122 - Keys to Worldly Nonconformity [C]

Keys to Worldly Nonconformity; Romans 12:1-2; 2 Kings 23

In Romans 12:1 the apostle Paul is making a shift in his discourse in Romans. He has spent eleven chapters dealing with the implications of God's righteousness, the fact that God is a righteous God, which has to do with the standards of His character, that He is the definition of righteousness; and the outworking of that is referred to in terms of justice. Righteousness is the standard of God; justice is the application of that standard. In chapter twelve Paul makes a shift to application.

Romans 12:1 ^NASB "Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, {which is} your spiritual service of worship." There is not a specific imperative verb here but between the main verb, "I urge you [to do something]," and the infinitive verb to present there is the idea of expressing a mandate, a standard for every single believer. He says you "present your bodies," not because he is thinking in terms of the fact that it is our physical body for a physical sacrifice but he is using the term "body" to refer to the entire person. This is typical in Scripture where there will be an individual referred to, maybe in terms of their soul or their spirit or their body, where one of the aspects of the person is used to stand for the whole of the person. The call here is that we present our bodies to God. The word used here in the Greek is paristemi [paristhmi], a word that has the idea of presenting yourself to someone, and many times it is a verb used to describe presenting an offering or a sacrifice to God; in some cases it is used of a servant who is putting himself at the disposal of his master, that he might be used of his master in a number of ways. With the use of the words "living sacrifice" here as also "reasonable service" it is thought that the word has a full sense here and either implication, either as offering a sacrifice or service, are both evident within the meaning of the word, but both ideas are made more clear by the vocabulary used in the next two clauses.

We are to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, meaning that we put His will over our will and this is our reasonable service. We are saved to serve God. That is the positive command. We are to present ourselves to God recognizing that we have been bought with a price. This verb paristemi is used three times in Romans chapter six emphasizing the idea that we are to present ourselves to be used by God for the sake of expressing His righteousness through us. The positive is that we are to present ourselves to Him for service; the negative is stated in the next verse: we are not to be conformed to the world, or with the world. 

Romans 12:2 ^NASB "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." The Greek word that is used here is suschematizo [susxhmatizw]. schema is where we get our English word "scheme" indicating a scheme or a plan or a pattern. The idea of "conform" comes with the combination with the prepositional prefix there, sun, indicating that we are not to fit ourselves according to a particular scheme or plan of action, and that plan of action is expressed as the "world." The word used here is not the one that we are usually familiar with for world, which is kosmos [kosmoj], but it is the word aionos [a)iwmoj] that indicates through the ages. That is, the thinking that dominates all of the ages. As we have studied in the past there are only really two ways to think about reality: God's way and the creature's way. The creature's way was manifested first historically in terms of the arrogant rebellion of the creature Lucifer, who we usually refer to as Satan, the one who is the accuser and the opposer of God. This set a pattern, the first time any creature had opposed God in eternity past and Lucifer then used his influence and ability to deceive to win over approximately a third of the angels to his side. This set up a conflict, invisible to us, in the heavenlies among the angelic beings, those whom God created first.

From what we deduce from Scripture there must have been some sort of trial, for in Matthew 25:41 the Lord Jesus Christ talks about the lake of fire which had already been prepared "for the devil and his angels." So we know that the lake of fire has already been created, it is already awaiting the devil and his angels, indicating that they have already been judged in terms of the handing down of a verdict and assigning a penalty. The question then comes up: why is it that that penalty has not yet been enacted? Why aren't they in the lake of fire? The answer that we have is that the penalty was postponed because in some way Satan challenged the veracity of the verdict, the righteousness of the verdict, something along the lines of how can a righteous and loving God send His creatures to such a horrible death, and that for an unending period of time suffer horrors of the lake of fire? How can a loving God do that?

And so God in His grace and His wisdom decided to demonstrate why His righteousness would demand such a horrible penalty. He created the human race as a test case to demonstrate through the human race the importance of the creature's complete and total obedience to God. And when there is disobedience, even in what we may consider to be the most minor or innocuous way, the ramifications, the unintended consequences of that rebellion is so horrible and so extensive that an everlasting punishment in the lake of fire is the only just retribution. We see this demonstrated in the garden of Eden when God just had one test there for Adam and the woman, and that was to not eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the act of eating, when Eve ate and then Adam ate, that brought sin in to the human race and into this creation that God had created in Genesis 1:2ff that was a perfect creation. When sin entered into that it not only resulted in the spiritual fall and collapse of Adam and Eve, it not only resulted in the corruption of all of their descendants, but it also had an impact that reverberated throughout all of physical reality. It affected geology, it affected meteorology, it affected the universe; it just sent a shock wave through everything in the universe, so that now man, the creature, began to emulate the original sin of Satan before God had ever created the human race, and once again there was the creature acting independently of God and thinking in terms of his own frame of reference rather than in terms of what God had revealed to him.

So it is this way of thinking, the thinking of the creature, that somehow he can understand creation completely, apart from God, thinking that he can be the source of his own absolutes as to what is ultimately right and wrong; and it is the arrogant thinking of the creature that somehow he has become the ultimate reference point in the universe, rather than God, that is at the core of what the Bible refers to as worldly thinking. The word kosmos [kosmoj] has to do with the orderliness, the organization, of that thought. The word aionos [a)iwnoj], translated the same way, has the idea of how it is extends throughout human history, the thinking of the world in terms of the various civilizations that have been on the pages of history. So we are not to be conformed or to fit into the mold of those civilizations.

This brings in the idea of different cultures. There are different cultures in different periods of history and each culture manifests the rebellious thinking of the creature in different ways. So Paul says on the one hand we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God, but that is done by not being conformed or pressed into the mold of the thinking of our time period. The Germans have a word for that: zeitgeist, the thinking of the age. We are to be transformed, which is the Greek word metamorphoo [metamorfow], indicating a complete change of the very form or essence of thought. The Greek word morphe [morfh] translated "form" has to do with the very essence and core reality of things. So what Paul says here is extremely profound. It is not just changing the external details of our lives, it is being transformed at the most rudimentary levels of our thinking. This is what has to be changed. We are to be transformed and this is done by the renovation or overhaul of our thinking. It is not just what we think but it is how we think; it is the structure of our thought, and this is a very difficult concept for a lot of people to get their mental fingers around.

When we start thinking about how we think, thinking is something then very difficult to do. Do we think in terms of pure rationalism? Do we think in terms of pure empiricism? Do we think in terms of pure mysticism? Most of us think in terms of a mix of the three. All of the systems of thought simply reflect trends and ideas that just get new packages and new names but they all go back to the kind of thinking that Satan manifested in his original fall, which is exerting the creature's independence of the creator and that whatever the creator says in terms of defining reality must be evaluated and judged by the creature. We have to learn to have different thoughts and to think about that in different ways. The only way we can do that is to exchange the old for the new, and that only comes if there is a source of information or data that can come in and instruct us and teach us into the differences. That is why the teaching of the Word of God is so fundamental. It is Sunday morning, mid-week Bible classes, whatever the time may be, the focus is always learning something toward the end of changing our thinking. That is what church is all about. 

Within that we also are encouraged or strengthened or challenged, exhorted; all of these different things are sub-categories, but the primary purpose of the ministry of the local church is to enable the sheep to exchange the old way of thinking for a new way of thinking. So the focus seems to be on thought. That is why one of the reasons there is a manifestation today in many churches of a lot of singing and other things that go on that do not emphasize much thought. People are in a subjective, emotional rebellion against this because it is much easier to sit in an emoting church than it is to sit in a thinking church. So those who want to emphasize the teaching of God's Word and learning God's Word are running more and more against the grain in terms of the trend of our culture. But this is not anything new, we have seen these things go on throughout our study of the Old Testament in both I & II Kings and we see it in the episode that we are going to focus on today.

We have focused on what it was that provided the core element for the change that took place in Judah under the new king, Josiah, and that was the discovery of the Law. His grandfather Manasseh had been king for fifty-five years and during most of that time he was bent on the destruction of anything related to the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He persecuted and executed many of the prophets of that day, including the prophet Isaiah. He destroyed the worship of God, brought the false idols to the Baals and Asherah in the temple, and he built the various high places and alternate worship sites all over the kingdom of Judah. Anyone who brought up the name of God and anyone who taught the truth was persecuted if not executed under that regime. It was only at the very end after God brought discipline into his life that he was taken as a captive for several years to Assyria that Manasseh turned back to the Lord and began to reverse course. But then he died and was replaced by his son Amon, and he again did evil in the site of the Lord. He took the people back to all of the evil that had been done originally by Manasseh. So for 57 years basically the southern kingdom of Judah had been in rank idolatry and apostasy and rebellion against God; so much so that nobody knew what the Bible said any more. Josiah began to introduce some changes. He began to destroy some of the idols and high places but it wasn't until he had been king for eighteen years that the Law was rediscovered in the temple. 

Josiah became king when he was eight years old. When he was twelve he began to enact some of the reforms, and we learn from 2 Chronicles 34:1-7 what those reforms entailed. But those seven verses really talk about what he began to do and it is a summary of what he does even after the Law is discovered. He didn't do all of those things before the Law was discovered but he began to clean things up before the Law was discovered, and then we'll see what else he did. After the Law was discovered and they read it and realized what the divine consequences were going to be, the divine punishment would be, on the nation because of their idolatry they wanted to get an additional word from God to confirm when and how this would take place.

2 Kings 22:13 ^NASB "Go, inquire of the LORD for me and the people and all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of the LORD that burns against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us." This is Josiah speaking. They understood that the reason for punishment isn't because there was some whimsical deity who felt that now was a good time to punish them but that there were standards laid down in the Torah, and in the Torah God specifically stated what the consequences would be if they failed to be obedient.

2 Kings 22:14 ^NASB "So Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe (now she lived in Jerusalem in the Second Quarter); and they spoke to her." Whenever we read a passage in the Scripture related to a prophetess the question that always comes up is, why did God use a prophetess? What is the significance of that, especially in terms of a contemporary debate that has arisen in mostly liberal churches, but is leaking into conservative churches over the last decade or so? That has to do with the ordination of women and women pastors based on 1 Timothy 2:8-12. It is important to understand what a prophet was, what a priest was, and what a pastor is. A pastor in the New Testament is not the New Testament version of a prophet. They were very different roles and very different responsibilities. Same thing with the priests. Only when we understand those distinctions can we understand what takes place here.

Within the Old Testament there are only three prophetesses that are portrayed positively: Miriam, the sister of Moses; Deborah who was also one of the judges of Israel; and Huldah in this chapter. In all three cases these women are portrayed positively and they had positive ministries. The role of a prophetess was the same as the role of a prophet, and that was simply to be the voice for God, the voice that God used in communicating specific revelation to His people. A prophet generally was not interpreting what God said, he simply was saying, this is what God said—Thus said the Lord. The prophet was a mouthpiece; the prophetess was a mouthpiece, she was not interpreting what God said, not teaching the Scriptures, she is simply stating what God said. There is no conflict between the Old Testament and the fact that there were legitimate prophetesses and the fact that Paul in 1 Timothy 2:12 ^NASB "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet." So this limits the role in one sense that women can have in the church. They are not to be the teachers of the Word of God and they are not to have authority over men. This is not a conflict at all with God's use of women to be prophetesses either in the Old Testament or where Philip had six daughters who were prophetesses in the book of Acts because their function is very different from that of a pastor-teacher.

Huldah, then, is going to confirm what God said in the Pentateuch. She is going to state a message from God that confirms that. She is not making this up on her own, she's not interpreting things or applying the law; she is giving new revelation that God has given her.

2 Kings 22:16 ^NASB "thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I bring evil on this place and on its inhabitants, {even} all the words of the book which the king of Judah has read. [17] Because they have forsaken Me and have burned incense to other gods that they might provoke Me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore My wrath burns against this place, and it shall not be quenched.'" Wrath and anger are expressing the severity of God's judgment. That is the message and the confirmation of condemnation. But also we have a statement of grace for king Josiah because of his devotion and obedience to the Lord. And when we get to the end of this episode and we read the evaluation that God gives of Josiah, God says that he is the most obedient of all the kings to God. So in terms of his spiritual life he surpasses even Hezekiah.

2 Kings 22:18 ^NASB "But to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the LORD thus shall you say to him, 'Thus says the LORD God of Israel, '{Regarding} the words which you have heard, [19] because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before Me [the overt manifestation in their culture of their response to something horrible that would take place], I truly have heard you,' declares the LORD. [20] 'Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes will not see all the evil which I will bring on this place.' So they brought back word to the king."

The king has a response. Even though God has pronounced the certainty of judgment Josiah realizes that even though judgment is coming, even though there is going to be a time in the not too distant future of unprecedented horror and violence against the southern kingdom of Judah as the Babylonians would come in and destroy the southern kingdom, he doesn't sit back in negativity and just say, O woe is us, isn't this terrible. He knows that he needs to prepare his people spiritually for what is going to come, and the only thing that will do that is the Word of God.

We can make application to our own nation. We don't know though with any certainty that horrible things are going to happen in the future. If some of the policies that are set forth by our present administration do continue though, in terms of the unprecedented and continuous printing of money to fund the debt and the unprecedented spending of money and running the debt up, then we can look forward to some pretty terrible things happening as the monetary system could very well collapse. That is a worst case scenario. There could be a change of heart in the people of this nation, just as there has been in other nations, and things could just as well go in the other direction. Nothing is set in stone, at least it hasn't been revealed to us if it has. So there is always hope. But the hope that Josiah offers is even in the context of knowing with certainty the judgment was coming he doesn't react in negativity, he remains humble and understands that he needs to prepare his people for the horrible things that are coming. And so he is going to have the Word of God read to them so that they understand why it is going to happen and they can prepare themselves spiritually to endure the discipline.

2 Kings 23:3 ^NASB "The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all {his} heart and all {his} soul, to carry out the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant." Commandments = mandates; testimonies = related to how to worship Him; statutes = reference to the civil laws. Josiah makes a covenant, he renews the vow to be obedient to God and to fully and completely apply the law to the nation of Judah. Note that at the end of that verse it says that all the people took a stand for the covenant. So it is not just the king but everybody gets on board. This is explained in a little more detail in 2 Chronicles 34:32 ^NASB "Moreover, he made all who were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand {with him.} So the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers." He forces the issue. He doesn't force their volition but he brings it to a volitional point and he says, just as Joshua did after they had entered the land was about to die and said, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord; but who are you going to serve?" Josiah makes the same kind of challenge, and the people followed him in his leadership.

Note: The Word of God was taught and understood. The Bible teaches truth. They understood what had been revealed to Moses and what the consequences were going to be. They understood that the Bible presents an exclusive look at truth. This is what causes most people in our culture to vibrate in such hostility today. It is that they reject the exclusivity of God's Word; they reject the fact that God says basically it is My way or the highway; it is My was or eternal condemnation. Jesus said: "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one can come to the Father except by me." It is that exclusivity that drives the rebellious creature nuts because he wants to think that he knows more than he actually does; he knows better than God. Secondly, people have a choice. The choice is to obey or disobey. It emphasizes volition on the part of the people in the culture. It is not just the leadership, it is also the people. That was abundantly illustrated in the book of Judges. Judges focuses first on the failure of the leadership, and there was always a failure and it got increasingly worse in the period of the judges. No failure was mentioned about the first judge, Othniel, but as we begin to read through the book and see failure of Barak to assert his masculine role as the leader and won't go into battle unless Deborah is with him, and we see the increased feminism that develops among the men and the masculinity of the women was typical in the pagan culture. Then Gideon who is cowering on the threshing floor afraid of the Midianites who were coming. Then when God clearly tells him what to do, and he knows it is God and offers a sacrifice to God, even then he still wants to play this game with God about the dew on the fleece. He really doesn't want to obey God's commandment to go and defeat the Midianites. The Jephthah who had become so paganized in the culture that he thinks he can bargain with God by offering a sacrifice to God of his daughter. Then we get to Samson of whom nothing good was said. That is the indictment of the leadership. Then in the next couple of chapters is the indictment of the priesthood that has become almost totally corrupt, and the indictment of the people who had become so hardened against sin and violence. They, too, had come to be living in a way that was no different from the pagan Canaanite culture that had preceded them.

We see this same kind of trend taking place within this time period in the southern kingdom of Judah. There had been two kings who had taken the people forward, and it was on the basis of their leadership the people had followed, but as soon as those leaders were gone the volition of the people collapsed because the next leaders who came along were leaders who promoted evil and the people just went along with them. There was the evil of Ahaz and then the godly king Hezekiah. Hezekiah was followed by his ungodly son Manasseh and his son Amon, and they are followed by Josiah. Josiah is followed by his three horrible, evil sons who take the nation into its final days when it is destroyed by the Babylonians. The people had a choice, though, throughout this entire period and it was whether they would worship the Lord, put Him first and obey Him. Because the people rejected the Word of God the nation came under the judgment of the five stages of discipline outlined in the Mosaic law.

Even though there is not a direct correspondence between Israel and the United States—Israel was a covenant nation with God; the United States does not have that kind of covenant with God—there are certain trends or patterns or similarities that we see with cultures, that those cultures, civilizations, nations that reject God's Word and get mired in paganism end up in self-destruction that follows patterns that are very similar to those that God outlined to the Israelites. They are not the same thing because Gentile nations are not in a covenant relationship with God. Nevertheless God has built in these kinds of consequences to the essence of reality. 

So the people have a choice to obey or disobey and here they choose to obey. But notice that obedience means action. It can be either a mental action or a physical action, but in a lot of actions it involves both. When God's Word challenges us to change, as Paul talks about in Romans 12:2, to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, it starts with the mind but it often ends with changed behavior. That is what God was getting at in the evaluation reports to the seven churches in Revelation. Those who had a negative evaluation were to repent, which means to change. An understanding of God's Word isn't just an academic exercise where we learn great things about God but it doesn't impact the way we live, that which changes the way we think should change the way we live. Obedience means action. It involves first mental change and then secondly, overt change.

We see the overt change that takes place in the following verses. When they began to cleanse the nation they started at the temple, and then there are three or four things that happened with the temple. Then they moved out from the temple to Judah, and there are three or four things that are changed in relationship to Judah. Once Judah had been cleansed they head north into what was the northern kingdom and there is a cleansing that takes place there. Once that is finished then Josiah comes back to the southern kingdom, and now that they have literally cleansed the nation of the sin of idolatry what is going to take place? Then they are going to observe the greatest observance of Passover that the southern kingdom of Judah ever observed going back to the time of Samuel. And what has to be done in order to observe the Passover? Remember the Passover day was 14^th Nisan, a spring month, and before Passover could be observed, because Passover was the first day of the week-long observance of the feast of unleavened bread, all of the leaven had to be removed from the house as a sign of the ritual cleansing of the house from sin. So what we see in this pattern is first of all a literal, physical cleansing of the nation from the leaven of idolatry, apostasy and the perversion that went along with all of those false religions. Then they are going to observe the Passover and the feats of unleavened bread. So the reality occurred first and then the ritual occurs second which symbolizes what has just occurred physically and literally in the nation. Once they had cleansed the nation of the evil of apostasy and idolatry then they are prepared spiritually to observe the Passover.

When the text goes into all of the details of the Passover and how it is observed (found in the 2 Chronicles passage) it tells us that this is the greatest observance of Passover that ever occurred. And that is because the hearts of the people had been truly turned back to God through the teaching of His Word. That is why the teaching of God's Word is so vital and so important, because that is the only way that we can be transformed by the renewing of our mind. It is the only way we come to understand the grace of God, the only way we come to understand all that God has provided for us, and the response of the person who hears the Word of God is the response of Josiah which is to humble ourselves under the authority of God. That means learning the Word of God and applying the Word of God in every area of our life.