Out of This World

Joshua 24:14-15 “Now therefore, fear the LORD, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the LORD! And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

The other night, we were watching a DVD session of the “That the World May Know” series that centered in Egypt and compared the Egyptian gods and beliefs to the Israelites God of the bible. The parallel to today’s culture was amazing. The host, Ray Vanderlaan explained it in these terms …

Atheistic Naturalism is a belief based only on natural desires and instincts, denying that an event or object has a supernatural significance or origin. Those who embrace the Pantheistic belief system that equates God with the forces and laws of the universe, where God is in everything, are literally worshipping the Creation and not the Creator. Romans 1:19-20 &25 “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 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, so that men are without excuse. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”

If people worship the Sun, the sky, the Earth, the forests and the trees, then nature is their god. And in Nature, the strong eat the weak; its survival of the fittest. So if I am weak, I am nervous. This belief system glorifies, and eventually deifies humans and morality is going to be what the human says it is. Whether it is the biggest, the majority opinion or each individual, humans will decide what is right and what is wrong. Some are going to pay a high pay for the order of this belief, because this system is not going to be kind to the weak, the old, the poor and the defenseless; for they are a burden in this progressive humanistic faith.

It is exactly opposite of God’s system. God’s message is about bringing peace to chaos, and it is about compassion and care for the life of "the nobody"; the weak, the hurting, the spiritually lost, the homeless, the widow and the orphan, the old, the ill and the unborn. If you see a culture where life is cheap and where it is okay to sacrifice some, then you have a culture that is buying into the wrong system. If you have a culture that is obsessed with pleasure and success, position, power and having everything that your heart could possibly desire, we ought to ask the question: “Has the culture bought into to the wrong message". If you have a culture that is obsessed with violence and death, we ought to ask: “Have we bought into the wrong story?” Genesis says that nature is not God. The Bible says that the human is not deified. There is a Creator and one God, and He has the story, the message, that He brings peace to chaos and holds the whole world in His loving hands.

So when you see oppression, remember that Jesus came to restore us (separated sinners) to the Creator of the universe. When you see the hungry, feed them; the thirsty, give them a drink; the prisoner, visit them; the naked, give them some clothes; the lonely, go see them … bring them some light and peace. Join the “right” story. It’s about all of us caring about the broken and the hurting. God wants us to understand the two systems in this world, the two messages and the two stories; because we are going to discover that He isn’t looking for a "messenger” only. He is looking for someone to be the “message”, a witness by their life. You have to buy His story and reject the world’s. Hang on to the message and hold tight to the promises of God.

Leviticus 11:44a-45 ‘For I am the LORD your God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy. For I am the LORD who brings you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy." God did not just bring His people out from the yoke of bondage and slavery of the Egyptians, but also from the worship of the false gods of pantheistic naturalism and humanism, to the true God, Creator of Heaven & Earth. We need to make that same Exodus today, and then you will find a life that is "In this world", but truly “Out of this world”.

In Christ, Brian