "But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ’I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’
19 "Another said, ’I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’
20 "Still another said, ’I just got married, so I can’t come.’
21 "The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ’Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’
22 "’Sir,’ the servant said, ’what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’
23 "Then the master told his servant, ’Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.
24 I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’"
So it’s not just the pretty people, the lovely people, the “desirables,” who have a place at God’s table – it’s any who are willing to come. The poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame. Jesus is speaking in spiritual terms here of course folks, so he’s saying that many will have excuses as to why they will not center their lives in God. Many will live according to the world’s values – will take the broad road, will follow the crowd. Jesus will cast his lot with all who are willing to follow him and devote their lives to him and take on his values as their own.
Finally, in what is perhaps the most persuasive passage of them all:
Matthew 7:13-14 (NIV)
13 "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Summary? Most people will follow the crowd. The crowd is the group of people on the broad road – the ones running with the pack, living life the way most everybody else is living life. Only a few people will have the courage to leave that big road, to stop running with the pack, and to make their mark by countering the culture, falling out of love with the ways of this world, and getting onto that narrow road that leads to life.
Life’s too short to follow the crowd. Folks, Jesus – the wise teacher – told us that the crowd, the majority of people – are on the wrong road.
Now even that teaching itself is offensive in our culture that does not even accept the notion that there are right roads and wrong roads – the idea that some people, as sincere as they may be – may in fact end up being sincerely wrong. But that is precisely what Jesus said.
The church that adopts the values of the culture around it is willing to discount the majority of everything Jesus said: there is a heaven, there is a hell, there is a right road and there is a wrong road, the way to live life is to give up one’s life for the sake of serving God, we are all sinners in need of a Savior and that Savior is Jesus Christ, there is a solid foundation (the teachings of Jesus) and a foundation that simply will not last (every other foundation life could be built on) – such a church is willing to adjust the fundamental things Jesus said to please the culture, to fit in, to be socially acceptable. But remember from James, we see that when we aim to make our message appealing to the world, when we align our message with the world’s values, instead of proposing that God offers an alternative, and better, message than anything we could craft on our own, we alienate ourselves from God.
We can’t be in the sack with the value system of this culture and still orient, center, root our in lives in God. This means we must disdain money. We must see money as potentially very dangerous to our spiritual well-being. The world puts value on nothing higher than money. Money is the way our culture gets what it wants. To follow Jesus is to have different wants than the culture around us, so we must acknowledge that the values of the Kingdom of God cannot be bought or sold – they can never be acquired through money. The pursuit of money, therefore, distracts us from the pursuit of spiritual things. Again there’s nothing WRONG with money, but money, like everything else, must be used for God’s purposes.
One time during a funeral, a man leaned over to the guy next to him and said, “This guy was worth millions, wasn’t he? How much do you think he left behind?” After a moment came the whispered answer: “All of it.”
Folks I believe the allure of our culture is so great, so ubiquitous, that many of us have adopted vast portions of our culture’s value system and don’t even know it. And this sounds like a message today only for Christians, but it’s not. The message here for seekers, for non-Christians, here today is that being a Christian is a whole-life thing. You search. You ask questions. You are on a journey that hopefully at some point brings you face to face with your own sin, your inability to find a way to God on your own, your need for someone to clear a path for you, the necessity of laying down old ways of thinking and doing things and placing God at the center of your perspective. That’s what we traditionally call receiving your salvation, but that’s just the beginning. From that point on you steep your life more in God, you realize that Jesus was not sub-cultural – he didn’t just live in some Jewish cultural ghetto – he was COUNTER-cultural. His life, his teachings, his beliefs, were a threat to the culture around him and that’s why he ended up dead. And that’s exactly why he taught us this:
John 15:18-20 (MSG)
18 "If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me.
19 If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one of its own. But since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you.
20 "When that happens, remember this: Servants don’t get better treatment than their masters. If they beat on me, they will certainly beat on you. If they did what I told them, they will do what you tell them.
I want Wildwind Church to be a threat to the culture around us. A threat to the elevation of sex and money and power as the gods of our age. A threat to the lie of almost complete moral relativism. A threat to the philosophy that what individuals do has no impact on others around him or her. A threat to the endless pursuit of wealth as a means of getting our needs met. And most of all, a threat to the misconception and stereotypes people have of Christians as being unloving, hypocritical, insincere, and half-baked. I want those timid individuals who summon their courage and walk through the doors of our church to be met with love and warmth and acceptance that bowls them over, not so we can pass out warm fuzzies to one another and pretend that none of us sinned this past week and that everything is perfect, but so that we can bring into this environment of unconditional and relentless love the message of the unconditional and relentless love of God, the fact of our sinful state and the need of every person for a Savior. That is what church is when church is at its best. If you’ve spent five minutes talking to me you know I don’t give one rip about the hang-ups and traditions about doing church in either your past or mine. I care about one thing and that is breaking down barriers that keep people from asking the only question that matters: what is the focus of my life? What about MY sin? What about MY need for the forgiveness Jesus offers?
What’s my message this morning? My message is that to serve Jesus Christ with your life is to live in a way that some in the surrounding culture will find at least a bit odd, if not downright nuts. The view of reality taught by Jesus is completely opposite from the reality embraced by most of our culture, and if we find ourselves fitting into our culture too well, if we find we’re not thought of as just a little bit odd by anybody, chances are good we’ve either adopted too many of the world’s values, or we just aren’t living the Christ-life at all.
Life’s too short to follow the crowd. The way that leads to life – to real life – is a narrow way. Most people don’t hang out on that road, and many of them have a hard time figuring out why anyone would take the narrow road at all. Christians here this morning, I want to encourage you to not lose your edge. Counter the culture. Dare to learn to love recklessly the way Jesus did, even if it costs you what it cost him. Dare to see faith in Christ as the only hope of this world and to wrap that heartfelt belief in love and service to those around you.
I have a dream. What if every person in every church who calls themself a follower of Jesus really started to live, and love, the way he did? How many oppressed people would find freedom? How many sick people would find healing? How many lost people would be found? How many crooked paths would be made straight? How many broken lives would be made whole? How many social outcasts would find friendship? How many ugly ducklings would learn they are beautiful?
Isn’t this what Jesus came to do? Wasn’t this the thrust of his life? Wasn’t it toward the fulfillment of this vision that Jesus died for our sins and made it possible in the first place for us to enter into this kind of life? How can our vision be any less? It cost God the life of His Son.
Non-believers here today, would this be a world you’d want to live in? That’s the world Jesus came to bring to us, starting in every individual heart, one at a time, until this love -- this selfless, rare, reckless, precious love, takes over the whole world and breaks us free from all the ills that plague humanity.
Christians, it’s easy to forget that vision, isn’t it? It’s easy to start thinking it’s just about reading the Bible and praying and going to church and being in your small group – but we do those things in order that we can be better equipped to fulfill the incredible vision Jesus had for human history, paid for with his own blood.
Non-Christians here this morning, life’s too short to follow the crowd. The whole world is pretty much doing it’s own thing – dancing and singing and drinking and laughing into oblivion. Are you part of that crowd? Counter the culture, my friends. I urge you to think about your own life – the only one you have. What is your life built on? Whatever it is, will it last one second past the moment of your death? I believe God brought you here and that God has placed a call on your life, and mine, and everyone’s, to belong to Him – to recognize the sin that separates you from being able to really know God and find His will for your life, to ask and allow Jesus Christ to be your forgiver and the new leader of your life. You can do that right now before you leave this room. You can do it tomorrow. You can do it a week from now. You can do it alone or with a Christian friend. The most important thing is that you deal honestly with the question of whether you are following the crowd and on a path that is leading ultimately to nowhere. Do it in your own timing as you sense God leading you. All I ask is that you stay on that journey and be willing to find out where it might be leading. And if and when you do it, tell us so we can help you. We want to encourage you to take whatever step is next for you.
Finally, the good news is that I think Wildwind IS, and IS BECOMING, a place where our people counter the culture – where we challenge the notions of what it means to follow Christ – where we dare to really love each other sacrificially – where we take the teachings of Christ seriously enough to allow them to be the anvil on which we allow God to mold and shape our lives. I want people to come to this church and be blown away. To realize it’s not about the building, it’s not about the clothes or the hair or about money or about the style of music, but it’s about the mysterious and incredible journey we are on together with God as our leader and teacher and friend. I have often said I want there to be a sense here that the presence of God is oozing through the walls and up through the floor – but mostly through the words and gestures and love of our people. That’s my vision for Wildwind – and really for churches everywhere – that they would become places that get as close to heaven as we can ever get while we are on this earth.
Life’s too short to follow the crowd. I encourage you, no matter where you are on your journey today, follow Jesus – counter the culture. Take the narrow road. Let Christ change your heart and your mind and your life.
