Culture Shock - Salt & Light, Part 1

For the next couple weeks. I'm going to consider what God's word has to say about some of the most divisive issues facing our world today, and I want to talk to a very special group, a group that is called followers of Jesus Christ you believe the Bible you love Jesus with these topics, you don't know what to say you don't know where to go. How do you address them. That's today welcome to this Wednesday edition of Living on the Edge with children Living on the Edges of international discipleship ministry featuring the Bible teaching of nature begins a new series called culture shock. As Christians were aware of mounting cultural pressure link act as our children much more so for the next couple of weeks to provide a biblical approach to some of the most controversial issues facing the church today. Human sexuality abortion, sexuality, and politics. Now more than ever, Christians need to know what God says about these topics and how we can engage in conversation. Like not heat the discussion. Now let's join Chip for today's message to something a little different.

I want you to picture in your mind. Just hypothetically, that it this moment in history moment in history where you've heard this amazing thing about this is man named Jesus and he is the bus and I mean some of you are actually there when he fed the 5000. You were up early in the front row seat in Saul the discussion in the couple fish in the bread and then you know like a rock concert.

They were breaking everything down you and while we may make it 12 big baskets (and then you you been curious you been following what does it mean to follow him. Could he be the Messiah and what does it, but what you really calling us to and so he stayed up all night.

We prayed and he chose 12 and and then as he did. Then he wanted to lay out for them. This is the journey. This is the life, the kingdom of heaven. The way God wants life to work is come down to the kingdom of earth is going to talk about being a kingdom citizen when a rabbi sat down.

He sat down as one with authority and and if you have your Bible, you can open it up and please follow along and this is a very important most famous sermon by Jesus where he he lays out this is what it means in your heart and your life and your attitudes and what it's gonna look like to be a follower of this radical God who came to earth. Now when they saw the crowds, Matthew chapter 5 verse one he went up on the mountainside and he sat down and his disciples came to him and you begin to teach them, saying, and he goes through what's known as the Beatitudes about this is this is what the kingdom looks like this is here to be.

This is refined joy. This is fulfillment. This is alignment after he talks about those characteristics were a heart that's changed were supernaturally your following Jesus. Then he says something about you all better now followers. Verse 13 you are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again. It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men you you are the light of the world.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden.

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house in the same way you are to let your light so shine before men that they could see your good deeds. Your kind acts. Your amazing acts of love and pause because of how you live and give glory and praise to your father in heaven. If you know, historically, salt was very valuable. It was used for number purposes. But one thing it preserved did have a lot of refrigeration.

So Saul preserved things from corrupting. There's a metaphor there salt flavored things to change the taste of things we change the taste the direction the sense of culture like those two or three things number one light exposes light reveals but also when you're in a jam and you don't know what to do, just a tiny little bit of light. You can see a candle from 10 miles away. It gives direction and you are the called out ones by God to give direction to reveal who God is to be the kind of lives in the kind 11, holding some kind of winsome this that actually begins to shape all the culture around my concern is what's happening inside the church and when I say church. I don't mean just anyone who claims to be Christian, anyone who intellectually says they believe in Jesus, I'm talking about those of us in this room. People that unashamedly believe this is the word of God that the second person of the Trinity. Jesus Christ left the glory of heaven was born of a virgin, lived the perfect life revealed what the father is like full of truth and grace, and after living a perfect life, went to the cross to die in your place as your substitute to pay for your sin and sins of all men and all time and after he died, he rose from the dead physically and bodily. And he walked around on the earth for 40 days speaking about the kingdom to 500 eyewitnesses and then he gave them a commission that is still ours to make disciples of every effort not every people group all over the earth to tell them that your sins have been forgiven. It's good and wonderful news. There is a good God and he loves you and he wants relationship with you and we boldly lovingly when simply going to all the world and preach the gospel by our words and by our life and that we believe he is now seated at the right hand of the father, praying and making intercession for us and he will come again in his glory, and what he expects is a bride unspotted without wrinkle pure and holy is called the church. My concern is what's happened to that group and that group is us. Do you understand that you are living in the fastest changing. In all of human history information every 3 to 4 years is doubling. I've been all around the world and I've been to Salerno, South Africa. I've been in the slums of the world are more mobile phones now in many countries and there are people in America being one of the world is changing rapidly and with technology. Lots of things have happened in the church and I want to ask what's happened to the salt and the light and all I want to do. Please hear the heart of this is not at all in terms of condemnation.

I've lived the major part of my ministry life in either Santa Cruz or the Silicon Valley. That's the bay area were one of the richest areas in the world.

31% of the people where I live were born outside the United States, 51% speak another language at home. We have one of the strongest and largest homosexual populations less than 4% of the people where I live. Go to any church so so what really matters to me is when they need a person says I'm a follower of Jesus. Are they salty, are they light do they bring light. Let me do a little history lesson amount will show you two timelines just to give you a snapshot of how rapidly things have changed in the last 50 years. I made up this little chart and in the far right you'll see righteousness a call that a +10 wickedness of -10 and just in terms I'm just talking biblical morality. You know, right, wrong, stealing, lying 10 Commandments, you know, purity, and so let's just make a +10 righteousness in the 1950s. I'm saying belief and behavior. Not that everyone live this way but the culture. The culture in general of the church and then of the world the whole world system. What was what would be on those three little channels we had back what was an Internet and what I can tell you is in the 50s marriage was viewed as a covenant divorce was in the low single digits inside the church and actually below single digits outside the church.

Sexual purity was a standard high school in the 50s and someone got pregnant.

It was scandalous.

Abortions were illegal and homosexuality was a sin.

And so that was where the church's beliefs and behaviors and so the world was a few you know so movie stars got divorces abortions happened in back alleys illegally. Of course, and people dabbled in the homosexual lifestyle but but by and large, that was the world so here's the question for thousand years of biblical morality in 50 years. How is it changed, and more importantly, how is a change in the church and again this isn't just individuals, but the general belief behaviors in the church and when the church is evangelical Bible believing we love Jesus without a supernatural birth church after the 60s revolution by the 2000's of the divorce rate in the church and outside the church is roughly the same.

About 50% of 65% of women have abortions self identifies either Catholic Protestant or evangelical a sexual immorality, and by that I mean a people living together having casual sex in the church of Jesus Christ in 18 to 29-year-old categories, but 34, 35%. The adoption of homosexuality in the mainline denominations happen 15 to 20 years ago and the revisionist movement currently among Bible believing churches is that homosexuality in monogamous relationships, especially in the younger generation of 30% of our teens believe that homosexuality in our Bible churches is okay and so there's a dramatic shift to me that is, ask yourself how to stop is hard to 1000 okay, 10 Commandments, Moses 1000 2000 3000 Jesus for about 4000 years of these are absolute moral core biblical absolutes in 50 years. Inside the church, let alone the culture and so what happens is, imagine if you will the church in our beliefs and behavior. Imagine a string connected to the world system and when the church is moving toward righteousness the world, follows along to some degree.

In other words, in the 50s and early let's make this box the culture of America and inside of it. The culture of the church was pretty big and so we influence there is ethics and and and people though they may agree or disagree that what was right and wrong. Those things we influenced our culture. 50 years later here we are in the American culture and now this small little box is evangelical Bible believing believers and the arrows are the culture shaping us. How did it happen. How did it happen. I think in inner honesty would say the beliefs and behaviors of the average evangelical Bible teaching church where I pastor and around America are not very salty.

Well let me give you the symptoms. The symptoms are sexual immorality, politics and the environment. Now let you know when when the Scripture talks about sexual immorality is a very broad term cornea is the word in Greek and kinda get all kind of things fall underneath that so this iceberg is you know 10% iceberg is above. So here's the things that people in terms of sexual immorality. Abortion usually results from some level of either sexual immorality or we don't want to child adultery, cohabitation, pornography, fornication, homosexuality, all of those. The Bible will call sexual immorality and then you politics and the environment, and here's all I want you to see those are symptoms, there nothing more than symptoms, but inside the church and outside the churches is where people battle and yell and scream at one another and so here's what I want to do.

Are you ready once you in your mind's eye.

Now to go back to the beginning God's desired intent before there was sin. So he's creating it's good it's good it's good it's good it's very good and he brings Bre's life into man and from God's perspective all through Scripture, life is the most precious commodity in the universe.

We are made in the image of the living God, let us make man in our image, and so God is always protected life. What does abortion do to life.

It snuffs it out before it even starts after there was life. What's the first thing that happened God brought the woman to the man in the instituted the first institution called marriage and long before there was sand there was a man and a woman and they would come together and they would be naked and unashamed and well beyond physically. Another words they would they would have emotional, spiritual, physical intimacy, there would be connection. No hiding, no shame, no pass, no baggage and they were to multiply and would multiply have children and has the family multiplying children you develop was called community and in community there something every community has to figure out priorities and who gets what and why and when the communities grow larger. They become a city with the Greek word for city is polis. We get our word politics is a politics is nothing more nothing less than the arrangement of how community should live with one another and where the power should be aligned for the highest good. If you went to Webster's and said politics. It would not say corrupt people making lots of money who are hypocrites and make promises can lie and their agenda.

It doesn't say that there Polydor is not a dirty word but I want you to get God's dream God's picture because underneath all of this is a lie. The enemy is attacking.

He's attacking the core things of the goodness of God.

Life, marriage, family, community, and then what did he do he created this amazing view. I live in one of most beautiful places in the world so you and weathers the beauty, the Everglades, or whether it's the ocean weathers the redwoods to go up 300 feet majestic in his powerful it's the environment it's the earth that he made us stewards of and what you see is not when lies we believe then pretty soon. Life doesn't matter, and violence is the answer. Marriage doesn't matter and sexual immorality of any kind. It brings death in this room here. My heart this is this is not us and them. I'm guessing there's probably more than handful of women that are found out in your season of life that your husband had an addiction to pornography.

What did that to your marriage. How did you feel the betrayal hurt. There's a lot of them that they don't want to do that and feel stuck and trapped. I'm sure there's many of you that if the group the size and have had a mate walk out on I married a woman whose mate walked out on her and she wasn't Christian. He secretly was having an affair. He was doing drugs and that was their lifestyle and he was selling and had an affair on the side when she got pregnant with twin little boys. He left her desperation. Her boss letter to Christ and I met her a few years later is one of the most wonderful godly people I got to adopt those little boys but I will tell you I've been married 35 years. We are unpacking have unpacked and through counseling the pain when you've been rejected in Kirk did what to do to the relationship mean there's there's there's people that have cohabitated and slept around them and and and and they don't like sex in marriage anymore cures all of what you hear.

It's not about this or that are right or wrong or legalism is about God belonging to bring life unity, intimacy, health and community and in this beautiful place he called earth, and so those are the areas so that the chapter of each of the book to address how to bring light to those, but there symptoms are not the problem look right below the waterline. The problem is much deeper. It's about truth is truth relative worth truth absolute absolute truth is that I believe this all the time. It's factual. It's not subjective is like driving I believe gravity is true I can be over here and say I really disagree with you. I don't really feel that way about gravity. You know I went to college and read some books and gravity isn't really all that true okay so we agree to disagree and I say why don't we test this and let stand on the edge of a three-story building and you don't believe in gravity. So what if you step off and will see him say what you believe in gravity or not. The consequences are about the same when you step up a three-story building right to relative truth never works in the concrete physical realities of life, but philosophically what we've been taught. I I came to Christ right after high school I was discipled by a guy who love me deeply. I had this radical transformation in my life I was a slow learner and it's a lot of things I'm talking about. The reason I know about them as I didn't do well. Early okay I I really get what it's like the man that Bible study on Thursday night was awesome and not ship your kind have the relational skill. So when we hit all the bars in Wheeling, West Virginia.

You invited all the girls in and got I'm sorry on the do that again I'm really sorry you know I'm a making church once a month and I'm trying really hard, and guilt. Guilt, shame, shame, divided soul right been there. I have miserable and so my life radically changed and ended up playing basketball around the world and sharing Christ and then went to graduate school because I thought Mike: my life is to be a major college vessel coaching so I need to have a Masters degree so I wanted Bobby Knight's job. If you remember that name. I would not throw chairs and but when I got there that the intellectual blowback on my faith was so strong I decided to write my thesis on the philosophical basis for teaching ethics in sport networks. Is there an absolute is there right that's what ethics is there right is there wrong and so I won't bore you over the first couple chapters of this book for those like philosophy in that world. I decided if I have to throw my brains in the track to follow Jesus, it must not be true, and so I'm I'm going I'm to go after this and the thanks to Francis Schaeffer and some other apologist like I did a very long study and wrote my thesis on this and what I learned is that you go back to the Reformation, then the shift in the Renaissance was revelation was always King God said, but then in the Renaissance reason was heightened so it's revelation, but reason becomes what we think is more important what God says and then by the mid to late 1800s. You had Nietzsche and German philosophers changing this idea of absolute truth, and then it made it over the big pond to America and you had Huxley over here and had Spencer Darwinism was Darwinism was, not taken seriously early on, especially scientifically, but it was interesting and social sciences and and Albert Einstein was talking about a theory of relativity that was about factual matter, but the idea of relativity, the social sciences evolution gain some of the 20s and 30s it made into the major seminaries of the day. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, William and Mary. All those places deeply that they were theological institutions in the sciences you studied all the science is the queen of sciences was theology and then it made it into the everyday life. He had a split of the churches that believe the Bible and then did believe the Bible and forcefully those who believe the Bible sorted got segmented out of the reality of life and more so pounding on the truth and did it in such a way that he called fundamentals of the truth and called fundamentalist and pretty soon I got a what it's like to be a Christian, but if you're that mad about that stuff. I don't want Jim will be right back.

But if you just joined this you're listening to living on the judge with chirping chips message today.

Salt and light is from his series culture shock in this bold series trip addresses fundamental yet controversial cultural issues from a winsome biblical point of view. Topics covered are human sexuality truth about sex, abortion, homosexuality and the church and politics. Parents help equip your children to know the truth about these important topics and consider using the series as a devotional study with your teens and preteens. Culture shock is also a popular study for Sunday schools, youth groups or neighborhood Bible studies. Chip does the teaching and brings the issues to the table in a way that promotes discussion versus debate like versus heat the small group study is currently discounted.

So take advantage of this opportunity and order your studies today. Just give us a call at 1-888-333-6003 or visit us online at http://livingontheedge.org will chip as we begin this series give us an idea of why you chose to teach on such controversial topics. I mean it's getting harder and harder to talk about these things.

I don't have any sort of masochistic tendencies. You know my my desire is not like hey let me think of the most controversial things were hate mail will come my way, but God talks about these men. God is very, very concerned about truth. Jesus said on the way and the truth, not a truth life.

I am the way, God cares for us and he cares about her sexuality because he doesn't want us to be in bondage. He has a plan. He cares for us and so when we go off and whether it's not protecting the unborn, or getting in relationships and same-sex identity and the kind of things that take us down paths of bondage. God cares about us and were living in a world even inside the church where the moral fabric is being eroded and so God speaks about these things and if you don't know the truth. What will happen is you will be in bondage and were seeing the impact of that like never before and so this is a series that yes it's controversial but it's about light. It's not about heat is not about condemning people. It's about. This is what the Bible says this is a God of love, but also God of holiness and for our protection and we pray you know our father who art in heaven. Let your name remain.

Holy is the idea. His name is not remaining holy in his church because we can abandon his truth in large measure in many corners of the church on these controversial issues, and so I would say to every parent you get a preteen or a teenager. You have someone in college. I'd say if you're in your 20s and 30s under rustling through what you say when subjects like homosexuality and abortion politics and environment come up. You need to get with a group of people go through this series and develop convictions.

If you're someone that's on your own maybe want to get the book, read the book underline some things but we want to put this truth in your hands, for the glory of God for the good of men buying strip for complete information on all the culture shock resources, including the book and previews of the small group video sessions. Visit us online at http://livingontheedge.org or if you'd prefer to talk with someone about these resources. You can always reach us by calling 1-888-333-6003 and for a limited time, small group video versions of culture shock are significantly discounted to get your copy today.

Visit us online at http://livingontheedge.org or give us a call at 1-888-333-6003 will be sure to join us again tomorrow. Strip continues our current series culture shock so Greg this is Dave Drewry saying thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge