Audio Transcript
Worldliness — a theme addressed many occasions right here through the years. Particularly worldly media. I simply glanced at the APJ ebook right here, on pages 291–307, to be reminded of how large a theme worldliness has been for us through the years, Pastor John. A everlasting problem for the church. However not one each preacher needs to deal with within the pulpit, it appears, in line with this be aware 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 through which this ministry blesses me and different Christians world wide, 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 through which Christians right now 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 usually go to concert events by fashionable artists, keep out late on Saturday nights, then skip church the subsequent day or arrive one hour late. They’re normally absent from prayer conferences. They trip with out giving Sunday worship a lot as a second of consideration. Christ will not be current in most of their conversations.
“A few of these people are regionally seen as mature, mannequin Christians. My very own church has stable Bible- and Christ-centered preaching. But I don’t see the topic of worldliness talked about usually. Nor do I see it even on web sites with stable theology. In APJ 603, titled “What Qualifies as Worldly Music?” you stated, ‘Worldly isn’t a sound; worldly is leaving Christ out. That’s the reason it’s known as worldly and never Christ-ly. And it approves of what he disapproves. It’s known as worldly as a result of it treasures the world above the one who made the world.’ Might you broaden 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 nervous about the way forward for the church and Christianity due to what I see being normalized within the church right now.”
I share your disappointment and your concern for the church. In actual fact, 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 manner as to create religious 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 believe what we’re eager for collectively has traditionally been known 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 once 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 believe one of many best indicators of worldliness is little concern for the truth of hell and other people going there as a result of they don’t imagine, and in all of that, a larger intensification of our sense of religious fact and religious realities. That’s my sense of what revival is and what the church wants right now. It is a sovereign work of God. We will pray towards it and we will preach towards it, educate towards it, write towards it, embody in our particular person lives as a lot of it as doable, however ultimately, it’s a present God provides to his church with irresistible, sovereign energy, and I agree that we’re definitely in want of it.
Why Such Worldliness?
After I was in faculty, a preferred little ebook by J.B. Phillips — known as Your God Is Too Small — was very efficient in lots of our experiences and lives. It was a provocative little ebook that pleaded with the church to cease treating God as if he have been a facet concern 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 major awakening impact upon me.
“We will pray towards revival, however ultimately, it’s a present God provides to his church with irresistible, sovereign energy.”
About forty years in the past, David Wells wrote a ebook known as No Place for Reality, which made the case that within the American church, God rests far too frivolously 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 companies and little weight in our lives. He’s taken frivolously. He’s merely one amongst many components quite than the all-consuming issue, and I’ve thought that if I have been to jot down a ebook right now with the same burden, it might need this title: Your Christ Is Too Low cost, Your Heaven Is Too Distant, Your Earth Is Too Large.
Christ Too Low cost
After I say, “Your Christ is simply too low-cost,” I keep in mind Philippians 3:8. Do the individuals who flirt with the world and appear to be completely at dwelling in secular entertainments which might be void of God, Christ, Christian morality — do these folks actually say, with the apostle Paul, “I depend every thing as loss due to the surpassing price of realizing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I’ve suffered the lack of all issues and depend them as garbage, so that I could achieve 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 evaluate to our treasuring of entertainments supplied us by the world? The place are our affections? As a result of that’s the key backside concern. 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 solely not operational within the every day mindset of many believers and nearly 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 known as to set our minds on issues which might be above (Colossians 3:1–2). We’re known as to look to issues which might be everlasting, not transient (2 Corinthians 4:18). We’re known 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 right now. It’s too distant and, subsequently, ineffective, leaving us sitting geese for worldliness.
Earth Too Large
After I say, “Your earth is simply too large,” I imply that individuals are merely not considering clearly with regards 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’m wondering if folks ever assume that, in 100 years, nearly each particular person alive right now can be gone — eight billion folks gone. There’s a full turnover of humanity on the earth each ten a long time, which appears very brief 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. Nearly all people who was 22 years outdated after I was born is gone, and in 22 years, all people born earlier than me can be gone. That turnover has been taking place for 1000’s of years.
We have a tendency to consider 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 dwelling to particular person people no a couple of hundred years and, usually, manner 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 have 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 have been rational, they’d not be earthly minded; they’d be heavenly minded. And in the event that they have been heavenly minded, they’d not discover their best pleasures within the entertainments produced by earthly minded folks. So, we pray and we educate 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).
