Audio Transcript
Worldliness — a theme addressed many instances right here over time. Particularly worldly media. I simply glanced at the APJ e-book right here, on pages 291–307, to be reminded of how large a theme worldliness has been for us over time, Pastor John. A everlasting problem for the church. However not one each preacher desires to handle within the pulpit, it appears, based on this word of concern from an nameless younger lady, who sees worldliness creeping in round her, within the lives of the professing Christians in her life.
She wrote us this: “Pastor John, thanks for the innumerable methods by which this ministry blesses me and different Christians all over the world, in addition to in your and Tony’s books, which additionally contribute to that. I don’t wish to exclude myself; I’m positive I even have blind spots, however after I see the methods by which Christians in the present day use their free time and have fun occasions of their lives, my coronary heart feels heavy and saddened due to what I understand to be worldliness. The celebrations are identical to these of unbelievers; they typically go to live shows by well-liked artists, keep out late on Saturday nights, then skip church the subsequent day or arrive one hour late. They’re often absent from prayer conferences. They trip with out giving Sunday worship a lot as a second of consideration. Christ is just not current in most of their conversations.
“A few of these people are regionally seen as mature, mannequin Christians. My very own church has strong Bible- and Christ-centered preaching. But I don’t see the topic of worldliness talked about typically. Nor do I see it even on web sites with strong theology. In APJ 603, titled “What Qualifies as Worldly Music?” you mentioned, ‘Worldly isn’t a sound; worldly is leaving Christ out. That’s the reason it’s referred to as worldly and never Christ-ly. And it approves of what he disapproves. It’s referred to as worldly as a result of it treasures the world above the one who made the world.’ Might you increase on that in relation to my considerations above? What can Christians do to encourage each other in religion and treasuring Christ? I’m saddened and apprehensive about the way forward for the church and Christianity due to what I see being normalized within the church in the present day.”
I share your unhappiness and your concern for the church. Actually, I see most of my ministry as a ministry dedicated to weaning the church off of the world and its pleasures onto Christ and his pleasures. I attempt to communicate and write in such a approach as to create non secular style buds in folks’s hearts, in order that they discover distasteful issues that don’t honor God and discover fascinating the issues that do.
We Lengthy for Revival
I feel what we’re eager for collectively has traditionally been referred to as “revival” — a piece of God within the church first. We name it “awakening” when it touches the world, however within the church first, “revival,” a piece of God that causes the hearts of God’s folks to burn — like in Luke 24:32: “Didn’t our hearts burn inside us after we walked with him?” Revival causes our hearts to burn with love for God’s phrase and love for God’s folks, love for God’s service, all rooted in an more and more intense love for God himself, and for communion with God in prayer and meditation, with a rising enjoyment of holiness and a rising horror at sin (particularly our personal), and a rising concern for misplaced folks.
I feel one of many biggest indicators of worldliness is little concern for the truth of hell and other people going there as a result of they don’t consider, and in all of that, a higher intensification of our sense of non secular reality and non secular realities. That’s my sense of what revival is and what the church wants in the present day. This can be a sovereign work of God. We will pray towards it and we are able to preach towards it, train towards it, write towards it, embody in our particular person lives as a lot of it as potential, however in the long run, it’s a present God offers to his church with irresistible, sovereign energy, and I agree that we’re actually in want of it.
Why Such Worldliness?
After I was in school, a preferred little e-book by J.B. Phillips — referred to as Your God Is Too Small — was very efficient in lots of our experiences and lives. It was a provocative little e-book that pleaded with the church to cease treating God as if he had been a facet difficulty in life and to get up to his huge centrality — the truth that all issues are “from him and thru him and to him” (Romans 11:36). It had a big awakening impact upon me.
“We will pray towards revival, however in the long run, it’s a present God offers to his church with irresistible, sovereign energy.”
About forty years in the past, David Wells wrote a e-book referred to as No Place for Fact, which made the case that within the American church, God rests far too evenly on the folks of God. He doesn’t have weight. It was the identical coronary heart cry from Dr. Wells as from J.B. Phillips. God is marginal. God has little weight in our worship providers and little weight in our lives. He’s taken evenly. He’s merely one amongst many components moderately than the all-consuming issue, and I’ve thought that if I had been to write down a e-book in the present day with an analogous burden, it may need this title: Your Christ Is Too Low cost, Your Heaven Is Too Distant, Your Earth Is Too Massive.
Christ Too Low cost
After I say, “Your Christ is simply too low cost,” I take into account Philippians 3:8. Do the individuals who flirt with the world and appear to be completely at residence in secular entertainments which are void of God, Christ, Christian morality — do these folks actually say, with the apostle Paul, “I rely every part as loss due to the surpassing value of realizing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I’ve suffered the lack of all issues and rely them as garbage, so that I could acquire Christ”?
For Paul, Christ was the supreme and all-pervasive treasure of his life, and I might ask all of us, How does our treasuring of Christ examine to our treasuring of entertainments supplied us by the world? The place are our affections? As a result of that’s the key backside difficulty. The place are our affections? Not first our behaviors, however our coronary heart.
Heaven Too Distant
After I say, “Your heaven is simply too distant,” I imply that the truth of the afterlife is just not operational within the each day mindset of many believers and just about all unbelievers. However as I learn the New Testomony, the decision to put up for ourselves treasures in heaven and never on earth is pervasive (Matthew 6:19–21). We’re referred to as to set our minds on issues which are above (Colossians 3:1–2). We’re referred to as to look to issues which are everlasting, not transient (2 Corinthians 4:18). We’re referred to as to financial institution our hope on the rewards of the resurrection, not the rewards of this life (1 Timothy 6:17–19).
Heaven is a dominant, life-shaping actuality within the New Testomony, however a minor actuality in most individuals’s lives in the present day. It’s too distant and, subsequently, ineffective, leaving us sitting geese for worldliness.
Earth Too Massive
After I say, “Your earth is simply too large,” I imply that persons are merely not pondering clearly relating to how tiny this earth is — not solely within the universe, which isn’t very important, however within the scope of eternity, which could be very important. I ponder if folks ever suppose that, in 100 years, just about each particular person alive in the present day will probably be gone — eight billion folks gone. There’s a full turnover of humanity on the earth each ten many years, which appears very quick to me now as a result of I’m in my eighth. The quantity of people that dwell longer than 100 is 0.0002% of the inhabitants. It’s statistically insignificant. Each 100 years, there’s a full turnover of humanity. Just about everyone who was 22 years outdated after I was born is gone, and in 22 years, everyone born earlier than me will probably be gone. That turnover has been taking place for 1000’s of years.
We have a tendency to think about humanity in phrases that don’t actually match particular person expertise. Humanity has been round for 1000’s of years on the earth, however the earth has been residence to particular person people no multiple hundred years and, usually, approach shorter than 100 years. And after that temporary eighty to at least one hundred years (or much less), each single a kind of people enters eternity and, in comparison with eternity, these 100 years on earth had been nothing. The Bible calls it a vapor (James 4:14). It lasts two seconds whenever you breathe it out on a chilly winter morning.
If folks had been rational, they might not be earthly minded; they might be heavenly minded. And in the event that they had been heavenly minded, they might not discover their biggest pleasures within the entertainments produced by earthly minded folks. So, we pray and we train and we dwell with the hope that God would break in with sovereign, reviving energy, and trigger his phrase to be so beloved that it’ll now not be, as Jesus says, choked out “by the cares and riches and pleasures” of this world (Luke 8:14).
