And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— 33
who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,34
quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35
Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. 36
Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.37
They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— 38
of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. 39
And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40
since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.
When the Bible speaks of worldliness it means to live forgetful of what is unseen, a way of living in which it appears that a person does not know or has forgotten
that the world that we can see is the smaller part of the reality of human life.
Worldliness overcomes us when this world becomes the limit of our horizon; When we live as though what is seen, what is before us is all there is or is ultimate. When
this world is too big and the ‘real world’ is too small or non-existent to us.
I have heard it said that a problem with Christian education is that it keeps Christian young people from being exposed to
the real world. Interestingly the irony is that, Christian education is designed to do the opposite! Whereas an education that rejects or even ignores God as Creator and Sustainer of all things, would be NOT educating people according to the real world,
because they don’t believe in the world that is unseen. And to be candid, there is plenty of this world in any Christian school because young people are exposed to far too much of that world as it is.
But the use of the term gives away a state of mind, a way of thinking that is utterly untrue to the Word of God and so untrue to the facts. Candidly put, This world
is not the real world if it is thought to be the standard of reality; if in looking at this world and thinking about this world, the unseen world is not only not factored in…but is not THE lens through which everything…including everything seen, is viewed,
understood and judged.
If this world is the only world one considers, if one makes his decisions and fashions his loyalties only according to what he can see and hear and touch, then this
world – being only a part of reality but being taken to be the whole and being the least part of the reality but being taken for all…becomes an illusion, a fantasy, a dream from which someone will in the end finally awake and to his or her utter dismay discover
that he or she lived life as a mistake; he has acted on false principles.
He has utterly failed to grasp the nature of reality and has done so to his everlasting doom. The real world of the American high school or university, without Christian
faith, is the most profoundly unreal world of all.
Reinhold Niebuhr, (1892-1971)who was more of an ethicist than a theologian and who taught at Union Seminary for over 30 years defined original sin as “humanity’s
ineradicable inclination to absolutize the relative,” which is to say to make a god of creation and forget the creator. Which is simply another way of saying “to live by sight and not by faith.”
Who is the fool? The Bible says he is the one who says in his heart, “There is no God.” Well, the Christian knows there is a God. We know that Christ is Lord. We know
many things about the unseen world.
But it is far too often the case that we do not
live as if we knew these things, we don’t live as if these things are real. It is far too often not obvious that our lives are governed by the conviction that these unseen things are absolutely real!
This “irreality”, living blind to what God calls the “real world” is characteristic of our time. In some respects, it has always been characteristic of human life
in this world.
Unbelief, in the nature of the case, leaves people who were made for more than this world…and who cannot help but think and act as if there should be much, much more
than this world…I say it leaves them stuck in a world that is too small for them…a world that does not answer the true and deep questions of life and reality to which their very natures demand them to ask. Well, that is all very well for unbelievers.
As I have said many times, Ecclesiastes says that man was born to ask those questions, born to seek this ultimate reality because God has put that in the hearts of
man. But we are also told that because of sin, man will search and search but never find. Outside of Christ, the answers to life’s enigmas and sight of the real world will always evade capture to the man or woman without the Spirit.
But that is not as much my concern this evening as it is that such worldliness, such practical atheism, living as if God and the unseen world did not exist, is an
altogether different thing when it is as it far too often is, characteristic of a Christian’s life…when it becomes characteristic…of my life…and I would guess, yours at time as well.
We admit that what we see with our eyes does not tell us the truth about reality…not in any full sense. For example:
We cannot see:
*The demons that inhabit this world and serve the pestiferous purposes of their master, the Devil;
*The angels who go to and fro serving the interests of those who are being saved;
*The dead in hell already suffering the consequences of their unbelief and disobedience in this world;
*The dead in heaven already enjoying the fabulous reversal of their fortunes from this world to the next;
*The hand of God orchestrating events in this world to bring history inexorably along that course ordained from before the foundation of the world;
*The books that are being kept on every human life, the deeds that are done, the thoughts, the words – all of which must be answered for in the judgment of the Great
Day;
*The risen and ascended Christ with the nail-prints still visible in hands and feet but now in the glory of his deity surrounded by the joyful worship of saints and
angels. (Litany from RSR)
None of this is visible to the eye, but every one of us in this room believes it is not only real but that these things are more real than what can be seen because,
of course, what is unseen determines the meaning of all that can be seen.
We can observe a human life but we do not know its reality until we know its connection to the judgment of God. What looks good, what seems a cause of happiness here,
could well be only increasing a person’s misery and judgment in the world to come, because it is deepening someone’s disinterest in the things of God. His life is too happy here to turn from it to Christ. He is too busy pursuing what the world tells him he
must have to take a true and honest look at himself and so all of his so- called success and happiness are actually keeping him from the real world!
Contrarily, what looks disastrous, sorrowful, dismal may in fact be the brightest and happiest event or string of events precisely because it forces a man or woman
to look to Christ for help, comfort, forgiveness, and meaning. So again, what is the “real world”?
Prayer: Father, I would not have the restless will that hurries to and fro, seeking for some great thing to do, or secret thing to know; I would be treated as a
child, and guided where I go. I ask thee for the daily strength, to none that ask denied, a mind to blend with outward life, while keeping at thy side, content to fill a little space, if thou be glorified. Through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen. (Anne Waring,
1850)
Hymn: This is My Song