Sermon Transcript — November 4, 2006
For those of you yesterday who I told the topic of my sermon I should warn you that it's all changed. It changed last night as I was lying in bed, and I'm trusting that it's inspiration not sleep deprivation that brought it on. Probably most ministers have experienced that. You think all week long of what you think you'll speak about, and then you just realize there've been some other things on your mind more, and maybe you should go in a different direction. So, I'm going to save that topic for another day, probably the winter family weekend.
We had a senior pastors conference this week. The senior pastors are the U.S. based ministers who have been given the oversight of various other parts of the world, either specific nations or areas. We have several in Africa such as in Ghana and Kenya, Nigeria. We have Dave Baker overseeing Asia, Eastern Europe, several areas like that, and this is our second conference. And it was interesting how during the course of this conference, and last year, too, so many times we discussed issues that revolved around cultural differences. Some of the problems that are faced when you have members who live in widely diverse parts of the world, and they face things unique to their cultural experience that other areas don't face either from sometimes the society that's around them, or sometimes just within themselves from what they've grown up immersed in as a way of life. And they come into the truth of God, and they battle certain things from their cultures that we do not in other parts of the world.
Those of us who have never encountered some of these cultures sit there and listen with intrigue and curiosity and sometimes amazement, and we can shake our heads and think, wow, how different. Then you stop and think, well, if they were having their conversation over there about the way it is in other parts of the world, they'd probably be shaking their heads and saying, boy, those people are different.
There are some big differences in life like that. One of the qualities that I appreciate about these ministers from here and their wives who have volunteered to serve in places like that, some of the scattered areas in the world is they have an ability so often to adjust. And it's not an ability that just everybody has. I think God gives help that way, but it is a challenge.
You know Paul said that we must all strive to be all things to all men. And sometimes that's difficult enough in the town you live in. But when you get on an airplane and you leave one distinct culture and a few hours later you plop down in the middle of another culture that really is truly a different world in people's history and the way they approach life and the way they think. It requires a lot of wisdom and understanding and flexibility and the capacity to know how to guide someone in a different way perhaps in their culture than you would in another atmosphere. And it just doesn't come easily to everybody, and those who have that it's very helpful.
Every segment of society in the world has distinguishing features, and we think of them as their cultural expressions. Their culture meaning the way that things are done, just their habits and their practices and the way that things are handled, whether it's national cultures or within a nation you have different groups. Sometimes within a group you have different demographics. You may have for example we say, well, you know, the south has its culture. But then you get people in the country versus people in the inner city, and both of them may be in the south which has its own regional culture but within that region each will have various cultures there.
These can be things that are wonderful and things that are not so wonderful. Cultural differences add immensely to our lives, to the fabric of the beauty of what God has created as human beings, and what different groups offer when their strengths are portrayed, when they come out.
But on the other hand, sometimes while we have some cultural aspects that are rather endearing, for other people there are cultural aspects that they will go to war over. We live in a shrinking world through technology. The world is coming closer, and it's coming in closer contact with one another, nations and individuals. And that contact and the cultural sometimes clashes is oftentimes putting us into divisions and animosities and frictions. It's what's happening in the world. We, even our own country today, we use the term "culture wars" to identify the philosophical battle that's being fought as different groups with different perspectives seem to be waging philosophical and a moral and sometimes illegal battle, or their fighting in the illegal arena to try to have one cultural viewpoint dominate another. And it's a big social problem that we face in our country that does not unify us.
World analysts will tell you that a lot of the things – the motivation that drives some of the Islamic extremists today has to do with culture. They see decades of the worst of western culture coming into their countries, and there are some pretty bad things about western culture that tends to get exported, especially when you're talking about entertainment, morality, and they resist that, and they fight it, and some of them are willing to go to war and engage the whole world in war.
Now of course, their solution is to instill their culture on everybody else, and that'll fix it from their point of view, which is not going to help in the world at all. But we have this around us. It is a continual strain on the human condition, the great variety and sometimes the conflict of cultures.
We saw in the feast film just recently a little bit about the culture of New Zealand and Australia. People commented about why they are the way they are today, their backgrounds, the history that molded and shaped them, and that wasn't unusual because it was on the Feast film the year before about South Africa and Malawi, and the year before that about the Philippines and the year before that about Mexico. And you can't really highlight a people in a part of the world without their culture playing a major part of what you are describing their lives as, and you know, it's part of what makes life wonderful, but again, it's part of what makes life difficult.
When members, for example, who are called in the Philippines, come out of a culture that is over eighty percent Catholic, they will face different issues in their society; they will ask different questions than somebody whom God is calling at the same time out of a culture in Africa which has a religious background based with a blend of animism and Protestant theology and all sorts of other things woven in. They will face different issues in their cultures, and they will have different questions, and it impacts us. And we begin to realize that if you're going to travel to various parts of the world, it's important to be educated as to the cultures that you're going into.
Number one so you'll have an appreciation for the people, and number two so you won't cause great offense, and that you'll have a bit of understanding because culture can be highly sensitive, and people can defend their cultures, and they can have very strong holds on their culture.
Last year, I was talking, my wife and I were talking with Jeff and Lisa Caudle in New Zealand. The Caudles have lived for several years in Asia previously, and they were explaining some of the differences between Asian and western culture, and even within Asia some of the differences, and they can be quite varied. But I remember him saying that when you go to India that the Hindu culture is one of being very indirect when they are talking with you. And that it's often hard to get what we would call a "straight answer." And if you come there, say, "Just give me a straight answer."
Well, that's not the way they communicate. And he said even their language, their vocabulary is built with a lot of shades of nuance on various words, and you can hear and you assume you know what is said, and then you go back later, and they say, "Well, that's not what I said. That's not what I meant." And you have to be careful not to assume too much, or to go too quickly on what you think you heard.
You go over to Europe, and every European nation has distinct cultural traits. We were in Germany and Italy earlier this year, and they were teasing and kidding us about, and there was a bit of self-kidding about their individual traits. Germans tend to be very punctual, very organized, very regimented at times, and I'm speaking in general.
Italians tend to work on Italian time, you know, and it's sort of like their cousins down in the Caribbean, I guess, you know where we say, "We'll meet at seven o'clock."
At eight o'clock, you're not worried. At nine o'clock, you're watching your clock, and at ten o'clock, you think, "Well, maybe they're not coming." Well, you know, that's just the way it is. You take one out of one culture and drop them in another and they could be extremely frustrated and agitated by that if they're not able to work in it. The rub comes when all it takes is one person to make some kind of comment about, "Well, you guys are so disorganized and careless, and. . ."
". .. Yeah, well, you're wound too tight, you know, you need to relax." People can go back and forth on why theirs is better than the other.
My wife and I have lived North, South, East and West over the last few years, and you find out quickly some of the things you're going to be facing in the cultures. We moved in 1989 from Northeast Arkansas to Northeast Pennsylvania after eight and a half years in the southern Bible belt. Within about three weeks, I said, "Okay, here's one cultural difference I'm going to have to get used to." You know, you could say something in a sermon that might hit somebody in the wrong way, down South, generally speaking, they're more relaxed, they take some time to chew things over, it might take them three or four weeks before they get around to coming to you, and "You know, I wanted to talk with you about something that you said," and sort of in their genteel way, sort of beating around the bush and try to get around to you.
And we moved to Northeast Pennsylvania and about the third week there, I said something in a sermon and the "amen" had barely died on the congregation's lips, and this guy's making a bee-line, I kid you not, literally, he's thumping my chest with his finger, and he said, "You know, I liked that sermon pretty much, but you said something there that really bugged me, and I want to know what you meant."
Okay. You have a talk, and it's over with. Well, that's just that – I'm generalizing, but they're true generalizations, you know, that basically you find northern and southern cultures, and the East coast was much more direct, and you know, the first thing to figure out is that he wasn't mean-spirited. He wasn't coming in a mean-spirited attitude. He was just a direct person. Let's get straight to the point, and get it fixed. And that's a good thing. You know where people stand. That's a good thing. Southerners would be so polite and kind, and that was a good thing, too. You just didn't always figure out where they stood on some things.
Well, it's like that all over. There are huge differences between the West coast and the Midwest, moving from California to here, big differences in outlook on issues such as politics, religion, issues of morality, liberal/conservative causes, but I tell you what, don't give a blanket statement about California because California has its distinct differences as well. The red and blue zones in California are quite marked, and there are some huge differences there.
We can all tell stories. We can tell lots of stories of what we've run into and the way our cultures are, and these are not always inconsequential. When we have pre-martial counseling, and we use the "Prepare Enrich" program, there's a segment on there identifies a family genogram where we try to help the couples understand the cultures that they are coming from in their families because each family has a culture. And some of them vary widely, and you have to be very careful in understanding what your family's culture is and purposely creating your own new culture in your own family because if you decide, "I'm going to bring my culture," and both of them decide, "My culture is the culture I want and we're going to bring it into the family," there will be problems. And there are ways to understand it, and there are ways to go blindly by it that neglects that and leads to difficulties.
One very interesting example in how culture can impact our relationships in the church came up last year when we were in Australia. An Australian minister was making an observation to me about something, and it reminded me of another situation which I will tell you about first before getting into what he was telling me. A few years ago, you will undoubtedly recall, most of you, how the church was in a somewhat difficult, sometimes controversial study on church governance, and wrestling with concepts about what that meant and application of whether the church could be appropriately governed by twelve men acting as one on a council, or whether it should be one individual, and there was quite a bit of discussion and study back and forth. But I was told of a meeting where there was a minister, and I won't identify exactly from where, but let's just say another commonwealth country besides Australia, who made the statement that was quite revealing. He said something to this effect, "You have to understand, though, where we come from, we have always had a monarchy. Where we come from, we've always had a monarchy."
And it was very revealing; he was quite honest in saying that; in stating that it was the admission, if you will, that my cultural background has a degree of influence on the way I look at this issue. Now I'm not saying it determined it for him one way or the other, but he was aware that it had a degree of influence on the way that he would look at this issue. That was one person in one country.
Now what this Australian minister was explaining to me was the cultural differences between Australians and Americans and government in general. He wasn't talking about the church. He was talking about the way the two nations look at their forms of governance. Now they would not be in the same position regarding the monarchy, even though they're a commonwealth county as his fellow peer was in another part of the world. But neither was he in the same position that we are here.
He made the statement, he said, "Americans automatically respect the office of the President of the United States." He said, "I've noticed that, that Americans just respect the office even when the President is in a scandal, they are able to separate the person from the office, and even though they may not be able to stand the man, they still respect the office." And he said, "That's an admirable trait about Americans, how they can separate that and hold the office in high esteem." He said, "Now Australians don't. We don't particularly respect the office, and we don't respect the man. We don't give any respect until he earns it. It doesn't come automatically. He has to earn it before Aussies will just give their respect."
I thought that was very interesting. I can't speak for Australian culture, so I'll take his word for it, but from the American perspective, I thought, "Well, his observation is correct." We do as a culture hold the office in high regard, and we have a history of doing that. And yet, at the same time, if we're going to get into a discussion with our cousins across the seas, we would take a position that would be pretty far removed from having a culture of loving the monarchy. Now which one is right? Well, we are! We know that! No, I'm just kidding, you know, I say that "tongue and cheek."
It's interesting. Ethnically, we are very close. We come from common roots, but historians can tell you stories of how we came to be where we are in our cultural mindset toward these and all sorts of other issues. They can tell you the stories of how and why we went different directions, and how our cultures took on certain tendencies, and I thought, "There we are, cousins, brothers, by blood, and yet, put a bunch of us in the room together, and we can end up arguing until the cows come home on which one is the best." And we will defend it from our perspective.
Now that was an important insight because it is one thing to understand one's culture, and it's quite another thing to try to influence or to shape the culture of the church according to where one is operating from, and we don't ever want to fall into that when it comes to areas that involve the church whether it is administrative or certainly, doctrine, to be able to simply take, especially if something as major as a doctrinal position and have the culture that says, our culture is one of what is truth. Find the truth when it comes to what the Bible says. If we inject our nationalistic or our cultural persuasions, we set ourselves up to be trapped in a way of worldly thinking, and the world's way of thinking leads to division and strife. So we have to be very careful, because the temptation is there. It's there because we are what we are. We are molded, and we're deeply affected and shaped by the culture in which we grow, and we tend to fall back on that as the way to see things. It's our comfort zone.
In the last year and a half or so, I've had a chance to travel more and visit God's people in various parts of the world and think a lot more about the impact of nations and cultures on the church and on the work of God and upon unity. And it's easy to see how the approach to doctrine and church administration and our views of even brethren in other parts of the world can be influenced from a cultural perspective. At times it can be enlightening, and it can give us better understanding; at times it can be problematic. But we come back to asking, "What's the solution?" And in finding the solution, we have to come back to something very basic. We have a unique calling. We have a unique calling, and we are called to be different.
The church is called to be different. And so we say, "Well, how?" Well, certainly our doctrinal position is different in some ways, but it's got to be more than that. It's more than just a doctrinal position. We are called to be different as people, and therefore we can ask, "What should be the culture of the church?" What should be the culture of the church when God is calling people from all sorts of cultures, which should be the culture of the church? How would you answer that?
Well, the calling of God into His church is a calling to change. It's a calling to examine every aspect of our lives. God calls us to change our values and our ways of dealing with Him and others. He calls on us to understand and adopt His culture, His way of doing things. What is that?
And secondly, do we understand the importance of how living in a certain manner will create a common culture in the church, a dominate culture in His church around the world, no matter where people are coming from individually, our way of doing things is going to create a dominate church culture, and do we realize how much we need that? These are important questions because every one of us is deeply rooted. We're deeply rooted in our own world, and God called us to set up a different world. A different way of doing and thinking, and if we can retain the aspects of His creation that is reflected in culture that is wonderful, that's great. But we also have to be very aware that Satan and the world around us will always try to manipulate and twist these things for self interest. Could Satan ever use our differences as a crowbar to sort of pry us apart? Absolutely. He has before, and he will do it again.
We just returned from the Feast of Tabernacles, which God gave us a view of the way He thinks, the way He governs, the type of society He's going to bring in for mankind, and He's not going to do it by looking around and picking a nation, and saying, "Okay, we can get this peace that everybody wants if you'll just, oh, that nation, everybody be like them. If everybody'd be like them, then we'll set it up."
No, He is going to call every nation to change. There's not a nation around that represents the model for the millennium. It's just not there. There is not a nation on the face of the earth that represents the model for the millennium. Therefore we have to be real careful about pulling nationalism into the church, don't we? We have to be real careful about pulling nationalism into the church. I like a comment that a fellow named Sydney Harris who is a columnist, he died back in the eighties, but he put it well. He said, "Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies. It also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets the country's virtues and denies its deficiencies while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be and proclaims itself to be the greatest, but greatness is not required of a country, only goodness."
How interesting. That's a profound statement. People who want to be great and dominate, have their view of life dominate, have created so many of the world's problems. Greatness is not required of a nation, only goodness. The point being, if you could find a nation that was good, it would become great. It would become great. "Righteousness exalts a nation," God says.
It's not wrong to love the country in which we live, and we should. We all should. But it is wrong to take on sentiments that warp our view of others, sentiments that are driven by an ego-centric view that puts one's self at the center of the universe as opposed to a God-centered view that puts God and His values at the center of the universe.
One of God's values says we should esteem others better than ourselves. That should be part of the cultural identity of its people. Wouldn't that be interesting? There's a people who have a culture of esteeming others better than themselves. Why? Because that's God's culture. What an interesting identifying mark that would be. When I say, ego-centric, I mean it the way that George Bernard Shaw expressed it. He said, "Patriotism," and by this he's meaning just sort of blind, nationalism, "Is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born here in it." But that's the way it is, isn't it? I was born here; my country's the best. Well, if everybody feels that way, it's just not possible, is it?
God calls us to a higher view. He says, "You know, your duty, the duty of the church, is to all of mankind. It's to all of mankind. The whole creation groans and travails in pain, eagerly awaiting the revealing of the sons of God." The whole creation. The whole creation is waiting on the church. It's not just certain countries here and there. It's not only the countries in which people have been called. The whole creation. We are working for something larger than our interests that we had before we knew what God's way was. And He calls us to lift our thinking to a different level, not just self-interest but for humanity's sake.
In God's church, we have to ask ourselves, "Who are we? Who are we? And what does God say? Where is our allegiance? Where is our primary allegiance? How do we think together as a people?"
For those who are outside the United States, I don't know how many countries have a cultural equivalent to something that is part of our upbringing, something that becomes just part of our culture from before we can remember, probably. We grow up, taught in the schools how to recite what we call the "Pledge of Allegiance." The "Pledge of Allegiance," and that pledge simply states, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Sometimes people ask is it okay to recite that pledge? And the answer of the church is, yes, based on how it's worded. You do pledge allegiance. The Bible says to obey the laws of your land, and you pledge allegiance because of that phrase, "under God." As long as your country is asking something of you that is "under God," sure, honor that country. Honor the king. If it's not under God, then you owe your allegiance to where your citizenship is primarily which is in Heaven. That's the technical reading.
Realistically, we understand that the "Pledge of Allegiance" has its severe limitations. The ideal is wonderful. The reality is that we are not a nation under God. We're not a nation indivisible. We're not a nation that has liberty and justice for all, but the ideal is good. It should be a unifying factor for our people. The fulfillment of its ideals is the problem, and that's where the weakness of its subjects come in.
Are we indivisible? You don't even have to go past the "Pledge of Allegiance" to find out. We're divided over the Pledge. We have a big fight going on in the country over whether to leave those words, "under God" in there. They've been in; they've been out; they've been in again. We have people who are very vehement on their positions both ways of what that pledge should say. Indivisible? You know, that word means we cannot be divided. We are a people who cannot be divided. We are indivisible. Well, you know, it's a great goal to shoot for, but we're nowhere close.
You know where that phrase, that "Pledge of Allegiance" should be with a slight editing? It should be the pledge of the church of God. That should be the pledge of the church of God because there is only one nation, there's one nation on the earth today where you can find the potential for true liberty and justice and unity. I Peter 2 talks about that nation. I Peter 2 talks about that nation.
I Peter 2:9 – Peter said, You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. . . This is the way God sees us. We'll see some other terms that He uses later, but He said here, . . .you are a holy nation, His own special people that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Verse 10 – who once were not a people… Well, wait a minute. I was a people. I was an American. I was a Canadian. I was a German. I was an Italian, everybody can say they were a people, but he's looking at it in a spiritual context. The previous verse that – He called you out of darkness. The whole world was in darkness. And he said, you were not a people but (are) now you are the people of God. We were, to use the phrase, we were dead men walking before God called us. You know, we belonged to certain nations, but where were we heading? Over the thousands of years, the dust has covered how many peoples, and they are just forgotten in antiquity, and we would go the way of all flesh. He's saying now through this calling you are the people of God. . . .who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.
The potential exists to be a holy nation, but it is achieved only to the extent that we give our allegiance to, and fulfill our obligations to, the standards of the kingdom of God and the government for which it stands, one nation under God. That's the only way that we can begin to create the culture of the church in the right direction. I'm not talking to the Cincinnati church today. This is addressed to everybody. He talks about "you." He called you. Anybody who reads this, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, around the world, anywhere we are, anybody who has been called and read this says, "I am part of that holy nation." And if you're a part of a holy nation, it is to change the way we think.
Verse 11 – He said, Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul,
Verse 12 – having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. There are several things he mentions here. You're pilgrims and sojourners. You might say, "I've lived in the same house fifty years."
Not after you're called. That's just a place where you sleep and eat and live. But he said spiritually, you've plucked up your roots. God uprooted you. When He called you, He uprooted you, and He put you into thinking in a different way, and He said, "You've got to start at the day of visitation."
You have to start in the kingdom of God and think in those terms. "This is where I'm heading." We don't have our spiritual roots sunk into the soil of our physical heritage anymore. Yes, we are what we are. We come from where we come. But that is not our primary allegiance. He said you're sojourners and pilgrims. When a pilgrim puts down roots, he has stopped pilgrimming. When a sojourner puts down roots, he stops sojourning.
He's saying, "Don't put down roots in this world." Don't put down roots here. We're to live a different life. We're to identify with different values. God has placed us in a church which He says is, "This is my nation. This is where it's to be, one nation under God." Then He says, "Look to my kingdom. Look all the way ahead." What will we see in the day of visitation? What will be the culture of the kingdom? What will be the culture of the kingdom of God? See, if we can answer that, then we have the answer to – what should be the culture of the church? What should be the values? What should be the, just the way of life that identifies the church of God. This is where we begin to establish the right culture.
He says, "Abstain from fleshly lusts. Have honorable conduct." These are just two statements of many in the Bible that are similar in theme, and that is that God's nation will be a nation that has a culture of change. And by that I mean, a culture of overcoming, a culture in which the mindset is to change, where people are thinking about abstaining from fleshly lust. Their minds are strongly on, how can I reflect the culture of God in this way? How can I have that mindset? It has to be a culture of overcoming. That‘s embedded in one of the Feasts that we keep every spring. It's got to be part of our culture that molds and shapes us as opposed to the world we live in.
I was in a church area one time, gone in for a few months and saw some things that needed to be changed, and so I tried to give some gentle correction on this in a sermon. A man came up to me after services, and he was smiling. He sort of patted me on the shoulder, and he said, "Mr. Kilough, I know what you're trying to do with us, and we appreciate that, but you just don't understand. We've always been this way. Other ministers have tried to change us, too."
And I was appalled by the statement, and I was a little dismayed by it, and I went away thinking, "Is that the culture of this congregation?" I found out, it wasn't. It was really more of a personal culture because there aren't a lot of people who carry that, but his culture was – "That's just the way I am, you know." That's not the culture of the kingdom of God. That's not the culture we can have in the church. One of the core identities of the church must be a culture of overcoming, a culture that pledges to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That takes a very serious view of that. If we don't have that ingrained in our thinking, then other cultural values will step in to take its place, and that creates problems. This is where the culture of unity in the nation of God has its roots, doing the will of God, glorifying God, as He said here, identifying with Him and working to live that way.
Now when Jesus Christ was born in the flesh, He came into a culture that was extremely divided. It was a very different world, and yet it's very similar perhaps to our world today, and there were a lot of cultures that just their perspectives from culture alone got in the way of them seeing what He wanted them to do. They were so deeply embedded. And He had an occasion one time to talk, spend a long time talking to a Samaritan woman, and this was a very deep conversation, it's found in John 4, and that occasion turned in quickly to another occasion to deal with some of the cultural concepts of His disciples that really had to be totally overhauled.
There's a statement at John 4:27, at the end of that discourse where it says at this point, His disciples came and . . .they marveled that He talked with a woman. Where did that marveling come from? Well, that was so embedded in their culture. Samaritan, woman, you know, you just didn't do that. Culture said – that's not right. And culture separated those people. The rest of the verse:
John 4:27 - . . .yet no one (said) asked, "What do you seek?" or, "Why are You talking with her?" They could have asked. They could have thought, "Hmm, this is Jesus, the Messiah. This is Christ. He's doing something differently than I would do it. Maybe I need to find out if my way is all wrong."
Nope. They just, huh, "Look at Him." They marveled. "He's talking with a woman. A Samaritan." It was a cultural, mind-blowing experience. Well, their cultural prejudices made them focus on the wrong thing, and they missed some of the most important questions and opportunities right there. They were divided by cultural view that was so ingrained. And this was an indication of some of the challenge that was to come for the whole church, both ways, both cultures, but in John 10, He gave them a bit of a hint. Now they had plenty of Old Testament scriptures that, had they thought about it, and thought it through, they would have understood that salvation was going to be expanded beyond just their realm. But He gave them another hint here in John 10:16, just to break into the thought here, to hit this point:
John 10:16 – He said,. . .other sheep I have that which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd, He said. One flock, one shepherd. It doesn't say what their reaction was to that, but this was an introduction, it was a hint of how His nation was supposed to be different from all the other nations, even from all the other church nations in the world.
Last week at the St. Louis conference, one pastor told me of a new member in his congregation, been baptized for about a year, I think he said, and he said he'd been sitting in the congregation for awhile, and over the last year we've had two or three videos that have been sent out to be played in all churches. And after the second or third one, this man came up to him and he said, "Let me ask you something. You mean to tell me that this same message is being played in all the churches around the world."
"Yes."
"Huh." He said, "You mean to tell me that everybody in all the congregations believes the same thing?"
I said, "Yes."
And the guy said, "That's amazing." He said, "The church that I came out of, we could never get that done. That could never happen." They just wouldn't do it, and this was a major, major organization. But he was expressing a concept that something as simple as sending out a sermon to be played in all the churches around the world, imagine, the unity that you have. You know, we sort of take that for granted.
Well, that's good, but playing the same video at church, even having the same doctrines, is only part of the picture. It really comes down to doing, living those doctrines. Applying and living and being dedicated to the will of God, and being under that one shepherd. That's what draws us into the unity of the faith.
Now Christ was giving them a hint, and it wasn't going to be easy. It isn't easy today, but I tell you what, you read from here on and He took steps to address it right away. When the church was established on the day of Pentecost, it wasn't long before He was going to lead His people to tackle the reality of what He meant. And in some cases, it was going to blow the lid off of cultural mindsets and prejudices that some people clung to very heavily and said, "My way's the right way."
Peter was one of the early ones. In Acts 10, there are, to this day, there are some fine, fine qualities in the culture of the Jews. I mean powerfully strong qualities, education, and family, and so on, in so many ways. But on the other hand, at this time, he had been raised in a culture that just viewed Gentiles in a very stringent and different way. And God performed a miracle, brought him through this whole process of a vision, took him to Cornelius's house and to cut right through to the core of the story here, in Acts 10:28, Peter said to them:
Acts 10:28 – Then he said to them, "You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation . . ." They had set up so many cultural restrictions, religious restrictions, it was really difficult, but he had this light, this epiphany. ". . . God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean." This was a major event in Peter's life to say nothing of where it was going to lead for the Gentiles and even with other people in the church that he had to really work to get this concept through to. But this is a type of prejudice that is so common. ". . .God showed me (that) I should not call other people common or unclean."
Verse 34 – . . .Peter opened his mouth and said: "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality." I get it. God shows no partiality, Peter said. Humans do.
Verse 35 – "But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him." Now you might say, "Well this is great," you know. This was a brilliant life-changing revelation for Peter and for opening the door to the whole church, but while the revelation took Peter part way down the road, he also found it was easy to veer off of that road.
Paul wrote in Galatians that, he told the account, he said:
Gal. 2:11 - "When Peter came to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed." He said:
Verse 12 - "Before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles . . ." Peter sort of broke through those cultural barriers to do something he would have never done before.". . .but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision.
Verse 13 – "And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy." Now, why did that happen? Culture can be pretty strong. Cultural influences can be very powerful, and Paul was basically saying, "Look if this going to be God's culture, then we'd better live it. We'd better live it. But on the other hand, the reality is it was a hard habit to break, and Peter easily fell back on his upbringing. This is the way I'm comfortable doing things.
Well, the lesson is, if we don't recognize and stay above the weaknesses of our cultures, wherever we are, we could be caught up in the human difficulties, politics, prejudice. If we are nationalistic first, and put our self-interest before that of the church as a whole, we can reduce ourselves to the same problems that humanity has always had, agendas that lead to difficulties, that lead to battles, that lead to hurts.
In Ephesians 2, Paul addressed this issue, Ephesians 2, Mr. Welty? It's amazing how when somebody doesn't catch one of the clocks on daylight savings time, it can give you a heart attack. I looked at that, I'm a half-hour overtime already. Pheeww! Man, it's five o'clock! It's got to be the same sermon I gave this morning! (Laughter.) How did I get so far off? Okay, I'm heading on the downhill slope of this sermon.
Ephesians 2:11 – He said, Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh – who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands –
Verse 12 – that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Verse 13 – But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Verse 14 – For He Himself is our peace. . ." If there's going to be peace among people, it has to come through our relationship with God, doing His will, seeking His way. . . . who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of (separation) division between us.
Now Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were just to Turkey at the Feast, and they spent a couple of days in Ephesus. I talked to one of the other ministers at the conference last week who was there, and he said they saw the ruins of a wall that literally was in Ephesus that said, you know, I forget which, if it was either Gentiles or it was Jews, but there was a warning, if you crossed to the other side of the wall, you'd be killed. So when Paul was writing to the Ephesians, he was talking about tearing down that middle wall of partition, he was using something that they could relate to, and yet those walls can exist in so many ways of varying heights and thicknesses in our lives.
Verse 15 – having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace.
Verse 16 – (and) that He might reconcile them both to God. . . If our focus is on – what is the culture of God? What does He want me to do? How does He want me to live? It becomes just the way things are done, that it becomes the culture of my life, the culture of my family, the culture of my congregation. If it is done in this way, reconciled to God, then the reconciliation between peoples comes and follows.
Verse 17 – (And) then He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near.
Verse 18 – For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.
Verse 19 – Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners. . . And I would like to pick Mr. Johnson's brain sometime, he teaches the epistles of Paul, and you'd get more of a background on this, and I just can't help but think though, that those receiving this letter, those Gentiles, they're having Paul who had been such a zealot on the one hand before conversion, telling them, . . .you're not strangers and foreigners. That must have been deeply moving to some people to have heard that. . . . but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.
Verse 20 – having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone,
Verse 21 – in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.
Verse 22 – in whom you also are being built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit. This is how things change. These were people who had been alienated, who had been separate, different gods, different rites of worship, they had nothing in common. They had different feelings. They both regarded each other, Jews and Gentiles, with hatred and scorn, and this was embedded in their cultures for centuries. Oh, wait a minute, they did have one thing in common, two things. They had all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and they all had a common sacrifice for those sins. How important is that? That's where we begin. God had to bring them to see their need in that way, and to give them the same hope, the same sacrifice, the same calling, same future. He gave them the same family. That was the only way they had a minute chance at reconciliation. It had to take place with God and then each other. This has to be the culture of the church.
What did Christ say would be the identifying cultural aspect of His church? By this shall all men know that you're My disciples,if you have love for one another. Wasn't this sweet – let's have group hugs, warm, fuzzy feelings. No, it was built on real things, having the understanding of God that you have a goal to do the rights things, to decide to do the rights things, and to have the right motives for doing those things, and then to do them in the right ways. This is the culture of God and the culture of the church. So Paul addressed this over and over. The early church was begun in a complex world, a world highly divided in terms of religion and politics and social structure and morality, philosophies. For the early church to become grounded and unified, it had to rise above all of that and adopt a new culture.
Paul wrote often of this. He spoke to the Romans, to the Galatians, to the Colossians, Jews and Gentiles alike about God's way of seeing them. Let's notice Colossians 3 for example.
Colossians 3:9 – Do not lie to one another. . ." Well, you know, there are some cultures that that's just not as big a deal as it is in other cultures? There are some cultures that just simply practice what some people call – white lies, you know. They think, well, you know, you just have to fudge the truth to survive. Other cultures say – well, no, lying is a virtue. What we come back to is – it doesn't matter what one culture says, what another culture says about lying. What does God say? That has to be our culture. Why? ". . .(since) because you have put off the old man with his deeds,
Verse 10 – and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him,
Verse 11 – where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. No matter where you go in this world, the people of God will be identified as a people who say, "Hey, I've got to do it the way Christ does things. That's where my cultural influence has to be."
Verse 12 – Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, as one nation under God, put on tender mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;
Verse 13 – bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another . . . Huh. Hadn't thought of that as part of the church culture. Has that ever happened? Well, yeah, I mean, how many times will we have complaints? But he says part of the cultural identity of the church has to be marked by this. . . .even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.
Verse 14 – But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. This is what will glue the people of God.
Verse 15 – And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; (and) by the way, be thankful. Be thankful, too. All of these things should be cultural traits of the church of God. These are the ideals. I know, somebody might be saying, "Well, you know, boy, everything you're talking about, that's all good in theory, but that's not real world."
Well, it is the ideal, isn't it? What else are we going to shoot for? Are we going to aim for less than the ideal? No. God says My people will be on a quest. They'll be on a quest for the righteousness of God. What that does, then, it creates a culture as more and more people identify with this, it creates a culture, a way of doing things. This should be the identifying culture of the church.
Take any one of these listed in Verses 12, 13, 14 and 15. Take just any one and say, "Okay, I'm going to take that out of the equation." And what happens to the church's culture? If we say, "Okay, we'll try all of these except humbleness of mind. We'll try any of them except tender mercies, or patience. "
Nope. God says, "All of these have to be part of the culture. This has to part of the way that we do things. Anything less than that will create, it'll bring in substitute cultures that are not of God." These are very personal. You see, my point is, brethren, yes, it's personal; it's between you and God, but what we do personally with these affects the fabric of the church. It affects other people. It affects our relationship with God, and it affects, either for good or bad, the culture of the church.
II Corinthians 5:14 In closing. For the love of Christ constrains us, When we may be tempted to fall back on areas and ways of thinking and doing that came out of our cultural background, what makes us act differently? Well, it says here it's the love of Christ. . . .the love of Christ constrains us. . . It says, "Nope, nope, don't do it that way. Do what is according to the word of God." . . .because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died. We're all in the same boat that way.
Verse 15 – and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves . . . no longer live for themselves, . . .but for Him who died for them and rose again.
Verse 16 – Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Well, how do you do that? We're all flesh. We all live in a fleshly world. He says, "No. We see people differently. We regard no one, in the church, out of the church." In other words, the church becomes a group, it's a nation that has a view of the world that's different than everybody else. It attaches a high value to human life. It attaches a high value to the ways of God and what those ways can do for human life, and where human life is going to be in the future. We regard no one the way the world regards them, according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.
Verse 17 – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
Verse 18 – Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,
Verse 19 – that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. It's not just the word, though.
Verse 20 – It says, Therefore we are ambassadors . . . We represent another nation. We represent a nation under God. . . .as though God were pleading through us. . . It's as though the church is to be God's example out there that He can tell the rest of the world, "Look this is how you're supposed to be." This, the ideal culture., of how people can come from nations all over the world, every kindred, tribe, tongue, and they can be people with a unity and a love for one another that is unnatural; it's inhuman; it's through God's spirit. . . .we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.
Verse 21 – For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. This is our challenge in the world, and at times, at any stage of history, probably, the church has probably fallen short, not probably, we have fallen short of being the model that we should be, but we should have the mindset of being different. You know one of the first problems in the church that was established in Acts 2 and 3.
In Acts 6, one of the first problems that comes up is that there arose a murmuring among the Hebrews, or rather, against the Hebrews by the Hellenists. They were all Jews, but now you add Hebrew-speaking Jews and Greek-speaking Jews, and the murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily administration. Why would that happen? Well, probably there was a cultural aspect, our widows deserve first. Our widows are better than your widows, you know. Whatever. It was a young church. They were just coming along, and this led to some administrative changes, but I suspect there were probably some follow-up counselings about how did this come to be a problem in the first place? What's our thinking here that allows one group to be neglected. Why would that happen in the church?
Well, these are things that we have to grow in. We spent the last couple of days, not the last couple, Wednesday and Thursday in this Senior Pastor's Conference discussing the challenges of fulfilling our mission of preaching the gospel in a world that sometimes has very different cultures than what we're used to.
Giving the proper administrative support and care, manpower, in those parts of the world, providing shepherds, proving the appropriate financial resources, providing the right direction to help people grow spiritually. It's challenging. The world's cultures have been so diverse, that sometimes it presents real challenges. Satan will always try to pit one against the other, and he'll do that at the end time. What it means, then, is in this complex world, we must have simultaneously we must carry the ability to have two different approaches.
One, that says the church first, sees itself as one nation. We must see ourselves as one nation, a holy nation. That first of all, we see ourselves as a church without borders. Yes, we live within our nation. We have to live by laws of their nations, but those things are just things by which we have to operate by. But as a church, we see ourselves first and foremost that way. Being nationalistic, if you will, for the kingdom of God. If you're going to be nationalistic, let it be for the principles of God's kingdom. If we look down on anybody, if we see others as superior, if we put the needs of some first because of our culture or preference or whatever, we become just like the world. Our culture has to be that of the kingdom of God, the culture defined by the fruits of the spirit.
Secondly, at the same time, we live in the real world. We live in a world in which God is calling people, and those people that He calls are struggling to come out of their cultures just like we are who've been in and around for a long time. And it's a world that sometimes you have to understand how to deal with many groups of people in a manner that understands how their culture has effected them, what they deal with, sometimes mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically. Culture can be powerful, and therefore it requires of us to have the capacity to be like Paul, all things to all men. But you know what he said at the end of that section of verse? He said, "This I do for thegospel's sake."This I do for the gospel's sake, that the work of God can be fulfilled.
So strive to make sure that we enjoy and value the tremendous variations of different cultures, but also be on guard against the destructive characteristics that can reduce us to behaving the way the world behaves. Our calling is higher than that, and on the contrary, be working every day with an eye toward personal overcoming, yes, but also realize that your personal overcoming effects the whole fabric and culture of the church of God, and that church is one that we hope will illustrate the culture of the kingdom.