Set Apart (eBook)

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Set Apart to Save

“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”

EXODUS 19:5-6

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

1 PETER 2:4-5

If we had only the story of Lot’s life as it is told in the book of Genesis, we would never have imagined that Lot was a true believer. But Second Peter 2 tells us three times that this conflicted, compromised man was “righteous”—and more, that he was “distressed” and tormented by life in Sodom. Peter’s carefully crafted description of Lot is this: “... righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard)...” (vv. 7-8). Ironically, though Lot was revolted by Sodom, Sodom was in his soul. It is possible, then, for a believer to be distressed by the world while willfully clinging to the world.

There is every evidence that righteous Lot was of no benefit whatsoever to the inhabitants of Sodom. Though he lived in Sodom for years and was prominent in its gates, and therefore would have had many opportunities to influence his friends, Lot utterly disappointed. When judgment fell on Sodom, not one righteous person could be found outside his family. No acquaintances, no neighbors, not one of his servants had come to know the Lord. His plea with the Sodomites in front of his door was dismissed by them out of hand. Lot lacked gravitas; his words carried no weight.

Even more tragically, Lot’s life did nothing to point his family and relatives to heaven. None of his family or friends feared God. When he urged his then future sons-in-law to flee the cities’ destruction, they thought he was “jesting.” Lot’s words had no substance because he was so insubstantial. Additionally Lot’s lifestyle had done nothing to loosen the culture’s grip on his wife. She left her heart in Sodom and therefore couldn’t resist turning around—to her destruction. The very woman who bore his children, who was on most intimate terms with him, who knew the contours of his soul, saw nothing in him or in his faith to point her from earth to heaven.

It is also evident that Lot’s life choices had promoted his daughters’ absorbing of the spirit of Sodom into their souls. Deception, of course, was a way of life in Sodom. And Lot was part of it. But his deception was spiritually charged and therefore domestically lethal. Inwardly he was “greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked” and “was tormenting his righteous soul,” says Peter; but outwardly he said little or nothing because he had become a prominent man in town. Forthrightness, anything approaching a witness, would have jeopardized his standing. Lot had mastered the craft of turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the social and sexual abuses of Sodom. He didn’t practice them. He didn’t approve of them. He loathed them. But he didn’t speak out against them. Blasphemies and filthy speech were met by Lot’s easy politic smile and careful deflection.

His daughters saw his accommodating character that so deftly masked what he really thought. Lot the survivor was a master. His girls could not forget that he had offered them to appease the inflamed men of Sodom in his infamous betrayal of fatherly duty. So when the successive father-daughter seductions took place, his girls used the craft he had bequeathed to them. It was his wine, his deceit, his betrayal mixed together and served in a dark cup in the depths of the cave. His daughters’ dishonor of him was brilliant, because with cruel irony he himself carried out the shameful act he had first suggested to the men of Sodom. Lot had effectively sown Sodom into his daughters’ souls.

Lot’s folly was this: Though the worldliness of Sodom vexed his righteous soul, he lived as close to the world as he could, hanging on to it for dear life until the bitter end. And the result was that though God judged all of Sodom except Lot and his daughters, Sodom was reborn in their very lives. We see, then, that it is possible for believing people like us who are truly distressed by the course of this world to live lives that are so profoundly influenced by culture that Sodom is reborn in the lives of those we love the most.

Fair warnings. The enticements to yield to this syndrome and become indistinct from culture have never been more powerful than they are right now because of our prosperity, cyber-options, and the powers of the media. I sense that these are crucial days culturally and spiritually. And I am not alone. Those who poll religious interests—including George Gallup, Barna Research, the Princeton Religion Research Center, and ChristianityToday.com—indicate that evangelical Christianity is becoming increasingly worldly, and that it is ever more becoming a mere mirror of secular culture.

The September 2001 issue of Emerging Trends, published by the Princeton Religion Research Center, bears the headline “Religion Is Gaining Ground, But Morality Is Losing Ground.” Positively it notes that adult weekly church attendance has increased from 38 percent in 1996 to 44 percent in 2000—up 6 percent in four years. The same is true of teenaged students, only higher, from 42 percent to 53 percent, an increase of 11 percent in four years. There is also an uptrend in adult Bible reading (weekly or two or three times weekly), from 18 percent in 1982 to 26 percent in 2000. Yet at the same time one Gallup Poll indicates that 78 percent say that our moral values are “somewhat weak” or “very weak” and that morals are in decline.1

This is corroborated by a study by the Evangelical Alliance (the British counterpart to the National Association of Evangelicals), which found that one third of evangelicals between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five say they have no problem with unmarried men and women living together.2 One Christian college president here in the U.S. confided to a Christianity Today editor that the most perplexing puzzle he and his staff were facing regarding their present student body was that student leaders were outspoken in their Christian commitment and yet living with a girlfriend or boyfriend—and not seeing a disconnect.3 Significantly, Barna Research listed the following as one of the most discouraging findings of 2000: “Born again adults are more likely to experience a divorce than are non-born again adults (27% vs. 24%).”4

In the same issue it was noted that a minority of born-again adults (44 percent) and an even smaller proportion of born-again teenagers (9 percent) are certain of the existence of absolute moral truth.5 George Barna’s recent book Boiling Point categorically states that moral anarchy has arrived and rules our culture, and that we are now in a state of spiritual anarchy.6 The implication is that some ominous times are ahead for a church that dares to insist that there is absolute truth. This isn’t helped by the biblical ignorance that afflicts so many young Christians in the upcoming generation, 40 percent of whom hold the view that Jesus Christ committed sins!7

All of this together—the ignorance, the spiritual anarchy, the growing acceptance of relativism among Christians, divorce rates that exceed those of secular culture, the rise of cohabitation among professing Christians, the increase of worldliness in the church despite growing attendance and Bible reading—suggests that the church is becoming indistinct from the world—worldly. And more, the failure of its increasing numbers to make a difference in the world shouts of compromise. Indeed, what we see now may be an Indian summer, the last gasp of the warm, sunny days before a long, dark spiritual winter.

Who can deny Robert Gundry’s assertion that the evangelical enterprise has become worldly, that materialism grips the church, that pleasure-seeking dominates us, that evangelicals watch sensuality and violence like everyone else, that immodesty is de jure, that voyeurism and pornography and sexual laxity and divorce are on the rise, and that we, like Lot, could find that Sodom has been born anew in our own homes. God help us if while decrying sin, we are sprinting headlong after it.

We must lay this to heart: A worldly church cannot and will not reach the world. The church must be distinct from the world to reach the world. We must set ourselves apart to God if we hope to reach the world. In a word, the only hope for us and the lost world is a holy church.

GOD’S PLAN: A PEOPLE SET APART (DISTINCT)
FROM THE WORLD TO REACH THE WORLD

From the onset God’s plan for reaching the world has been to create a people distinct from the world who would then minister to and reach the world.

God’s plan: Israel. This was God’s global plan for his chosen people as first told to Abraham: “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you... and in you all the families of...