How should a Christian engage with the world

[0:00] Thanks Brian and thank you again everybody for choosing to spend the night to come and think about this together. And I hope that as I say what we say tonight will be helpful as we think about what the Bible say about the world and the place of the believer in it.

[0:19] First thing I want to say is it's a complex topic. It's an important topic because the first immediate thing to say is we are all in the world in one way or another.

[0:31] We are engaging with the world. It's not a question of should we but the question is how should we? In our own context. But the Christian faith has always had an interesting relationship with the world.

[0:46] So I don't know what your baptism ceremonies are like but in the Anglican Church we sign the child with the sign of the cross which I know some people don't like that.

[0:56] But what we do say is fight bravely under Christ's banner against sin and the world and the devil. And traditionally people have thought about the three opponents of the Christian life as being the world, the flesh and the devil.

[1:14] When a Christian person is living in this world and their spiritual forces are opposed to them. They have their own sinfulness. That's the flesh. That's also stopping them from being a disciple.

[1:28] And then we talk about this thing called the world which is kind of the immediate context around. And all of these three things, the spiritual forces, our own personal nature and the social context around us, all of these make the task of discipleship a trivial at times.

[1:50] And the world has certainly been part of that for a while. Many people often criticise the church for being too willable.

[2:03] And the little phrase that sometimes gets said is, what in the world has gotten into the church? So what is it in the outside environment that has come into the church which is somehow making it not quite the church that the Lord wants it to be?

[2:18] And Christians have been thinking about these issues well for as long as they've been following the Lord Jesus, as we see since April 6th, maybe 33, way back when Jesus died and rose from the dead.

[2:33] And it's a complex topic because when we say, how should a Christian engage with the world? Some people think that means, how shall I vote in the world? Some people think it means, what TV shows should I watch or not watch?

[2:47] What music should I listen to or not listen to? Some people think it's about having an opinion on every social issue.

[2:59] Sometimes it would be very personal whether to engage in some kind of activity. There are lots of different ways that this question can come up. Parents are sometimes worried about the influence of the world on their children.

[3:15] And in all of that, even as I say that, there's a whole dimension of the Bible's teaching that I haven't even touched, which is talking about the opposition of the world in terms of persecution.

[3:27] There are lots of different aspects to this particular story. So it's a complex topic and it's sometimes one where people give very simple answers when maybe there aren't simple answers to the habit.

[3:41] Let's think about three key texts which might help us to see some of the issues that the Bible brings up. So John chapter 15, verses 18 to 19.

[3:55] Jesus says, If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated you first. If you belong to the world, it would love you as its own.

[4:05] As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I've chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. So that's Jesus talking to his disciples. He's talking very specifically to the 12 or the 11.

[4:19] And that's why the Jews have left the group. But Christians have often seen that Jesus is talking directly to us as well. Now when Jesus says, if the world hates you, he means since the world hates you.

[4:32] This is the reality. He's not saying, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. He's saying that the world is opposed to you because it was opposed to me first. So that's the first thing.

[4:44] So there's an antagonism between the world and the Christian disciples. And some of us will feel that more strongly than others, depending on our circumstances.

[4:56] And some Christian groups around the world feel that more strongly than others. I was at a, I was talking to a fellow in one of the networks that I've engaged with.

[5:06] He runs a church which is worldwide and it's a church for Muslim background believers, particularly in the Middle East. And he was saying that the like expectancy of a believer in Syria who becomes a Christian is about three months.

[5:25] That they will die because of persecution. Now I'm not exaggerating for effect, but I think there's a deadly treatment in what he's saying. Those Christians in Syria particularly know what the reality of this statement is.

[5:40] That the world hates you, he didn't mind what he's saying. And then Jesus goes on to say, if you belong to the world, it will love you as its own way. You do not belong to the world, but I've chosen you out of the world.

[5:52] And so that puts a different thinking about our relationship with the world around us again. Do we belong to the world? Well, Jesus is saying no, disciples no longer belong to the world, but they belong to Jesus.

[6:04] And that immediately also creates a tension in relationship. So that's one perspective from the Bible's teaching. Then in 1 John 2, 15 to 17, we get the language of love.

[6:20] But notice what John says. He says, do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not into. But he goes on to describe what's in the world.

[6:33] Everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the quiet of life, comes not from the Father, but from the world. The world in its desires pass away, but whoever does the will, whoever is to him.

[6:46] So in the 1st passage, Jesus is talking about how the world hates disciples. Now here, Jesus is saying, disciples should not love the world. And what does that mean?

[6:59] Do you know when we should walk around the place thinking, who can this place on earth? I wish I'd even live here. What do we think? How do we respond? And Jesus goes to the eternal.

[7:10] He talks about the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the quiet of life. And we've got to come back to this passage for a little bit of a baby right. So we've got the hatred of the world. Don't love the world.

[7:21] And notice what Jesus says at the end. The world and its desires will pass away. So we're living in a world that's going to come to a baby. Don't get too attached to the Jesus' hands of this man.

[7:32] What is that about? Our third passage is one of the most famous passages in the Bible. For God so loved the world that he gave his unknowingly son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

[7:47] God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through it. So that can sometimes get a little bit confusing. So we're told the world hates us not to love it.

[8:02] But God so loved the world that he gave his son to die for the world. How do we put all those things together? And that's what we're going to come up and think a little bit about tonight, as we say.

[8:16] So the first question I guess we ask is, what is the world? What is the world? The Bible uses the word world in Greek language.

[8:30] It's the word kosmos, from which we get the word kosmological, or kosmos. the word kosmos, it's really referring to three things. So in many passages, when the Bible talks about the world, it's simply talking about the created world.

[8:48] So we talk about the world and every community, that is all the animals and plants and all the rest of it, the creation. That's what we call a very mutual usage.

[9:00] The creation doesn't hate us, you might think it does sometimes, it's the water or whatever. But the creation is just the environment in which we live. The second way in which the Bible uses the word world, is to just simply talk about the people.

[9:17] So Jesus says, I'm sorry, the Pharisees say about Jesus, the whole world is following people. And what that means is, that the world of people is following Jesus.

[9:29] And again, that's what we would call a mutual usage. That's just talking about people in a gender. The sense that we're talking about is the third sense, which is the idea of the world of people that gather together in opposition against God.

[9:48] And so that's not always all people, because the world is a mix of believers and underwriters. But when we have people opposing God, and this is the negative sense of the world, and John's gospel in particular, is the place in the New Testament where this negative sense of the world is used in the world.

[10:09] Because we have Jesus constantly leaning in the outfit with the Jewish people. And they represent the world of people who are opposed to God. So when we talk about the world, we're talking about the world of people opposed to God, and the environment that they have.

[10:26] That's the specific thing we're talking about. And it's a very quick definition as we think about that.

[10:37] There is a patent in the Bible which really starts, well, almost from the very beginning of the Bible, where we see the people of God interacting with them in life.

[10:50] People often think, the Bible's teaching of the world is a New Testament teaching. Because that's where we started, right? The passages from John's gospel and 1 John and 1 John and 1 John.

[11:02] And we've already said John uses the world a lot. But there's a patent which we can trace almost right from the very beginning of the people of God in an environment and that environment impacting on them in a couple of ways.

[11:19] Okay? So the overall story of the Bible we have right at the very beginning God creates a perfect world compassion. Adam and Eve rebel and that creation is immediately thrown out of out of filter and it's thrown out of harmony and it starts to be a place which is not so easy to live.

[11:41] And the rest of the Bible's story is God working to restore that creation. And He does that through the nation of Israel. And the nation of Israel are God's chosen people.

[11:53] He chooses them to be His people in the midst of the world. And the world for Israel particularly is the nations around and about. And so we have the story of Israel amongst the nations.

[12:09] And this is the story of the Old Testament where God calls His people out of Egypt leads them to the promised land and then they become the people of God in the land of Israel.

[12:23] And eventually that land splits into two between Israel and Judah. and all the time we see Israel constantly interacting with the nations around the battle.

[12:34] And there are two main reactions or two main things that happen for the nation of Israel with the nations that are around them. The first one is Israel is constantly in conflict with the nations around them.

[12:53] The nations oppress Israel. They come in and they start wars and they take over Israel. And so they it's almost like the nations are persecuting Israel.

[13:06] They are opposing Israel. And so that's the idea of Israel amongst the nations that we know eventually that both the nation of Israel and the northern kingdom is destroyed by the Syrians in what is it 722 BC.

[13:23] And then the southern kingdom Judah is taken away by the Babylonians in 586. So the nations are the weak and they oppose Israel and they take over.

[13:35] now Israel doesn't disappear entirely of course in the birth of Christ and that eventually leads to Jesus. But the first dynamic is Israel being opposed by the nations.

[13:48] The second dynamic is Israel being attracted to the nations. And so what was Israel's big problem all the way through the history?

[14:00] Why did Israel eventually go into exile? Why was Israel destroyed? What was the problem? They were attracted to the gods of the other nations and they were attracted to the practices of the other nations.

[14:17] They want to be like the other nations and not like the people of God. Do you remember the story when Israel wanted to have a king? Right back in the very beginning of the book of Samuel.

[14:32] They come to Samuel and they say we want a king. Why did they want a king? Because they wanted to be like the other nations. they wanted to be like the other nations and God saw that as a rejection of his kingship in favor of a kingship which was like that of the other nations.

[14:50] And you remember the first king they got. The king saw tall, good looking, strong, a king like the other nations. And Saul was a failure to show Israel that they really should be looking for a king not to their own heart who was king David.

[15:09] now king David had his faults as well. In fact, none of the kings really ended up being the king that Israel needed to have correct the Lord Jesus.

[15:20] But constantly, Israel wants to be like the other nations. They take on the other nations' gods, they start behaving like the other nations, they are not acting like the people of God should be.

[15:36] God. And so, that pattern is then repeated in the New Testament with Christians in the world. And we saw a little bit about that as well. So, Christians are opposed by the world, John 15, and yet we're warned to be not like the world and to want to be like the world range on chapter 2.

[15:57] So, this dynamic of opposition and attraction is really at the very heart, I think, of what the Bible is teaching about how we are to think about our engagement in the world.

[16:11] For some of us, we might feel the opposition of the world really strongly. Others of us might feel the attraction of the world really strongly. Sometimes, we might move between the debate.

[16:23] But this pact runs right the way through the Bible. And we even see it in the book of Revelation at the end when we see the great seed, Babylon, come.

[16:36] And Babylon represents the world. In the book of Revelation, what does Babylon do? Babylon is described as a woman who is very attractive to her.

[16:48] And she also opposes the people of God. And so, the figure of Babylon right at the end shows that this battle has always been the part of the Christian faith and experience or the experience of people of God that they are looking for, they are being opposed, and at the same time there's a curious attraction.

[17:13] Now, I don't know how that sounds to you, but that sounds very strange. Why would you be attracted to something that is opposing you, but that seeks to be the dynamic that is running through Israel and also through Christians that are there.

[17:30] So, this pattern gets set up, two dangers, opposition and attraction. So, all of that is kind of background. Now, how should we respond?

[17:44] How should we respond? And we're thinking particularly here about the idea of attraction. How should we respond to the idea of attraction?

[17:55] attraction? We are in the world. I guess we could be hermits, we could escape from the world, go and sit on the other world and sit in the cave, and nothing to do with anyone around.

[18:08] But that's not really a realistic option for any of us. We've got to eat, we live, we are in the world. How do we respond? And over Christian thinking and history, there's been two extremes of response, and then there's some responses in the middle, and they don't know what they are.

[18:29] One response is, a big no. One response is, no. Don't be as involved with the world as little as you possibly can.

[18:45] Now, that means some people form monasteries, where people got together and they built walls and they tried to create a Christian place inside of it.

[18:55] Some people talk about Christian nations, or some people talk about withdrawing completely from the world around them, homeschooling their children, perhaps, or creating, only having friends.

[19:10] There's one group in my country where the Christians try and buy, and we now see a couple of streets, and basically create a little Christian community in the middle of the world and only real world.

[19:25] You might know the army's bit in America. So, again, they're trying to protect themselves from the world by creating an almost closed life community.

[19:38] Now, it's not really working, is it? Because they're a tourism attraction, so they've got people coming in all the time. But, you know, that's what they're trying to do. They're trying the same way. And in recent times, there was about 10 years ago, there was a book called The Benedict Collection, I don't know anyone who have heard of that, where a writer in America was saying, things have got so hard for Christians from the culture now, that the best thing that they can do is completely withdraw, create Christian schools, have a Christian culture, step back from the culture, don't get involved at all, and wait until the bad times are over, and then start to re-engage.

[20:23] So this is the kind of thinking that's been around, and the idea is, don't have nothing to do with the world, or as little as possible to do with the world as you can.

[20:35] At the other end of that, some Christian people say, what's the problem? It's God's will, whatever happening, therefore, must be good, so we can get involved in anything.

[20:49] Now, I'm pretty sure that most people here are probably not going to be down in this end. We are worried about things in our world, but as I say, there are some versions of Christianity, some are called it as a liberal Christianity, which says that there is no issue with anything in the world.

[21:08] In fact, God is evolving and changing as the world is evolving and changing, and so whatever the world is doing, we should accept that as God's will and just understand that's the way things are.

[21:20] So one area where that is particularly being played out, and the broader thing around the world is an area of sexuality, where God's word has apparently now changed, and it's okay to be same-sex attractive, and marry the same-sex person, and all that kind of stuff.

[21:40] That's saying yes, whatever the world is saying is good and right and God's will, and we should just go along with it. So you've got those two extremes, and in the middle is what we call a maybe option, where every time something comes to us from the world, we have to think, is it a yes, or is it a no, or is it somewhere in the middle?

[22:05] We live in a tension, where sometimes we say yes to things, sometimes we say no to things, sometimes we're not sure, but we move between the two poles.

[22:15] We haven't got one answer yes and one answer no, and sometimes yes, but sometimes no. We live in a tension. I suspect that's whatever we think, that's maybe where we are, that's a realistic option.

[22:33] There is another option that has been tried through Christian history, and that is that Christians should be working to transform the world, that they should be trying to do what they can to transform the culture and the society and help it to be the place that God wants it to be.

[22:48] And you might have heard about the rise of a phenomenon called Christian nationalism, particularly in the United States, where some Christians are trying to say, we're going to reclaim America as God's country, and we're going to bring in ten commandments of the law, and we're going to see America as a Christian nation again.

[23:08] And that's kind of an extreme version of the transformation idea, and you might have an opinion about that. Probably a realistic way of thinking about it, and this is from the American guy Tim Keller.

[23:23] He talks about perhaps what we need to do is think about different seasons of the world and the culture, and different responses as we come through. And he uses the seasons spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

[23:36] I'm not sure if that works in the future, it seems like it's potentially summer. But you have what went dry season, maybe. So sometimes things dry for the Christian culture.

[23:50] There's opposition. And at that point, we maybe need to just step back a little bit, not totally, but we need to kind of gather everyone in and strengthen them and so on.

[24:04] Sometimes it's the good season. I don't know what we're talking about here, obviously. But we would call this summer in Australia. If it's spring or summer, you enjoy it and you make hay while the sun shines.

[24:18] That's a great time for your Christian flourishes, your evangelism can flourish. Get out there and move like that. In Australia, we would talk about when winter comes, that's when it gets cold and hard.

[24:33] And so you've got to respond maybe a little bit differently when winter is there. And the Bible, interestingly, if you look through, there are examples of just about all these different apostles in the world through the Bible.

[24:45] The Bible doesn't make one approach. You've got John. John who says, if the world hates you, don't love the world, but God loved the world. Even within John's own thinking, we have this kind of maybe how we put this together idea.

[25:02] So as I said at the beginning, it is complex and how to respond to these complex and we may need to respond at different ways, at different times.

[25:13] It's there. One thing is a constant way, and that is that we are children of the Word in the midst of the world. And if we understand that we are Word of God people, then that tells us two things.

[25:32] the first thing is that our job as Word of God people is to take this Word to the world. And we don't need to worry about how the world is going to respond to us as we take the Word of God to the world.

[25:48] We will get a response. And so we've got to work out how we're responding to that. But what does the Word of God do? The Word of God judges, the Word of God exposes, the Word of God convicts, and the Word of God also commands.

[26:07] It does a whole range of things. And so if we know the Word of God and we bring that Word of God to bear on the world, sometimes we're going to find things that we think, yes, the Word of God judges this, and we will speak in judgment against it.

[26:22] And so I would put same-sex marriage, for example, from a take-home version. I think the Bible is clearly opposed to that and there's no compromise there, but we can simply, well, simply, we would just say no at that point.

[26:42] We might think of a thing like marriage. Marriage is a gift of God and it's a well-groom thing. People get married everywhere. But there is a way to be married.

[26:53] A way, faithfully, lovingly, not quite a whole bunch of ways to be married. And the Word helps us to think about how to be married.

[27:05] Now, non-Christian people can be married, Christian people can be married, but a Christian marriage ought to be marked by fidelity or faithfulness, ought to be marked by love, by kindness, and not by whiteness.

[27:19] not like many marriages in the world that's around us. So there's a transforming effect that comes. So as we go into our world, we don't want to think so much about the world, but rather about the Word.

[27:37] How does the Word shape and inform the way that we ought to be in the culture that we are? We need to be children of the Word in the world.

[27:49] And then that will help us through the spot. And so sometimes in talks like this, and I've done those talks a couple of times, we spend a lot of time thinking about our world.

[28:01] That's a good thing to do, no person. But we ought to spend a lot of time thinking about the Word and how we are, what kind of person we are meant to be, and to be faithful there, and then see what happens in our world.

[28:14] So we are the children of the Word in the midst of the world. Then we talk briefly about the two challenges and see what the Bible says about it.

[28:26] First of all, face the opposition. Now, in talks like this, normally we end up focusing on the love, don't love the Word, but I really want to spend a little bit of time there because the reality is that many Christians in the world are living in cultures that are hostile to the Gospel.

[28:47] And that may well be your culture, way more than it is one culture, because you're living in a majority Muslim context, and there will be either clear opposition or subtle opposition, but opposition may well be a reality for you in a way that it's not for me living in Australia which is a multicultural and multifaith, no one believes anything really in the context.

[29:16] But opposition is a really, is a wide one, and as I've said from many places around the world, opposition is the reality. They haven't got time to think about loving the world because the world is opposing them all the time.

[29:30] What does Jesus say is the big danger of opposition? temptation. And here we're thinking about John 15. So this is a little bit of a spoiler for this sermon on Sunday for anyone who thinks it's church, because this is the passage we're looking at.

[29:44] So this is not saying you should stop listening to the sermon. You can hear it twice and you hear it twice as good. But the big danger, interestingly, Jesus says, is not losing your life.

[29:57] I would have thought being hurt or physically hurt or even losing my life is the big danger. Jesus warns his disciples about opposition so that they will, like he says, they will not stumble.

[30:10] They will not fall away. The big danger of opposition is falling away from the Christian faith. Now, how does that work? Well, maybe it's a little bit like the parable of the four soils.

[30:24] Remember the four soils? The first one falls on where the bloody ground just doesn't grow. The second one kind of springs up quickly. But as soon as the sun comes out, it starts to rip out.

[30:36] And Jesus says that's persecution. So persecution can ruin the risk of faith because people start thinking, it's not worth it. I'll give up. I'll try and find an easier way.

[30:49] And so Jesus says that the big danger of opposition is giving up the faith. And so we really need think about how do we help ourselves and others to either be prepared for opposition when it comes or to face opposition when it's here so that they don't give up the Christian faith and be under the sermon on the people who have done that.

[31:18] And that's a big point that that Jesus has noticed that opposition is a big marker because it will force people to allow the Christian faith.

[31:31] Now, also, David and what's all this, that uses all the vision to break the church. So one of the famous quotes from the early church is the blood of the martyrs is seen.

[31:42] And that simply means that the Christian people faithfully dying for their faith was a tremendous weakness to many others around. And they became Christians as a result of seeing the genuine faith of people who could really mean with strength to face death and persecution in the context that was there.

[32:07] So basic opposition, the big danger, is falling away and no longer want to contain the love of Jesus. Which is why it is so deadly.

[32:19] The big responsibility that Jesus talks about in John 15 is to keep speaking, to keep proclaiming, to keep witnessing, to keep testifying to Jesus.

[32:34] And Jesus says, this is the Spirit's word. He will testify about me. And he says to the disciples, you must testify also. So we testify, or continue to preach the gospel to a world that opposes us.

[32:50] And that, again, has always been the task of Christians to do this, to proclaim the gospel, to bring the face of that issue. We see it in Paul's trials and events.

[33:04] We know about it through the stories of early Christian martyrs and proclaimers. And we know it in our own context that there are still people preaching the gospel.

[33:15] One of the guys I studied with at college back in 1989 is now running a church in Baghdad in Iraq. And he sends me regular prayer requests that he would be faithful in the population in the midst of Baghdad, in the midst of the middle of Iraq.

[33:35] And now he's doing it through all the violence in Iraq falling on Baghdad as well. And I just think, this guy is a hero of a Christian faith. No one does ever know his name.

[33:45] We will know him in heaven. But he is a person who is persevering in the task of preaching the gospel in the midst of intense opposition.

[33:57] His name is Baruch. Great guy. And that's a story that's repeated a thousand times, a million times around the world and all over a bunch of places.

[34:08] But to keep on thinking, how can I proclaim the gospel in this context? Now, it may not mean that you have to go down to the street corner and set up a soapbox and start yelling at people.

[34:23] But how will you not be kept silent in your culture by the opposition that is around is the question that we need to answer.

[34:36] How can we find opportunities to pass the gospel on, whether it's preaching in a former situation, more likely this could be one-to-one in a conversation with a friend.

[34:51] How we know it will be. How we know it will be. Australia is a very different place. The gospel is not opposed so much as ridicule.

[35:03] It's very clear that people are happy for you to believe what you believe just one talk about. Just shut up. Don't say it. Okay?

[35:14] It's fine to have your voice, but don't tell us anything. And so as soon as you start to talk, people get upset. Now, again, I don't know the situation in Malaysia, but down there, I'm not sure what rules there are about public proclamation or talking with people, training religion, all sorts of cultures and all sorts of different kind of ways that make it difficult for Christians in terms of their opposition.

[35:39] But our responsibility as believers is to find whatever opportunities we can in our countries to keep witnessing and testing out of Jesus so that people love us in that way of the world.

[35:58] What about attraction? Resisting attraction. Jesus says, John says, do not love the world or the things in the world.

[36:09] I mean, he talks about the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. He seems to be talking about the fact that when we live in a world, even though sometimes we think it's not so great, it's not really good.

[36:23] God abundantly provides us with all sorts of stuff. One writer said, it's almost like God has made the world too good. And most people, wherever they live, think that the place they live is pretty good.

[36:37] They like it. And they like being there. And there's plenty to attract them. And there's plenty to make them feel very comfortable in that world. Even with economic problems and all the rest of us around us.

[36:50] But there's something attractive about the world that attracts us away from God and who he is and what he is about. And Jesus here is talking about our desires.

[37:03] and it can be as simple as our desires for material possessions. That's what John means and then he says, the pride of life. That we can accumulate things to help us feel safe and secure.

[37:18] Anything but our faith in God himself. And this can start to help us to make us drift away from God rather than fall away from God.

[37:29] As we get so attached to the things in our world and the material benefits, whether it's an income, whether it's ambition, whether it's a reputation, there are a whole bunch of things that can distract us from our discipleship in the world.

[37:48] Was the film, the Disney movie Up, has anyone heard that film? It's a story of a guy who's trying to rescue us.

[38:01] Halfway through the movie, in a lot of the movie, there's a whole bunch of dogs that are running around. And every now and then, the dogs will see a squirrel and they'll stop whenever they're chasing and they stop and look up at the squirrel.

[38:16] And at one point, someone's being chased by these dogs and you just yell, squirrel! And they all stop and look up at the squirrel and they'll get away. We are like those dogs.

[38:27] We're kind of running along trying to follow the Lord, but we keep seeing squirrels everywhere. And every time we see a squirrel, we stop and we look away and that stops us looking for where we should be going.

[38:41] That is to heaven. So you're running along and you hear, good job, squirrel! Right? Okay? Or you're running along, you hear, expensive carton, squirrel! Running along, you hear, family, squirrel!

[38:55] Lots of things can be a squirrel that distracts us from God. And John puts it in terms of loves. What we see, what we want and what we need become the thing that we love.

[39:12] And the Bible says that what we love, we will follow. Where your treasure is, there you are in love. And so it's an invitation here at this point to think very carefully about the shape of our heart, the shape of our treasures, what we see, what we want, what we need.

[39:30] And our world is brilliant at putting stuff before us which is very effective. So, I think, I don't know what you can particularly notice coming in but I guarantee on many streets in Kuchin, you've got lots of signs advertising all sorts of signs.

[39:48] And those signs are trying to make you feel dissatisfied, you'll either want it bigger or stronger or faster or cheaper or more dossier, whatever it's going to be, advertising does this.

[40:01] and this is very simple what we see and it attracts us and it draws us away from the love that we chop the sugar which is the love in God but the end is the love in his creation.

[40:17] And that's where I say that cultivation is that God has almost made this world too good. It's almost too attractive. And so, let's have it on the curious or I mean, let's bear.

[40:30] So, whether it's resisting opposition or resisting attraction, these are the things that we need to be kind of thinking about.

[40:43] And I think one of the keys to both is the people around you. God has placed us in the community for a reason. When we are under pressure and under persecution and under opposition, isn't it great to be able to go to church and know that you're not on your own?

[41:05] If there are other people who can support you, it may even be in the same situation we write in the Hebrew sisters. It says, remember those who suffer before you. You're not alone.

[41:15] You're not alone in this. And we can support and strengthen one another and draw resources. This is why it's so essential to keep coming to church. Because if you're in a world which doesn't believe in God, it's good to meet at least people who are Sunday with a few people who do.

[41:32] It just reminds you that you're not completely crazy doing this. and your congregation also can help you with attraction.

[41:44] Because there will be people there who will be examples to you or people who have given up or are resisting attraction. Sometimes there will be people who will say things that will make you think, oh, maybe I'm going down the wrong track.

[42:01] This is the whole point of the body of the leaders and we will expose the word in the community of God's people and we can make these things through. Now, there's lots of other things that we can do maybe on our own but if you're like me, you seem to think what can I do rather than what can we do?

[42:20] And the I and the we is always better. It's always better than being an I and a bunch of we's rather than an I and I don't know in most of the other places in the community.

[42:31] Which is why it's a tragedy when people stop coming to church. I think that the world needs us.

[42:46] The world needs us to speak up. And this is Hebrew in John 3, 16, 24. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son and the world believes that he should not bear as prepared as a life.

[43:01] The world around us is hurtful towards that is the people in the world around us is hurtful towards a Christless eternity. And that can only be described in a word as horrific as hell as hell for many people who are being without the love and the goodness of God.

[43:22] And the world needs us therefore whether it knows it or not to speak up and to say there is a better future there is another way you can speak up.

[43:36] The world also needs us to be different. So it needs us to resist opposition and resist the temptation to be silent.

[43:47] It also needs us to live that life which demonstrates even if it's only briefly or faintly what it looks like to live as a disciple to be that point of difference.

[44:01] And this is part of not going along with the world but to live a Christian life or a life in the context of selfishness to live a life of patience in a world of impatience to live a life of joy in a life where everyone complains you know you can work your way through the freedom of this world.

[44:25] Live a life of peace in a world of comfort and so on. It needs us to be different to show that there is a better way that's there.

[44:35] So we strive to be different at that point. So what I'm saying is engage as best you can. And I guess they're also saying disengage when you need to.

[44:50] So engage with the world speak up. Disengage when it's a squirrel and it's a scrap in your attention when you are realizing that perhaps you are starting to love something more than the Lord.

[45:07] and do that in your context. Now I want to just think I'm just going to give some time for questions. I've said a lot of things and then they do questions. But I want you to do a little bit of work first.

[45:20] The question is what's in your work and what's in your work here right now. Is it opposition or is it attraction or is it a little bit of faith?

[45:32] So I'm going to invite you just with the people around you to just hunger that question for a few minutes. You live in Kujim. I don't. I think the wizard I think it looks fantastic but you know the reality okay and it's opposition a big problem it's attraction the big problem or are they tolerance and give specific examples what is it about your world?

[45:59] If it's attraction that's the problem that is a problem what kind of attraction what are the particular temptations in your world in your context? And even though you all live in Kujim you might all live in different parts of Kujim and have different contexts as well so it might be even different for you but I just want to give you time now to reflect on these two points and try and throughout it in your own circumstances you do two or ten parts so it's about eight or nine minutes and then we'll have 20 minutes of questions and if you've forgotten the questions you get better so there you go so let's let's break up just with two or three people around you and have a discussion about this what's in your world who who who

[47:27] Yeah. Nice.

[47:58] Thank you.

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