A LIGHTHOUSE IN A DARK WORLD
By Steve Zeisler
In his film Sleeper, Woody Allen plays the owner of a health food
store who awakens 200 years in the future. The following morning he asks
one of the doctors who has revived him for wheat germ, organic honey, and
tiger's milk for breakfast. She is mystified and reports it to another doctor,
who explains, "Oh yes, some years ago these foods were thought to contain
life-preserving substances."
"What!" she exclaims. "No deep fat? No steak?
No cream pies? No hot fudge?"
"No," he chuckles. "Those were thought to be unhealthy---precisely
the opposite of what we now know to be true."
It's typical Woody Allen humor, poking fun at all of us. But there's a serious
point underlying the joke, which is that there's a good chance that today's
experts don't know what they're talking about. The "assured results
of modern scholarship," to use C. S. Lewis' phrase, are likely to be
jettisoned by the next generation, which will look at things differently.
If there is any area where that pattern obtains, it is the advice of the
world in the area of ethics or morals. In Romans 1:22 Paul says, "Although
they claimed to be wise, they became fools . . . ." Again and again
those who give us direction on how to behave and what to believe tell us
things are right and proper that turn out to be destructive, and foolish.
That is a subject I'd like us to consider this morning. Over the course
of several months we have studied the book of 2 Corinthians. Last week we
concluded our study of the last verse of the last chapter. This week I'd
like us to look at the whole, to think again about some of the themes running
through the book. Essentially, the book of 2 Corinthians is a clarion call
for the Christian church to be what it ought to be. It is an effort to help
us come to grips with temptations to be impressed with that which should
not impress us, sound a false note, lose our way, and be inauthentic in
our expression of the Christian faith.
A world in darkness
If there is anything we need to recognize, it is how desperately our non-Christian
environment needs the Christian church to fulfill its role. The last verse
of the book of Judges says, "In those days there was no sovereign in
Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes." The period
of the judges was one of the worst periods in the history of the people
of God; they were dominated by their enemies and often in spiritual darkness.
We live in an age that is just like the age of the judges. Our contemporaries
are not just in rebellion against what is right, but they are losing the
capacity to know right from wrong.
Remember the Uncle Remus story of Brer Fox, Brer Bear, Brer Rabbit, and
the Tar Baby? Brer Fox and Brer Bear were trying to capture the wily Brer
Rabbit, and they set in front of him a silent, sticky tar baby that would
never say anything. Finally Brer Rabbit, in his frustration with the Tar
Baby, struck it a blow, and of course his paw got stuck in the tar. That
made him angry, so he struck it another blow and got the other paw stuck,
which made him even angrier. Then he started kicking it and hitting it with
his head, and soon he was effectively captured by this individual he was
trying to challenge and change. Every effort he made to fix things made
them worse.
We live in a world that is increasingly like that, where people are so confused
about what is right and what is wrong that even the best efforts to fix
things are likely to make them even worse! For instance, our culture is
attempting to fix the pain of societal breakdown and the loss of family
unity, but the very attempts to fix it---the reconstruction of the family
into all sorts of bizarre configurations---are likely to bring even further
destruction.
Sidney Shamberg is quoted in a newspaper article on the demise of New York
City:
Sidney H. Shamberg, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, who now
writes a New York Newsday column, calls the situation an emergency and compares
it with his experience as a war correspondent. "I never looked over
my shoulder when I was in a war zone because I always knew where the bad
guys were," he says. "When order breaks down and there are no
rules any more, you're inviting pockets of anarchy, which we have in this
city. It is worse. Twenty years ago I didn't look over my shoulder in this
city. Now I do."
Our contemporaries are not just in rebellion against what is
right,
but they are losing the capacity to even know right from wrong
The condition we're talking about is denoted by the Greek word anomia, which
means lawlessness; it is found in 2 Corinthians and other places in scripture.
Interestingly enough, in the book of 2 Thessalonians "man of lawlessness"
is one of the titles given to the antichrist who will set himself up in
direct opposition to the reign of the Lord Jesus. The word anomia is often
translated evil or wickedness. It is the end of the process, the worst condition,
in which those who oppose God no longer just rebel against the truth; they
deny that such a thing as truth even exists. We live in a world where truth
has been sacrificed, so that people who want to do what is right have no
notion of which direction to turn.
I'm told that those who fly airplanes can occasionally experience vertigo,
the phenomenon in which they have no notion as to what direction they are
moving; their orientation is thoroughly confused. So as the plane is careening
along, it's impossible for the pilot to make a good choice of direction
until he can tell where the ground is. Anything he does might just as easily
cause disaster as correct the situation. What our society is experiencing
today is moral vertigo.
A foundation for truth
Contrasted to that is the responsibility of the church in society. The message
of 2 Corinthians, that the church should know what it is about and rightly
represent our Lord, is all the more important because of the loss of direction
or standards in our age. In 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul makes a statement that is
significant in this context: ". . . God's household . . . is the church
of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." The best
illustration I know to explain this role of the church is that of a lighthouse.
A lighthouse is a tower built to stand high enough so that the light displayed
at the top can be seen from a distance. Lighthouses are put in places of
danger to broadcast to those at sea the presence of rocks, promontories,
shallows, and so forth that must be avoided. The church is not the light
itself. Jesus Christ is the light of the world. It is his beauty, his reality,
his love that must be displayed. That is what will warn people and bring
them life. But the church, like a lighthouse, has the responsibility of
being the pillar on which the truth or the light stands. When the foundation
is shaky or the tower is fallen, when the church is not what it ought to
be, instead of holding up the light high where it can be seen, it may let
it sink down so it is not in view for anyone. In a world as dark as ours,
it is critical that we testify to the Lord, hold him high in the view of
people, and allow his love to be broadcast everywhere. It is critical that
we not become consumed with our own importance, foolish, selfish, and uninvolved.
When we give the light a proper foundation, it may win unbelievers and declare
the truth so people can tell the difference between right and wrong.
Let's look at 2 Corinthians chapter 5. We studied this chapter several months
ago, but today I'd like to re-examine it as a challenge to be true to our
calling as the foundation on which the truth stands, offering hope to a
world experiencing moral vertigo. Chapter 5 verses 11-13:
Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to
persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to
your conscience. We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but
are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer
those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.
If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right
mind, it is for you.
What is in the heart
Verse 12 makes a point that is one of the themes of the book: The church
can fail in its responsibility if we allow ourselves to take pride in what
is seen rather than what is in the heart. We can become consumed with a
fleshy managing of the impression we make, concerned only with its greatness
and beauty, wanting to look and sound like the world only better, fighting
with the world's weapons, caring more about what is on the outside than
what is on the inside. It is a grave temptation that affects us as individuals,
as denominations, as para-church movements, etc.
Think of some of the language that is familiar to us. You often hear about
"community-building" efforts as something the church should do.
If properly understood, this can be very good. But the Biblical phrase that's
more potent is our Lord's calling to love one another. The radical thing
is not to build community; community can be built on externals: looking
alike, having the same experience, knowing the same jargon, etc. The radical
call, is to love one another from the heart, with enough humility to understand
what another person is going through and go through it with them. We can
easily be sidetracked into community-building on the basis of externals,
and lose the deeper calling.
Think of a phrase like church growth. The church growth movement is widespread,
and brilliant thinking has gone into developing church growth strategies.
But the truer and more profound call is to make disciples. We should be
about the business of testifying to Christ in ways that are honest, winsome,
thoughtful, and courageous, making his name known and drawing people to
him by our actions and our words. Church growth can instead, if we're not
careful, lead us into exclusive concern for numbers, seeing people only
as members of a group, not as individuals.
Paul raises an important warning in 2 Corinthians 5:12: Beware of those
who care more about what's on the outside than what's on the inside. If
this dark world of ours is to be served well by a church that is the pillar
for the truth, it must be a church that has given up caring what others
think about it and that cares more about what the Lord thinks about it,
that is more deeply committed to character than to image.
A second warning is found in verse 15. Chapter 5, verses 14-16:
Not for ourselves
For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that
one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those
who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them
and was raised again.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we
once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.
The challenge to us in verse 15 is that we should no longer live for ourselves,
but for him who died and was raised again. Another temptation for the church
of Christ is to circle the wagons of protection around ourselves and to
imagine that Christianity exists to bring security, friendship, and other
advantages for those who are already on the inside, and to forget that as
Christ died, all died, and that we need to have his concern for a lost world.
We start thinking of being a Christian as getting what we always wanted
and never had, and now that we've got it, we try to protect it.
There are wonderful books, cassette tapes, and many other forms of Christian
communication on the subject of family life. One of the great boons we have
to offer the world is our ability to say what families can be; to strengthen,
encourage, and build up walls that are broken down; and to hold high the
calling of godly family life. But sown throughout much of what is said about
families is the desire to have everything for the benefit of those who are
members, with a lack of concern for those who aren't yet. The effort to
protect our children or our group can at times leave others out. Rather
than seeing the family or home as a beachhead into a neighborhood, a hospitality
center where strangers and those in need are welcome, the church thinks
of itself as existing for itself. The book of 2 Corinthians challenges that
idea. That's not real Christianity. Making the world safe for us is not
why the Lord left us here.
Another question I would ask comes out of verses 17-20:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the
old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us
to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that
God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins
against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal
through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.
An appeal to reconciliation
Verse 11, the first verse we read, says knowing the fear of God, we persuade
men. Here, in verse 20, the need for reconciliation is spoken of with urgency.
But a temptation we can fall into as a church is to want to bring about
conformity without persuasion, by dominating, electing, and pushing, to
expect the world to change and act as if it believed these things, without
our ever taking the time to persuade people. We want to shape up the non-Christian
world in external ways instead of imploring people to be reconciled to God,
changed from the inside so that righteous actions occur because the heart
itself is righteous. But it is not the business of the church to make the
world conform to the church's standards as if that were the end of the process.
Now let me make an important clarification here. We are citizens of a nation,
and we live in a community; we can vote, speak, and have influence as citizens
who are Christian. It is our responsibility to take Christian citizenship
seriously. We ought to act in ways that raise national and community standards,
because the loss of standards is a terrible evil. We ought to use our citizenship
to the full and do everything we can to influence nonbelievers around us
to hear what is true. Part of the persuasion that brings about reconciliation
is to hold the standards high so nonbelievers can be attracted to them,
chafe under them, have to deal with them, and hear from God. It is a good
thing to use political and public forums to make the world a better place.
But these things are not the main business of the church. Imploring men
and women to be reconciled to God is the greater thing. We must not let
ourselves think that our primary responsibility is to try to fix the non-Christian
world so it will be more compatible with us.
So there are three things from this passage that I would call to our attention
if we are to be a pillar on which the light can effectively be displayed:
First, we must not be fleshy and care more for appearance than for heart,
imitating the world. Second, we must not be withdrawn, serving ourselves
rather than serving the Lord and reaching out to the lost. And third, we
must not be dominating, pushing the world into shape instead of appealing
to men and women to believe Christ.
Spiritual vertigo
Now, this is serious business. The world is in spiritual vertigo and doesn't
know how to help itself any longer. People around us are going to wake up
as the prodigal son did and realize they're eating pig slop. They have spent
their inheritance, and all they have left is starvation or food fit for
pigs. But they, unlike the prodigal son, don't know where the father's house
is! They don't have a memory of once knowing the living God, of being welcome
before and perhaps being welcome again. They don't know how to go back home.
That's why the lighthouse is so important. And the pillar that allows the
light, the truth, to broadcast itself is the church.
In any age, the world's darkness is directly correlated to the loss of vitality
in the church. If the church is hypocritical, self-consumed, listening to
false teachers, and preoccupied with things that don't deserve its attention,
then to that degree truth's foundation is faulty and the world is plunged
into further darkness. If the church is true to what it ought to be, if
it has learned the lessons of 2 Corinthians (indeed, all the Bible), and
the foundation of the lighthouse is secure so the light may rotate and broadcast
itself, to that degree the world at least has hope, the possibility of reformation
and knowledge of God, a place to go. Bearing in mind this correlation, as
dark as our age is, the church bears responsibility.
In any age, the world's darkness is directly correlated to the
loss of vitality in the church
"His name the only name"
I remember 15 years ago Ray Stedman was preaching here on a Sunday morning.
He was just getting started, and Howard Hendricks walked in the back door.
To Ray's amazement, Howard walked up the aisle and said, "Sit down,
I'm taking over the service now!" He'd been invited by the elders to
speak on Ray's 25th anniversary as pastor here. So Ray had to sit down and
listen while Howard proceeded to speak in glowing terms about Ray's life
and ministry---the good work that had been done at PBC. It was a wonderful
message. Ray got up at the end, and he was obviously overwhelmed, so he
didn't say very much. He just pointed to one of the Christmas banners hanging
in the auditorium, which quoted Zechariah 14:9, and read it aloud: "The
Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only
one, and His name the only one." Then he sat down.
For him, what was important was to deflect attention from himself, other
human instruments and the glory of the church, and say it is the Lord who
is glorious. I'll never forget as long as I live the sense I had of how
utterly critical our responsibility is, and that we will be best at it when
we forget ourselves and are caught up with Christ, always thinking of him,
praying to him, speaking of him, loving him, when it's the Lord Jesus who
is most highly thought of. The foundation isn't noticed because the light
is bright. We live in a world that is in desperate need of such a church.
"His name the only one."
Catalog No. 4235
2 Corinthians (all)
Twenty-first Message
Steve Zeisler
November 18, 1990
Copyright (C) 1995 Discovery Publishing, a ministry of Peninsula Bible Church.
This data file is the sole property of Discovery Publishing, a ministry
of Peninsula Bible Church. It may be copied only in its entirety for circulation
freely without charge. All copies of this data file must contain the above
copyright notice. This data file may not be copied in part, edited, revised,
copied for resale or incorporated in any commercial publications, recordings,
broadcasts, performances, displays or other products offered for sale, without
the written permission of Discovery Publishing. Requests for permission
should be made in writing and addressed to Discovery Publishing, 3505 Middlefield
Rd. Palo Alto, CA. 94306-3695.