Unmasking the Spirit of the Age

They did not honor him as God or gave thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men or birds or animals or reptiles. Let me begin this morning by asking you a question. Do you feel in step with America, aside from perhaps your circle of friends and those in the community with which you spend time, do you really feel that you're part of the mainstream of thinking in our country today? What really is going on in the United States? What really is being said as we listen to the debates and to the campaigning that's going on and to the media appraisal of those things which were being spoken and declared by our candidates? Do you feel in touch with the kinds of things that are being put forth as symbolic of the thinking of this nation on things issues such as morality and on values in our culture, on abortion, on things that have to do with the sanctity of human life? Frankly, church, when I listen to what's being said with any sort of intensity, I have to ask myself, what difference does the Church of Jesus Christ make in our country? What difference does it really make? You know that a year and a Half ago the U.S. news World Report magazine showed the results of a poll where it listed the chief influencers in our American culture. Do you know where the church ranked on that list of things such as political parties and labor unions and arts and entertainment and sports figures? You know where the church listed not 3rd or 5th or 7th or 14th, but 26th behind all those things I just named? That's where our culture sees the Church of Jesus Christ in terms of its impact on itself. And I'll tell you that it's of deep concern to me this morning as I share with you, that as we see the fabric, the foundation of our value system being eroded down from underneath us, that as this disintegration continues on and on, we as a people and as a nation, as a culture are going to see the very thing upon which we have built our lives literally snatched out from underneath us. Charles Simpson wrote that when spiritual freedoms are lost, political repression is not far behind. And frankly, church I believe this morning, as I share with you, that God is not indifferent about the things that are happening in the United States of America. You may think that because you read polls, about 50% of Americans are born again. That, boy, you know, we're really in the midst of a revival and we hear a lot of revival talk. But I'LL tell you something. We don't see a lot of revival living. And our culture is not reflecting a transformation, even though we as his people want to declare it to be. So as we listen to the leaders of today, do you know what we hear? We hear this an awful lot. Religion is fine in its place. I believe that it's important to pray at home. I believe it's perfectly acceptable to say grace over dinner in your own house. I believe it's fine to go to church and talk about religious things there, but keep it out of the other things of life. Don't bring religion into politics, don't bring religion into education. Keep your religion to yourself. That's the way I was taught. That's what my parents told me, and it's worked for me. And do you know something? More and more, as you listen to the political candidates and as you listen to the people who shape the mentality of our culture today, what they want is they want to give you plenty of room to exercise your religion behind closed doors in the privacy of your living room. But don't bring it out and have it influence what's going on in life. And I want you to know something, Church. Every dictator through history would be very happy to give you that same right. Somehow. The idea that we can go ahead and practice our religion behind closed doors in the privacy of our own living room, and the idea that Jesus Christ is Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth, Lord of all that ever shall be, those two things are not in harmony. And I submit to you this morning that there is being birthed in such a way in the mentality of our culture, a dichotomy between the secular worldization and the spiritual life of. Of Almighty God, that it won't be long before there'll be no room whatsoever in our society for the things of God. And it won't be long before even what you were told you could do in the privacy of your own living room is held in disdain and scorn. Do you know that this whole matter of the secular spiritual dichotomy that we've really bought into, more or less. Listen. Tell me that you don't, when you listen to these candidates and people talking, that you don't hear this woven in, that we are a secular culture. I'm not talking about secular humanism in the sense of you've heard a lot of talk about that being a new God and all. I'm talking about the secularization of society. I'm talking about keep religion out of the public square, keep God out of the concerts at Christmas time, in the public schools. And we hear more and more and more of this stuff every time we turn around. But do you know something? This sort of was birthed out of some Christian mentality back in the 17th century when Pietism arose. One of the things that they did, pietism was a reaction to those who had gotten loose and sloppy in their lifestyle. And what the pietist said was, I want to live and practice the full realm of my faith in life. And that was a good thing. But you know what else the pietists did was that they virtually ignored their body, saying that really it had very little value compared to what God wanted to do in their spirit. And so when you began to divide the spirit and the body, what you ended up with was a focus on all the spiritual practices, but very little about what concerned the flesh, the body, the living. Out of what happened through our flesh and bones, we lost the idea of wholeness. And this thing came really on very strongly during the whole period of the Enlightenment. If you don't know much about history, the Enlightenment was basically man's answer to God. The Enlightenment came and said everything can be figured out by reason and we don't need supernaturalism. And that's what happened. That was bought lock, stock and barrel by the European culture in the 17th and 18th centuries to where much of the theology that shaped the modern day liberal movement in the churches came out of that Enlightenment period. And so we've had seeped into us in the last 50 years especially this idea that we can have a dichotomy, that we can come to church and do our church things. And a lot of you, some of you still think this way. You can come and be spiritual here, but when you leave here, you get into the real world. Do you have anybody at work that calls work the real world? And your pursuit of God is sort of the fantasy world, the mystical kingdom out there. And I want to say to you this morning, church, that Jesus Christ has said that we're to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, a city set upon a hill, shining. And I want us to see that God has given us very specific and relevant ways of impacting our culture for the sake of Jesus Christ. I want to talk about the channels of expression, the media, arts, entertainment. I want to talk about the ways that God has given to give expression to life as Jesus Christ would bring it. I want to talk about the way that we've basically yielded over all of those things in the name of secularization. And have been intimidated by the world to keep our mouths shut. Because after all, this is a pluralistic society. And who gives us the right to talk about God unless we're in our living rooms with the doors closed and the blinds pulled down? And I want us to see ourselves in a new light in the next few weeks, not as some sort of a satellite rescue effort that God's hoping at the last minute to snatch off the face of the earth and rescue church. We need to not see ourselves as a lifeboat, but a battleship. We're not just here so that we can rescue a few broken souls and in the last minute God will come and lift us out. We're here to stand, to occupy. That word means to do business until Jesus Christ comes back. And I think the implications of this are never more necessary than they are right now as we face this political campaign, as we have plenty of opportunities to talk to people about what's going on in America, because what's at stake is vital to us all. I want to do just briefly and wave introduction this morning on this subject, I want to unmask three things for you. I want to unmask number one, the spirit of the age. Paul said that we are not ignorant of the designs or devices of our enemy in 2 Corinthians 2, 11. I want to disagree with that in terms of the church today. My own observation is that we're quite ignorant for the most part on a listen public scale. We're pretty good at identifying demons in people one on one. But we're not all that good at identifying what the enemy is doing in the public fashion, the public arena. And I want to just submit to you a couple of things which they were startling to me and I don't know what they'll be to you, but I want to talk about this spirit of the age. Francis Schaeffer calls it the world spirit of today. To me, the world spirit of the age has a terminology that includes words like freedom and choice and equality and lifting of oppression and releasing of shackles of bondage and fairness. And the world spirit of the age has been, I think, most interestingly defined by none other than Time magazine. TIME magazine in one of its more recent editions celebrated 60 years of publication. And they were capturing what they called the spirit of America. Listen to what they said. The fundamental idea that America represented corresponded to the values of the times. America was not merely free, it was freed, unshackled. It's talking about the last 60 years now. The image was of something previously held in check an explosive force of a country that moved about in random particles of energy, yet at the same time gaining power and prospering. To be free was to be modern. To be modern was to take chances. The American century was to be the century of unleashing the breaking away at first from the 19th century as Freud and Einstein and so on, and eventually listen from any constraints at all. And that's their assessment of the flow of the spirit of the age, away from any constraints at all. And then when you hear people talking about not interfering with the right of making choices, you can be made to feel foolish, like as though you were some sort of tyrant because you felt it was right to somehow cause people to be responsible for their actions and that nobody has the right simply to make decisions and choices based on what's convenient to them. And then it's not long before pretty soon you hear, well, you're just closed minded. Anyone get that? You're just kind of close minded. If you believe that stuff. If you believe that there should be any sort of restraint. I was talking to a person this week who's a journalist here in our area. She was saying that in her circle of influence, the cardinal sin is to be closed minded. Let's just be open and we've got to just embrace whatever comes along. And it's totally unacceptable to be closed minded. All it shows is you're a bigot. And I want to submit to you, Church, that it's not just the Ayatollah Khomeini who's anti God because he defies Jesus Christ. I want to say to you, Church, that it's this spirit of unrestrained freedom that in its essence is really anti God. It's those who believe that to be human means that I'm totally free, that have adopted the spirit of the age. Think back to the Garden of Eden in perfect relationship with God. Was there any constraint? Absolutely. In fact, it was the violation of the one constraint that God gave that brought the fall of man. What was Moses called to the people of God? The Lawgiver. Because God knew, unrestrained that the nature of man would destroy itself. And it hasn't changed one bit. The nature of man will always destroy itself because it's a fallen nature. It's satanically attacked. And in this dispensation of grace that we're in, it's no different. We're still called to live by the word of God. And the word of God is an inner law written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And yet the world spirit of the age would say, check that thing. Who needs it? Who needs to be told what they can and cannot do? Complete autonomy, really. Ultimately, where we're headed with this thing, folks, is the complete removal of restraint. And I want you to see something turn in your Bibles, would you? To second Thessalonians, the second chapter. Now, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited either by spirit or by word or by letter purporting to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first. And the man of lawlessness. Just look at that word, would you? The man of what lawlessness is revealed. Man of sin. First, John tells us that lawlessness and sin are the same thing. The son of perdition, you see, the spirit of the man who is called the Antichrist in the Bible. This is the same personage, by the way, that spirit church is called the spirit of lawlessness. Anomia in the Greek, the alpha derivative means without law, without restraint. And what we're saying here, we're seeing here by the apostle Paul, is in the last days, the spirit of lawlessness will reign and will be seen in the form of one man. And it will lead to a great rebellion, an apostasy, a falling away, you see, because lawlessness church inevitably leads to chaos. And so what we see happening here is in the end times, lawlessness, that spirit is pervasive. And it's seen most dramatically in the personage of the Antichrist. Notice what is called just looking a little bit farther here in the same section. Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you this in verse six? And you know that what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. In other words, this force is at work right now. But something is happening, and it's from God. And some say it's the Holy Spirit, and some say it's the form of government. And I had all kinds of quotes that I was digging up in different commentaries about. Who is this restrainer? The important point is it's a restrainer. Someone is holding in check the spirit of lawlessness, the world spirit of the age that would say, I want to be completely free, because to be completely free is to be free from God and whatever God would want me to do. The world spirit of the age resists everything and very cleverly disguises itself. I just had to chuckle when I read the Pittsburgh Press a few days back about the Monday Night Football game. How many of you watched the Steelers play? Was it the Bengals that night? There were 25 acknowledged fist fights that night, 40 ejections, and a shooting at Three River Stadium where one man was critically injured, another one seriously injured. And I chuckled when I read the newspaper how, here we go. Those who were calling for a ban on beer drinking at Monday Night Football were being a little reactionary that the drunkenness and the offensive language and just the foulness of the whole thing. And anyone that goes to those football games will tell you if you sit near the wrong person, you'll have a miserable time. And I just. I was so to hear the mentality. It's just a little overreacting, isn't it? I mean, we only had one shooting and 40 people thrown out of the stadium. And the councilmen were arguing back and forth. Well, it is $100,000 worth of concession income after all that if we don't serve beer. And the next day in the press. I really love this cartoon. It has a picture of Three River Stadium and these turrets up on top of the stadium with 50 caliber machine guns down there and a helicopter flying over with guns coming. And the guy said, well, heck, it was either this or stop serving beer. And that's church. Listen. And yet if you would stand up and say, I just think this has got to end just with the smoothest of tongues, you would be put down as being out of touch, overreactionary. It's the world spirit of the age. And that world spirit of the age is driven, secondly, if you would, on the overheads, please, by the wisdom of the spirit of the age. And I don't have time to talk too much about this this morning. I'll probably say more about it in weeks to come. I want you to see. Do you still have your finger black and blue in Romans 1? Well, here it's on the overheads. Thank you. Want to show that scripture, Gene? Romans 1:21. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. And I want you to see something, Church. Paul's not just talking about the Roman citizens at this point. He's talking about mankind. He's talking about 1984. That man has become futile in his thinking. And there's a spirit, there's a wisdom of the world that's driving this, that's feeding this spirit of the age, there's a lot of definitions of it. One of the things that I think is pretty close to right on is naturalism. You know what naturalism is? Naturalism has found its way for the most part into most of our thinking. According to the dictionary, the definition is the philosophical doctrine denying that anything in reality has supernatural significance. Specifically the doctrine that scientific laws account for all phenomena. That's naturalism. And we're told that that can explain everything that has to do with life. Just about. And the things that it can explain is simply because we don't have. We haven't quite understood, you know, we haven't quite gotten to the point the knowledge is out there, we just haven't discovered it yet. You. But you know, the Bible doesn't tell us that the whole Bible church is full of supernatural phenomena that have no explanation in naturalism. Look at verse 18 of Romans 1. Men who by their wickedness. All right for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness see it that it's a hard issue. First, suppress the truth. Suppress in the Greek means to be imprisoned. Men in their wickedness imprison the truth of God. Suppress it, won't let it out, won't confront it, won't deal with it. And so that all through our culture today you see the truth of God being called foolishness. How many of you have been told that what you believe is foolish? How could you believe miracles? It's foolishness. And this is exactly what Paul said was going to happen. They don't want to acknowledge God in their hearts is what it boils down to. And you better beware church. When you read things like listen, just little phrases. Test tube babies. Now, test tube babies aren't conceived in a test tube. I mean, the elements that make up those babies are still so intricately and mysteriously put together that nobody's even close to figuring out how to make a DNA molecule. But yet the world spirit of the age would have you think, hey, we're close, we're close to be able to create life. And I submit to you, man has created nothing from nothing. And be careful when you read things like the quality of life versus the sanctity of life because it's another way of the wisdom of the world creeping in and helping to cloud the issues in your mind as to what really has God said about life. Well, Jack Irwin read it for us this morning. He knew who you were while you were being formed in secret. And the sanctity of life of our Bible tells us that God knew you before you were even conceived. Colossians 2:8 talks about not being deceived by the elemental spirits of the philosophies of our age, not being taken in by it, caused to reduce your thinking and drawn away and following cleverly devised myths. The Bible says, do you know what that leads to? Church, I want to give you a word, accommodation. And the church of Jesus Christ by and large has been drawn into accommodating itself to the world mind. And I want you to know that it's in the mind of God, in the heart of God. It's a great grief today that we've accommodated ourselves to the world. And what is happening in America is that we are seeing secularization begin to drive out the roots of God and godliness. Oh, it's subtle and it can sound. You'd be made to sound so foolish if you stand up and say what you really know to be true. We're not just experiencing some variation of the middle of the road, folks. We're getting pushed off the road and it's happening around us. I want to finally and rather quickly unmask what the Bible says about the conflict of our day. There is a world spirit of the age, and there is a spirit of the Lord as revealed in his word. And we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. How many of you have been told somehow that America, America is God's hope. America is sort of God's bastion for delivering the world. God would never judge America. I just want you to know that we are on the verge of that judgment. There's so much that could be said about how God feels about sin. David said in Psalm 1:19:53, Burning indignation has seized me because of the wickedness of those who forsake thy law. Proverbs 14:34. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach. And I want you to know from what we read in Romans 1, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and we wickedness of men. And as we see biblical values being put down and decried, as we see those who would stand for the righteousness of God mocked and in some way demeaned, I want you to know that the truths of God are being trampled down and that if we don't rise up in warfare, spiritual Warfare. First of all, we will have nothing to say before God but that we just hand it over our culture. And some people say, well, God just cares about the salvation of men. Jesus never said anything to the Roman government. I believe that God holds us responsible for our culture. He's given us dominion over the earth. Those who hold that view, why does Jesus then say to us, by the Holy Spirit in Revelations, the second chapter, that he will come back and rule the nations with a rod of iron? Warfare exists, church, and we're called to be in it. Now. So often we think of warfare in terms of what? Well, I'm going to battle for the demon of something and somebody, or that there's a battle going on in this relationship, or alcoholism, or you name it. And those are right things, and we need to do that. But how many of you would confess that it's hard to conceive of spiritual warfare in terms of nations, in terms of culture, in terms of government and education and science and the arts and media. And we don't know what it's like to stand against a powerful prince that would pull down all of which we hold valuable in our culture. It's difficult for us. But this scripture that we've just seen or take the life of Daniel, which we studied Thursday night, Daniel was talking about what a whole nation, the prince of the kingdom of Persia. And warfare is talked about in the Bible in terms of nations and. And entire segments of culture being battled for. And this works itself out right where you live. And don't ever think that somehow this is all out there and vague because your kids are influenced by what you determine to do as a church. Your neighborhoods, your workplace will be affected by what you're willing to stand and to do as a child of God. Let me conclude by giving you four things, four applications. Number one, in this matter of conflict that we're in right now, the first thing you've got to do, and I don't have these on an overhead, I wish you'd write them down. Face the reality of your responsibility squarely, that God is going to hold us accountable for our culture and for our day. He is. It's a responsibility that we have. Face it squarely. Number two, would you be mature enough to deal with the accommodation in your own life? Would you be willing to look at your life and say, God, I admit I've been going to movies I shouldn't be seeing. I've been reading books I shouldn't be reading. I've been listening to jokes I shouldn't be listening to, I've been acquiescing and accommodating where I should have been standing and being willing to be persecuted. Number three, would you commit with me to seeing how this church can make a difference where it is today and it begins, first of all, by reflecting in our relationships the kind of integrity that the world cannot match and church it is possible to show love and holiness and we need to do that. And finally, in the coming two or three weeks, as I teach, would you commit with me to see the place of the word of God as God's absolute authority in the face of a vacillating and completely unrestrained spirit of the world today and see that God has given us his absolute word in all of its perfection upon which we can build a life. And I'll say to you, if we'll commit to those four things together, we will be a church that will stand in the face of the erosion of all that we hold valuable and will be able to stand and say, come Lord Jesus, and take that which is rightly yours. And I want to be that kind of person. And I hope you do too. Let's pray, Lord, as we watch the coming weeks, as we hear the issues being debated as we talk with countless numbers of people about what's going on in America, I pray, Father, that we no longer would stand for accommodation in our own lives, that we no longer Lord wink at sin, but that we'd be willing to say what your word says about all these things. And Lord, I just pray for ministry to happen right now as we come to commune together with you. Minister strength to us in Jesus name, Amen.