Sunday Sermons
Christian Counter Culture - Part 1
Christian Counter Culture
John Stott gave the above title to what is known as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5 through 7). The term “counter-culture” was first applied to the culture of many young people of the 1960's and 1970's, manifested by a life style that is opposed to the prevailing culture. In rejection of the mainstream, many youth people turned to alternative “counter-culture” or “sub-culture” movements. Some turned to communal living, dressing casually, and going barefoot. Others turned to drugs and unrestrained sexual activity in the hopes of finding happiness. Some turned to various Eastern religions, meditation, and various philosophies. Others sought refuge in radical political movements and various causes. Yet young people often found that all these alternatives contained the exact same sins as found in the mainstream. They found that people in their own groups manifested the very same sins as found in their parent’s circle of friends. Here too, people were inconsistent, greedy, manipulative, selfish, and hypocritical. Some were looking for the right things (the meaning of life, true love, happiness, peace, fulfillment, contentment), but they were looking in all the wrong places.
The “Blue Jean” Mentality
In the book The Great Evangelical Disaster, the late Francis Schaeffer observes that rebelling against the culture can actually be nothing more than conforming to the culture. He writes, “This rather reminds me of young people whom we worked with at Berkeley and other universities, including certain Christian colleges, and those who came to us in large numbers with packs on their backs in the 1960’s. They were rebels. They knew they were, for they wore the rebel’s mark—the worn-out blue jeans. But they did not seem to notice that the blue jeans had become the mark of accommodation—that indeed, everyone was in blue jeans. It is so easy to be a radical in the wearing of blue jeans when it fits in with the general climate of wearing blue jeans”. He later adds, “We must try in a balanced way not to fall into the ‘blue-jean’ mistake of thinking that we are courageous when we are really only fitting into what is the accepted thought-form of the age around us” (pp. 99,101). In the Sermon on the Mount we will find that spirituality is clearly linked with virtue, righteousness (Matthew 5:20), and inward purity (5:22,28,37,48), rather than cultural trend.
God’s People Must Be Different
Some today are worried that the church turns people off by its strong doctrinal stand on issues. Look at the Sermon on the Mount. In it Jesus took a very strong stand on moral issues (5:20,22,28,29-30,32). Yet why does this sermon still draw us? Why does it so attract the attention of people? Why does it seem like a breath of fresh air? Why did it amaze those that heard it?(7:28). "The first place to which they should be able to turn is the one place which they normally ignore, namely the church. For too often what they see in the church is not counter-culture but conformism, not a new society, but another version of the old society, no comment could be more hurtful to the Christian than the words, “But you are no different from anyone else” (Christian Counter Culture, Stott, p. 55). At times I see the bumper sticker that is popular among the denominations that says, “Christians are not perfect, they are only forgiven”. Yes, Christians are not at some level of sinless perfection, but God does expect far more from us than simply being forgiven (5:13-16; 20). Prior to this sermon, John the Baptist and Jesus had both announced the fact that the long awaited Kingdom of Heaven was at hand (3:2; 4:17). "Jesus emphasized that His true followers, the citizens of God's kingdom, were to be entirely different from others. They were not to take their cue from the people around them, but from Him." The whole sermon is a lesson emphasizing the life style demanded by God, in contrast to the false views of both paganism and first century Judaism. Jesus contrasts His followers with both cultures (see 5:20, 46-47; 6:6-8). "Thus pagans love and salute each other, but Christians are to love their enemies; pagans pray after a fashion, ‘heaping up empty phrases’, but Christians are to pray with the humble thoughtfulness of children to their Father in heaven; pagans are preoccupied with their own material necessities, but Christians are to seek first God's rule and righteousness (6:32,33)"(Vine p. 62).
The Full Spectrum of Life
"Thus followers of Jesus are to be different--different from both the nominal church (some have called this the church in captivity to the American suburbs) and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious. Here is a Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, and attitude to money, ambition, life-style, and relationships, all of which are totally at variance with those of the religious and non-Christian world" (Stott pp. 47-48). While some religious people try to limit the application of Jesus’ teaching, it is clear that biblical Christianity means that Jesus is the Lord of every area of life. He is Lord of our emotions (5:22), of our thoughts and desires (5:28), of marriage and divorce laws (5:32), of our words (5:34), of both our public and private worship (6:1-15), as well as how we handle money (6:19-34), and how we treat every person we encounter. Schaeffer notes, “The failure of the evangelical world to take a clear and distinctively biblical stand on the crucial issues of the day can only be seen as a failure to live under the full authority of God’s Word in the full spectrum of life” (p. 143).
There is to be no accommodation with the World
I challenge one to find any compromise in this sermon, any bending of the rules, any accommodation to the spirit of the age. There is none. There is no allowance for quitting under the weight of persecution (5:11-12), there is no tolerance for anything less than inner purity (5:8), we are to have a voracious appetite for righteousness (5:6), real humility in the presence of God, genuine mourning for our sins (5:3-4), full allegiance to only one Master (6:24), uncompromisingly placing God first at all times(6:33), and no place for deception or dishonesty (5:37). Notice that in this sermon worry is hit as hard as adultery, anger as hard as murder, and hypocrisy as hard as false teachers.
Don’t Rock the Boat?
Francis Schaeffer further observed that those who profess to be Christians often will qualify their answers on a subject to the point where the end result is the same as moral relativism (i.e. no absolute right and wrong). In this sermon, nothing is qualified. Jesus did not say, “I personally believe that one should seek first His kingdom, but there are times when such is not practical or workable”. Neither did He say, “I personally believe that the man who looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery in his heart, but I must admit, everyone does lust”. Jesus makes no apologies for plainly stating that the religious leaders of the day were lost men (5:20). Also be impressed with how many times Jesus mentions “hell” in this section (7:13; 5:22; 29-30).
Confrontation
A Christian is not to be quarrelsome yet this is not the same as confronting the evil in our culture. Schaeffer is right when he noted that one of the “marks of a Christian” is confronting the evils of the culture that surround him. The type of person described in this sermon will stick out, and they will be ridiculed (5:11), they are as salt and light (5:13-16), which means that society is feeling the weight of their character, integrity, words and example. They love their enemies, but this does not mean that they look the other way when the people they love are headed towards eternal destruction (Matthew 7:1ff). These are people that when they see sin in the lives of others, or their own lives, they deal with it. This means that there is no careful or safe way to teach or preach this section without destroying the message therein. The sermon even emphasizes this particular point. Failure to live up to the standard of righteousness here presented means forfeiting the heavenly kingdom (5:20). Churches that seek to water down Jesus’ teaching here, not only will end up miles apart from those churches that do not, they will end up eternities apart(7:13-14).
The Audience: 5:1-2
The disciples are present, yet so are the multitudes (7:28-29). This sermon applies to everyone: The person who is poor in spirit, a sinner, someone who realizes his or her spiritual poverty. Jesus said “everyone” (5:28), and we know that God holds non-Christians accountable for their lusts and anger as well as Christians (Titus 3:3; 1 Peter 4:1ff). In the sermon, Pharisees, scribes, as well as Gentiles (covenant and non-covenant people some might say), are condemned for their perversions of true worship (5:20; 6:1-8).
“Blessed”
The term blessed means “fortunate, happy, usually in the sense, or being a privileged recipient of divine favor, 'O, the happiness of those'” (Arndt p. 486). “A man in the condition of being truly well-off” (Zond. Ency. p. 352). “He is declaring not what they may feel like ('happy'), but what God thinks of them and what on that account they are: they are "blessed". "The conditions, which Jesus represents as blessed, are those which His listeners had always considered curses. These verses declare the man well off, that the world considers to be unfortunate. These 'blesseds' are another of Jesus' attempts to get man's eyes off the glamour and glitter of this age. Jesus wastes no time beginning by contradicting all points of man's basic philosophy. He lays down the challenge, ‘whose world is real?’ For man declares that the rich, self-sufficient, proud, self-centered, aggressive, and the fully satisfied as being 'blessed'. The beatitudes are paradoxes in that they declare as being truly well off the man who, from the ordinary point of view and perhaps in his own opinion, seems to be most unfortunate. But Jesus refers to a man’s true well-being which can often be opposed to his apparent well-being” (Fowler p. 207). The section is called the Beatitudes because each verse begins with a blessing. Such beatitudes also existed in the Old Testament (Psalm 1:1; 34:8; 65:4; 128:1), and are also found in other places in the New Testament (John 20:29; 14:22; James 1:12; Revelation 14:13). “Yet in all this the values and standards of Jesus are in direct conflict with the commonly accepted values and standards of the world. The world judges the rich to be blessed, not the poor, whether in the material or in the spiritual sphere; the happy-go-lucky and carefree, not those who take evil so seriously that they mourn over it; the strong and brash, not the meek and gentle; the full not the hungry; those who mind their own business, not those who meddle in other men's matters (like trying to save someone) and those who attain their ends even if necessary by devious means, not the pure in heart who refuse to compromise their integrity; those who are secure and popular, and live at ease, not those who have to suffer persecution”. “With every beatitude, the gulf is widened between the disciples and the people, and their call to come forth from the people becomes increasingly manifest” (Stott pp. 16-17).
Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net/mdunagan@easystreet.com
