Confronting Culture Pt. 1 No Compromise - a podcast by Lewis Marsh
from 2023-02-26T20:32:15
Pt. 1: No Compromise
By Louie Marsh, 2-26-2023
Intro.: Cartoons on compromise
How Can I Confront Culture?
1) Don’t Talk About it – NOT BIBLICAL.
“27Daniel answered the king and said, “No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, 28but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream and the visions of your head as you lay in bed are these:” (Daniel 2:27–28, ESV)
As Timothy Keller, who pastored in Manhattan for 30 years and reached thousands of secular skeptics, says, “not talking about this” is no longer an option. If anything, it’s counterproductive. At this point in history, it’s better to acknowledge out of the gate that we represent an entirely different kingdom with entirely different values and under an entirely different authority. Becoming a Christian in America means you’re not only going to have to drink a few cups of crazy milk; you’re going to have to buy the whole crazy cow.
“23For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,”…“32Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.”” (Acts 17:23-24, 32, ESV)
“19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”” (Matthew 28:19–20, ESV)
Christian apologist Michael Green makes a distinction between “missionary” and “defender of orthodoxy”: “There is a fundamental difference between the defender of orthodoxy, who is anxious to maximize the gap between authentic Christianity and all deviations from it, and the apologist [read: missionary], who is concerned to minimize the gap between himself and his potential converts.”
We’re no longer primarily chaplains to a Christianized culture or merely custodians of doctrine. We need more pastor-missionaries. Our teaching on homosexuality should sound not only like a denunciation of immorality but also like an invitation to conversation.
In 21st century American Christians must posture themselves not only as guardians of the faith delivered once for all to the saints but also as missionaries to an increasingly pagan culture.
“3And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”” (Matthew 19:3–6, ESV)
2) Removing the OFFENSE of the Cross divests It of its power
“23but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:23–24, ESV)
“1And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:1–2, ESV)
“24Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24–25, ESV)
Christian missionaries seek to remove obstacles to faith, such choices should never involve muting, denying, or equivocating on anything the Bible teaches.
At the center of preaching the cross is repentance. And repentance, properly understood, is the truly offensive thing.
Becket Cook, a gay man who was working in Hollywood’s entertainment industry when he became a Christian, explains how much Jesus’s demand of self-denial cut against the grain of his soul: “All my life I’d been told to be true to myself.” But in reading the Bible, he saw that [the self] is corrupted by sin, so why be true to that? The whole idea of [choosing your sexuality] is bound to the exaltation of self. It carries the implication of making yourself your own god. Putting yourself and your desires on a pedestal and worshiping them. Being true to yourself is nothing short of idolatry.
Repentance means denying the premise behind not only alternate sexualities but also the premise undergirding the entire spirit of our age: “I know who I am, and I know what’s best for me.”
Rosaria Butterfield, who first heard the gospel as a practicing lesbian and professor of literature and women’s studies at Syracuse University in New York, argues the real focal point in repentance isn’t homosexuality or any other particular sin. It’s pride: “Proud people always feel that they can live independently from God and from other people. Proud people feel entitled to do what they want when they want to.”
The call to repentance isn’t just offensive to gay people. It’s offensive to us all.
To return to Green’s distinction, the church needs both missionaries and defenders of orthodoxy. Each church must maintain both emphases. Richard Lovelace compared this to the red and white blood cell counts in our bodies. Too many white blood cells (leukocytosis) and we can die; too many red blood cells (polycythaemia) and we can die. Attempting to be an entirely “red blood cell” (evangelistic zeal) church is just as unhealthy as attempting to be an entirely “white blood cell” (doctrinal fidelity) church.
3) Jesus Was Full of GRACE & TRUTH.
“5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it….14And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…16For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:5,14, 16-17, ESV)
The light that couldn’t be overcome by the darkness was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:5, 14). John puts grace before truth, and the order isn’t accidental. Jesus led with grace—embracing others and drawing them close even as he told them the truth. He was so filled with grace that unbelievers flocked to be around him, and we should ask why they aren’t doing that with more of our churches.
Ambiguity on this issue isn’t kindness. Clarity is.
Churches today tend to gravitate toward one of the two. Fundamentalists like truth without grace. Liberals like grace without truth. To be effective as evangelists, we have to be full of both—more truthful than the fundamentalist and more graceful than the liberal.
A number of years ago, a lesbian couple started to attend our church. After several months, one of the two scheduled an appointment with me. Through tears, she said,
I need some advice—I prayed with you a few months ago at the end of a service to receive Christ, and now I don’t know what to do. When I started coming to this church, I was so excited about the God I was encountering each week that I invited my wife to come with me. She researched you and found out this church believes homosexuality is a sin, and she told me, ‘There’s no way I am going to that church. If you want God in our lives, fine. Let’s find a different church. A church where they accept us.’ So she found a liberal church in Raleigh and we started to go there.
“After attending there for a month,” she continued, “I told my wife that God was not in this church. He was, however, at The Summit. So, we had a choice. We could go to The Summit where God was and they didn’t accept ‘us,’ or go to this liberal church where they accepted us but God was not. ‘Do what you will, but I’m going to the church where God is.’”
She asked for baptism and began the painful process of severing her marriage ties. Shortly thereafter, we baptized her. Six more months went by, and I got a request from her former wife to meet. She told me,
After my wife was baptized, I finally worked up the courage to come and visit your church one weekend when she was out of town. When you introduced the subject matter for the morning, I couldn’t believe it. . . . I thought, ‘I knew it! This is all these bigots ever talk about. They are obsessed with us. I’ll just listen for 10 minutes and catalog all the hateful things he says so I can prove to my wife this is not the place for us.’
In five years, I’ve probably preached one message that was entirely and completely on the subject of homosexuality. That happened to be the weekend this woman chose to come.
She continued, “However, after 10 minutes, my column for ‘hateful things’ was blank, and I thought, #$%#! This is the most loving anti-gay message I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve been attending or watching online every week since.” She broke down in tears and said, “I know this is all true and I want God in my life. What can I do?” A few weeks later, we had the privilege of seeing her profess faith in Christ in the waters of baptism. She said, “Thank you for not changing the message for me. It’s always been obvious, to both my partner and me, what the Bible says about this.”
My intention is to encourage those of us who’ve been entrusted with God’s Word for this generation not to shrink back in unbelief but instead to press on in faith
“27for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”…“31Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.” (Acts 20:27,31, ESV)
Fr Calvin Robinson, black Pastor in the Free Anglican Church because the Church of England refused to ordain him because he wouldn’t affirm that the church was full of “systemic racism.”
“3For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry…7I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:3–7, ESV)
“26And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”” (Matthew 7:26–27, ESV)
Further episodes of River Church Sermons
Further podcasts by Lewis Marsh
Website of Lewis Marsh