Do Not Be Conformed

Father and our God, as we come now into Your Word, may we remember, may we recognize that we are standing on holy ground as we hear Your Holy Word.  May You enlighten the eyes of our understanding, may You illumine our hearts, may we hear Your Word, understand Your Word, love Your Word, and obey Your Word.  Amen.   

Our text is the final verse of Romans chapter 11 and the first two very familiar verses of Romans chapter 12.  Romans 11:36 and chapter 12, verses 1 and 2.

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.  To Him be the glory forever.  Amen.  I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

It is a real pleasure to be able to be with you this morning and to be in this text.  Before we look into this text, I just want to say a few words.  I want to say to Nathan, wherever he has disappeared to, what a wonderful hymn selection.  I often think that that hymn should be required singing every Sunday morning.  We all walk in these doors with hearts a little out of tune.  Don’t we?  So we need to ask our Lord to come and tune our hearts so that we can sing His praises aright. 

I can’t help but notice in the orchestra and choir that was up here, those that I’m assuming a number of them under the age of 18, I’m going to go out on a limb right now and offer all of them a scholarship to Reformation Bible College.  I don’t want to be accused of age discrimination, so all of you in the orchestra and choir can have a scholarship to Reformation Bible College.  

I also want to say a word about your pastor, the Rev Kev, and I appreciate not only his ministry here but how kind of you as a congregation to share him and his gifts with others.  It has been a real pleasure to have times where our paths have intersected, and when those times happen I enjoy it immensely.  You all have been very welcoming and warm, not only receiving me but also my son Ben, who’s here somewhere out there among you.  Thank you for having us.

I’ve read those three verses, but I want to focus on just one clause.  It’s the opening words of verse 2.  It’s a command.  It’s a very clear command.  It’s an imperative and it’s a negative command.  I’m a very negative person so I thought we would have some negativity this morning.  If you want positivity, you have to come back tonight.  We will flip it tonight and we will be positive tonight and deal with the rest of verse 2 and the transformation and the renewal, but not this morning.  No.

This morning it’s all bad.  It’s that list of don’ts.  Be prepared.  Get out your list.  We’ll run through, I don’t know, maybe if we look at Romans chapter 12 to 14, last time I counted there’s something like 85 commands in there.  Let’s run through an 85-point sermon on everything you’re not supposed to do.

But this is very important, nonconformity.  What does it look like?  To not be conformed to this world? 

For the last 11 years we’ve lived in central Florida, but for the previous 17 we lived in central Pennsylvania, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in Amish country.  The neighbors next to us were Amish farmers and their cows would come right up to the fence and look across at our property and want to eat my grass.  Across the street was an older Mennonite farmer, the old order Mennonites are buggy Mennonites.  They also do not have cars but they have horse and buggies.

We lived at the top of a hill and we were surrounded by Amish and their Amish gray and black buggies and the old order Mennonites all black buggies, and by the time these poor horses got to the top of the hill and at our house, their clip-clop had slowed to a very slow clip-clop and in the summers and in the fall and in the spring and our windows would be open in the evenings and we would sit there in our home and we would hear the clip-clop of horses in front of our house. 

Is that what it means, nonconformity?  To withdraw from the practices of this world.  To dress not in the fashions of the unregenerate with colors and so forth, but to be very plain.  And to even withdraw from devices, like televisions and phones and even go off the grid to not be attached to electricity and to have a closed community and to even speak the language of the old country.  Is that what it means to not be conformed?

I think if we define nonconformity as simply appearances, we’re not going deep enough.  Some of you may remember of a previous era as fundamentalism was waning and evangelicalism was waxing and this sort of list of the fundamentalist era.  It was the era of long hair and beards as rebellion. 

I remember a piece of literature produced by a very prominent fundamentalist minister and it was a little tract and it was entitled “Jesus had short hair.”  So to not conform, not actually sure that was historically accurate, but nevertheless there it was.  So to not conform to this world would be, as a man, to cut your hair short.  I believe the pamphlet even had an illustration of how it needs to be off the collar and above the ears.  And for women who were cutting their hair short as a sign of rebellion, a woman was to have long hair and it, too, had an accompanying diagram.  Is that what it means to obey this text?

If that’s what it means, I don’t think we’re fully understanding what Paul is asking of us.  In fact, before we even get into the list of don’ts, I want to pause for a moment and just think about this word “world.”  Do not be conformed to this world.  I don’t think Paul is talking in a geographic sense, this globe.  Certainly it is a place, it is a world, but it’s also what we might say, and this word that has come into the 20th century, it was not a word in Paul’s day, but this word “worldview.”  That not being conformed to this world isn’t about geography, but maybe it’s more about ideology and philosophy and worldview.

So let’s go back to the first century, let’s go back to Paul’s world.  Paul wrote this incredible epistle from the city of Corinth.  Corinth, like most Roman cities, could be identified from a distance by its temple.  There on the highest point within were the city developed of Corinth, which was a massive city, it was the center of Achaia, the center of Greece.  It was two ports, very busy trading on the Aegean Sea and it had its own version of athletic games and right outside of the city there was somewhat akin to Colorado and the United States Olympic training grounds, was a training ground for athletes.  Sailors and people would come to see these celebrity athletes and visit the city of Corinth and there in the center of it all was the temple to Apollo.

As you would make your way around the city and walk around the city at certain times of day, the temple would block the sun, ever present reminder of the gods.  Paul, as you know, made his way to Corinth initially after have been to Athens.  Even today with it just a state of ruins there on the top of the Acropolis, the city, the high city of the Acropolis, is the city of the gods.  There is the temple, the Parthenon, the temple to the virgin, the goddess Athena.  And in the first century, 51 A.D. to be exact, as Paul walked into that city and made his way into that city, he would have seen it.  He would have seen it from the port.  The golden statue, 30 feet tall, of Athena, glimmering in the rays of the sun, standing guard over the city, towering over the city, and the Parthenon towering over the city.

As you walked through the Agora, you trip over temples and you trip over idols, and you grip over monuments to the gods.  And these Roman Christians lived in a city of temples, surrounded again by the gods.  It was our Old Testament reading.  What does God call these things?  Detestable.  These idols.

The world of Paul was a world of the gods.  If we go to Ephesus, in fact, turn back with me to Acts chapter 19.  It’s a remarkable text.  Paul’s been in Ephesus his longest time at a church, this church at Ephesus.  What a rich history.  Paul, Aquila, and Priscilla were there.  Paul was there, Timothy was there, John was there.  That’s almost like a church having Harry Reeder and Kevin DeYoung.  Someday you all may be judged for hoarding great teachers.

Here while Paul is at Ephesus, Demetrius, a silversmith as Luke identifies him for us, is feeling the economic pinch of Paul’s ministry.  He gathers his fellow craftsmen and idol sellers, gets them all wound up and stirred up.  Ephesus had one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the temple to Artemis, this great goddess who is said to have healing powers.  So they would come from all over – Asia Minor, Greece.  Cleopatra visited Ephesus.  They would go there to be healed.  They would go there to find prosperity.  They would go there to bow before Artemis, the great god.

But Paul’s thrown a wrench to all of this.  Business is slowing down.  Demetrius, to get his fellow craftsmen and merchants together, begins to give a speech in the Agora and eventually it goes into the theater and the theater at Ephesus can seat 25,000 people.  The crowd just goes in there.  They don’t even know, they’re just sort of swept along.  He starts them chanting and for hours they’re chanting, great is Artemis of the Ephesians.

Imagine it, 25,000 people thundering, echoing off the marble steps, bounding off the hillside, could be heard for miles, a crowd whipped into a frenzy, shouting, chanting, great is Artemis.

Verse 26 before that riot as it’s called, Luke tells us Demetrius’s speech back in the Agora.  You see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost all of Asia, this Paul, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.

I can’t help but think Luke is laughing to himself when he writes that.  Can you not hear yourself, Demetrius?  Let’s think through the logical conclusion of what you just said.  Gods made by human hands are not gods.  The nerve of Paul to teach that.  But we flip it on its head.  Does it not illustrate how absurd and silly all of this cultic temple gods pantheon worship of the Greco-Roman world is?  A truer statement was never said – gods made with hands are not gods.

Another Athenian, dates are 133 to 190, was an apologist, probably a professional philosopher converted to Christ, and he wrote in either 176 or 177 A.D. a wonderful early Church text, addressed it to Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher, emperor, “A Plea for the Christians.”  The early Christians were accused of crazy things.  One of them was atheism.  Oh, the irony.  It was because they were denying the gods of the state, but Athenagoras  begins his plea for the Christians after he identifies himself as the author Athenagoras, Athenian philosopher and Christian.

He says to Marcus Aurelius:  You have tolerated all things in your empire, various peoples have worshiped gods and made sacrifices in all kinds of ways, and you tolerate that.  And if we go down to Egypt we see that the Egyptians worship animals.  Then Athenagoras, and I guess that this indicates that he’s a dog lover, says the Egyptians even, and I love the word that he throws in there even, that they worship even cats.

And I know just appealed to half of you and I just alienated half of you by revealing myself as a dog lover and not a cat lover, but even cats.

And from our vantage point in the 21st century, we can look back on the first and previous centuries and a world enveloped in mythology and we can say, well, that’s all rather silly.  It’s all rather silly.  Even cats.

But even as your pastor prayed, this silliness of our idols in the 21st century may very well over top that of the ancients.  I do not know what idols you’re susceptible to.  We know the definition of an idol, don’t we?  It’s hinted at there in the text in Deuteronomy.  Anything that displaces God, that’s an idol.  God is at the center and at the center He moves out and permeates every being of life and every aspect of our life.

So an idol, very vainly and foolishly, tries to displace God from the center.  It can be many things to many people.  Sports, athletics can become an idol.  Good things, God-given abilities, God-given gifts, God-given things which are intended to be a blessing of God and intended for us to look back to Him in gratitude and allow that gratitude to spur on further obedience, those good things could become the end rather than the means.  Can displace God.

For some people sports, for some people it’s grades, for some people it’s status, for some people it’s whatever the idol is.

We think of nonconformity and renewal and transformation as the list of things and behaviors, but behind the behaviors are beliefs and behind the beliefs are what we worship.  If we’re going to be obedient to this command to not be conformed to this world, then we cannot be conformed to the gods of the age, whether they are the idols of the first century or the idols of the 21st.

Do not be conformed to this world.  Do not be conformed to the gods of the age.

We also recognize that this world is not only the gods and the idols, it’s also philosophies and ideologies.  The first century, Paul’s era, was the era of philosophy.  The Greco-Roman world was the center of philosophy.  He had been to Athens, the city of Plato, of Socrates, of Aristotle, of Epicurus, of Zeno, of stoicism.  He’s writing to the Romans at precisely the time Seneca is living in Rome, the great first century philosopher.

Paul walked among the philosophers and he was familiar with the philosophers.  He himself had studied the philosophers.  You see the impact of Aristotle on Paul’s own rhetorical style.

I was in Gulfport, Mississippi.  Landed and took the shuttle bus to the rental car center, went to the rental car center, gave them my reservation, getting walked to my car by the attendant and he notices on my reservation Ligonier Ministries.  He says to me, “Ligonier Ministries.”  And whenever someone pronounces it correctly, I know that they know who we are.  It’s not Legionnaire or my favorite Le Gonyer Ministries.  Very French, you know.

“Ligonier Ministries.  I was just listening to Brother Sproul this morning,” he told me.  “On Aristotle, on causality.”  And as we’re walking to my car, we had a great philosophical conversation on causality.

There were elements of the classical tradition, Greco-Roman philosophy, that are helpful.  But then there are elements that are harmful.  The early Greeks had a phrase, “Soma toma,” the body a tomb.  What we do in the body doesn’t matter, got to get past this physical existence .  This is Plato’s ultimate view, ultimate reality is pure, abstract idea.  So what we do in the body doesn’t matter.  That’s a very worldly worldview that can lead to a very worldly ethic.

Or there were those philosophies of the first century that celebrated the physical.  Maybe we don’t have a soul, maybe we are not eternal beings, maybe all we have is this material world and our material existence.  So live it up.  If they were writing beer commercials in the first century, they would say, “Grab all the gusto you can.” 

So as there were philosophies in the first century that are counter to a Christian worldview, so there are philosophies in our day that are counter to a biblical worldview.  Probably the biggest among us is the philosophy of secularism.  It’s been in its infancy in the early stages of the 20th century, maybe even prior to that, spurred on by certain enlightenment thinkers, spurred on by the scientific revolution.  If we go back to Newton and the beginning of the scientific revolution, we remember that Isaac Newton taught us that we use science and the methodology and the instrumentality so that we have more reason to praise God, so that we understand the intricacies of this universe on a micro level and a macro level in such a way that we see even more order and design and purpose and beauty.  So science only leads us to praise God even more.

But somewhere along the way that enterprise of science went off the rails and it morphed into scientism and it taught us that the more we can explain the phenomenon, the less we need God.  Whether it rains or doesn’t rain is not related to God’s blessing or withholding of blessing.  It’s atmospheric pressure and it’s cold fronts and it’s the water cycle and we can understand it through meteorology and we can predict it and we know, we know how weather works.

Before we could put germs under a microscope and understand genetics and were afflicted by disease, is this God at work directly?  Our impulse is to immediately go to God?  But now we have the germ theory of disease and our understanding of medicines and our understanding of genetics and we know, we understand.  We don’t need God to explain it anymore.

That’s secularism.  Charles Taylor in his famous book, A Secular Age, said secularism is the devoiding of God or religion from public spaces, that’s part of it.  This goes back to John Richard Neuhaus’s book The Naked Public Square, the New England town square, church on one end, townhall on the other.  But secularism pushes the church out of the town square, pushes church and religion out of public life.  Taylor says that’s one aspect of secularism.

The second aspect is people stop going to church, except in Charlotte.  This place seems to be full of really big churches, so maybe you’re the exception.  But if you go to other parts of the country, people have stopped going to church.  The Pew Research people tell us that from 1970, 1980, those that would claim to be nones, and these aren’t n-u-n-s, these are n-o-n-e-s, no religious affiliation, 5%.  By 2020 that number grew to 30% and they predict that by 2050 they will be the majority population.

So Taylor says that’s the second aspect of secularism, and yes, secularity involves people who have stopped going to church.

But there’s a third aspect, Taylor says, and actually it really gets to the heart of what secularism is, and it’s simply this – that God is no longer axiomatic.  He’s simply optional.  He’s an alternative.

This is secularism.  This is the secular age. 

How does C.S. Lewis say it?  A god is there like a book on a shelf and if we need him, we take him off.  But when we’re finished with him, we put him back.

So this is the age in which we live, secularism.  It has subtle ways of tamping down that again theocentric nature of God, that He is at the center of all things, and He’s at the center of all aspects of life.

These gods of our age, these philosophies of our age, they manifest themselves rather as what we tend to think about when we think about not conforming.  It’s back to the list.

So do not be conformed to this world means do not be conformed to the gods of the age.  It means do not be conformed to the philosophies, or the ideologies, of the age.  But then it manifests itself in this – it means do not be conformed to the ethics, the morality, and the behavior of this age. 

Paul again writing Romans from Corinth.  So wicked was this city of Corinth that throughout the Roman Empire to express flagrant sexual immorality was actually given a nickname.  It was called to Corinthianize, to have a very, very loose sexual ethic was to Corinthianize.  This is the city where Paul is sitting when he writes this epistle to the Romans.

We know the sexual ethic of the first century Roman world.  If the body doesn’t matter, live as you please.  If the body is all there is, live as you please.  Same conclusion.  Most of the people in the first century weren’t engaged in stoicism and epicureanism, the Athenians might have been.  No, they weren’t discussing the finer points of philosophy, they were just pure hedonists, living for pleasure.  That’s what hedonism is, it’s the Greek word pleasure, and hedonism means pleasure is the end of all things.

This started innocently enough in the hands of Epicurus, the philosopher, who believed that in order to have true pleasure it must be a bridled pleasure.  But as it devolved and popularized, it became the wholesale pursuit of pleasure.

I can illustrate the difference.  Lunch hour is soon approaching so let’s talk about food just to make you even more hungry.  So Epicurus would say pleasure is a 4 ounce filet mignon, grass-fed of course, organic of course, and perfectly cooked, and a perfect, thick piece of bacon.  I am not Jewish, so thankful.  Surrendering that filet mignon, that’s pleasure.

Hedonism is the, I was going to say 32, let’s go 48, hedonism is the 48-ounce T-bone steak, full of fat and gristle.  You know hedonism and you know the wholesale pursuit of pleasure is a total perversion of God’s good gifts.  So the wholesale pursuit of pleasure does not bring pleasure but it brings pain.  It’s like a boomerang and it doesn’t come back with pain, it comes back and hits one square on with pain, not pleasure.  Hedonism.

Do we not live in a hedonistic culture?  Do we not live in a culture pursuing pleasure?  Pursuing the interests of the self above all else?

So how are we to live?  Not that way.  Do not do that.  Paul says this to us all the time, doesn’t he?  That was the old man.  You need to put that off.  He’ll list, he’ll tick off things that demonstrate these behaviors and these lifestyles and these commitments and these following after these worldviews, and what does he say?  But such were some of you.

Paul is very clear in this.  The Christian is to live differently.  The Christian is to live differently.

Now Romans 12 comes at the end of Romans 1 to 11.  If we don’t pay attention to Romans 1 to 11 as the foundation for Romans 12, we will become moralists.  We might even give up our, I was going to say give up our gasoline automobiles, but we’ve already done that for electric cars, but we might even give up our vehicles and get a horse and get a buggy.

And we may think that the way to be sanctified, to live the Christian life, is to sort of white-knuckle it, to take the command to heart, buck up, exert our will, and get it done.  But we can never severe Romans 12 from Romans 1 to 11.  We can never severe sanctification from justification.  Not only can we never sever it, we can never get the order wrong.  It’s always justification first.  It’s actually regeneration first and justification, and now raised to newness in life in the Holy Spirit, and now with hearts made new, clothed in the righteous robe of Jesus Christ, now we can live for God.

I purposely read verse 36 because I didn’t want to read all of chapter 1:1 to 11:36 for you, but circle back up to verse 36.  The doctrine of God is always present.  These three verses, verses 36 to 12:2, seven times God is mentioned.  We think about what it means to not be conformed, we must go back to the doctrine of God.  We must remember that all things are from Him, all things are through Him, and all things are to Him. 

And now we take in the command to not be conformed.  We’ve been taking about R.C. Sproul this weekend.  Back on July 1, 1977 he wrote a column for Table Talk.  Some of you might read Table Talk.  It goes back to 1977.  In its first instantiation, it was eight 11×17 pages, or four rather, 11×17 pages, folded in half and stapled, an 8-page newsletter.  From the very first one in the month of May, R.C. had a column that he called “Right Now Counts Forever.” 

The first one was on the Pepsi generation.  When he got to July 1, 1977 his Right Now Counts Forever column was on the sexual revolution.  This is what he said:  In the final analysis we are left with the deterrent, the deterrent to be like the world, the deterrent to reflect the world in our thinking and living.  In the final analysis we are left with the deterrent we started with, the holiness of God and His authority to command obedience from us.  We need a new and a clearer vision of who God is.  We need to see the more excellent way. 

How we as Christians deal with this sexual revolution now counts forever.  This secularist world that sometimes influences us, the battle cry is right now.  Period.  Right now.  And R.C. wants us to see that the Christian lives differently by believing and saying and then living right now counts forever.  That means that we are not conformed.  We are not conformed to this world.  For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. 

Our Father and our God, we thank You for this clear command of Scripture.  We all confess that in different ways we fall short of obedience to this command.  Too often we find ourselves conforming to this silliness and absurdity and sadly tragedy of this age.  So convict us and steer our hearts to You, for to You be glory forever.  Amen.