How To Live In This Messed Up World

How to be transformed and not conformed

Transcript

Speaker 0:19

. I'm Dr. Dave Jones, and today's episode is entitled God's People in This Present Age. First of all, God is not a God of contradiction, and he can't set forth six or ten or sixty or a hundred different ways of dealing with life issues which contradict one another. He's not a God of contradiction and confusion. In other words, God is not a God of contradiction. And we're going to get into that in this episode. So God is a God of order and truth and consistency. And so if he has one way, he tells us what that one way is, and he says, This is the way, walk in it. When he comes to the whole book of Psalms, he puts right at the beginning of that psalm that sets forth two ways and only two. He says there's the way of the ungodly, and he says there's the way of the godly man. There's two ways, two kinds of men, two people. Antithesis. All through the Bible, that's what you find. That's what our church is today, our denomination, our thinkers, our societies and life are all lacking. This antithetical mindset, which leads then to a failure to live and act in that way, and rather leads to an accommodation of all sorts of ways brought into the church from the outside, and the people of God going out and associating in all sorts of ways with the world out there because it's just a little bit of continuum away from where we are. We dare not think that way. This verse calls us to a different kind of living, growing out of a different kind of thinking. It says don't be conformed to the way of our modern age. God divides life into two eons, which are simultaneously in existence, though one comes to an end and the other continues on from glory to greater glory and to perfection of eternity. There is the modern age, the present eon, the present world system, which is fundamentally the system of Satan. In 2 Corinthians 4 4, Satan is called the God of this age, the same word eon, which is used there. In Galatians 1 4, we read about this present evil eon, this present evil age, which is all about us. And here in this verse we are told do not be conformed to that present evil age. Do not be conformed to the age of which Satan is the god or ruler. You see, there's this antithesis. It's all over there, and we're to be all over here. We're not to be a part of that. Now, it doesn't mean we shouldn't be in the world, mixing with people of the world, trying to win them to Christ and living a kind of life that's exemplary before them that will attract them to him. Oh no, you cannot go out of this world, said Paul, but does mean we are not to be conformed to this world in its ways, that there is to be a difference, a discernible difference in the Christians. That's one of the tragedies of our time, that the church looks so much like the world, and so many of the churches are so much like the world that it's hard to draw the line between the two and see who belongs on which side. Most of the church, perhaps, are bunched right along the line, sitting on it, and you hardly know which way their feet are hanging over which side of the fence. It's not an age in which the church is very strongly differentiated from this modern evil age around us, which is Satan's kingdom, or over which he is the god or ruler of this world. Now, you see, he tells us that we are not to be conformed, and that the word is an interesting word that means to be fashioned after, to take the shape of. You're to think here, perhaps, of a jello mold. You know, you know how a jello mold can be in the form of a butterfly or in the form of a flower or in some kind of formless form, and you pour the liquid jello into it, and it takes the shape of that cup or of that mold. When you pour it out and plop it down on the table, remove the mold, it has the shape of the mold into which it was poured. That's precisely the picture in front of us in this word conform. To take the shape of, to be molded by is the idea, this world. And the question for you tonight, in your business, in your home, in your social relations, in the way that you deal with your family, in your educational processes, and the things that you do in your church, and the decisions that you make day by day as a shelter shareholder or as a Christian in some other relationship to life, what molds all of those activities? Is it the Bible that shapes you in life? Or is it this present age, this evil age, this modern age, which belongs to the God of this age? What's molding you? What's molding you now? What shape do you have tonight? If God were to pour you out tonight, what would you look like? Would you have the shape of this world around you? Would you have the shape that conforms to the word of the living God? That's the issue in this verse. What shape are you in? You're not to be conformed, poured into this world's mold and shaped as though the world were able to take you like a batch of dough and with a cookie cutter come down and just cut you out in the shape and its form. But you are to be transformed, be transformed instead of being conformed. You began life conformed. You began life like everybody else, conformed to this world. A little sinner, a little tiny sinner, but a sinner. That's what it takes to be poured into the devil's mold. Somewhere along the line, those of you who know Christ recognized your sin, confess the fact that you were sinners and trusted in Christ as your Savior and believed in Him, even if it was when you were a little child, it happened. Now, he says to you as a Christian, you are to continually go on being more and more like Christ, transformed from what you used to be and the way you were born, and the way that this whole world system does things and the way that others around you do things. You are to be transformed, different from all that. The word here is metamorphosis. You all know that word from the process of the caterpillar growing into a butterfly. That crawly, creepy little caterpillar turning into a glorious butterfly. Have you ever seen a lot of butterflies? How beautiful they are? One time when I was in Brazil, I walked into a cloud of butterflies. Literally, it was a cloud of butterflies in a museum. And you walk right in it, and they didn't pay any more attention to me. They were all flapping around having a wonderful time, and it was just, well, they were all golden, and it was just like a golden cloud that had transcended as these butterflies came down. And I've never seen anything like this. And I walked over close to them and they didn't pay attention. And I walked right down there, flapping all over, just wonderful butterflies, gorgeous and beautiful creatures. Some of the most beautiful butterflies in all the world come from that area. We saw some radiant, iridescent butterflies, but before they were ever like that, golden or iridescent, blues or whatever color they may have finally taken, they were little green, wormy like caterpillars. God says you may have been born a worm, but I want to turn you into a butterfly. I want you to be golden, I want you to be iridescent in the way that you live. I don't want you to be like the others around you. I want to make something out of you that's different and beautiful and glorious and wonderful. That's conformed to the image of my son, not to the God of this world. So he sets forth an antithesis between the caterpillar and the butterfly, and he says stop being a caterpillar. Be a butterfly, be transformed. Notice now that it's passive. You can't do it by yourself or by your own strength. It's transformed. You don't have to do anything to be conformed either. Just do nothing and you will be conformed. But if you soak yourself in the Word of God, asking the Spirit of God to give you the knowledge and wisdom to understand His will, and if you are willing to step out in faith, even though you don't feel the strength or ability to do what He's asked you to do, and take that step forward in faith that whenever God commands you to do something, He will empower you to do it. Take that step forward. Then the Spirit of God will enable you. You can't do it without the Spirit of God, but He isn't going to do it for you instead of you either. He's going to give you the strength to obey His will. The human and the divine come together in that way. He gives you the strength and the wisdom to know and do what He commands. This reminds me of so many times when I'll talk to counselees who appear to be living life in the horizontal. The horizontal, what I mean by that, they dress the way that the world suggests that they dress. They talk the way the world wants them to talk. They read what the world wants them to read. Everything is predicated upon the person next door, the person down the street, the person at work. It's a horizontal influence. It's a horizontal relationship. And unfortunately, what's happened is that what used to be a sanctuary, the church, was a place where you could come to get away from the horizontal influences in life. It was a place to come where you could. A lot of people would say, Well, I'm going to go and pray to God and I'm going to go to church because this is where God is. And so they've gotten away from the world and they've come to church. But unfortunately, anymore nowadays, we can't tell the difference between what's happening in the world and what's happening in our churches. There's as much sin going on in our churches as there is in the world. So no wonder people are confused and disenchanted with going to church anymore because it's no different than being in the world. I had a professor in seminary one time saying that nobody's legs are long enough to walk on both sides of the fence. Well, what does that mean? You can't walk in the world and walk in the church and expect to be happy. The Bible says a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. So the point that I try to make here, as well as to the counselors that I talk to that are confused about the influences around them, start thinking vertically. What does God want you to do in this situation? How does God want you to dress? How does God want you to talk? How does God want you to behave? How does God want you to think? You get my idea. You get the point. So instead of recognizing what we do on the horizontal, we've got to turn that to where we start thinking more about the vertical. In fact, every time we think on the horizontal plane, we've got to use that as an impetus and a catalyst of saying, you know what? I'm not going to think horizontally anymore. I'm going to think vertically. Try that. Encourage your counselings to try that. Change your focus. Be conformed and be transformed and remolded, not to be caught up in the horizontal influences, but be more vertical in your concept and in your living your life. I hope this helps. Make it a blessed day. Talk to you later.