Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Series: Christian Calling · Talk No. 6
Called to Obedience
Sunday, 14 August 2005
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From time to time, as I talk to people about their relationship with God and Jesus, people say to me something like “My faith is my own business.” Meaning of course that I should mind my own business. But like the similar statement, “I have my own beliefs,” this statement is wrong. Contrary to popular belief, if I call myself a Christian then my beliefs are not just my own and they are not just my business. When we truly become a Christian through faith in Jesus Christ then we become members of God's Forever Family, God's New Society, the fellowship of all believers that we talked about last week. As members of that new society we are called to obedience to the rules or laws of that society. It’s not that obedience to the rules makes us members of the society but as members we are obligated to obey the rules.
God's New Society has a way of life that is in many ways diametrically opposed to the pagan society that surrounds it and we are warned not to be part of that society or to follow its life style. In this morning’s reading from Ephesians 4. One of the first things that is evident from this passage is that the Apostle Paul asserts his authority as an apostle. He says, “I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord,” He is speaking to his readers with all the authority of Jesus, that is with the exoectation that he be obeyed just as we obey Jesus. He tells us that we are no longer to live our lives as the Gentiles do. Transposing this into our culture and society, we are not to live according to the practices and standards of our moderen, 21st century, westernized, urbanized, Australian society. We are Christians and our standards are to be those of Christ and our model for how we live is to be Christ.
We are not to get our standards from the TV, the pages of the Women’s Weekly, the newspapers, the talk-back radio, the celebrities, the gurus, our mates, our friends or even our parents. We are to get our standards from the Bible.
Paul addressed this [passage to the minds of his readers rather than their emotions. He contrasts the intellectual factors of the pagan lifestyle with the intellectual factors of the Christian lifestyle. He doesn’t say we all have to be Einsteins to be good Christians but that the thinking of the pagans or non-Christians is futyile. They think they’ve got it all together but they haven’t. He says their understanding is darkened. They think they are enlightened but they are stumbling around in darkness. They think they know it all but they are ignorant, in particular ignorant of god because they have hardened their hearts against him.
If you were to go out onto the streets of your favorite shopping mall on Saturday morning and conducted an interview survey asking, “What is the purpose of life?” What sort odf answeres would you expect to get. Some wags would answer “42” but I suppose you’d get a lot of “I dunno”’s. You’d get some “To have a good time”’s; some “To help your fellow man”’s and all sorts of other answers, but how many would you expect to answer “To know and serve God,” or “To prepare us for forever with Christ in heaven”? what would you have answered.
Paul says that the pagan world has lost sight of the whole point of its existence. Their deficiency of the knowledhe of God and of the understanding of his ways leads them inevitably to a societry with degrading moral standards or as Paul puts it, “having lost all sensitivity they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more.”
The pagan secular society in which we live out our lives today is just like how Paul described it almost 2000 years ago. We only have to turn on the TV to see the nature of our godless society paraded before us. We see our society giving itself over to to sensuality, we see it indulging itself in every kind of impurity and we see it continually lusting for more. Movies that a few years ago wouldn’t be allowed into the country are now shown on prime time TV or you can rent them to watch on your home video.
A few years ago a local primary school near where I lived put on a production of Cinderella and the fairy godmother was portrayed as a drag queen – and 20 or so years ago most of us wouln’t have known what that meant.
Our regard for our parliaments and our courts are reaching new heights of cynicism as those bodies reflect the standards of the rest of society. Our society no longer pays even lip service to respectability. The crass and the vulgar are the norm. Sex insteadf of being the highest expression of love is used to sell almost everything and has become the expression of exploitation. The promise of life long commitment made at marriage can be dissolved by sending a form in the mail. The value for our money is depreciated asd our greedy society demands more and more for doing less and less.
All this Paul says is caused by the wrong thinking of people who do not know God. Because of their ignorance of God they act on wrong premises and no matter how cleverly they work out the answers to life’s questions they always come out wrong because the error is in their basic assumptions. The origin of this darkness and futility of the mind is their hardness of heart or perhaps more literally the “petrifying of their minds” or willful obtuseness.
In his letter to the Romans Paul declares that what may be known about God is plainly revealed in creation. He says that men, and by this he means mankind not the male of the species, men are without excuse “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”
We can all see the nature of God in his creation provided we are prepared to look but most people deliberately close their eyes and their minds. Paul depicts the fate of the pagan or unbeliever as a downward spiral starting with obstinate refusal to acknowledge God and leading down through ignorance of God , alienation from the life of God and ending up in licentousness, greed, and every kind of uncleanness. And if you still don’t agree take a look at the second half of Romans 1 and compare it with our society.
On the other hand Paul says ,”You Christians, over against the pagan darkness, have put on the light of Christ. You have learned Christ, you have heard Christ and you have been taught by Christ.” Again referring to the attitudes of our minds.
We have LEARNED Christ – we have learned that Jesus is not just God become man, not just the individual Saviour or Saviour of the individual, he is Lord, the ruler of God's Kingdom, the Kingdom of righteousness, the new society in which we dwell. The Kingdom whose standards and values are totally different from those of our formerly pagan life, from the society around us. And we are to be obedient to those standards. Harking back to that sermon a few weeks ago on servanthood and slavery. If Jesus is our Lord then we must obey him.
We have HEARD Christ -- not just heard about Christ but actually heard Christ speaking to us through his word, the Bible, through our Christian teachers. When we hear sound biblical moral instruction then we are hearing Christ teaching us about Christ. It is Christ speaking to us in the Spirit not just the teacher.
We have been TAUGHT Christ – Christ is not only the teacher but also the subject of the teaching and the context in which the teaching is given. Jesus is
We are to repudiate our former selves – put aside our past life, and be the new people that we have been made in Christ. Being Christian is having a totally new attitude towards the whole of life.
And the fundamental thing is that this new attitude must show in how we live. What we believe shows in how we behave. How we behave is the window on what we believe. If we believe, have faith in Christ, then we will live as Christians, obey Jesus’ commandments, live lives leasing to God.
We are called to obedience, not in the hope that if we do the right things God will bless us. But because we belong to God, are members of his kindom we obey his commandments. Instead of the downward spiral that leads to destruction we are on the path that leads to God and life.
The calling to obedience is not meant to lay a guilt trip on us because of the difficulties we sometimes have being obedient, rather it is an encouragement that through faith in Christ, and only through faith in Christ, we can actually do genuine good deeds, pleasing to God.
Let us pray.
