The following message was delivered
at the 1994 Trinity Baptist Church men's retreat. As we stood together
singing that militant hymn, I asked myself the question, Lord, why
should I, with three score years behind me, be found standing
in a group of your servants and your children singing your praises
when I ought to be roasting in hell or marking time to be sent
there. May God help us that we never
cease to be amazed at the grace of God. Let's pray and ask God
to help us as we seek better to know what it is to be good
soldiers of Christ in our generation. Our Father, when we hear you
ask us the question, who makes you to differ? We acknowledge
that it is grace, sovereign, distinguishing grace alone that
has made us to differ. Some of us tremble to think what
we'd be doing on a Saturday morning were it not for your grace. We
thank you that we are not in hell, that our cry is not mingling
with that of the rich man pleading for a drop of water. We thank
you that this day we are not enmeshed in the shackles of sin,
seeking to find some fountain at which we could drink and fill
the burning thirst of our souls, only to turn away in bitter disappointment,
with the parched lips of our souls reminding us that you and
you alone are the fountain of life. Oh God, we thank you for
the privilege of being here. Thank you for meeting with us
in the previous hours. We called upon you. Now, Lord,
give us to know in grace the fruit of our prayers and our
expectations. As we remind you of your word
of promise, open your mouth wide and I will fill it. O Lord, fulfill
that promise for preacher and listener alike, we pray, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Now, as a background to our study
this morning, I want to read in your hearing one of the passages
that will be crucial in our study, and it's found in Ephesians chapter
4. And can you men hear me in the
back comfortably? All right, good. Ephesians chapter
4, and I shall read verses 17 through 24. Ephesians 4, beginning
with verse 17. This I say, therefore, and testify
in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk,
in the vanity of their mind being darkened in their understanding,
alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that
is in them, because of the hardening of their heart, who being past
feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness to work all uncleanness
with greediness. But you did not so learn Christ,
if so be that you heard Him, and were taught in Him, even
as truth is in Jesus. that you have put away as concerning
your former manner of life the old man that waxes corrupt after
the lust of deceit and that you are being renewed in the spirit
of your mind and put on the new man that after God has been created
in righteousness and holiness of truth. Now our subject for
the three plenary sessions of this very brief men's retreat
has been announced. as the Christian man in a wicked
generation. And for the sake of, I think,
probably about a dozen of you who were not with us last night
in our opening session, but are here this morning, let me take
just a few minutes to review the main substance of what was
addressed in our initial session last night. I began by stating
that if I were to carry your conscience in the handling of
this theme that I must first of all convince you from the
scriptures and from an accurate description of things as they
are that indeed our present generation of humanity in this country deserves
the description a wicked generation. I then proceeded to set before
the men three propositions, and they were as follows. Proposition
one, that in a general sense, every generation of mankind since
the fall can be described as a wicked generation. Proposition two, that in an intensified
sense, some generations are more wicked than other generations. And then we looked at the biblical
witness to the generation prior to the flood, the generation
under the leadership of Manasseh, and the generation which crucified
the Lord of glory. And then proposition number three,
that there is abundant warrant to designate the present generation
in our country as a peculiarly wicked generation. And I then
sought to focus your attention upon four categories which validate
this assertion. Our arrogant intellectual perversity,
our shameless moral degeneracy, our violent social anarchy, and
our grievous religious apostasy. And then we concluded our study
with two lines of application, one to the unconverted, focusing
upon Acts 2 in verse 40, in which Peter called upon his hearers
to be saved from this crooked generation, and to you who are
the children of God, I exhorted you to beware of the peculiar
dangers of living in a wicked generation and to understand
and to seize the peculiar privileges of living in such a generation. Now in our session this morning,
I will attempt to answer this question. What is the essence? What is the heart? What is the
bottom line? What is the irreducible minimum
of the Christian man's duty in the midst of a wicked generation? In other words, I want to address
with you and make an attempt to extract from the Word of God
that boiled down essence of the duty of a Christian man whose
heart is set upon pleasing God in the real life circumstances
of living in a wicked generation. And without being simplistic,
I do believe that this question can be answered under two basic
headings. The first is negative, and the
second is positive. What am I to do? I have a heart
given to me by the Spirit of God to honor God in my generation,
to serve Him as I ought in my generation. How am I to serve
Him in this particularly wicked generation in which God has placed
me? And I answer, under the first
of these two major headings, The Christian man must not allow
the wickedness of this generation to shape his thinking or his
lifestyle in any area. The Christian man must not allow
the wickedness of this generation to shape his thinking or his
lifestyle in any area. And now on the principle that
at the mouth of two or three witnesses that everything is
to be established, I want to bring forward three basic biblical
witnesses to this principle. This is the negative aspect of
our duty. And we turn first of all to Romans
chapter 12. Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and
2. I beseech you therefore brethren
by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual,
reasonable or rational service. And do not be fashioned according
to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind
that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect
will of God. Now, as most of you know, in
this epistle, the Apostle Paul has opened up in great detail
and in relatively logical connections this marvelous reality of God's
saving mercy to hell-deserving and helpless sinners set forth
in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has demonstrated the
manifold mercies of God to those who by nature deserve nothing
but His wrath. and now he appeals to his readers
on the basis of their minds and hearts feeling the fresh impregnation
of the realities of God's abounding and amazing grace to sinners
to commit themselves to this God who has conferred these mercies
in a lifestyle of unreserved devotedness to God. The imagery
of a living sacrifice is at its essence a call to a life of unreserved
devotedness to God. When an animal was taken out
from among the flock, and slain and offered up as an offering
unto God, if it was anything else, it was an act of total,
utter, unreserved presentation of that sacrifice to God. You didn't expect a hair to be
returned. You didn't expect a tip of the
ear of that lamb or that bullock to be returned. And here Paul
takes that imagery of the sacrifice that was presented to God, that
which was given to God in utter, unreserved and irrevocable dedication
to Him and to His service. And he says that we are to present
the totality of our redeemed humanity. You cannot present
the body without presenting the heart. But lest we be deceived
that we are presenting our hearts and our souls, Paul wisely says,
by the guidance of the Spirit, present your bodies, that is,
the totality of your redeemed humanity, utterly, unreservedly,
irrevocably given over to God, which is your rational, which
is your spiritual service. Then, assuming that those who
would have heard that appeal based upon that amazing display
of the mercy of God, it's as though they ask, well Paul, having
by the grace of God come to that place where my disposition is
indeed one of utter, unreserved, irrevocable consecration to God,
how am I to work out that life of consecration in its particulars? and the answer comes in these
words first of all the negative and be not fashioned according
to this world or this age a present passive imperative and the imagery
is something like this here's a man who's an artist or attempting
to be one And he sets his canvas and he's going to do a still
life work of art. so he takes his fruit and arranges
it on the table he has a couple of apples and a couple of pears
and a bowl and he has a cluster of grapes and he arranges them
in the way that he wants to reproduce them on the canvas and he opens
up certain windows in shade so that the light comes upon those
materials and items in just the precise way then he sits down
with his palette and what does he seek to do? He seeks to reproduce
upon the canvas what is there in the real item upon the table. He is seeking to put an impression
upon the canvas that matches the realities that are there
upon the table. And here the Apostle Paul says
to the Roman Christians, do not let your life be a canvas upon
which the world paints its concepts of reality. of what is worthwhile,
of what is worthy of your devotion, of what is right and what is
wrong, what is noble and what is ignoble, what is good and
what is evil. Do not allow yourself to be the
passive recipient of what this age will do, if you allow it,
in painting upon the canvas of your soul your standards and
perspectives touching every facet of life. Or perhaps we could
use the imagery, which some would say is more akin to the sense
of the words of Paul and have even paraphrased it, don't let
the world squeeze you into its mold. If you've ever done any
work in pottery, you know what you do when you take that mold. It may be the mold in the shape
of a vase or a vase. however you pronounce it, or
it may be some kind of a mug or a jug, whatever it is, and
when you pour in the plaster of Paris, it conforms to the
contours of that mold. And what the Apostle is saying
is this, the world has the contours of a mold as to what it thinks
a man is and a man ought to be, how a man ought to think about
life, about death, about a wife, about sex, about work, about
recreation, about money, about the use of time. The world has
a well-fixed mold. And it will constantly attempt
to turn you into liquid plaster of Paris and pour you into that
mold. And he says, do not allow this
world, do not allow this present age to pour you into its mold. For its mold is marked, as we
saw last night, by intellectual perversity, by moral degeneracy,
by social anarchy, and by religious apostasy. And those four pools
of evil have a thousand streams that go out, and all of them
are polluted from their source, and will, if allowed to do so,
so influence us. that we will not be the light
and the salt that God has called us to be. So in answer to the
question, what is the duty of a Christian man in a wicked generation? My first heading of the answer
is, the Christian man must not allow this world's system to
shape and mold his thinking or his actions in any area. Romans 12, 2a. Second witness is taken from
1 Peter. 1 Peter 1, verses 13 and 14.
1 Peter 1, verses 13 and 14. Wherefore, girding up the loins
of your mind, be sober, and set your hope perfectly on the grace
that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As children of obedience, now
notice the negative, not fashioning yourselves according to your
former lusts, in the time of your ignorance. Peter has just
written concerning the great privileges of the people of God. He speaks of them as a people
who have a living hope with its tap roots in the fact of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He tells us that
the terminal point of that hope is this inheritance that is incorruptible
and undefiled and is reserved in heaven for us and that we
are being kept by the power of God unto the enjoyment of the
consummate blessings of salvation. And furthermore, while we presently
are grieved with our trials, we rejoice, we love an unseen
Christ and are filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory. because we now have the substance
of the things which the prophets only saw dimly in their prophetic
utterances and many times their prophecies exceeded their understanding
and we have all of these privileges at this epoch in redemptive history
these things are ours in possession and the best is yet to come in
prospect and in the certainty of the power of God that will
keep us to enjoy it that's a summary of what Peter's been saying now
he says in the light of this you see a similar motif to the
Apostle Paul I beseech you by the mercies of God Peter is saying,
wherefore, in the light of all that is yours right now in Christ,
and all that shall be yours in Christ, and in the light of the
privilege of having these things in possession, not by prophecy
and type and shadow, but in their substance in the gospel, gird
up the loins of your minds, he likens the mind to a long flowing
robe and he says take all of the loose ends and gather them
up at the waist and tie them with a sash in other words he
is calling us to conscious intense mental concentration strange
thing I would never think of likening my mind to a long flowing
robe but the more you think about it the more you see the sense
in Peter's imagery Left to itself, there'll be a fold drifting off
here and a fold there and a fold here and a fold there. And if
you try to make tracks at any speed at all, you're going to
stumble and fall upon your face and scrape your nose. So Peter
says, girding up the loins of your mind, be sober. Now, when the Bible calls to
sobriety, it's not simply saying, don't get yourself smashed on
booze, though it does say that, be not drunk with wine. But what
it's saying is, be spiritually what a sober man is in regard
to physical realities. You see, if a man gets too much
unabsorbed alcohol or, what's the word I want, unmetabolized
alcohol gathering in his brain, it becomes a wall between him
and reality. The man who is inebriated does
not see things as they really are. There are no pink elephants
out there. and he is not what he may imagine
himself to be so Peter then moving from the imagery of the man who
is intent on making tracks and making them quickly and safely,
gathering up the loins of the mind, he says, be sober. That is, have your mind and your
heart fixed upon reality. Don't live in a never-never world
of irresponsible fantasy. Be in touch with reality, the
reality of who you are in Christ. who you are as a man with remaining
sin, a man who carries around a tinderbox of the dried leaves
of remaining sin, in the presence of which every temptation is
like living sparks, be sober, be in touch with the realities
of who you are and what you are and set your hope perfectly on
the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of
Jesus Christ. That is, have your heart continually
fixed upon the future. You see, we hear the term, so-and-so,
so heavenly-minded, he's no earthly good. I've never yet met such
a person. But I've met thousands, and I live with one whose problem
is that he's so earthly-minded, he's no heavenly good. Peter
says, set your mind. You are to set your hope perfectly
on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of
Jesus Christ. Now picture this man. Here he
has the loins of his mind girded up. He's not just meandering
around in his bathrobe hoping somehow he will happen to hit
upon the right course as a Christian man, no. He knows it's a serious
thing to be a Christian in an ungodly world. He's girded up
the loins of his mind. He is seeking to keep in touch
with spiritual realities. His heart and his affections
are set upon the age to come In the language of Colossians
3, he is seeking the things that are above where Christ is, from
whence Christ shall come to receive him unto himself. And with those
spiritual dispositions as a part of his overall posture, what
is he to do? Verse 14, as children of obedience,
not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in the time
of your ignorance. In other words, in that posture
there is a work of fashioning going on in your life. Same word that is used in Romans. You're not to fashion yourself
according to your former lusts which operated in the realm of
ignorance. You see the place of the mind
in all of this? You're to gird up the loins of
your mind. You are to be sober, which is
an activity of the mind. You're to set your hope, which
is an activity of the heart, to the affections as well as
of the mind. And as children of obedience,
you are deliberately You are consciously to reject anything
that could be in any way described as fashioning yourself according
to your former lust, your former desires in the time of your ignorance. In other words, everything about
you is to be fashioned by a totally different set of standards than
the things by which you were fashioned in your unconverted
days. It is not that you are to pick
and choose and throw out the grosser forms of influence that
impinged upon you in your unconverted days. He says, no, not fashioning
yourselves according to your former lusts in the time of your
ignorance. And if any other text is a commentary
upon those former lusts, it would be first john to fifteen to seventeen
love not the world Neither the things that are in the world.
If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in
him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the desire
to enjoy things, the lust of the eyes, the desire to have
things, and the vain glory of life, the desire to be somebody
in the eyes of my peers, is not of the world, is not of the Father,
but is of the world. And the world passes away. and
the lusts thereof. So what is our duty, men, in
a wicked generation? It is a duty in which our hearts
are set upon the determination not only will we not allow this
world to paint on the canvas of our lives its perspectives,
be not conformed to this world, But Peter goes a step further
and says, I am not in my own life to fashion myself in any
way according to the former lusts in the time of my ignorance. Now, for some of us, that's going
to be a very difficult discipline because you began to have certain
patterns of thought about what a man is. and those thoughts
shaped your whole emerging identity through puberty and into early
manhood and into mature manhood and if they are closely examined
you will find that they were shaped and molded by the time
of your ignorance when your notions of what a man is were not drawn
from the Word of God under the tutelage of the Holy Ghost, but
they were drawn from a combination of the pressure of the advertising
world, of society, of your peers, and of a host of other influences. But over them all, Peter says,
the time of your ignorance, when your mind was unenlightened with
respect to the fact that God in God alone has a right to define
what manhood is, God and God alone has a right to define what
is our view, what our views ought to be about ourselves, about
His world, about marriage, about sex, about money, and the full
spectrum of the things that constitute life as we live it. So brethren,
If we are to be thorough-going Christian men in a wicked generation,
we have to begin with this first principle, that we must be determined
that we will not allow the wickedness of this generation to shape our
thought or practice in any area. Romans 12, 2a. first Peter 1
13 and 14 and now the third witness that we bring to the stand is
Ephesians chapter 4 Ephesians chapter 4 those of you familiar with this
marvelous epistle will know that it is roughly roughly divided
into the first three chapters setting forth what we would call
high and glorious doctrinal truths. The great sweep of God's salvation
in Christ from election in Christ to being sealed with the Spirit
is opened up beautifully in the first chapter, followed with
the prayer for spiritual illumination, chapter two, the marvelous account
of the conversion of the Ephesians in verses 1 to 10 and how that
conversion was operative in both Jew and Gentile manifesting that
in the salvation of Christ the middle wall of partition has
been broken down and that takes us to the end of chapter 2 and
then chapter 3 Paul speaks of the fact that it was his unique
privilege to make this truth patent and to make it openly
known as a ongoing and ongoing deposit to the church this glorious
truth that the new humanity in Christ has neither Jew nor Greek
But now, in Christ, we are one new humanity. And then he prays
that within that blessed reality, verses 14 to the end, we might,
by the Holy Spirit, be given a spiritual apprehension of that
which lay behind all of the things God has done for us in His Son,
namely, the love of Christ that passes knowledge. Then in chapter
4 he begins to make a number of practical applications of
that glorious truth. Having told us what we are in
Christ, he now tells us what we ought to do in the light of
what we are. Some of the theologians like
to express it this way, and I think it's helpful. God's indicatives,
that is, his statements of what we are and have, are the basis
of God's imperatives, what we are to do and what we are to
be. And this is why, men, if you
come out of a church situation that despises doctrine, I urge
you seriously to consider whether you ought to remain there. Because
doctrine, rightly understood, is nothing but the setting forth
of what God has revealed of the great indicatives. Doctrine is
the statement of what is what God has done. and based upon
the great indicatives are the grand imperatives. What we are
to be and to do in the light of what God has declared and
God has done. So chapter 4 begins with the
words, I therefore in the light of these realities beseech you
to walk worthy of the calling wherewith you were called. And
the first area of emphasis is the area of unity. Now the second area of emphasis
is found here in verse 17. this I say therefore and testify
in the Lord that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk
now notice the emphasis in the vanity of their mind intellectual
perversity again see the emphasis the vanity of their mind being
darkened in their understanding alienated from the life of God
because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening
of their heart, who being past feeling gave themselves up to
lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness, but you did
not so learn Christ. And now for our purposes in this
head, under this heading, notice the emphasis, the negative. Do
not any longer walk as the Gentiles walk. And Paul says that their
walk is dictated by a futile mindset. They walk in the vanity
or the futility of their mind. It is framed by a darkened understanding
being darkened in their understanding. It is a walk devoid of the life
of God because it is a walk of willful ignorance of reality,
perverse hardness of heart, and a frightening seared sensitivity
leading to an abandonment to sin. Now that's not a very pretty
picture, but that's exactly what you and I were before the Lord
in grace laid hold of us. And now those whom he has not
been pleased to touch, among whom are those whom he will yet
in grace rescue from such a state, the apostle says, no longer walk
as they walk and as you once walked. Now in the Bible, walk
speaks of a steady, determined course of life and action. We are no longer to walk. That is, everything that now
makes up my steady, determined course of life is to be utterly
antithetical to everything that marked my steady course of life
when I was in my state of spiritual ignorance and in my state of
spiritual death. What am I to do in a wicked generation? I am to be determined that God,
by the appropriate means of His own appointment, will increasingly
give me spiritual understanding to see those things in my present
walk that are a carryover from that which I left when I was
converted by the grace of God. that I might increasingly understand
the patterns of thought, the ways of speech, the mannerisms,
the framework in which I interact with people in every facet of
my life Every part of it was shaped and molded by this darkened
understanding, this alienation from the life of God, this culpable
ignorance, this hardness of heart, and now we are called to a radical
departure from anything that is related to that lifestyle. How is a Christian man to live
in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation? I say these
three texts of scripture surely establish the case that he is
to live as a man who is consciously refusing to have his thinking
and his actions shaped by the thinking and the acting of the
wicked generation in which he lives. Now I'm just expounding
now, not applying. But now there's the flip side,
and that's the positive. God begins with a negative, and
therefore I'm never embarrassed to be negative in my preaching.
I've long since given up any sense of embarrassment with being
negative, so long as I'm being biblically balanced in my preaching.
And in these three passages, the Holy Ghost puts the negative
first, for the simple reason that if you don't take the negative
seriously, you're just playing head games to think you're taking
the positive seriously. If you're not willing to say
no to what you once were in every area of your life, you'll never
be serious in saying yes to what God says you ought to be in every
area of your life. Now let's look at the positive
side, and it's this. Here's my second heading. The
Christian man is to seek to be transformed in all his thinking
and patterns of life in conformity with the standards of God. The Christian man, some of you
taking notes, is to be transformed in all his thinking and patterns
of life in conformity with the standards of God. And here again I bring forward
three witnesses, two of them are the last half of the passages
in Romans and Peter and one is a passage that I read in your
hearing last night. Let's start again with Romans
chapter 12. No sooner does the apostle on the basis of this
fresh display of the mercy of God call the believers to utter
unreserved irrevocable consecration to God Give them the negative,
be not fashioned according to this world, but that he now introduces
the positive. But, be ye continually. The sense of the verb is not
a once for all experience, it is a constant pattern of spiritual
experience. Be continually transformed. Now notice how. by the renewing
of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable
and perfect will of God. Now what does he call us to?
Well, using another present imperative passive verb, he says you are
to be transformed, literally changed in form, When the caterpillar
changes into the butterfly, we call that process the process
of metamorphosis. And that's simply a transliteration
of the Greek word. We're to be metamorphosized! transformed. That's the imperative. We are
to be transformed. That's what we are called to.
But how are we to be transformed? Look at the text. Be transformed
by, here's the instrumentality, the renewing of your mind. That is, our thinking about all
of life is to be wrenched away from the categories and perspectives
of this present age. He says, don't be conformed to
this present age, but be metamorphosized, be transformed, and here is the
method, here is the instrumentality of that transformation, a constant
work of renewing in your new The thing with which you think
your mind. He doesn't say your heart. Isn't
that interesting? Doesn't say your soul. Doesn't say your feelings.
Doesn't say your emotions. He says your noggin, your thinker.
This thing between your ears with which we conceptualize This
thing with which we look out and interpret what we misperceive
to be reality, there's to be this metamorphosis of what we
are in the totality of our redeemed humanity by the instrumentality
of a constant renewing of our thinking. We have got to think
God's thoughts after Him. in every facet of what makes
up our lives. We must think God's thoughts
after Him with respect to what is a man, what is a husband,
what is a father, how is one to use his time, his money, how
is one to relate to things, how is one to relate to his superiors
and his inferiors. Everything that makes up life
is to come under the renewing influence or the influence of
a progressively renewed mind. you're not to assume that because
God in mercy has wrenched you out of the mass of the Gentiles
who are under the dominion of sin in that orbit of spiritual
ignorance and molded and fashioned by the world you're not to assume
because he's rescued you out of that you just sort of do what
comes naturally and if there's something obviously that is akin
to the old lifestyle such as thievery or blasphemy or uncleanness
or adultery or some other gross sin you rejected. Otherwise you
just sort of do what comes naturally. My friend, you've made next to
no progress as a Christian, if that's your thinking. We must
apply all of our faculties and in particular the faculties of
our minds to be transformed in the totality of the function
of that mind with respect to all aspects of reality. To what end? Look at it. In order that, here's the end
in view, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and
perfect will of God. And the thought of these words
in the original is this, that you and I may prove by testing
and then approve in our hearts the will of God. And the will
of God is that which is characterized by these three things. It is
the good, the morally right. It is acceptable unto God. and it is perfect that is it
is whole we are brought to redemptive wholeness of life as opposed
to the tragedy of the fragmentation of life in the state of sin now
that's your duty in a wicked generation to dare to believe
that by the renewing of your mind in the use of the means
of God's appointment you can in every area of life prove by
testing and then approve in your experience the very will of God
for you in the midst of that wicked generation and be marked
as a man in whom the good, the acceptable, and the perfect is
the norm of his life. Second witness It tells us that
the Christian man is to seek to be transformed in all of his
thinking and patterns of life in conformity with the standards
of God, is Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2. After exhorting the Philippians
to be sure that their obedience would not wane now that the apostle
left them, because if that were so, then people would say, ha
ha, your religion is attached to a man. When your man goes,
your religion goes. Paul said, look, you've obeyed
in my presence, but now much more in my absence. To make it
evident that your supreme attachment is to Jesus Christ, let your
obedience be more careful and more intense. Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling, that is, with the full engagement
of all of your faculties. You see again, men, no room here
for blasé, part-time Christianity. There is no such thing except
in hell. You work out with fear and trembling,
not the fear and trembling of the criminal who's looking over
his shoulder everywhere he goes, wondering if someone will recognize
him from the posters in the local post office and tell the police
and the apprehended, no. It's the fear and trembling of
the man so desirous of pleasing his master, and so grieved at
the thought that he might displease him, that there is an internal
spirit of fear and trembling that leads him to depend upon
the strength and grace of another. That's the sense of the fear
and trembling. And we do so in the confidence that we're not
on our own. It is God who is constantly working
in you, both to will and to work, for His good pleasure. I need
never fear that my earnest working out will ever outstrip His effective
working in. When I am enabled to will what
is pleasing to God, God had gone before and worked on my willer.
And when I'm able to do what is pleasing to God, God went
before and gave me the strength, for I can do all things in Him
who strengthens me. Well, there's the general directive,
but now look at the specific. Do all things without murmuring
and questioning. Do all things, to put it in current
Americanese, do all things without grousing and grumping. Do all things without grousing
and grumpy, that is, you do all things that fall to you in the
will of God cheerfully. To what end? In order that you
may become blameless and harmless children of God without blemish,
among whom you are seen as lights in the world. Now just park here
for a couple of minutes with me. The first specific application
of verse 14 is verse 14. In working out their salvation,
everything they do is to be done without grousing and complaining,
without having a cantankerous, disputatious spirit. And what
end does Paul have in view? That they will be known as just
well-mannered, nice guys? No. in order that you may become
blameless, no just cause to lay blame upon you as one who professes
to be a Christian, who says you have a sovereign God who orders
all the details of your life, even the foreman you have, even
the job load for that particular week, even the sickness that
has come into the family and thrown all of the family's schedule
into a cockpit, Even in the midst of that, you say you serve a
God who is ordering all things together for your good, then
surely for you to be grousing and complaining is a denial of
what you say is reality. And if you want to be blameless,
that is, no just cause for anyone to point the finger at gross
inconsistency, do all things without murmuring and disputing
that you may be blameless, that you may be harmless. The word
Jesus uses in Matthew 10, 16, you are to be wise as servants,
harmless as doves. You are to be known as a man
who does not have ill will, who seeks the harm of no one. Children of God without blemish. Children of God who when you
look upon them you don't say, oh Lord, I hope that guy doesn't
open his mouth and tell people he's a Christian because there
is that gross, glaring, moral and ethical blot. He's known
to have a hot temper. He's known to be touchy, can't
take a joke. Try to rib him and he's as sensitive
as the sole of the foot. That's what he's saying. You
must seek to be children of God without blemish. And in this
condition, he says, you shine forth as luminaries in the midst,
look at the language now, of a crooked and perverse generation. It is only as we are positively
transformed in such details that our response to the things that
cause drowsing and complaining among men in the world find us
free of those characteristics that we shine as lights in the
midst of a crooked and perverse generation. In other words, If
Paul focuses on, quote, such a little thing as whether or
not we grouse and complain when we can't get our way, when we're
frustrated, when our plans go awry, surely by touching on such
a piddling little aspect of life, he's including all the greater
issues of life. If the failure to respond to
a busted bit in a job in the shop in the way that is thoroughly
Christian can be a blot upon my testimony, what about the
fact that everybody knows me to be a hothead and a blabbermouth?
You see, by focusing upon what we would say is a little piddling
aspect of a Christian's character and his response to things, Paul
is surely including all of the greater things, and saying that
right down to the way you respond to a busted bit in the drill
press, be blameless, be harmless, be a thoroughgoing Christian
in every facet of your life. And then the final witness is
1 Peter 1, 15 and 16. Remember now what we're seeking
to establish the positive principle the Christian is not only Consciously
to refuse to be molded by the world He is to seek to be transformed
in all of his thinking and patterns of life in conformity with the
standards of God Romans 12 to be Philippians 2 14 and 15 now
first Peter 1 again and We saw the negative, and I'll not go
back to set the general context and flow of thought. I hope you
can remember back about 25 minutes ago when we did that. But having
given the negative in verse 14 as children of obedience, not
fashioning yourselves according to your former lust in the time
of your ignorance, that's not enough. There must not only be
a concentrated engagement of all of our faculties, and in
particular our minds, that we may recognize and reject everything
that pertains to the lifestyle when we were in the time of our
ignorance, but we are with equal engagement of all of our souls
to be committed to this positive directive, but like as he who
called you is holy be yourselves also holy now notice this phrase
in all manner of living because it is written you shall be holy
for I am holy Now brethren, that's the standard
God has set before us. Like as He who called you is
holy, is God holy in only half of His being? Two-thirds of His
being? Holy in His mind and in His affections,
but not in His will? No, God is holiness in every
facet of His glorious, ineffable essence. He is called the Holy
One of Israel, and He is holy through and through in the entirety
of His glorious being. Now, like as He who called you
is holy, So be ye holy, now notice, in all manner of living. We are not only to have holy
desires when we pray, and holy expressions of devotion when
we pray, and holy acknowledgements of attachment to Christ when
we sing His praise and gather with His people, but He says
we are to be holy in all manner of living in the entirety, in
the totality of what makes up life for you and for me, nothing
but holiness through and through is to be the passionate commitment
of our hearts. Because it is written, ye shall
be holy, for I am holy. The standard is God Himself. That's why Jesus could say in
the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.48, Ye shall be perfect, even
as your Father in heaven is perfect. The extent of the standard in
all manner of living and what is to be the underlying motive. Look at verse 17, And if you
call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according
to each man's work, past the time of your sojourning in fear
knowing that you were redeemed not with corruptible things such
as silver and gold from your vain manner of life handed down
from your fathers, but with precious blood. What's the motive? It's this twisted or this many-stranded
motive in which the God who has adopted us and has called us
into the family and called us to family likeness is the very
God before whom we shall one day stand and face Him as an
impartial judge. But blessed be His name, He's
the very God who has redeemed us at the price of the blood
of His own dear Son. And Peter assumes that in the
heart of every Christian a contemplation of being judged by an impartial
God and by a redeeming God is all the motive we'll need to
desire with all our hearts to be like that God. Now if you
can hear such a God say, Be holy as I am holy, be holy in all
manner of living, because you will stand before me and face
me as an impartial judge. And I remind you that I am the
God who gave my Son to redeem the likes of you at the price
of the blood of incarnate deity. If those things don't move you
to be ready men to say, of every nook and cranny of your life,
I wanted to bestand holiness unto the Lord, then I sincerely
doubt if the power of the gospel has ever terminated upon your
heart. So there is our duty in the midst
of an intensely wicked generation. The negative, we must not allow
the wickedness of this generation to shape the patterns of our
thoughts and of our lives. Positively, we must seek to be
transformed in all of our patterns of thinking and living in conformity
with the standards of God. Now I want to close this study
with two very pointed basic applications. I've spent the time in seeking
to persuade your judgment from the scriptures. And may I say
by way of an aside, don't let anyone else play with your conscience
unless he persuades your judgment from your Bibles and you see
it with your own eyes in your Bibles. I don't care how persuasive
the man may be. Have no use for any ministry.
It goes after your conduct without seeking to persuade your judgment
as to what God has said. And that's why I've labored.
I hope it hasn't been pedantic. I've thrown myself into it, but
it's meant you've had to think. But you see the place given to
thinking in being the man you ought to be? My two final applications. Number one, Response to this
call to the Christian man's responsibility in a wicked generation is not
optional. Response to this call to a Christian
man's duty in a wicked generation is not optional. For what is it but the call to
a life of practical holiness And Hebrews 12, 14 says, follow
after peace with all men. And the verb used there in the
imperative is the verb dioko, the very verb used to describe
what Saul of Tarsus was doing when he persecuted the church. Fix these sights upon Christians,
track them down with zeal and with a burning passion. God says,
picture eyes upon a life of sanctification, a life lived in consecration
unto God and away from the world, a life conformed by the norms
of God. Fix your eyes upon it and track
it down with the zeal of a blind persecutor. persecute, track
down, pursue holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. The ground of our seeing Him
in joy and in perfection is not in us. The ground of our acceptance
before God now and even in the day when we stand before Him
is Christ and Christ's righteousness alone. But all who have truly
had that righteousness imputed to them are a people who have
been transformed by the power of God and given a heart to be
holy. And therefore God says, Pursue
the holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. You may
be sitting here and be saying as I've been opening up these
scriptures, Pastor Martin, that's a standard that's so high, so
all-embracing. That doesn't give me even room
for three minutes in a day when I can suspend thoughts of God
in what pleases God. It means in everything from the
time I put my stinky feet on the floor in the morning and
stagger into the bathroom and do my thing and go down and get
my coffee and take my shower throughout the entire day to
what I read in my break time and how I relate to my boss and
how I speak to my wife and relate to my kids and what I do in the
bedroom when the door is shut until I drift off into sleep.
I must think of everything every moment that's under the eye of
God. That doesn't leave me any room. My friend, if you want
room, you'll have plenty of it. Because the essence of hell is
to be cast out from the presence of God. You want three minutes
of your day without Him? God will give you an eternity
without Him. That's no burdensome thing to
the true child of God. His burden is that all too often
try as he may and pray as he does. He looks back and says
a whole patch of an afternoon went by. And though I did not
indulge in any gross sin, I had no conscious thoughts of my God,
and it breaks his heart. It grieves him. He longs that
this standard will be worked out in his life. Our response
to this call is not optional. And thank God I can close on
this final note of application in this hour. Compliance with
this call is not. impossible. Compliance with this
call is not impossible. Now notice I didn't say perfect
compliance. I said compliance. Compliance. That is, it is not impossible
to take Romans 12 and to see it being worked out in my life
where I am refusing to be molded by this present age, to let this
present age paint on the canvas of my perception of reality what
I ought to be and do. It is not impossible to refuse
that and to be transformed by the renewing of my mind. Compliance with this call is
not impossible. Why? Listen to Philippians 4.13. I can do all things. Good Paul,
you sure have changed your mind from what you said in Romans
7. The good that I would, I do not. The evil that I would not,
that I do. O wretched man that I am! I know that in me that is in
my flesh dwells no good thing. Well, the same Paul said, I can
do all things through Christ who strengthens
me. I can face the reality of my
remaining sin as really as I faced it and recorded it in Romans
7 and not let it send me into a tailspin of spiritual dejection
and discouragement and roll over and play dead. I can face the
reality of my remaining sin, and in the anticipation of my
full deliverance, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,
and I can press on in the strength of Christ to do the will of Christ. Then you have that marvelous
statement in Hebrews 13, 20, 21. Some would call it a benediction,
others would call it a prayer. Now the God of peace who brought
again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, with the
blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus Christ make
you perfect, complete in every good thing to do His will, working
in us that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ,
to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. unto the God
who is able to make you perfect in every good thing, to do His
will, working in us that which is well-pleasing in His sight. It's not well-pleasing in his
sight because it comes before him in total perfection viewed
nakedly. No, no. God's eye can discern
enough imperfection in the holiest thought and action we have ever
thought or performed. God's eye can see enough sin
in it to damn us to hell. But when that deed comes out
of a heart overwhelmed with gratitude for the mercy of God in Christ,
a heart that wants to please God out of gratitude for what
Christ has done, and a mind that is determined to think after
the patterns of God, so that it is not blind obedience, impulsed
by warm devotion but an empty head, but it is the obedience
of an enlightened mind, driven by the affection of love and
gratitude. That very act of obedience is
presented to God through the fragrance of the mediation of
the Lord Jesus. and it is well-pleasing to God. And then, of course, Philippians
2, 12 and 13, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Why?
It is God who is, present tense, continually at work in you, both
to will and to work for His good pleasure. Know, my brethren,
the standard is high, yes, But the heart of every true Christian
is committed to it. This call to our role is not
optional. And thank God, compliance with
this call is not impossible. Rabbi Duncan, as he was affectionately
called, he wasn't a rabbi. He was a Scot. But he was a man
to whom God had given a very unusual mind as well as an unusually
sensitive heart. And in that unusual mind was
a passion and a thirst for languages. They say the man would just absorb
languages. And also the kind of mind that
whenever he contemplated anything, particularly spiritual and biblical
truths, his biographer, who was his pastor for 30 years, said
he was never satisfied until he had plumbed the depths of
a given aspect of God's truth as deep as the human mind could
take it with an open Bible and then he sought to trace it up
as high as the mind could go with the light of the Bible and
then he wanted to come out of the depths and out of the heights
and express the pith, the heart, the essence of that truth in
a simple little pithy or sententious statement and this is one of
them contemplating all that the Bible teaches about the kinds
of things we've been dealing with in this hour, that the child
of God is committed to a life of total consecration, to have
his mind renewed in every area with respect to performing and
doing the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God, seeking
to be holy as he is holy, while at the same time reckoning with
the ugly and horrible realities of remaining sin in the influence
of the seducing world, Rabbi Duncan said this, nobody's perfect. This is the hypocrite's couch. It is the believer's bed of thorns. Nobody's perfect. That's right. Is that your couch on which you
lie? to keep you from whole-souled
engagement in seeking to be holy as He is holy? Or is it your
bed of thorns that though your heart is set upon that total
renewal of your mind, that rejection of all that pertains to the times
of your ignorance, And while you cry to God for grace and
depend upon Christ and supplies of the Spirit, you know that
your best acts are pitiful at best. Nobody's perfect. It is the true believers. Bed
of thorns. Which is it to you? God grant
that if it's not your bed of thorns, men, face the fact you're
probably a stranger to grace. and seek that grace at the only
place it can be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you again
for your holy word. Thank you as we did at the beginning
of this hour that we are found in this place. Oh God, we're
in amazement to ourselves. For some of us can remember a
time when to be in a meeting like this would have been sheer
boredom. It would have galled us to our
socks. But Lord, we've actually delighted
to be here. Our hearts have found joy in
even thinking about you and your word. Oh, Lord, we thank you
for your grace to the likes of us. seal this word to the heart
of every Christian man in this place, that we will be done with
all piddling about in the Christian life, and that we may begin to
manifest that engagement of our whole being of which our Lord
Jesus Christ is infinitely worthy. And for those who sit here And
the more the Word has been preached, the more they've had reason to
question whether or not the root of the matter's in them. Lord,
may they not squelch those holy doubts produced by the Word,
but may they cherish them and seek your face until they know
of a surety that they are new men in Christ Jesus. Thank you again for being with
us through the hours of this morning. You bless us. And shortly
we will go to our lunch. Oh God, how quickly the enemy
would come like the fowls of the air to pluck up the word.
May our conversation be seasoned with the salt of grace. May our
interaction be more than surface. Give us the grace to be open
and vulnerable one to another. And then bless our remaining
sessions that much good will be done in all of our hearts
to the glory of your name. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.