Living The Gospel in A Godless Culture

Living The Gospel in A Godless Culture Matthew 5:11-16

Session 2 February 11, 2018

Session 2 – Strategy Strategy for Living in Babylon * What do you do when your boss or your company makes it clear that taking a biblical stand to do the right thing, or even a moral stance will put your job at risk, or cause you to be fired? * Where do you turn when you refuse to give in to culture pressure or know that your refusal to compromise your biblical values breaks the law, or could result in a lawsuit? * Have you been faced with the temptation to deny Christ, just to live to fight another day? We live in a time in our nation when choosing to live faithfully for Christ actually _______________ _______________ for those who choose to stand against the evershifting culture. No matter how much the culture changed, Daniel stayed strong. His commitment turned into conviction and courage to do what was right. Daniel: “He made up his _______________ not to defile himself and sin against his God.” Daniel and his friends refused to operate strategically or seek to survive in safety. Instead, they chose to live _______________, choosing to thrive in the Spirit. (Spiritual Leaders)

What’s the strategy? 1) Know God. Be intentional about learning of Him, about being in an intimate relationship with Him in the Holy Spirit, supernaturally, being transformed from the inside out. Daniel made up his mind ahead of time that he would not _______________ _______________ and sin against God. Spend time in the word of God. To know Him is to be present with Him. “Nothing creates humility in the human heart like God’s _______________.

As Job testified after encountering God personally, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.” Job 42:5-6 God’s presence gives us _______________ and empowers us to “make up our mind ahead of time.”

2) Know your identity. We are the children of Light, Image-bearers, called ones, made in the Image of God, the Light of the world. Know your calling in Him. _______________ with God transforms us into the Image of God. We find our identity in Christ alone. Daniel’s ministry and impact grew out of his _______________ with God. He was not a priest, or a prophet, but his call to the prophetic ministry grew out of his intimacy with the Lord, and he acted on his commitment to the Lord with courage because he knew who he was in Christ..

“Do you not know that you are a _______________ of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” I Corinthians 3:16

3) Be Transformed God calls us to be _______________ _______________, to walk as temples of the Holy Spirit, living in purity, not mixing in a culture that promotes “mixing” at every turn. “Though we believers must mix in with culture externally (like a chocolate chip in cookie dough), we must not allow the culture to mix in with us internally. Transformational purity requires us to guard our hearts and lifestyles from the world’s infiltration.” “Though he was living in Babylon’s moral and spiritual pollution, Daniel refused to allow its ways to _______________ into his heart and mind. We must commit ourselves to _______________, not with occasional events, but as a lifestyle.” “Living Among Lions: How To Thrive Like Daniel In Babylon” David and Jason Benham

“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” Romans 12:1 “Transform your internal values, or what you know, into the external disciplines of a Spiritual Leader. Daniel was the same on the inside as he was on the outside. He didn’t allow Babylon to mix in and dilute his purity.” “Living Among Lions: How to Thrive Like Daniel in Babylon” David and Jason Benham

“ Do not be _______________ to this world, but be _______________ by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2

4) Engage the Culture We are witnessing the systematic redefinition of _______________ _______________ and the _______________ influence from our culture. Our religious beliefs, based on biblical truth, especially on the subjects of marriage, gender, and life, are being

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challenged, and we are being characterized as religious bigots for standing for biblical truth. 1962 Engel v. Vitale: Prayer removed from school 1963 Abington School District v. Schempp: Bible reading expelled from school 1973 Roe v. Wade: Abortion legalized 1980 Stone v. Graham: Posting Ten Commandments removed from schools 1992 Casey v. Planned Parenthood: The culture defines life 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges: Marriage redefined 2016

Gender redefined by Obama Admin.

Darkness prevails in the culture, but it can never over take the light. The light always shines brightest in the _______________. All we have to do is shine the light. Darkness is not the problem today, the problem is the light has been _______________ _______________.” No matter how dark things seem, or out of control, God is always in control.

“But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.” Ephesians 4:15 “Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.” Deut. 31:6 CULTURE SHIFT

(An Excerpt from Culture Engagement – Loving the City/Center Church by Tim Keller) In the early part of the twentieth century, the fundamentalist-modernist controversy left much of the United States’ educational and cultural establishment in liberal and secular hands, and conservative Christians in America responded by creating a massive network of their own agencies — colleges, periodicals, publishing companies, radio and television networks, and so on. Nevertheless, the major cultural institutions of North America, although they rejected traditional Christian doctrine, continued to inculcate broadly Christian moral values. Most people in society continued to have views largely congruent with Christian teaching on respect for authority, sexual morality, caution about debt and materialism, and emphasis on modesty, personal responsibility, and family. Until the middle of the twentieth century, therefore, most conservative Christians in Western societies felt basically at home in their own cultures. Sometime in the middle of the twentieth century, however, Western culture began to change rather dramatically. In Great Britain and Europe, church attendance fell precipitously after World War II. And in the United States, while church attendance and religious observance rose initially after the war, by the

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late 1960s a major cultural shift was afoot. In their book American Grace, Robert Putnam and David Campbell call this a “shock” to American society’s connection to Christianity and the church. A “basic shift of mood” and crisis of confidence occurred, with regard not only to older ideals of patriotism and national pride but also to traditional moral values — particularly sexual mores. The very idea of moral authority began to be questioned. In the United States, this new mood erupted with a vengeance and was widely transmitted through the youth culture of the 1960s. Popular music questioned all moral authority. Hollywood and television somewhat more slowly began to adopt the same tone. Two famous Westerns that came out in 1969 —

True Grit and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — represented the two clashing worldviews. The former expressed a traditional view of virtue, while the latter subverted traditional understandings of good, evil, and moral authority. In 1952, 75 percent of Americans said that religion was “very important to them personally,” but less than half of that percentage said so by the mid-1970s. Church attendance dropped from approximately 50 percent of the population in 1958 to about 40 percent in 1969, the fastest decline ever recorded in such a short span of time. Even more striking was the decline in church attendance among people in their twenties. In 1957, 51 percent of the members of that age group attended church; by 1971, that 5 number had fallen to 28 percent. Most noticeable to Christians, however, was how the main public and cultural institutions of the country 6 no longer supported basic Judeo-Christian beliefs about life and morality. Before these changes, Americans were largely “Christianized” in their thinking. They usually believed in a personal God, in the existence of heaven and hell, and in the concept of moral authority and judgment, and they generally had a basic grasp of Christian ethics. A gospel presentation could assume and build on all these things in seeking to convict them of sin and the need for the redemption of Christ. Now, for more and more Americans, all these ideas were weakening or absent. The gospel message was not simply being rejected; it was becoming incomprehensible and increasingly hated. The world that Christians in the West had known — where the culture tilted in the direction of traditional Christianity — no longer existed. The culture had become a problem the church could no longer ignore. Here is a personal case study illustrating this shift. My own parents — born in the 1920s — were evangelical Christians, while my wife’s parents, who were born during the same decade and in the same U.S. state of Pennsylvania, were not. Yet if
 you had asked the four of them what they believed about the morality of sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, and abortion — or about almost any economic or ethical issue, such as going into debt or national pride and patriotism — you would have heard almost identical answers. Why?

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That era had cultural consensus about basic moral convictions. Yes, evangelicals often opposed smoking, drinking, profanity, and going to most movies — and those would not have been mainstream views. Nevertheless, evangelical churches could assume that the institutions of the culture went a long way toward giving citizens the basic “mental furniture” for understanding a gospel presentation. In the 1940s, a Christian minister could say to almost any young adult in the country, “Be good!” and they would know what he was talking about. By the late 1970s, if you said, “Be good!” the answer would be, “What’s your definition of good? I might have a different one. And who are you to impose your view on me?”

Discussion: Several causes are given for the shift in our culture away from traditional moral values (the rejection of authority, radical individual- ism, technological advances, etc.). Regardless of the cause, the gospel message has now become “increasingly incomprehensible” to people. How have you experienced this challenge as you communicate the gospel in your own cultural context? What aspects of the gospel do you find are most difficult for people to grasp?

Answer Key: costs something mind, supernaturally defile himself presence courage Intimacy relationship temple living sacrifices mix purity conformed, transformed biblical values, Christian dark turned off

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