Countercultural Christianity - Pastor Nik Godhsall

It is so good to be with you. I've been looking forward to this. SIVI got a hold of me several months ago and asked if I would help. And not just speaking, but actually putting the series together. So I've kind of had my hands in this. It's very exciting to see it happen. Men like Obdoo Murray, and I know Pastor Carter has already gotten to participate. I never expected, you know, shoes that big to be filling the slots. And I feel a bit underqualified to be up here. But I am excited just the same. And I believe God is going to speak to our hearts tonight. I was asked by Elder Chukes if I would share for just a few moments about my time in Nigeria, the thing that makes us kindred spirits. I ended up going there after I graduated from Summit. And God used that season to show me what it really means to love unconditionally. It was a cross-cultural experience on a number of levels. I was 20 and knew very, very little about life and the world. It was nearly the first time I'd been out of the country. I'd been on one short-term trip prior to that to Mexico, a short-term trip to Italy. They were both very safe. I was in familiar environments. This was-- I was plunged into the deep end of the pool. You know, we got to stay in a good neighborhood

we were working with. If you've had the privilege of hearing Pastor Esther Ibanga, it was her husband, Eko Ibanga, his ministry called Pro-Health International that we were partnering with. And we would go into the most impoverished parts of southern Nigeria. And I saw things there that you would never see in our country here today. And because I knew nothing about medicine, I'm not a doctor, nor the son of a doctor, they would send me all of the Muslims, the witch doctors, and people within curable diseases. They here pray for them. And so my faith got tested and stretched every which way you can imagine. But the reason the call to be a pastor, I think, was birthed in my heart there, was because seeing all of the confusion, the deception, the misunderstandings about God, all I could think was, Lord, I want to shepherd people. I want people to know truth. And I want it to set them free. So whatever the next step is, God, take me there. I want you to use my life to lead others into your truth. And I'm not worthy of what He's permitted me to do in the years since then. So it's my joy to be with you. I do want to share about cross-- not cross, but I just talked about that.

Countercultural Christianity, a lot of culture stuff going on here tonight. Countercultural Christianity, we're not to be people looking for a fight, but there are times where we have to go against the grain. And so the focus of tonight is about helping us discern, when are we in those moments? How do we navigate the fact that we do live in an earth and culture? The way that you do life is, in a lot of ways, in alignment with where you are, it's one of the things that helps people discern, are you normal? Are you abnormal? Are you safe? Are you unsafe? But then there are times when we can't go in line with cultural norms. When is that moment? That's what we want to discern tonight. We're going to look to the Word of God for guidance on that. If we could put-- the QR code is up there on the screen. If you scan that QR code, it's going to take you to a page. If you go to the bottom of it, there's a button that says download Pastor Nick's notes. That is not clickbait. All of my notes are in a PDF form. You may download them, keep them forever. I am going to have some points going across the bottom of the screen.

And you won't be able to keep up with it. Everything on the screen is in the PDF. So what you want to write down is not the stuff that's on the screen. Write down the stuff that I say to expound on that. Because if you download the PDF, you'll have it forever. And for those of you that are true nerds like me, I've got just a short work-cited list in there. You can see where I've gotten my information on key things, just in case you want to look deeper into that for yourself. But our topic, again, for this evening is countercultural Christianity. And I want to tell you about a recent interaction that I had while you're getting that scanned and downloading the document. I want to tell you about a trip that I just took with my family to Seattle, Washington, for a speaking engagement. And we had a day snuck in there. I spoke probably seven or eight times. I was exhausted, but I had my wife and my son with me. I said, we're going to do some sightseeing before we go home. My son's never been to the West Coast before. My wife had never seen the Pacific. So I said, let's take a ferry ride. And we went on this beautiful ferry. We're on the water. We can see Mount Rainier off in the distance. And I decided I'm going to flirt with my wife.

Because if you're smart, that's what you do, 14 years in your marriage. That's how you last that long. You keep on flirting. So she's at the bow of the boat. And I snuck up behind her. And we recreated a scene from a famous boat movie that you might have seen. And I stretch out her arms. And as I'm doing-- accent erupt behind me. Oh, that's a great picture. Let me take a picture of y'all. And I'm like, I'm the person like, listen, I'm not, I don't know you. I'm very private. Like, you do you. I'm going to do me over here. Just don't, don't offer to take a picture. And my wife is all about it. So I'm like, okay, I have to cooperate. And I look back. There's this gentleman with a big white beard and he's running over reaching from our phone. Let me take a picture. I said, okay, go ahead. Take a picture. So we resume our position at the bow of the boat. He snaps the photo. And of course, I can't just, you know, thank you and walk away. I heard his accent. So I said, so where are you from? And my wife is from Louisiana. So southern accents feel like home to me. You know, I feel like, all right, I've got to connect with this. And he told me he was from Georgia and that little cultural connection that we made just led into this conversation. And he of course asked me, what are you doing in Washington? I said, well, I'm a pastor. I'm here speaking at a youth camp. And he said, oh, you're a pastor. So he tells me that he grew up Christian and then goes into this unabashed tirade against how angry he is about political stances that he's seeing in the American church right now. And he's asking me how I thought it could be possible that American Christians would agree with that issue or with that government action. And I knew right away this is not going to be a fruitless con, this is going to be a fruitless conversation. If I engage him, the way he wants to be engaged. So whatever cultural connection the South had given us, it's gone. And we're now operating on two different levels. So I looked at him, I said, you know, as a Christian, I don't put a lot of stock in politicians. I know that no matter who gets elected, I'm eventually going to be dissatisfied with them on some level,

because they're human. I said, I belong to a higher culture. I belong to a higher kingdom. And that's where real change comes from. And I don't think he was expecting that answer. But I think he appreciated it because now the conversation shifted. Instead of talking about political issues and what he thought about this figure and that decision started talking about his son. And he told me about how his son had served in the armed forces and was suffering from terrible PTSD. And he started sharing more and went further back and all the way to his childhood, his son's childhood and the abuse that he suffered at the hands of his mother. And the more that he's talking, the more I can see the broken heart behind all of that anger. And I said, that's what needs to be spoken into. See, there was a trap laid for me in that conversation. Satan didn't want this man to receive the hope that Jesus wanted to give him because right there on the bow of that boat, he let me pray with him for his son's salvation and healing. And God willing, the Lord's going to stretch out his hand and do a good work there. But there's always this temptation for us to get caught up debating the concerns of a lower culture. And it's in those moments that it's not our job to go down to where those debates are happening. We want to lift people up to a higher culture, say, no, this is where reality is. This is the stuff that really matters because changing people's minds on earthen temporal issues, that's not evangelism. I had a recent conversation with a lovely young couple who was ministering in Portland, Oregon, very difficult place to serve. Everything is leaning away from Christ in his gospel and they want to do evangelism. And they said that recently they took their youth out to do a survey door to door and they were asking questions like, what are you thankful for? And, you know, being Portland, they're getting these highly political answers about how there's nothing worth being happy about in America. I hate this country. I'm not happy. And what they did is they got down into those debates. And they started trying to tell these people how much they had to be thankful for and what a great country they live in and all of the anger that they got in response to that. And I said, okay, guys, I really appreciate your hearts, but that's not the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not thank God I live in a good country as wonderful as that is. The gospel transcends where we live. The gospel transcends who holds power. The gospel goes beyond all of those things. And I said, we've got to learn to ask the questions that really matter. This is what Christianity being counter-cultural is all about. It's not just about being combative. That's not what we're looking for. It's about aiming higher. It's about transcending the low earthly things that people want to get us

caught up in. And that's what we're examining tonight. And, of course, we've got to start with a definition of what culture is. And the first thing that I want us to understand is that culture is a story. It's a story. It's not just a philosophical concept. It's not just a way of doing life. It's more Culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a community or social group. How do they do life in that neighborhood? That's a culture. If you get a bunch of people that are trained in a certain field together and they start talking shop and using language that people outside the group might not understand, that's a culture. Culture takes on many different forms. It's the way people do life. It's the way they orient themselves to the world around them. And culture is shaped by things. The biggest thing that it's shaped by is something called worldview. It's shaped by worldview. Now, I'm not gonna say too much about this because this is a whole other topic itself, but it's important enough we need to dwell on it for just a few moments. Your worldview is what you believe about the four most important questions a human will ever ask. Culture has changed from place to place, but the questions involved in a worldview,

every person everywhere will be confronted with them. And the four fundamental questions are these. The first is a question of origin. Where do I come from? How did I get here? Why are there people on the planet at all where we're seated by aliens? Are we just a cosmic accident? Is there intelligent design? Is there actually a benevolent creator out there who designed us and made us? What's the deal, where do we come from? The second is the question of meaning. Why are we here? Is there any purpose? What's the point of my life? The third question is a question of morality. Is there a way I'm supposed to live? Is there a right and a wrong? Are there expectations that I'm supposed to meet? And if so, who's writing those rules? Who am I complying with when I follow a moral code? And the fourth and final question is that of destiny. What's going to happen to me when I die? What happens when this is over? You know, I was talking with a pastor one time who ministers out of Canada, he travels the world and he smuggles Bibles and Christian resources into close countries to pastors and then he gets out before the government can catch him.

He's like the Jason Bourne of Christian missions, I guess. He's awesome. He's a bit of a hero to me. And I said, you know, look, you're doing a lot of work in the Far East and you're talking about people coming to Christ by the thousands. What is it about the gospel that's drawing them? It's like, I know it's the Holy Spirit's work, but what are they hearing? That's compelling them so strongly. And he looked at me, he didn't even need to think. He said, I can take you to villages in this part of the world where at the end of every day, young men have the task of taking dead bodies out in a wheelbarrow because the village is so impoverished and so full of poor sanitation. People are dying every day. They cart the bodies out to a pile of corpses, throw the new ones on, douse it in kerosene, light it on fire. Every day, that's what you see before you go to bed. What that writes in your mind is, that's why I'm here. That's my destiny. And he said, the thing that's making people turn to Christ is the gospel is coming to those parts of the world. And someone's pointing and saying, I know a man who came off the pile. I know a man who was thrown on, he died, but then he rose from the dead. And that's why you don't have to look at that as your destiny anymore.

Their worldview is one of doom and gloom and hopelessness. There's no getting out of where I am. My life and existence all culminates in being burned on a pile of bodies at the end of it. What's the point? And then this new message comes in. A new worldview comes in and everything changes. Everything changes. What you believe about these four questions is gonna shape your culture. For example, if you believe that you're the result of a cosmic accident, there was a big random explosion billions of years ago, and the settings of the universe just so happened to be fine-tuned enough that you're the result of it. There's no real purpose in you being here. You're an accident, you're random. And if there's no meaning to your life, who's to tell you what right and wrong is? If that's your worldview, the way that your culture approaches questions like, does it matter if I take my own life? How do you think you're gonna deal with that as a culture? There's no point anyway, who cares what you do with your life? Why should I feel hurt by you ending it early? Why should we matter? Why should we worry about you if you want to end your life early? But the reason why those things matter to us automatically, why we intrinsically fear for people who are thinking

such things is because something in us knows there's a reason we're here. There is a reason we're here, but we can't discover that reason until we find the God who put us here to begin with. So culture is shaped by worldview, and it's how communities orient themselves Other cultures believe they're there to be worshipped Look at Hindus Hindus believe there's a god for everything there's a spirit and everything We have you know some of the first nations here on this side of the planet had similar religious beliefs So the way that you orient yourselves to things like nature a lot of that will be determined within your culture Expression do we emphasize the arts intellectualism athletics? How do we express the soul of our community the human condition? What's good and evil? Who are the good guys who are the bad guys? How do we approach these moral decisions culture is how we orient ourselves toward those things? I gave an example of that just a few moments ago But then it's also how we orient ourselves toward other people and other cultures. Who's a friend and who's a foe? I mean even if you look at today's world Largely of course there are exceptions to this but largely speaking The friends of our nation are people who have kind of adopted western values in some sense And nations that don't really hold those views We tend to be a little more distant if not hostile toward them He so culture determines a lot of different things even right down to the social order How do we structure and arrange ourselves? Do men and women have different roles in a marriage? Does marriage matter? All of those questions get answered within cultural boundaries Now culture is also a story That's told in scripture It's a story that's told in scripture. What would you say if I told you culture was God's idea

He actually is the one who began Human culture and all of the beauty that's meant to come out of it and the story of the bible No matter what topic you're addressing is always creation Fall redemption God initiates something beautiful Humans mess it up with sin But God wins it back because he's just that good That's the story and you can see that play out with human culture God established it in the garden of Eden He planted a garden for himself and he made humans his authorized representatives in the earth They weren't like the beasts of the field the birds of the air said no those things are made to inhabit the earth You're made to rule it Now this is radically different from some of their neighbors nearly every other nation around israel believed that humans were created By the violent angry gods to be a slave force The gods were lazy. They didn't want to feed themselves So they said let's make a race of lesser beings and have them grow our food for us And that's where food offerings came from that's where human offerings came from in some cases The gods were unpredictable Violent and angry and so you had to be willing to offer up everything potentially even your own children to keep them happy And all of a sudden a new narrative emerges And this little slave nation out in the desert called israel says no the universe was actually created by a good god Because he loves us And he actually made us not to be slaves but to be his dignified representatives in the earth What do you think you're going to believe about human life? If you're living in a country that believes no you were made to be enslaved you were made to be Less than you were birthed into a world of violence. That's why your life doesn't matter Versus being born into a nation where you're told no you were made within trinsic value You were created to be worth something no matter what you believe about yourself Your creator has marked you and that's got more authority than anything that you've ever been told

Radically different world view you get a radically different culture as a result Humans were meant to populate the earth through marriage and child rearing make families He says fill the earth and while you're filling it. I want you to go out and subdue it He they were meant to culture the untamed world outside the garden now look Bit of a guilty pleasure. I guess i'm a star wars fan Always have been There's a weird thing about star wars planets if you've ever watched the movies you go to any planet in star wars It's got the same climate around the whole thing. It doesn't make any sense. It's just the way that it is Sometimes people think that's what the earth was like at the beginning We think oh yeah eden was like the whole planet. No, it doesn't say that It says the lord planted a garden in eden Eden was a region that god chose and within that region he planted a garden the rest of the world Yeah, it was full of grass and trees and animals, but it was wild and untamed And so the commission of the man and the woman will say you see that wild untamed world out there I want you to spread the beauty of the garden to the rest of the planet The beauty that i've given you to enjoy here. I want you to spread that to the rest of the world So they have this incredible commission, this great commission. So we were meant to culture to cultivate the world with the beauty that God had given us. But rather than do that, we initiated a cultural rebellion. That's pretty much what happened. God said, "This is the way I want you to do life." The serpent comes in and injects some lies into Eve's thinking. And Adam and Eve say, "No, this is the way we're going to do life." And so we exchange divinely given cultural values for Satan's lies. If culture is the shared values and goals of the community, God gave us those at the beginning. But then because we listened to the serpent, we exchanged God's goals and values for our own, and they were satanically inspired. And so as a result, we established new cultural values that were oriented not toward the spreading of life, but toward self-preservation.

What was the first thing Adam and Eve did when they finally woke up after eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil? They covered themselves. I can't trust what she thinks of me. I can't trust what he's going to think of me. I'm not going to let anyone catch me vulnerable. And after they're done hiding from each other, they hide from God. And then when they're confronted on what they did, they pass the blame. Everything becomes about self-preservation. Everything becomes about my safety, me feeling sound. Rather than spreading life, we spread violence and death. Genesis 3.21, it says God made animal skins and clothed the man and the woman. I'm not on my own in thinking this. I don't believe God just created the skins. I believe he killed an animal. And a lot of theologians believe this became the prototype of the sacrificial system. God is acting as the first priest on behalf of his fallen children and covering them even in their sin before he sends them out into the wild, untamed world. Sin is now humanity's fundamental flaw. It's not something that we can escape. It's not something that we can discipline out of ourselves. It's a part of what it means to be human and only Jesus can rescue us from it. Now that's not the end of the story. That's the creation and fall part, but then there's the redemption. Jesus' victory guarantees an incorruptible culture in the New Heavens and the New Earth, wherein righteousness dwells. Nothing corrupt or evil will ever enter into those gates he says in Revelation 22. The new creation arrived with Jesus' coming. Jesus was the beginning of the new creation. Remember on the cross he said it is finished.

He meant it. The results are coming in a process. They're coming progressively. But he said I have guaranteed the outcome because of what I've done. And that's why Paul can say if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. That's not just a term he randomly chose. He's being very deliberate. He's like, yeah, the new creation that we know is coming at the end, guess what? You're the trailer for that movie. You're the sneak peek at that. You are the first taste this world gets of the coming new creation. So the church age, the time that we're in right now, the salvation of men's souls, that's the advance of the new creation moving through the earth. And what we're all waiting for, of course, is the return of Jesus when he will inaugurate the new creation in fullness. All enemies will be put away. All sin will be destroyed and only righteousness will remain. So that's the story. Culture is in a fallen state right now and that's why sometimes we have to go against the grain. But there is coming a day when the only culture that will remain is God's kingdom culture. That's what's coming and that's what we're waiting for, praise God. Now what we need to take from that is that culture rises bearing the stain of human sin. Culture rises bearing the stain of human sin. We're going to take a look at Genesis chapter 4, verses 19 through 24. If you want to turn there, I'll read it to you. But it says this, it's an early genealogy account, you know, genealogies are the most exciting parts of your Bible. I know that's what you all look forward to in your daily reading. It says, "Enlemec took two wives.

The name of the one was Adah, the name of the other was Zilla. Adah bore Jabbal, and he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of those who play the lyre and pipe. Zilla also bore two-ball cane. He was the forager of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of two-ball cane was Namah. Lamec said to his wives, "Adon Zilla, hear my voice. You wives of Lamec, listen to what I say. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. Sounds like a really nice guy. He's a very bad guy. This is a very nasty guy. And we need to spend some time unpacking this for just a few moments. The sons of Lamex-- sorry, culture rises bearing the stain of human sin. The sons of Lamex show the rise of human civilization. I just read you that list. You have Jabbal and Jubal, Tubal, Kane. And they're each credited with being the progenitor of some important aspect of human civilization. So Jabbal, he's the father of shepherding, having livestock, farm life. Everyone that practices that, well, they got that from him. He began domesticating animals and using them for food and using them maybe for helping with the farm work. Jubal, he starts the arts. He's a musician.

So human expression is coming into play here. This is a good thing. These are good things. Civilization is on the rise. Culture is developing. Tubal, Kane, he learns, wow, having dominion over the earth means we can harvest the resources. We can use them to our advantage. He becomes the father of metallurgy. Let's use these minerals, and we'll use them to make tools. And then their dad comes along. And it's interesting, because he doesn't just show that civilization is rising. He shows that corruption is rising, too. Civilization is advancing. And as we're getting more creative with nature, we're getting more creative with sin. Because in a genealogy, you always go ancestor to ancestor down the line. If all of a sudden he's backtracking, he says, here's Lamek, here's his sons, here's Lamek again. Why is he backtracking? There's a reason for that. If he's backtracking, he's communicating something. Moses, the author of Genesis, is telling us something. So the first thing we know about Lamek is that he's the first polygamist, an oppressive husband, and scripture. Why is he telling his wives this awful poem? Why is he warning them? Well, it tells you what kind of guy he is.

So keep those women in line. I killed a man for insulting me. What do you think I'm going to do to you if you get sassy and step out of line? He's not a good man. Not a good man at all. Some of you bear in witness to that. His poem, Coming After Tubal Cane, indicates he used his son's tools as weapons. That's probably what's going on here. He lists his sons, then goes back to the father again. Why? These tools that were made to do something productive. They were made to help us with farming, help us with construction. There's also another use for them. And that's what Lamek used it for, most likely, to kill this young man who insulted him. And he's proud of his crime and presumptuously threatens any future attackers with God's judgment. When he says, if Cane's revenge is sevenfold, Lamek's is 77, God put a mark of protection on Cane after he killed his brother Abel. And Lamek is trying to take that and say, well, God's going to protect me too. This is arrogance on his part. This is a very corrupt man. And so the idea that we're meant to walk away with here is that as human civilization advances, so does human corruption.

This is what we see even today. You do any historical study on advances that we've made in one area or another. Corruption will always be not far behind. Always. To give a couple examples, scientific discovery, how often does that lead us to atheism instead of worship? The more we discover about the world around us, the more puffed up we become and think, ah, we can explain everything without God. We're getting more advanced. We're also becoming more corrupt. Technological advancement increases our destructive capability. We can eradicate more diseases and more people than ever before. You see what I'm saying? All of this reflects the pattern that scripture laid out for us. Don't tell me it's not God's word. It knows exactly what's going on and how we operate. Even forms of justice now can devolve into forms of corruption. Look at various fights for equality that have taken place over the years. If you start back and just say like the 1920s, there was a fight for equality up to that point that where equality was, hey, women are smart enough to vote. Can I get an amen? Sorry, yeah, you can bear witness to that. It's okay. It's all right. We finally, yeah, that's a good thing.

Why aren't women allowed to vote? When a little further, this is really corrupt and evil that we have whites only signs over certain storefronts and water fountains. This isn't okay. But now look at what equality means today in some contexts. So it's like, well, women are smart enough to vote. But if we really want true equality, we should say there's no distinction between the sexes whatsoever. That's how sin operates within us. Because we are still God's image bearers, we can accomplish incredible good. Sometimes we can even fix ourselves in a measure. And we can make wise decisions that are reflective of that image. But because we are corrupted by sin, well, it's always going to be stained in some way. It will always be at some distance, coming up on the heels of it. How much then? If that's the case, how much can Christians partake of their culture before they corrupt themselves? That's the big question that we want to tackle tonight. And for answers to that, we're going to look at a situation the apostle Paul dealt with with the Corinthian church. So 2 Corinthians chapter 6, I'm going to pull that up and read from it. If you want to pull it up on your phone or open your Bible, you can follow along. But we're going to talk about Christians and the cultural tide. And I'm calling it that because just as tides go in and out, they ebb and they flow, cultural shifts happen regularly, don't they? One day, there's no cost to being a Christian, it's pretty safe, there's not a lot of hostility to the gospel, things can change in an hour. And you've got to be ready to adapt and be ready to move and flow. Now Christians experience their culture, their earthen culture in two contexts, this is a scripture passage here, got ahead of myself. Christians experience their earthen culture in two blended contexts, we're going to go to the text in just a moment. The first is what I call a context of congruence. If something is congruent, it means that it's in harmony. Two things are congruent when they run together.

We've got highways and interstates that run together sometimes, like every time I drive out here to New York, I get on Interstate 78. And in Pennsylvania, there's times when I-78 and Highway 22 are the exact same road. And then they break off from each other again, they're congruent and then they're incongruent. Sometimes, being a Christian is in perfect congruence with our earthen culture, there's little to no tension between a community's cultural norms and biblical values. Thank God for those seasons. But then there's another context and it's not congruence, it's a context of conflict. This is when there is notable tension between a community's cultural norms and biblical values. And that's when we have to get counter-cultural. It's like whoa, all of a sudden what's normal goes against God's truth. I'm going to have to look a little different. I'm going to have to be noticeably different. It might even cost me, but who am I truly loyal to? What really has my allegiance? Is it my desire to be comfortable in the world I live in? Or is it my longing to be in the real world? That God has promised to those who love him and to those who overcome. Now, there are many, many factors that influence whether Christians enjoy congruence or endure conflict. We're going to experience both to varying degrees, but Christians are always called to defer to the Bible as God's revelation of right and wrong. No matter what, you go back to the Word of God. And if you're not sure of where to find something in the Word of God, ask. Seek the wisdom of the body. Now, this is where 2 Corinthians will come into play. In chapter 6, let me read it to you. It says, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with belyal? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?

For we are the temple of the living God. As God said, "I will make my dwelling among them, and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst and be separate from them," says the Lord. "Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me. Says the Lord Almighty. Since we have these promises beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God." Now, in these times of conflict, in these times of conflict that we are going to face, we're called to be a holy and counter-cultural temple of God. That is what we're called to be. I'm just going to locate myself here. Here we go. We are called to be a holy, counter-cultural temple of God whenever we're in seasons of conflict. And that image of us being a temple is absolutely critical. As God's temple, we must not be unequally yoked. Now, most commonly, I hear this phrase used to refer to "don't get it into a marriage with an unbeliever." Totally correct, totally true. Not actually what Paul is talking about, though. But I wanna tell you the interpretation. What is he really dealing with? And how does that actually touch a host of areas in our lives? And it would include not marrying an unbeliever. It would include that. But I wanna get into the interpretation, not just the application of being unequally yoked. This refers to living at peace with evil

rather than resisting it. When you are at peace with something that God says you must resist, that's being unequally yoked. When you are validating or endorsing something that God says is sin, you are unequally yoked to unbelievers. That can look like a lot of different things. It involves participation in evil to varying degrees. Whether it's through just the verbal approval of it or the actual attendance of an event or the participation in something, whatever the case might be, that is being unequally yoked. And Paul uses contrasting relationships to highlight the compromise that he wants to address. He speaks of righteousness versus lawlessness, light versus darkness, Christ versus Satan, the believers inheritance, which is in heaven versus the unbelievers, which is in the lake of fire. And it culminates in the main conflict. He says, what does the temple of God have to do with the temple of idols? This is a worship issue. That's what it's coming down to. What has your loyalty? What has your admiration and your affection? It seems that many Corinthian Christians were still participating in pagan worship. That was their issue. So he's telling these Christians,

some of you are going to church on Sunday and you're going to the temple of Apollo on Monday. This is not okay. 'Cause the thing about pagan worship is it wasn't just the acknowledgement of a false God. It was always involving sexual immorality to some degree. Temples always had prostitutes in them, whether male or female, and part of the worship act was sleeping with these people for a fee. And the God would bless you because of that act. Paul calls them to forsake their society's values and give all loyalty to Jesus. And so when we speak of being unequally yoked, it's not just what kind of marriage are you in. It's are you validating something that you should be confronting? If God says this is sin and you validate that, you're unequally yoked. And Paul says you can't live like that. You're the temple of the Holy Spirit. You're called higher. You're called to live differently. And Paul repeatedly refers to the church's God's temple. In 1 Corinthians 3 and in Ephesians 2, he says that because we house God's presence, we have to walk in unity and love. We can't get caught up in the silly arguments and foolish debates of this world. We have to transcend those things. We model what love looks like because we are the temple.

Because the individual Christian is the temple of God. What they do with their body sexually matters. The reason why God has so much to say about purity is because your body is his home. What you do with it matters. Who you give it to matters. It's of the utmost important, utmost importance. And again, back to corporate here in 2 Corinthians 6, the church as God's temple means we are his representative body in the earth. If you went to a pagan temple in Corinth or any other place in the Greco-Roman world, you expected to encounter the presence of the God represented there. You believed the spirit of Apollo really lives in his temple. The spirit of Zeus really lives in there. Paul's like, what should unbelievers encounter when they come to you? But what can they encounter if you're participating with them? If you look just like them. The church houses the presence of the God she represents. Pagan's visited temples expecting to encounter the gods that they worshiped. And so the question we need to ask is, what can unbelievers expect to encounter when they enter our churches? Is it the spirit of the living God? Are churches a place of encounter? Or are they a place of entertainment? Are they a place of accommodation to sin?

Those are the burning questions that Paul would have us ask when we look at what it means to be unequally yoked. And this brings us to some application now. How do we stand firm in our world? That's what was happening in Corinth. How do we bring that to our experience? How do we bring that to bear on the things that we face? How separate do Christians need to be from their culture? Well, the early church had a hard time with this because paganism was everywhere. It permeated social and economic life. Sporting events were in honor of particular gods and were viewed as pilgrimages. So in some of them, it's like if you wanna come in, you gotta give homage to the patron deity, to something you don't believe in. Meat sold in the marketplace. The Agora had been sacrificed to an idol before going to the market. That was a big question. We live in the city. We got to buy groceries. But my favorite butcher offers it up to Zeus. Is that okay? We're going to talk about that in depth because that's a question. What about if the store that I have to go to? I've got like one retailer that I can go to and every time I walk in they're promoting some sinful thing. Can I shop there? Those are big questions and we're going to deal with them tonight.

Certain crafts had very lucrative unions. They were trade guilds. They could only be joined by giving allegiance to a patron deity. So that meant if you were an artisan, you were a potter, you could be guaranteed work if you joined the pottery trade guild, but said, "Well, you got to give homage to Athena first." If you don't worship Athena, you can worship whatever other God you want to, but you've got to worship Athena too. So now it's like if you want to be guaranteed work, you have to worship something else. So sometimes being a Christian for these folks, it meant poverty. It meant a lot of economic uncertainty. It was a very scary thing. To reject paganism was to reject social and financial security. So when does strong connection to our community make us unholy? I've got to live. I've got to eat. I've got to supply provisions and clothing for my family, but it seems like sins promoted anywhere. In the line, Paul, one does being financially secure, become defiling for the Christian. And believe it or not, it's the Corinthians question about groceries that proves the most helpful to us. Paul wrote about this in multiple places. First Corinthians 8 through 10, we're not going to read it. It's three chapters. It's quite long. I'm going to summarize his conclusions and where he landed and then we're going to draw it into our world and see how it informs us. So their question about groceries, Paul said you're free to eat whatever sold in the market. Your favorite butcher probably offers it up to a god or goddess before he sells it to you.

That's not your fault. You are not worshipping his deity by buying that meat. That's what Paul tells them flat out. And he had to address it because the Jews and the Gentiles within the church felt very differently. Some of them had weaker consciences. The Gentiles would think, well, wait a minute, I got saved out of that stuff. I don't want to go back to it. Why would I buy meat that was offered up to an idol? And Paul says, look, some people's consciences are weaker or more tender than others. You have to respect that. These are areas where we're going to see differently. But at the end of the day, there is no moral injunction from God about this particular issue. But he said, there is still a line though. You're allowed to buy what's sold in the marketplace. You are not participating in idolatry just by purchasing from an idolatur. But if you go with that idolatur to their temple and you eat there, you're now worshipping another God. They were not permitted to feast in the idol temples. Why? Doing so was the equivalent of worshipping the idol. Paul says, that brings you in contact with demons. He bore no bones about this. Doing so would provoke God to jealousy. This was a big deal. And so the task that we have, based on what Paul says to them, we have to ask ourselves the questions, OK, what are the pagan temples of our day? What's a cultural equivalent in New York City, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and wherever we're coming from, what's a modern equivalent of a pagan temple? Where am I simply buying meat in the marketplace?

Because this is where I live and this is what I've got to eat. When am I now participating in something I should be resisting? That's a big question. We have to try to distinguish between meat sold in the market and pagan temple feasts. The former is a matter of conscience on which Christians are free to agree or disagree. The latter brings us in some level of agreement with the powers of darkness. Now a pagan temple, this is Pastor Nick's definition of a pagan temple today. A pagan temple is any cultural artifact that exists to enable the indulgence of sinful desire. I'm going to leave that up there. Now cultural artifact, an artifact is anything that humans produce. If it's an organization, it's an event, it's an institution, it's an idea. If humans produce it, and its purpose is to indulge sin, it's a pagan temple, don't do it. So for example, you go to your favorite store and they decide that they just want to honor all religions for the month of July. So they've got coexist, plaques up everywhere, coexist filled with all the religious symbols. So every time you go in, that's what you're looking at. Paul would say you are not validating that by going in and shopping there. Now if you as a free American with life say, "I'm gonna boycott and shop elsewhere." Thank God for that privilege. You can do that. Not every Christian in this country or in others has that privilege though. So what are you gonna tell them? Well, Paul would tell them you are free to shop there, but let's say they kick it up a notch for the month of August. And instead of just hanging co-exist stuff on the walls,

well, like, hey, if you wanna come in and shop here, you gotta wear this co-exist pin to show that you support this idea that all religions lead to God. Every religion can save you. Now they're asking for your loyalty. Now they're asking for your allegiance. That is a pagan temple. That is when we would have to draw the line and say, "God, I need you to open a door because I can't walk through this one anymore. I'm compromising my allegiance to you if I go in there. I'm participating in an idea that I know is not right and that I know is not true." To give some other examples, unsaved friends don't defile you, but living like them does. Paul tells the Corinthians in chapter 10 of his first letter, if an unbeliever invites you to dinner, go. Eat with them, fellowship with them. But he says, don't go worship with them. There are lines on how you can do that. Chapter 15, he says, bad company corrupts good morals. Being in business doesn't defile you, but greed does. Hearing profanity doesn't defile you, but using it does? I mean, if hearing profanity defiles, you gotta get saved again every time you're out of the subway. It's like, good night, man, come on. It's like some people, anyway, I'm not gonna get on that soapbox.

So hearing that kind of language doesn't defile you, but using it certainly does. Ephesians tells us that in two places. Your TV may not defile you, but your favorite shows might. Your Netflix account doesn't automatically defile you, but what you're streaming on it might, okay? So that's the difference. Meet soul in the market. I'm living here. This is my world. This is where I do life. I wanna do it as holy as I can. What are the things that say, no, now you're participating in unholyness? This is not an easy thing to do. I would be lying to you if I told you that we always know 100% of the time where the line is. The best thing that I can tell us, including myself, we stay transparent with the Lord, stay transparent with even our brothers and sisters in Christ. Sometimes it's good to invite that kind of scrutiny. Let people challenge you on your convictions because some of y'all might be too loose and some of y'all are way too uptight. We condemn each other over nothing sometimes. It's like if you're condemning people over meat, soul in the marketplace like, my goodness, go pray. Love your brother. It's okay because we do that sometimes. We'll point fingers very quickly,

but then there are times where we are legitimately far to care free in the things that we'll participate in. Christians are called to cultural holiness, which is motivated by two things. It's motivated by God's love for us. Paul says God wants you to be his temple. He wants to be near you. He wants to indwell you because he loves you. Pursue holiness. Pursue holiness. God's call to holiness is inherently relational. So when he confronts us saying you're feasting in pagan temples, it's not 'cause he's angry. It's 'cause he loves you and he wants you pure. He wants to indwell you and be a permanent part of your life. And it's also motivated by God's promises to us. It's what he says in chapter seven verse one. It says because we have these promises, let's bring holiness to completion in the fear of God. God longs to fill us with his presence and power so we can represent him. Sinners only encounter a holy God through a holy people. It's the only way they can do it. And so the fact that Paul commands us to cleanse ourselves, that indicates that we as spirit-empowered believers, we've got control over where we're eating. We've got control over whether we are just buying meat sold in the marketplace, doing things that are not inherently sinful, or whether we're participating in stuff

we should be resisting. The Lord will give you the discernment and the wisdom you need to get things straightened out. And that's a good thing. That's a very good thing. I'm gonna bring us to a close and just recap our major takeaways. And then I will finish up and we can go to Q&A. First of all, human culture will always be beautiful and ghastly, always, always. As God's image bearers, it's going to reflect the beauty they put inside of us. We can produce beautiful things. Look, I don't know how many of you are artists in here tonight. I'm a nature guy. You put me outside, man. I can pray for hours if I'm outdoors. 'Cause the beauty of mountains and of oceans, I just feel close to the Lord. 'Cause I'm an oddest creation, you know? And the way that we harness that, the things we've done to enjoy that, But I could spend all day on a boat. It's amazing. You know, there are things that we can enjoy, but then it's also going to flaunt the stain of sin that all humans bear. Culture is going to be beautiful and ghastly. Christians may participate in human culture because they're human. Not everything that humans produce is evil. Humans do produce good things. They really do. And if a good thing is produced, yeah, you can enjoy it. At the youth camp, I told you about it at the beginning. Of course, I had a Q&A with them. They brought up a question about AI. What does the church do about AI? I said, well, use it

responsibly, like every other scary form of technology. We're terrified every time something new comes out. It's like, just get over it. Be on your guard. Don't be foolish. You know, use wisdom. Not everything human culture produces is evil. Christians rely on the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and their conscience for guidance. Your conscience is not to be seen. This is an important thing to say. You can't trust your conscience too much. Your conscience is not like this infallible moral guide that God has given you. Your conscience is shaped by the way you're taught. It's shaped by your experiences. That's why some people get way too condemned over nothing. Their conscience is really overly sensitive, and some people need to care a lot more. So your conscience is not infallible, but it's part of that decision-making process where you're figuring out where the lines are. In cultural tension, we give allegiance to Jesus. That is our default. If there is tension, it's like, whoa, I have to compromise biblical values. It's time to part ways. Doesn't matter what the world says. If it's normal for the world, have normal for me. No compromise. As God's temple, we belong to a higher culture. God's presence in us calls us to holiness even if it means living a counter-cultural Christianity. Praise God. That is it for me for this portion. I hope that was helpful to you.