Conquering the Darkness
Life in the Spirit • Sermon • Submitted
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· 55 viewsLiving victoriously in the midst of darkness
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Introduction
Introduction
We are going to wrap up our series on Life in the Spirit this morning and at the same prepare us for Christmas, which is a little over a week away. When we began this series 3 months ago, the motivation behind it was to address the church’s lack of power to influence the culture that we live in today. Because one of the questions that I have been wrestling with is how we can have so many churches filled with so many people and yet have so little influence in the world that we live in. From general observation, it feels like our country is falling apart at the seams and many religious pundits are calling us a post-Christian society. Now, this may shock you because it shocked me but can anyone guess the percentage of Americans that identify themselves as Christians as of the end of 2015. The number is drifting downward but it is still shockingly high.
But that number alone doesn’t tell the entire story because out of that 75%, over 50% have never heard of the “Great Commission”, 75% responded that sharing their faith is unimportant, because 65% believe that there are multiple paths to salvation. Alongside those numbers, the majority of young Christians between the ages of 18-34 don’t believe that premarital sex is wrong for any reason. Given these statistics and many others that are equally alarming, it is no wonder that American Christianity has no influence on the world because in large part it has become the world. Today, many Christians in many churches are more driven by the flesh than by the Spirit including ours. Without even knowing it, we have become a nation of religious consumers who are driven more by convenience and comfort rather than calling and commitment. I want to show you this video that pokes fun at modern Christianity but it really makes you think at the end. How can I make church more about me!
How can I make church more about me!
Living in the Flesh
Living in the Flesh
If you remember we began our series by looking at the contrast between life in the flesh and life in the Spirit.
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
Romans 8:5-
Living in the flesh doesn’t begin with rampant sexual immorality, drug abuse, and drunken debauchery, it begins subtly in the mind, in the way you think about God, your thoughts about church and the community of faith, the way you look at your commitments and the priorities that you make or fail to make in your life. My question to you is this, “On any given day, how much of your thought processes and decision making is guided and motivated by the Spirit of God.”
I’ve just finished reading a book by Mark Sayers who is an Australian pastor who has become somewhat of an expert on American Christianity and he describes three categories of churches that may look different on the outside but on the inside they are all driven and fueled by the flesh.
The first category is the church that is focused on self-realization, living life to the fullest, giving you life hacks for your marriage, raising your children well, growing in your career, and being the best you possible.
The second category of churches is focused on nationalistic interests. It doesn’t care very much about ethics, sexual or social. It certainly doesn’t concern itself with reaching the marginalized and poor because they are trying to keep those immigrants out and preserve the American way of life.
And then there is a third category of churches that focus on social agendas which Christians in cities like San Francisco typically fall into and Sayers describes these churches like this.
“A third group of churches…disturbed by the falling back into cultural Christianity and the blurring of nationalism and the way of Jesus, will link arms with the New Left. Finding solace and succor in its agenda of equality and justice, and sensing the biblical prophetic parallels, it blindly misses its contradictions. Its motor isn’t fueled by the Spirit, but by the flesh. Ironically, it will flee what it sees as the reactive conservatism and hyper-religiosity of cultural Christianity only to be entrapped by the reactive progressivism and hyper-religiosity of the extremes of the left.”
So you might be asking yourself, “So pastor, if you don’t like any of these types of churches, what kind of church are we going to be?” I hope that we can become a church that is filled with the Spirit of God so that we can truly live according to the Word of God. If we are going to have any impact in the world, this is what the church ultimately has to become.
And how will we know when churches are on the right track? One telltale sign will be when the emotional and psychological health of Christians increase. Anxiety and depression are rampant in and out of the church. I believe something has fundamentally changed in our culture and these factors are drastically increasing feelings of anxiety that are leading to many depressive disorders. It is turning into an epidemic but the outcome of setting our minds on the Spirit is life and peace. Having gone through my own bouts with anxiety here in the Bay Area, I am a firm believer that the Spirit-filled life is the best cure for our psychological and emotional distress.
Some modern philosophers and cultural experts are telling us that we have moved from a culture of discipline to a culture of achievement. And what they mean by this is that we have taken off the limits of family structure, traditional roles, religious duty, and even definitions of gender for the pursuit of achievement. We are told that there are no limits to life, nothing that you cannot achieve, everything can be yours. On the surface it seems great except it is not true and its largely speaks to our flesh and is motivated by that. We are limited by our lack of energy, our levels of intellect, limited by our duties to family, and to God or we should be. Trying to live a limitless existence strangely brings us into the abyss of nothingness because there are no set goals, no real purpose. We end up achieving for the sake of achievement, performing for the sake of performance. It is the very definition of madness and its no wonder we are experiencing anxiety in mass. Anxiety and all the mental disorders surrounding is a kind of emotional and psychological death. In contrast, living by the limits that God has put around and living by His Spirit brings life and peace. The incarnation of Christ reminds us that in order for God to become fully man, he had to submit to the limits of being human and to the limits that order this world.
But this is only one part of why we are so anxious...
Overcoming the Darkness
Overcoming the Darkness
Over the past week or so, I have been been thinking about the current state of the world and how dark these times seem to be. I don’t know if you read the news or not but unfortunately, I have become sort of a news junkie in my old age. Back in my twenties and even in my thirties, I would just read the sports section and throw out the rest of the newspaper as being irrelevant and unreliable. Today with the explosion of information on the internet, news seems to be even more unreliable and completely biased towards one political extreme or another. But no matter where you stand on the political and religious spectrum, things don’t look good and the world seems to be falling into utter chaos with no signs of getting better. Those of us who were born after the Cold War and the fall of communism assume that modern civilization will continue unimpeded as it has for generations. But that isn’t a given and for those of us who have forgotten recent history, less than a hundred years ago, the entire world was at war with one another and civilization as we know it was on the verge of collapse. We can only shudder at what might have happened if Hitler would have won World War II and established the Third Reich. Right before one of the major turning points of the war, Winston Churchill the famous prime minister of England, stated unequivocally “I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.”
One thing that is often forgotten about the war against Hitler is the religious and moral component behind the battles. This was much more than politics, it is still viewed historically as a war of ethics, good versus evil. And fortunately at that time in history, Great Britain and the United States were sufficiently Christian enough to see themselves as the defenders of liberty, justice, and truth. By no means were these two countries perfect examples of Christian civilizations but nevertheless Christianity still had enough influence to shape the leaders of these nations so that they understood their moral obligation to fight against the threat of Hitler and stem the tides of injustice and to oppose the oppression that he represented. Clearly, Christianity had something to do with how the history of the world was written. Sadly, what has happened over the years is that Christian influence has largely been stigmatized as being negative. I had this very interesting conversation with someone not too long ago who argued vehemently that the world would have been a much better place without Christianity, that a secular view of life is far more optimal and if he had to choose a religion, Islam would have been his preference because it is far more peace-loving. It was mind-boggling for me to see someone completely ignore the facts of history and come up with his own narrative on the evils of Christianity.
years is that Christian influence has largely been stigmatized as being negative. I had this very interesting conversation with someone not too long ago who argued vehemently that the world would have been a much better place without Christianity, that a secular view of life is far more optimal and if he had to choose a religion, Islam would have been his preference because it is far more peace-loving. It was mind-boggling for me to see someone completely ignore the facts of history and come up with his own narrative on the evils of Christianity.
Although I don’t want to minimize the harm that some Christians have done in the name of Jesus, at the same it is patently unfair to ignore all the good that Christianity has done and the remarkable influence that it has had on human civilization and culture for the last 2000 years. During the Christmas season, countless millions of people all over the world celebrate the love, joy, and peace that can only be promised through the good news of Jesus Christ. And for those of us who believe, Jesus remains a beacon of hope in the midst of our state of darkness. But while we celebrate his first coming, we are called to keep one eye open to see the signs of his second coming. It is reassuring to know that Jesus warned us that there would be a time like this in human history.
I had this very interesting conversation with someone not too long ago who argued vehemently that the world would have been a much better place without Christianity.
And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
I don’t consider myself to be an alarmist but I am beginning to think more and more that the two world wars that we saw in the first half of the 20th century were the beginning of the birth pains that Jesus talks about here. And to me, what seems to be the strangest turn of events is that even though Christians are no longer talking about the end of the world because we don’t want to sound crazy, some of the most brilliant minds in science are doing it for us. The famous astronomist Lord Martin Rees put the odds at no better than fifty-fifty that our present civilization on earth will survive to the end of this present century. Given all of the various threats around us, that number doesn’t seem that unreasonable. Every year, natural disasters around the world seems to be getting more severe and frequent. Climate change, it seems is quickly approaching a place of no return. On top of that we have the ongoing instability caused by terrorism. We have the twin threats of bio and nuclear warfare. And just to add to this powder keg, we have a host of unpredictable world leaders like Vladimir Putin, Xi Ping, and Donald Trump leading the most powerful countries in the world.
I don’t want to ruin your Christmas but this is the current state of the world that we live in and if you believe in the words of Christ, things will get worse before things get better. Being a Christian in these times before the second coming of Christ will be extremely difficult for all the reasons that Jesus gives in Matthew 24:9-12.
We will be hated by all nations and people.
Many Christians will fall away from their faith and betray one another.
False prophets will arise and try to lead believers astray.
There will be an increase in lawlessness that will cause the love of many to grow cold and we will see droves of people falling away from their faith.
It already seems like these things are happening around us and it isn’t super comforting when Jesus warns us:
Matthew 24:
For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.
In the face of such trials and the chaos of the world that we live in, nominal Christianity has no chance of making a difference in this world. You can no longer be a cultural Christian and assume that this is enough because it is not. More than ever before, the people of God have to commit themselves to living life in the Spirit. The apostle Paul was keenly aware of the many obstacles that would stand in the way of living in the fullness of Christ and so he ends this chapter on the Holy Spirit with the assurance that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:35-39
Conclusion
Conclusion
Brothers and sisters, the church in the West has been too comfortable, for too long. Because of that we have become weak spiritually, listless in prayer, lukewarm in our love for Christ and we lack the courage to live sacrificially. But even in the midst of this downturn, the Scriptures remind us that we are more than conquerors not because we are so good, because we are not but because of the one who has loved us. And Paul reminds us that we were created for a mighty spiritual battle, created to fight for a cause greater than our own, and that in this struggle we find our purpose and meaning.