Colliding Values

SERMON: 2014-10-26--ac14143--colliding-values-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:46:08.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidate 15 ('Amen.') serves as the final spoken word of the sermon's closing ritual (likely a benediction or concluding prayer response). Since no subsequent candidates indicate a shift to music, announcements, or unrelated audio, this segment is identified as the last piece of sermon content. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- >> This morning where we left off last week, we were looking at Paul's ministry in Philippi. He is on his second missionary journey in the book of Acts. And in the city of Philippi, we saw last week, perhaps for those of you who were not able to be with us then, that there are three stories of conversion. There is Lydia, the purple cellar. There is the young slave girl who is possessed with the spirit of divination. And then there is the Philippian jailer. All three gloriously come to know the redeeming power of the Lord Jesus. It's that middle story that we want to come back to this morning because it's the story of the slave girl who precipitates a collision of values as the gospel message and the values of the world meet together in her deliverance. So let's take a few moments and re-read that story. Acts chapter 16, we'll read together from verse 16 of that chapter to verse 24 and then we'll talk about it a little bit. Once, when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. That's a spirit of divination. In Greek, as I mentioned last week, a spirit of python. We'll talk about that a little bit more this morning. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us shouting, "These men are servants of the most high God who are telling you the way to be saved." She kept us up for many days. Finally, Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her." At that moment, the spirit left her. The owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone. They seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, "These men are Jews and are throwing her city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice." The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. And then, of course, the story goes on of how God delivers them and the Philippian jailer comes to faith also. Join me in a moment of prayer. Father, we're so grateful that throughout the course of history, you have been at work. And we're aware, too, that when you are at work, so is the other spirit. And you've warned us repeatedly in your word to expect and to anticipate persecution. Lord, help us in whatever form that comes our way to not deny you, but to stand firm on your promises, knowing that all the kingdoms of the world and all their glory and all their power are eventually going to yield to the Lord Jesus because his is the kingdom that is an everlasting kingdom. So grant us your Holy Spirit now. Help me to give voice to that which you've laid in my heart. And again, Lord, may that word bear much fruit as each of us seeks to live out what it means to follow Jesus. We pray it together in his name and for his glory. Amen. Well, I've often wondered why the Apostle Paul allows this slave girl to carry on for as long as he does. Why doesn't he step in and stop her much sooner? After all, she created quite a spectacle. And again, to how Luke describes it here in verse 17, this girl followed Paul and the rest of us shouting, these men are servants of the most high God who are telling you the way to be saved. She kept this up for many days. Can you imagine the spectacle, a young woman following you around days on end, shouting these men are representatives, they are servants of the most high God? Why doesn't Paul step in much quicker? Well, a couple of thoughts come to my mind. Perhaps he thought if he'd ignore her, she'd leave him alone, you know. Sometimes when you're bullied or teased, the best remedy is not to respond at all because people are looking to get her eyes out of you and maybe he thought if he ignored her, she'd go away. Well, if that was his strategy, he failed miserably, as you could imagine. Or maybe he liked the publicity that he was receiving from her. After all, by the time she was done, there wasn't a question in anybody's mind about what his mission was, a servant of the most high God announcing the way of salvation. Come and think of it though, not sure he'd be too fussy about having a demon advertise his mission, somehow it doesn't sound quite right, does it? But what if, and this is what I've been thinking about in recent weeks a little bit, what if he is hesitant to address the issue because he knows that addressing the issue is going to bring a lot of trouble on his head because that indeed is what happens here, he is troubled, he casts out the demon by the authority of the name of Jesus and the moment he does, all hell breaks loose. Listen again to how the passage describes it, "When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, 'These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.'" And of course the story goes on as we have just read it together, they get stripped and severely flogged and thrown into jail as common criminals with their feet in stock and this indeed becomes the end of their ministry in Philippi because as the story goes on to tell us even though they get released the next day, they left town shortly thereafter. So the question before us this morning is what do we learn from this story? What do we learn from the experience of Paul and Silas in the city of Philippi? Well a number of things and we'll see how far we can get this morning. Number one, the gospel is inherently divisive. That is to say the gospel inherently divides and polarizes people. This is not a concept that we're very comfortable with in today's society because the emphasis in today's society is how can we keep everybody together, how can we eliminate differences? But the message of the gospel is that the gospel causes a line of separation through every social structure that you will find in the world. Listen to these words of Jesus, Matthew chapter 10, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth, I did not come to bring peace but a sword, for I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man's enemies will be the members of his own household." You'll notice double quotations over that list of relationships that's because that's a quotation from, I believe, the Old Testament book of Proverbs. Wherever the gospel goes, there is a line of division through the most fundamental of all human societies and all human relationships. The concept, as I said, that most of us are not particularly comfortable with but it's rooted in the very heart of the gospel because heaven's values, heaven's values will always be in conflict with the values of the world. Let me take a moment and elaborate on that just a little bit because it is so crucial in this day and age for the church to understand how counterculture we are if we embrace the values of God. And the danger with us is that we sell out on God's values and we surrender to the values of the world. Let me put it in this context for just a moment. If somebody were to ask you, "What are the values of heaven's kingdom?", how would you summarize them? Well, there's a lot of different ways to summarize them. I'm very comfortable with the words from 1 Corinthians 13, "Faith, hope, and love." Faith in the sense that the essence of the kingdom of God is knowing that God is sovereign. We put our trust in him and we seek to obey him. Hope because we know that because of Jesus, no matter how much evil reigns in the world and seems to triumph, in the end, truth and justice and victory for God's people will triumph and love because out of being loved by God and having faith and hope, we can share with each other the reality of the kingdom of God. Those are the values of heaven's kingdom. Now compare these with the values of the world. And again, if somebody were to ask you, "What are the world's values?", how would you sum them up? Well, you can sum them up in a lot of ways, but I like the way the Apostle John sums them up in 1 John chapter 2 where he talks about these three values, the pride of life, the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the flesh. The pride of life is our self-sufficiency in the world. We don't want to acknowledge that we need anybody. I am the captain of my own soul and the master of my own destiny. Because I don't have a relationship with God, it's all about what I can get to satisfy the cravings of my heart and the lust of the eyes is the desire to own and the desire to possess. Those are the values of the world as opposed to the values of the kingdom of God. And you can imagine then that when the kingdom of God comes, when the truth of the gospel is really being presented, those two are inevitably, inevitably in conflict with each other. Listen to how James puts it. Don't you know? He says that friendship with the world is hatred towards God. Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. And it's not only James who echoes that kind of theme. So does the Lord Jesus, Matthew 6, 24. No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Mammon is the word there and Mammon is more than just hard cold cash. It is the spirit that stands behind the desire to possess. It is the love of money, says scripture, not money itself. The love of money is the root of all evil. And so if you live by the values of the world and then the values of the kingdom of God come along, you've got trouble. And Paul realized that, I believe, and that's why he hesitated to take on this young slave girl because he knew the moment he took her on, he was attacking the very core values of the power brokers of that community. Because notice now how in this story, it is these conflicting values that cause the problem. Why are these girls owners so ornery and desirous to put Paul and Silas into jail? Well, it's very easy. The story makes it very plain. Verse 19, when the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They were money out of pocket. It struck me as I sort of reflected on my passage a while ago, owners in plural, they have a consortium on the girl, multiple families are being supported at the expense of this young woman, their highest value was how to line their pockets with the money that she was making with her soothsaying. Remember, people came from all over to get answers to their life's questions and they paid good money because they, as we, lived in uncertain times and they wanted to make sure that whatever decisions they made were going to work out. That was their value. Their value was using the girl for their own financial gain. Now what do you suppose was the value of the kingdom? Do you think God was concerned about whether they were lining the pockets at this young woman's expense? Of course not. God's concern was that this young woman would be delivered from this evil spirit that was driving her. Remember, I said last time, some of these Pythians, these women that were at the center of these oracles that were all over the Greek and Roman world were so overcome by the power of evil that came upon them to prophesy that some of them in fact died in the process. They didn't care about this young woman. They didn't care about the fact that she was demonized, but God did. And so at the authority of the Apostle Paul, this young woman gets released, comes into freedom, but notice it's at the expense of the money makers. Now put yourself in that situation. How happy would you be? You're losing your income. You're going to jump up and down and say, "But glory to God, I'm poor and broke." But this young woman, she's finally free. There's a story in the Gospels that this reminds me a lot of. Remember when Jesus delivered the Gadarene demoniac on the other side of the lake? And legions came out of that man, remember? He was so possessed that even chains could not hold him. And he cast out the demons, and where did they go? Into the herd of pigs. Two thousand, as I recall, something like that. Wasn't it in the story? And what happened to all the pigs? Down into the lake they went to. Now imagine being a pig owner. Is it any wonder? Is it any wonder they came along and said to Jesus, "Please leave because if you keep hanging around here, we're going to be flat broke real fast." Understand that when the Gospel comes and does its work, there is a conflicting collision of values. And when that happens, all hell will break loose. And that is the principle that we need to observe here. Wherever the Gospel goes, and really does its job, I'm not just talking about a little intellectual belief, I'm not just talking about a little cosmetic change. No, no. When the Gospel comes and changes the values of a society, there will be conflict and there will be opposition. And the degree to which any one of us represents the values of the world, because this is a gradation, it isn't just, you know, you're not just hot or cold, to the degree to which we embrace the values of the world as opposed to the values of the Kingdom of God, we will be troubled when the Kingdom of God comes and the opposite is true too. To the degree to which we represent heaven's values, we will be troubled by the values of the world. And hasn't that been your experience that the more you grow in Christ, the more alive you become in Christ, the more you pain at what happens in the world, and the more you want to cry out, "God, please do something about what it is that we're experiencing." And it's so important today, more than ever before, that God's people understand that if we're going to follow Jesus, there are going to be people who oppose us. Jesus, in sending out his disciples as apostles, put it this way, he said, "I'm sending you out like sheep among wolves, therefore be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves, wise as serpents," in another translation, "innocent as doves, be on your guard against men. They will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues. On my account, you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles." Our responsibility, of course, is to make sure that it is the gospel that is giving offense, not our own activities or behaviors, because, you know, when Jesus was crucified, there were two others that were crucified with him. They deserved it, and Jesus didn't. But let me say again, the holier you are, the more committed you are to the purposes of God, the more you step out into what God is calling you to do, and the more danger you pose to the kingdom of darkness, the more you will get them on your tail, and we ought not to be surprised, because Jesus said, "As they persecuted the prophets before you, so they persecute you." First lesson we learned from this story is if we're faithful to Jesus and if we're anointed by his Spirit and we step out to proclaim his kingdom and to deliver Satan's captives, I can tell you from my own experience and we can tell from the experience in this community all hell by times will break loose. Sometimes we bring it on ourselves, but even if we don't bring it on ourselves, I always say there was nobody more innocent than Jesus, and there was nobody that they were more anxious to kneel to the cross because he stood at odds with all the values that the world, including much of the religious world, wanted to hold onto. That's lesson number one. There's a second lesson here that I think we need to learn, and that is this. This conflict of which scripture speaks takes place on two levels. It takes place on a physical level, but it also takes place on a spiritual level. And the classic passage, of course, Ephesians 6-12, most of us know it well, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Notice two levels of warfare here. The first is flesh and blood. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Flesh and blood, of course, represents human beings, mortals like you and I, and scripture teaches pretty clearly that when we step out in obedience to Jesus and seek to proclaim the coming of his kingdom and the restoration of all things, then the first level of opposition that we will experience will typically come in the form of people. The boyfriend who ditches you because you resist his advances. The wife who is jealous of her husband's loyalty to Jesus. The boss that wants you to do things that you know are not kosher. Over the last couple of weeks, three people from this congregation have shared with me stories of how they find themselves in employment situations where their boss was wanting them to do something which they, as Christians, could not do in good conscience. Government that wants you to ignore your conscience and embrace values that are at odds with Christian values. Would you believe that just in the last week alone, and I wrote these down, there were four significant stories in the news of Christians being forced into a situation where they were expected to do things that in good conscience they could not do. Perhaps you've heard the story coming out of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. There's a couple there. They run a for-profit wedding chapel called Hitching Post, which is kind of a cool name. People come there to get married, obviously. They asked the city, if I recall the story correctly, about what would happen if a gay couple came to them for marriage, and they turned them down because they wouldn't be able to do that in good conscience. A number of those stories have been in the news in recent years, of course. Printer, wondering if, you know, didn't want to print, and a cake outfit that didn't want to make a cake for a gay wedding, and all of this kind of thing. The city told them that they would be charged under their municipal laws for discrimination. That was a big news story. Since then, the city has rescinded its ruling because they've come to the realization that they're treading on really dangerous ground. Big big story out of Houston in the last couple of weeks, where the mayor of Houston, who is a gay woman, is embroiled in a lawsuit against an organization in the city of Houston because the city has passed an ordinance that transgendered people, people who aren't sure whether they're male or female, or are oriented in a different direction, the ruling is that they would be allowed to use whatever public washrooms that they want to use, whether biologically they're a woman or a man. Well, that became a whole hullabaloo, and so now what did the mayor do? Not thinking very clearly, she demanded that five preachers submit to her and to City Hall as part of her defense against the lawsuit sermons they preached and any correspondence they had with any aspect of that particular case. Now, can you imagine how that goes over in Texas? So that's been a huge story in the news, and a whole bunch of preachers are getting together and they're going to swamp her office with sermons and with Bibles, and that's an interesting thing to be doing. Now again, in the meantime, they have rescinded this demand, and it's understandable to some degree in the context of the lawsuit that she's facing, but understand that increasingly everywhere in the world, including in North America, the challenges are before us. Can we hold on to Biblical values, or must we surrender Biblical values? Another story in the news just this past week, out of the United Kingdom, a Christian school is being challenged by government authorities. They're supposed to be teaching, let me see how it's worded, because it's all about having to espouse British values of democracy and tolerance. And if they refuse to espouse the British values of democracy and tolerance, and you can read into that whatever you want, then their accreditation is going to be denied or limited. This is happening all over North America, and presently, in most cases, they have to back off because there is still enough of a Christian heritage in our culture to see through the foolishness of that, but I'll be prophetic and tell you that's only a matter of time, because that is changing really, really fast. The battle is not against flesh and blood, but it is against principalities and powers, against rulers, authorities, the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. It looks like people in most cases, it is often people on the forefront of it, but behind the people are spiritual powers that are in league with the evil one who are seeking to destroy God's creation, who seek to resist the coming of God's kingdom, and who want the whole world under the domination of the force of evil, and if you ever want to see what that looks like, then look at the totalitarian regimes that we have experienced in the course of the 20th and 21st century, and you'll see what kind of death that ends up with. You get into the mind of these two young men this past week who killed those two soldiers. You get into the mind of those young Canadians who want to leave this country and go to Syria to fight with ISIS, or you get into the mind of the soldiers of the ISIS movement who delight in death and destruction, who think it's the most normal thing to do. Did you see the picture a couple of weeks ago of this person's young kid, 10 or 12 years of age, holding the severed head of an opponent and being gleeful about having been part of that experience? Can you imagine that? I mean, you think you have trouble with your kids watching video games or TV. You can imagine what kind of culture of death is being pushed in certain parts of the world. I mean, go back to Stalin who killed how many millions in Ukraine back in the '30s, or Hitler who gassed that many Jews, and all of those stories. The battle is not against flesh and blood, it's against principalities and powers, and again, the story before us this morning is such a clear illustration of both of these elements on the surface. Paul's issue is flesh and blood. It's the owners of the slave girl who drag him before the magistrates, and the trouble comes from them, and the trouble comes from the citizenry. It comes from the magistrates' flesh and blood, and in most cases persecution around the world comes in the form of men and women who are in league with the enemy. But behind all of that, even in this story, stands Satan's power, because remember, what is the spirit that he cast out of this woman's life? It was a spirit of divination in the Greek, as we've talked about earlier, a spirit of Python. Python was the spirit behind the oracles that were all over the Roman Empire. Python as a snake is a personification of evil. And if you think its power is gone, and I didn't take the time to download this, but what is the symbol of the medical profession? Anybody know that? It's called a caduceus, and I wish I had a picture of it, but you've seen the symbol of it. It's a vertical staff, and it's got two intertwining snakes around it, right? It's the official symbol of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, and it is also the symbol of the medical profession. What do you think those snakes are? They're Python. So when Paul takes on this young woman, and says, "Out you come in the name of Jesus," he's not just antagonizing their owners, he is antagonizing a whole spiritual world that stands behind that, and they come after him with a vengeance. And there's no love lost, and I strongly suspect that he knew. He would get himself into a lot of trouble if he stepped out into that situation. We don't just fight against flesh and blood, we fight against principalities and powers. And why is that significant for us? I'll tell you why that's significant for us. Because we live in a world, and I just told you a few of the stories, where the values of Western society, which historically have been rooted in the Judeo-Christian faith, are being dismantled at an incredibly rapid pace. And nowhere is that more true than when it relates to marriage or sexual identity. It's not the only areas, but they're constantly on the forefront. And time was not that long ago when at least the bulk of Western society understood that marriage, that first of all, there are primarily two genders that God created, male and female. We've always known there are people who are troubled, whether physically they haven't developed properly and they fall somewhere in between. That happens, and that's a great tragedy. We also know that emotionally and spiritually, not every boy feels like a boy and not every girl feels like a girl. And our society is to be commended for the fact that we want to be understanding of people who find themselves in those kinds of situations, because those are a hard way to live, and it's hard to fit into society when you are in those kind of places. But see, here's what makes the difference. The difference is not can we be gentle and patient and kind with those who struggle. The question is, do we normalize what the Bible calls broken? Because when you normalize it, you cannot bring healing. And all over the Western world, there is a huge pressure, as you know, in changing the biblical definition of gender, changing the biblical definition of marriage, and it has steamrolled ahead in such a way that it becomes almost impossible, even in Christian circles, to address it for fear of offending people. Isn't that true? Anybody under the age of 25 who has gone through this school system will have alarm bells going off the moment you say that same-sex attraction is not a natural thing, but is part of the brokenness of creation, and that Jesus came to restore creation to the purposes of God. So hear me well. I have great compassion, because you know the kind of emphasis that we have in this community on believing that Jesus wants to heal and to restore people. And I'm also fully aware that there are some things in this life and in this world that are not going to be healed until the age to come. But let's at least call it for what it is and recognize that Jesus Christ has come and that his purposes are to restore us into the fullness of what it is that God has for us. Because if we don't do that, society moves entirely in the wrong direction. Now remember, a couple of weeks ago I told you a story coming out of Sweden where the teachers were being instructed in classrooms no longer to differentiate between boys and girls because that doesn't do justice to people whose gender identity is confused. I thought, well, that's over there. Would you believe the past two weeks' story in the news out of Lincoln, Alaska, of all places in the world, the teachers are being trained to be gender inclusive and sensitive so that nobody feels left out. And I understand the heart that lies behind that, hear me well, but I took the time to download the document that is being used to train them. And when I read this document, I don't know where to turn because we are sowing seeds of destruction, 12 easy steps on the way to gender inclusiveness. This is happening in North America in the classroom today. When you find it necessary to reference gender, say boy, girl, both or neither. When asked why, use it as a teachable moment. Emphasize to students that your classroom recognizes and celebrates the gender diversity of students. Another heading, don't use phrases such as boys and girls, you guys, ladies and gentlemen, or similarly gendered expressions to get kids' attention, instead say things like calling all readers or, hey, campers, or could all of you athletes come here, create classroom names and then ask all of the purple penguins to meet at the rug. This is serious business as to where we find ourselves in society. Avoid using normal to define any behavior. It goes on and on and on. The human condition does not operate as a strict binary system. If we look at what actually exists, we see there is much middle ground, very few people are actually at the extreme ends, I agree with some of that, and there are people at every point along the continuum, each continuum concept exists independently. It's important to avoid assuming you know where a person falls on all of the continuums just because you think you know where a person falls on one or two. You know what that's going to do to our society? You know what that's going to do to our kids in school? A boy doesn't know what it is to be a boy. A girl doesn't know what it is to be a girl. And all differences begin to disappear until everything bogs down in confusion. That's the reality. And I've spoken to other teachers, even teachers in Ontario, and that's where the movement lies in the public school system. Where does that come from? Well, imparted comes from people who push it. And I don't think the people who always push it are bad people. They push it in part because they recognize the pain that exists. But nevertheless, they are not wise when they do not submit to the authority of scripture when God gets excluded from the picture and it becomes all inclusive so that we can remove all the differences among ourselves and ultimately behind that stands the forces of evil that are determined to destroy the structure of society the way that God has created it. And you and I can throw in the towel, we can lift our hands in despair, we can try to be accommodating, but at the end of the day it is not a battle against flesh and blood, it is a battle against principalities and powers and it needs to be fought on a spiritual basis therefore, but on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything to stand. This weekend is Reformation weekend, Martin Luther stood up against the forces of his day to declare the authority of salvation by grace through faith, living by the word of God, not by the traditions of men. We do well in our generation to know what that looks like for each of us in the areas of life that matter, may God have mercy on our culture and may he help us to demonstrate what biblical manhood, biblical womanhood looks like. Get rid of all the stereotypes, it is much broader indeed than many of us think, but he did create as male and female and he redeems us in Christ to be a reflection of his character. Amen? Amen. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:46:04.840; remove through 00:46:08.000] [Applause] [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:46:08.000; resume after this marked segment]