The Challengers of the 90,s By John Paterson

do any differently? If we took the Apostle Paul from Antioch where he spoke to Jews and put him in Athens where he spoke to Gentiles, would he do it any differently? And the answer when you read the New Testament and the book of Acts is, yes, he did do it differently.
He had quite a different form for his message. It was the Gospel, but it started in a different place, it illustrated differently, it applied differently, but it was still the Gospel.
The situation in which you find yourself determines how you say what you have to say.
What we have to say is the Gospel. Understanding where we are will determine how we say it.
If I was to speak to a five-year-old, I would say the Gospel quite differently from the way I would say it if I was speaking to a twenty-year-old.
It would still be the Gospel, but I may start differently, illustrate differently, apply differently. It would still be the Gospel as Paul did in the book of Acts.
And if we as a church, if you as a church, are to know what kind of pressures are likely to be on you in the future, you have to ask them what kind of society are we in? Because you might have to fight quite different battles from the battles that people fought here fifteen years ago, just fifteen years. I tell you, I would think that Newcastle, Australia has changed as much in fifteen years as it has changed in the previous fifty years. Great change. It will just mean that we will do things differently, say things differently, or fight different battles.
And I suspect there may even be different battles for people like you who live in a large city from the battles that we fight as we live in a small country town of just thirty-five thousand people. Quite different. And we need to know that, we need to know the pressures that are on us, that you need to know the pressures that are upon you. Well brethren, what I'd like to do tonight is spend about ten minutes, I'm hoping I can do it in ten minutes, in just sketching some of the pressures that will be on us in Oz of the nineties, in Australia of the nineties, that weren't on people in the eighties or the seventies or any other decade that we're aware of in the way they are upon us. We don't know the pressures, we don't know what's going on in our society, we don't read the times, interpret the times, we don't know how to stand and what to say. We'll know what we believe, how we say it, and how we answer the attacks may be quite lacking if we don't interpret the times. And I've just listed a few facts on the sheet that you've been given when you came in, which are just kind of an outline that may just help us remember some of the some of the main themes. And I'd like us to say to look with you firstly at what Australia is like in the nineties, and the kind of forces that are in our society. Well firstly, what we've called the multicultural change. If you live in Australia now as you do, then you need to know that one in every four people in Australia at present was born overseas. One quarter of the Australian population, four million people plus, was born in countries other than Australia. And one third of the Australian population, five and a half million people, were either born overseas or other children of people born overseas, with strong connections in other cultures.
Now that's a fact of life. It's partly the result of conscious government policy, and it's partly just the way in which things have worked out because of factors in God's world.
But our society has changed dramatically, so that the society people lived in Australia 30 years ago was radically different from our society today. And I use that term carefully, it was radically different in a number of ways. You might say, well that really will only affect you if you live in a Sydney suburb like Cabramatta, where the majority of people in Cabramatta are now Vietnamese, or in Lakemba, where the majority of people are Arabs. It would
only affect you if you live in those kind of suburbs. Well that's not quite true,
because the fact that we are so multicultural has affected our laws, it has affected our practices,
in fact in certain schools in Sydney now, Easter is a good Friday as a holiday, but so are the
Muslim holidays. What are you going to do if your children go to a school which now observes Muslim
holidays? Are you going to let your children take them or are you going to make them sit in the
playground not being taught? Far more importantly than all that is that it's affected the way we
think. See what happens when people bring ideas that are different from ours into our culture?
Sometimes they've partly come through television, they've partly come through the ability of people
to travel so widely in our world, but it's mainly because of immigration. When people
up with ideas different from our own come up against our ideas, not people in Australia
tend to think, but we all tend to think. Well we've always thought this, but now here is half a
million people who think something quite different and they're all sincere and earnest. Maybe they've
got the truth and maybe we've got the truth too. Would we be so arrogant as to think that those of
us who've been brought up in a white Anglo-Saxon kind of way have got the only truth? Well isn't
there a bit of truth all around? Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that's what people here
are saying. I'm saying that's what our society is saying. As we mix in a bigger world and become
part of a bigger world, it's hard to be content with the views you've always had. So people who
are businessmen travelling to many cultures all the time, they often start to get quite a mix of
ideas in their head and they would say, well I wouldn't be so arrogant as to say we've got it.
They've got a bit and they've got a bit and they've got a bit over there and put them all
together and you've probably got what's a fairly good bunch of truth in the end. And then that
means that all ideas and all understandings become relative. In other words nothing is definitely
right and definitely wrong. It's kind of true if it's true for you and it's kind of true if it's
the opposite for him but true for him anyway if he believes it's true and so on. And we live in a
country more than almost any other western country where the idea of truth has gone. Partly because
of our origins, see Australia wasn't founded on the basis of truth or of the gospel. If you were
a pilgrim father and went to America, you founded America on the basis of biblical principles.
When the first fleet came to Australia and Richard Johnson was the chaplain, he was a keen
Christian man, but he was pushed to one side and Christians were pushed to one side for the first
40 or 50 years of the colony. They had no part to play that was recognised except very begrudgingly.
And religion's never been part of our society. It's been a case of, well if you believe it and
you want to do it, well you believe it and you do it. That's been the Australian ethos for the
no more so than in the last decade. If we move into the 90s, we're moving into a decade where
people say there is no such thing as truth. Everything's relative. If you want to believe
it, fine. If you don't, that's fine too. We are the most multicultural nation in the world after
Israel. That's got to have an effect on the way we think as much as our practices. It's easy to
identify a Muslim law coming through but it's much harder to pick the one which we all start
to think relatively. He's got an idea, I've got an idea, we're both right even though they're
opposite. That's the first feature that we face in the 90s. The way people think, we think in
relative terms, not absolute terms. Not right and wrong but shades. The second effect upon us as we
face the 90s is that we're a highly industrialised society. See if you lived a couple of hundred
years ago in a rural community and indeed as many people in Australia still live in a rural
community, they're not me mind you, we're the most urbanised country in the world. In other words,
Australia more than any other country has the greater majority of people living in cities than
any other nation. There aren't many people left in the back blocks. We're a very highly urbanised
country but when we were a rural economy it used to be that the man on the farm, as many people
around where we live in Tamworth, is very conscious that he needs the rain at the right time, the sun
at the right time, the storm ought not to come at the wrong time and so on. Very conscious that the
world is not within his grasp, not within his control. Newton has changed a bit, talking to a
fellow during the week and he said he got a terrible midge in his sorghum crop. So it was a phone call
to the aerial sprayer and within an hour he was there and he sprayed his crop. Ten minutes and he
was gone and it's all dealt with. Quite quick, quite rapid. Much better of course than it
used to be. So things are partly in control but they're still fairly dependent on this particular
fellow still lost his crop because the wind came within the first half hour and blew the stuff away
so he lost it. But you see once you move from a rural economy to an industrialised economy, as
the west has done many in the world 150 years ago, a couple of things happen. See in an industrialised
society you suddenly become a specialist. Even the farmers become a specialist. You ask the farmer at
the farm what it came with and he'll use the agronomist to give you some advice on when to plant and
how to plant it. He'll use the technician to come and fix his tractor. He'll use the chemical
engineer to give him better chemicals and so on. So things have become a bit more specialised even
on the farm. But in an highly industrialised society, whereas one man used to do it all,
now one man does one small part. Like the man who was asked as he worked on an assembly line making
cars, what do you do? And he said well I put in part K76. And the fellow said what does K76 do?
He says I haven't got a clue, I just put it in. Poor fellow. Lots of dignity in that work isn't he?
But after he's become so specialised he doesn't even know what he's doing as he plays his part
on the assembly line. And not only with industrialisation of course and technology
has come, well you know the name of the television program, your life in their hands. We can control
life. And whereas in pre-industrial England one in pre-children died by the age of five,
one third of all children born died by the age of five and the remaining third didn't see the
age of 40. Now of course that's the exception. And John Kennedy was able to say all of,
well nearly 30 years ago, just after he'd become President of the United States,
it is man holds in his mortal hands the power to destroy all forms of human poverty
and all forms of human life. He's got the ability. We can do good he was saying and we can do evil
but all the power is ours. Under the law that's quite true. Man has got the power to do things
he never had. And as we live in a society like that that's highly technical and highly
industrialised, highly specialised, what's happened is that God has become for most people
quite irrelevant. Now the doctor does it, now the technician or the scientist does it
and now we do not need God in the way that we used to. And I might need God as I come to say
my prayers but do I need God when tomorrow I go back to my four unit maths textbook for year 11
or 12? What's God got to say to that? I can see how God fits in praying, I can see how God fits
in singing hymns, I can see how God fits in reading my Bible but we've all become specialists
and God's been pushed out of the centre to the sideline. Another sad thing brethren,
Christians have agreed. We've been the most successful of anybody I think in pushing God
to the sidelines. And so we've taken on board I think a whole set of language that isn't biblical
language and when the Bible speaks about worship what does it mean? I urge you to surrender your
bodies and souls which is right worship. When? When you go to work tomorrow? Yes.
When you say your prayers tomorrow night? Yes. When you play sport next Saturday? Yes, it's
worship. It's worship. Well the word worship means to show God's worth. How do I show God's
worth when I play sport? I honour him by the way I play. When I do my work tomorrow?
By the quality of the work I do. That's how much I show God his worth. But you see we've
segmented God into what we call worship for an hour on Sunday. But God is somehow now there
but not over here in the bulk of life. That it matters how I pray, yes I must get the words
right but it doesn't matter when I'm talking to my neighbour tomorrow morning over the back fence
about the television program two nights ago. Is God not concerned with all of life?
Society says no God belongs over there you church people just keep him in your little church box
and we've agreed and we have become a secular society where God no longer belongs
as it's supposed. The third feature is we've become a very rich society
particularly in a couple of areas. If you're here today and I'm looking around I'd suggest
there a number I won't pick the particular people but if you're born between 1947 and 1962
and some of us just get in there and others of us are well in there
you're part of the baby boomer generation and you constitute one quarter of Australia's population
you know age between what's it about the 27 and 42 something like that
you're part of the baby boomer generation. You constitute a quarter of the population
you constitute a third of the votes that's that's potent for any person wanting to be elected
who's he going to appeal to if you can pick up a third of the votes in just that one identifiable
group that's a fair bit you you have half you spend half the disposable income in Australia
what advertiser isn't going to try and get to the baby boomers
we have a generation who've never had it so good never known a world war
never known a depression we've had virtually everything we've needed it's been hard at times
that by and large the baby boomers age 42 down to 27 or so have had it all
and they're often called the me generation give me give me give me give me that's how we were taught
that's what we were that's how we were treated and uh but things are becoming a bit unstuck just uh
the 11th of February in the good weekend magazine in the Saturday Herald there was an article
article called the fast track stops here that was about the baby boomers the people who have now
made it to the top at age 40 or 36 or 35 around that part and in this particular article the
writer interviewed four people who were of the baby boomer generation who made it to the top
but when they got there top of their profession this lady a judge in Victoria at age 40
considered one of the most most proficient and expert judges in the state and the the
the lady writing the article interviewed these people who were part of the baby boomer generation
but who at age 35 or 38 or 40 or 42 have opted out they've had it all
they've been affluent they've done what they want they've been individuals
and this is the way this the writer sums it up they are tired and they cannot work out why
whispers wander through the brain late at night is this all there is is this it
and what is it all about anyway and what can be done to solve it an empty tired generation
says this non-christian writer who's analyzed exactly where we've been we've been rich
richer than any country in the world in terms of our development over that period
there's been problems but generally speaking that's where we've been rich and we've all done
our own thing you know the sad feature the sad feature of this particular article is that one
one person this man here he was a proper accountant he dropped out
and he decided to take a year off on the north coast playing his jazz guitar
what's he done he's exchanged one form of i'll do what i want for another form of i'll do what
i want that's what this baby boomer generation has been taught to do get what you want we've
become individualistic hang the rest i'll do my thing let it all hang out that's the theme
and we move into the 1990s with a whole generation of people who are the majority
spenders and the most influential pack of voters saying i'll do what i want
what suits me is what i will what i will believe and what i will think
we're a fractured society fourthly we're a society that's broken the path
most of the things that used to hold us together let me give you an example
partly as a result of the women's push the women's movement and partly as a result of other things
we've gone through a terrific change in our lifestyle and the forms which we find ourselves
living if you are a family where the husband works and the wife stays at home where there
are children in the home do you know you're a dying breed one in five households are like you
otherwise you're a very small minority
it's no good saying well families a family is a place where a husband does this and a wife does
this and the kids are at home that's no longer a family in australia as as australians consider it
if i asked you how many how many households in newcastle are single parent households where
the single parent is the mother it's one in ten three hundred thousand households in australia
are single parent households one in ten houses you walk past on average uh house households just
like that but then we can no longer allow ourselves the luxury as god's people to say
this is family and this is how it ought to be this is the norm become like us because people
are not like us if that's what we think family is we can no longer have to allow ourselves the
luxury of saying well mothers should be home looking after their kids and they shouldn't be
putting them into child care we have mothers in tanworth whose total income is a hundred dollars
a week who have got children at home whose husbands have abused them and and so on you
could tell the story a thousand times for newcastle i can no longer allow myself the
proud luxury of saying that woman shouldn't be out at work if i don't also say how can i help
her with her children it's a fractured society what's that done for her children and what's that
done for her and so we have we live in a society where there are few relationships that are of any
consequence few relationships of any consequence people wish they were they wish they were in a
survey taken in march last year a herald sydney morning herald poll where it asked people what
was the most important thing in their life for happiness one percent said my possessions and
they'd be a pain to live with i reckon but one percent said my possessions are the most important
thing to give me happiness five percent said their job ten percent said their friends and
a few other things and seventy percent said their family when something like sixty percent
of families are already fractured people say i want them here but it's not here
i long for a relationship but there's nowhere for it to be found
john smith with whom you won't agree on everything but i hope you agree on a number of things let me
say and his books are worth reading it'll provoke you if it won't cause you to agree
in his book advance australia where his subtitle is a lack of meaning in the land of plenty
that's it a lack of meaning in the land of plenty i'll tell you who's saying it best the non-christians
the non-christians someone like manning clark now manning clark is not a christian he doesn't want
to be a christian he rejects christianity manning clark the historian one of the wisest
non-christian commentators in our society let me suggest you and manning clark has said of
australians he's looked back as he's written this sixth volume history of australia he's he's tried
to observe society and he's tried to comment manning clark australians are the broad survivors
of the kingdom of nothingness the broad survivors of the kingdom of nothingness
say but hang on we've become multicultural we've adopted all kinds of ideas we've put bob back to
the sidelines where he should be we've made people about to stand up for their own rights
we've we've been bold and mature when it comes to breaking up families when they no longer work yes
said manning clark and the ship has sunk now sadly manning clark has helped to sink the ship
but his comment is still valid he's seen it in a way that many christians haven't he's analyzed
society and he's saying things that we ought to be using we always say to people society is not
together as you think it is and we should be promote provoking questions in people we say
we've got the answers but often people haven't even asked the questions they know there's
something wrong but what is wrong we should be using figures like this and we should be quoting
a manning clark to this world and we should be saying life is going nowhere the board survivors
in a kingdom of nothingness we will be offering that which of course is the very opposite
australians are no longer the pathfinders but rather the men in the army of the rear
australians used to make a contribution to our world but they do so no longer
since when was the last time australians made any impact in their philosophy in their science
in their whatever it might be it's the odd one or two but we've become basically a kingdom of
nobodies we need to recognize the fact we need to ask why i've suggested some of the reasons as
we've gone through there's a there's a slogan i don't know how old it is australian born
australian bred long in the leg and thick in the head and that's about the description of where
we're at we don't think very carefully about things because we are rich we've got the we've
got the pretty adventurous kind of government we've made progress a few other countries have
made progress but we don't reflect upon why we are the board survivors of the kingdom of nothingness
why is there so little in our lives as australians
well brethren we could say more than that i'm going to have to to move on otherwise i'll run
out of time and not lead you to the scriptures which i want to do of course but they have some
of the forces and we need to recognize you need to think about what is my neighbor like
does he or she think in areas of truth or it's true for you and it's true for him even though
they're opposites what is your neighbor like is your neighbor an individualist concerned to do
his thing his way when you talk about submitting to jesus christ as the lord does that run counted
that everything he's been taught from uh from nappies up when you want your neighbor to think
about things you might be asking to do what is almost impossible because he's become superficial
we don't think about things as as australians we don't feel things as australians it's bad
long to feel things what does the what does the media want to do what does the television report
want to do every time i want to put bob hawke down why does it show every time bob hawke is
made to look weak what do they show
yes that's right they show those shots of him crying
now christians ought to rise up against that what is weak about crying and you you remember that
time a couple of years ago when neville ran was caught out with something he'd done and he said
balmain boys don't cry as if somehow that was commendable that's part of the superficiality
of living in australia and i ask you brethren have we christians succumbed or have we stood apart
from those presses have we pushed christ to the sidelines so he's all right in church life but
got nothing to say with my tax return have we pushed christ to the sideline so that he touches
the way i pray but not the way i feel have we become me first and i'll get what i want and if
the church suits me then i'll be happy if it doesn't suit me i'll be out have we become
superficial have we become relative well i know they say that at the church but it's not like you
believe that kind of thing but if you've done it well then you believe something else
how the pressures affected us we can respond in one of two ways we can become like our society and
when we uh when we had john blanchard at tamworth on tuesday we also had peter barnes whom i know
you know and he spoke about the temptation to accommodate to society he used the term to have
a bit of gum leaf theology and we're trying to straightenize the gospel to such an extent that
we only pass on ideas that people around were like and in terms of people were like and we
accommodate and become like our society well we mentioned that this morning and we have no reason
to exist or can we to to exist or we can resist our society we can protest and say well let's go
back to the good old days in the menzies era when we when we honored the flag and we sang the
national anthem and we didn't have all this multiculturalism i tell you brethren you may
lament the fact that it's not as it was and you may lament rightly i tell you it's not like that
anymore and we cannot turn it around we cannot make our multicultural and multicultural we're
affected now as a society where the people should leave tomorrow or not we've changed
and you can't say i will not recognize the change i'm not asking you to become like the change that
would be wrong but you need to recognize it's there well recognizing it's there what are we
going to say let me give you four strategies for the 90s if this is what the world of the 90s is
to be like secular relativistic individualistic and superficial how might we respond four strategies
for oz in the 90s the first is we need to speak the truth let me tell you
non-christians have seen it in a way that christians haven't we think because society's
moved away from truth well maybe we shouldn't say too loudly what we believe let me read you again
let me read you from manning clark right manning clark the pagan
a self-professed pagan who just a little while ago on his 70th birthday said this
he said we can never get a satisfactory sense of wonder and delight without religion
so without a religious view of life we won't understand where we're going without a religious
view of the world einstein no a greater mind we're told einstein said it will not be the great
scientists of the world who decide the fate of civilizations but great religious leaders
he said such as christ or gandhi for they are the ones who give us values now ignoring the
comment about christ or gandhi for a moment the point is you need values from outside but you
don't get an industrialized society who's going to speak the words that somehow give meaning and
value to life i tell you if christians are not doing it it will not come from anywhere lasting
not anywhere of any worth
i noticed don mcmurray's been handing around my copies of my article here not mine but the
article i i have from punch magazine now you'd say you know punch magazine that english magazine
that's always making jokes of things it's sort of up market but uh punch magazine well in an
article of the the edition of april last year fairly recent the writer is talking about the
the bishop of durham who said he didn't believe in the resurrection of the body and didn't think
it was necessary to believe to be a christian and mr punch says uh it's a bit of a rum show
belonging to the church of england where people can say that sort of thing and still be uh
church of england bishops uh he said the he said he won't part um he said i may not believe in the
resurrection of christ either but then again he said i'm not the bishop of durham that's what he's
paid to do i can't fly airplanes either but i preferred if the captain of my next 747 had a
pretty good idea of how to how to handle the job that's what you expect from someone in the job
and he goes on he says how much nicer it would be to belong to a faith that says what it means
and means what it says a faith in fact which accepts that religion is to some degree
totalitarian either you believe it all or you don't you just can't have the bits of god you like
and leave out the stuff you're not happy with that's a pagan it's like can't someone be fair
dinkum out there what are we going to be fair dinkum with paul wrote to timothy
as for you timothy it's rough times i know chapter four verse 10 of second timothy
sorry chapter chapter three verse one of second timothy chapter three verse one
terrible times timothy and you read on those next verses people are hating their families
people are rising up with false doctrine people are rising up against governments it's all there
it's a really messy situation timothy what should you do panic no he says but as for you timothy
verse 14 of chapter three continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of
because you know those from whom you learned it and how from infancy you've known the holy
scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation all scripture is god-breathed inspired
comes from the mouth of god it's useful for teaching rebuking correcting and training in
righteousness to make the man of god thoroughly equipped for every good work timothy it's all
you need and the person that doesn't mean all you need to do is quote it i think we need to
get away from that awful idea but if someone asks the question we just give them a verse
now of course the lord can use a verse of scripture but timothy was to expand the scripture
if that he wasn't to do that sermons were useless he should have just had bible readings and gone
home no the preach was to open up the word and apply the word to make the word sensible to the
era here to the ear of the hearer because of the here of the ear to the ear of the hearer
that was his job so i mean if you were to go to hong kong or to uganda it would be no good to
quote a verse from the bible you'd say no i've got to speak in a language the man can understand
i want to use terms he's familiar with let's do that timothy so when god says the word of
god is sufficient it doesn't mean you just quote the bible it means you use the bible and apply
the bible to every situation you take the principles from the scripture that's hard sometimes
you say what's the script you've got to say to the environmental movement a lot it's not easy
to work it out you just can't go and find one chapter that will say here at the answer the
environmentalists you've got to tease out scriptures in different parts and seek to
understand them and blend them as you compare scripture with scripture timothy keep at it
keep speaking a supernatural word to a society that wants to know no truth
but i tell you brethren people in our society are seeking for something apart from what you eat
and what you paid and what you watch do you know that in 1980 in australia there were 20 000 members
of groups like the harikrishna society 20 000 by the end of the century there'll be 50 000
twice as many as salvation army 50 000 people in groups like the harikrishna movement why
because they're saying this society is not enough can someone speak values from outside it into it
can someone give us something else other than what we see and feel and eat and drink and we've been
quiet and we're hesitant to speak and of course the sad thing about groups like that is that a
number of groups were surveyed in the united states which they had a 75 percent turnover
every five years so people said give us something they went to these groups they found out there
was no answer and they left and we stand behind a quiet i can't believe it can you we live in such
a society without values without truth without anybody to say anything certain why do you suppose
that um in the period say the last five years 76 to 81 during those two census periods in
that census period when the two census were taken the australian population grew seven percent
the jehovah's witnesses grew 24 percent the seventh day of vegas grew 13 percent the roman catholic
church grew nine percent and the baptist church and the presbyterian church and the not pursuing
the anglican church grew four percent and the others mostly grew one percent or shrank
population grew seven percent and the pentecostal churches grew 82 percent
now we shake our head we say well we don't like what the pentecostal stands for but i tell you
brethren in most pentecostal churches at least there is some attempt to say this is right and
that is wrong this is sin and that is hell and that is heaven and that is life and that's all
there is to it and we might say well they're a bit simplistic are they out of the stuff sure i
know that and they add stuff that's awful in many cases i know that too but people are saying at
least here is someone who's speaking clearly and authoritatively who's seeking to speak as it seems
to me from the word of god now i know there are all kinds of aberrations there are some way down
one extreme which are just awful all the way through but just take the factors in this general
sense here at least people who are saying what's true and they're believing it's true
mr punch would have said well most people here are fed income and he even quotes at the end of
the article he said i don't like the morality of people like jim backer or jimmy swaggart
but at least you can rely on them to give you 110 percent you say at least they believe what they're
all about at least they speak authoritatively to a world where there's no one who's saying anything
certain and we're quiet i don't believe it god's strategy for the 90s is to take his truth
and speak it relevantly forcefully truthfully comprehensively savingly i tell you our society
is open to it in a way it's never been i'm not saying people recognize scriptural truth
for we're still darkened in our minds if we're unbelievers but people are saying isn't there
more we need to we need to provoke that question and promote it talk to a fellow recently just a
young bloke 21 he's earning 75 000 a year he's got native school at 15 crossed out of his family
married four years ago at 17 his wife left him a month before i spoke to him about four weeks ago
and he said as i was talking to him he's pretty devastated he was easy to talk to about the
gospel two weeks later he decided to take on another job an additional job that would bring
him another twenty thousand dollars a year he's a real wheeler dealer and he decided to go with a
couple of girls he knew with whom he was going to bed fairly regularly he said life's pretty good now
and for five hours i worked fairly hard to destroy that man's confidence five hours at
to undo him and show him that he was the bald survivor of the kingdom of nothingness before
i even mentioned the gospel but that's what was needful i think sometimes brethren we're so
quick with the text and the verse and the answer we don't provoke the question to which the answer
will be marvellous we may need to do that not everybody you don't need to spend five hours with
everybody but this might be some people who think you need to provoke the question and when he says
to you your next door neighbor says what do you think of that program on television last night
rather than say well the bible says why don't say what else could you expect the fact that he
went to bed with his uh with his neighbor's wife in fact he fiddled his boss's uh trust accounts
what else could you expect of course people like that and then why not go inside and they'll go
into the next day a company would say but hang on people are better than that or isn't that really
being a bit tough so no not at all you couldn't expect people to do anything else other than that
and go inside again why not try that with someone with whom you have an ongoing relationship that
you might speak the truth of god all the more relevantly and forcefully and applicably
there are people you're not going to have that opportunity with and it's here or it's never
you go for it but we need to work out our strategies we might provoke in people this
sense that we are the board survivors of the kingdom of nothingness i tell you i
reckon most australians are like percy grange you know percy granger um in an english country garden
now that that percy granger who wrote uh 50 years ago i reckon he could have written today
percy granger got writing to his lover in 1940 i was born right
i don't have to develop i am happy through and through i don't care a straw about god and
eternity because i am complete as i am i don't have to behave morally i am good in other words
i am an australian yet percy grange became undone some something got him and someone got him and
undid it well can you undo it that's what people say outwardly but underneath it's not like it
how would you undo it that you might speak the word of god as a truthful
disciple but then we need not only to be truthful but we need to be total
as i said on the way through that first section there uh many of us i think think christ has a
claim on me when i pray when i read my bible but not much to do with how i'm going to go
when i go to work tomorrow let me ask you how much did christ redeem
how much did christ make create by him colossus 116 by christ all things were created
things in heaven things on earth visible invisible whether thrones or powers or rulers or authority
all things were created by him and for him yeah for him in other words things make sense
only insofar as they are related to christ they made it's like like the hub of a wheel
like a wheel if you like with a hub and spokes the spokes take their significance from the hub
they only fit together because of the hub i tell you nothing in this world makes sense outside of
christ how you work how you learn how you think how you feel yet as christians we've we've segmented
i mean so many of us we were happy for so long i don't speak for all christians because christians
have a different view on this but many of us regard the fact that you could uh have church
on sunday and bible reading on monday morning and tuesday night and so on and then you can have
schooling which was quite unrelated but learning history and learning maths and learning science
and learning natural science and learning geography only makes sense as they're related
for christ the gospel affects how you work how you think how you feel suddenly christianity will
suddenly become attractive because i believe that's one of the other that's one of the three
main attractions to the pentecostal churches it's all or nothing what you're told there to believe
is it affects all your life well you can't have it yeah maybe they go a bit overboard in many
respects but that's one of the attractions it's fair dinkum it's not a take it or leave it it's
not push christ to the side and do what you like for the rest and brethren we need we need to be
saying that nothing in life is beyond the scope of christ beyond the scope of his creation or of his
redemption because paul then goes on to say he's reconciled you through his body let me ask you
did he reconcile your mouth did christ redeem your mouth for what reason sing hymns yes testify to
christ yes to speak graciously to your wife yes to speak truthfully to your neighbor yes to discuss
politics with the man further down the street yes redeem for all that did christ redeem your hand
yes for handing out tracks yes for doing your work yes for cooking your meals
yes for making the children's beds yes they have redeemed activities all of life is redeemed by
christ and we've got we've just got thousands and thousands and thousands of people opting into new
age religions in australia where people are saying all the world comes under all the world has
meaning all christians should have been saying that for years but we haven't we've been saying
bible reading has meaning and prayer has meaning and going to church has meaning and of course
that's right we say work has many of course i'm a christian and my hand is redeemed by christ
that's the answer brethren to secularism we can say more but there's not time the answer to
individualism well we mentioned this morning i mentioned this briefly before i go on to the last
one christians ought to be the least individualistic of all people we're individuals
and a person must come to christ individually we've said that for years no one can come to
christ boy you must come that's true but we've been said and you somehow stay an individual
that's not god's plan ephesians 5 21 submit yourselves to each other that's not individualism
i tell you this hear me carefully there is not one place for individualism in the church of jesus
christ there's a place for individuals there's no place for individualism you can't say i'm going
to do my thing and hang the rest i'm going to keep believing what i believe i don't care what
they've said i'm going to do my thing submissive to the word of god second timothy three and
submissive to one another one of the most attractive things about the church of jesus
when people come in they see people submitting to one another loving one another being unified
as we saw this morning there's no alternative so being truthful disciples being total disciples
being submissive disciples and lastly being radical society being radical disciples
brethren i said before i don't think it's hard to prove we live in a superficial society ask
people why they're going to vote some people say i haven't got a clue others will say well because
this bloke is going to put more money in the back pocket what a superficial response i hope there's
no one here who says that hope that's not your reason because that's what the politicians do
isn't that what they're lobbying we'll give 57 dollars a week we'll give 60 dollars a week
what a superficial way to evaluate how a country ought to move
you can be a rebel and you can protest against it
you can be not only a rebel but you can be a revolutionary and tear down
the forms in our society or you can be a radical i'll tell you this every christian has to be a
radical i hope every christian here tonight is a radical because you know what a radical is you
know what the word what the radical meant what the word radical means it comes from the word
radix meaning root a radical is a person who goes to the root of something
so if i were to say to you if you said to me how are you i said oh all right i suppose
well if you're a radical you'd say well that's an interesting answer there's obviously something up
what's up behind your answer and you'd go to the root of why i said what i said if you're not
a radical you'd say oh glad you're okay and you'd move on if you're a radical you'd say why does the
labour party have the plans it has what's its reason behind why does the liberal party have
the plans it has in our church why are we doing what we're doing that's the radical person who
goes to the heart of something and in your own life you read the sermon on the mount sometime
matthew six and seven and you see the key to the sermon on the mount in the first 10 verses
people read the sermon on the mountain they go on about all this stuff about being kind
of neighbours and not judging other people and all the rest of it as if somehow that were that
that were the thrust of christ's teaching in the sermon on the mount and it's not it's the
outworking and the thrust is in the first 10 verses where christ says blessed is the man who's
poor in his spirit blessed is the man who mourns inside blessed is the man who's meek in his mind
and heart gentle christ works from if i can use the title of that superb book that excellent book
that fantastic book by larry crab inside out change start from the inside out because christ
was a radical christ went to the root to the heart he says if you don't change the heart
you won't change anything because that's where my sin is what did he say where was the sin of
adultery firstly in the heart where's the sin of murder firstly in my heart
christ said change comes in the heart and then it comes outwardly that's why you pray for your kids
isn't it isn't it you can you can you can beat your kids and you can you can make them do
anything you like in the end that's not change change comes from the heart from the inside out
now i'm not saying you don't make your children conform to certain patterns i better just pretend
i'm not saying that but real change conviction heart change comes from the heart in a congregation
like this how are you going to minister to one another just by telling each other to do things
differently might last all you'll have is people who are conforming you can get any congregation
you can fall i can hold it loud enough and get everybody here reading their bible every day for
the next 10 years that's not change change comes from the heart change needs to be radical change
if it's true change brethren we live in a superficial society don't join at that level
respond to the superficiality with radical discipleship ask real questions when your
neighbor says to you i did such and such and such and such don't say oh i've done that too say
why did you do it would you mind telling me why you did that i'm very interested go for the root
of the matter in your own life go for the root of the matter go for the root of the matters as we
go for the root of the matters as we find it in scripture in the way you are blessed is the man
who's poor in spirit who mourns who is meek who hungers and thirsts for righteousness who
whom it matters more that he's like christ than that he eats again that's where it matters
i tell you that's that's that's why people are attracted to believers so often because they are
fair dinkum not superficial it starts inside out when people see substance it can be threatening
and that's why christ be another thing i said that some of you some of you will be rejected
and persecuted however others will see your good works and praise your father in heaven
i'll see you you'll be like and salt you're not like and salt by getting some political campaign
going you're not like and salt by getting a fantastic youth program going you're like and
salt as we are radical disciples as we are truthful disciples as we are total disciples
and as we are submissive disciples i'd recommend you might like to consider those things as a church
and what they will mean for you to be submissive to be total to be truthful and to be radical
that's god's way for the 90s i believe thank you jack