Our morality shouldn’t be dictated by the culture.
Whose ever been tossed around by waves? I remember a time a few years back when my son was younger. I had him out in the ocean jumping waves, and I would pick him up over each wave when it came. He loved it and was giggling, having the time of his life. Then one wave got us. We tumbled and tumbled and tumbled some more, then finally we emerged, discombobulated, not knowing where we were, my glasses gone. What started as fun ended up in terror. That’s what we’re going to see this morning. That’s what happens if we follow the waves of the culture.
1 Timothy 3:15 – if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and [foundation] of the truth.
The church is to uphold the truth.
What does this mean for us? It means that when we gather here, we are not merely a congregation; we are defenders and preservers of God's eternal truth! We are the guardians of His Word, standing firm when the world tries to sway us. When we gather, we’re gathering around a book, the Word of God, because we are redeemed by the God of the Word. God is why we gather, so His Word is what we gather around.
We saw this last week, that the Word of God should dictate what we believe. That’s not just true about truth, but it’s true about morality. The Bible isn’t just about what to believe, but it’s about how to live. What you believe is of utmost importance, because it determines how you live. And the Bible is clear about how we are to live.
And what do you do when the world lives a different way than what the Bible says?
The church should be countercultural.
We’re going to be hearing from the Apostle Paul as he writes to different churches. You’ll see that his words are still applicable today.
Romans 12:1-2 – 1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
We have so many examples throughout our Bible of people being placed in a culture and are commended by God for being countercultural, for not giving into the morality of the culture around them. One of the clearest examples is that of Daniel.
Consider Daniel and his friends. They found themselves in a foreign land, surrounded by a culture that contradicted their faith. Despite the pressures to conform, they remained countercultural, refusing to compromise their devotion to God. When they were young, they didn’t eat what everyone else ate, and God blessed them and made them healthier than those around them. When they were told to bow down to the statue of kind Nebuchadnezzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused, even to the point of allowing themselves to be thrown into a fiery furnace. They didn’t just do so when they were young, but when Daniel was around 80, he was told not to pray, and he refused. They threw him in the lions’ den, but God shut the mouths of the lions. Daniel is one culture war victory after another.
I vividly remember, early in my ministry, an older lady stand up in the middle of a service and say a word she felt God wanted her to say, and she said it towards the youth. It was a powerful word that I still remember to this day. She said, “Dare to be a Daniel!” I want to say it to all of you today, whether 8 or 80…Dare to be a Daniel! Don’t stop standing for God, even amidst threat and persecution.
For Daniel and his friends, it didn’t matter what the culture said. It never did. The only thing that mattered is what God said. It’s the same for you and me. Notice Romans 12 doesn’t just say “do not be conformed.” But it also says, “Be transformed.” Here’s the thing. The gospel transforms us. Jesus changes us. He takes what was dead and brings it to life. He takes what is broken and makes it whole. He makes us a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come.
Here's what we are changed by, though. We are changed by the eternal, timeless one. We are changed by the unchanging truth of the gospel. And when we are changed, we are conformed to the image of Christ. And that image is unchanging.
Jesus has never gotten plastic surgery. He never dyed his hair. He doesn’t wear a disguise. Jesus is who he is, and we are changed into his likeness. We’ll get to more of what that means in a minute, but it at least means this:
Biblical morality is unchanging, yet the culture is constantly changing.
Hear how the Apostle Paul demonstrates maturity in a believer:
Ephesians 4:11-14 – 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
We’re going to get a little real now. Can we get real in church? This is right now in our world. If we can’t talk about it in the church, this world is doomed, and so are we. There’s a myriad different matters of morality we could talk about that the culture celebrates while the Bible condemns, but we’ll take one as a case study for a few moments because of its relevance to the church and culture. Let’s discuss the matter of homosexuality.
Hear an excerpt from Albert Mohler’s “The Briefing” just this week.[1] (Albert Mohler is the longest standing Southern Baptist seminary president, a cultural commentator, and a brilliant theologian.)
Just a matter of days ago, Chris Christie came out and said that he had changed his position on same-sex marriage. He had been against it and he served as governor in New Jersey from 2010 to 2018. Now, he says that his views on so-called marriage equality have changed. Here's what he said, "And so for me, it still was a process I had to go through to change the way I've been raised, both from a family perspective and what my mother and father taught me and felt, and also from a religious perspective and what my church taught me to believe." I read it exactly as he said it. That is a statement of absolute confusion. It's typical of politicians who don't really want you to follow what they're saying. Now, here's what he's saying. He has changed his position in a very timely way. He sees it for the 2024 presidential context and he's claiming this action by the Pope and by the Vatican as justification for his change or his statement to use his own terms of evolution.
Here's what he said, "Society has changed and what people are accepting in our country now is different than when I was growing up, certainly than when I was your age." And he said, "I don't have any objection to it any longer. In the end, I think I've been convinced," and he went on to cite Pope Francis, who "is now allowing blessings to same sex couples, even the church is changing." This is how things work. When you think about cultural change or moral change within a culture, here's how it works. All the people who are pushing for that change, they all of a sudden become allies and pushing that change using the same language, citing each other. "I'm for it because he's for it. She's for it because he's for it. The church is now for it, so we who were against it are now for it." For us, the most important thing is just the pattern of seeing here that Chris Christie cited this Vatican policy change as justification for changing his own position in the middle of a presidential campaign. This is how moral change happens.
Now, one of the things we've noted for years is that, on the right among conservatives, one of the ways this changes is when people say, "I all of a sudden have a member of my family who's come out LGBTQ and is now involved in the same-sex relationship, perhaps in the same sex marriage." I referred to this years ago as conservative moral relativism, the moral relativism of changing your position because of a relative. But just to state the obvious, and sometimes that's exactly our job, just to state the obvious, God's truth doesn't change. God defined marriage, he established marriage, he created marriage. We don't have the right to redefine marriage. Jesus affirmed the Father's designation of marriage is the union of a man and a woman and went on to say that's all that it can be. "Do you not know," he asks.
Many within the church are giving into the very thing that the Apostle Paul said that we are not to be tossed around by if we are mature believers…the waves of moral change. Whole denominations are going the way of the culture rather than the way of God’s Word. When you go the way of the culture, you are carried along by the ever-changing flow of progressivism.
We just sang these words: “On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”
“When you sing this hymn, picture in your mind a huge rock that withstands wind, rain, ocean waves, and storms. Or look up on the internet Haystack Rock, which is on the Oregon coast. This single rock is 235 feet tall and one of the world’s most well-known monoliths (single stones). Although buffeted by waves and changing tides for eons, Haystack Rock stands immovable, unchanging, and firmly secure. Yet, even more steadfast is the work of Christ.”[2]
This is a picture of how we should be. Immovable.
If morality is dictated by the culture, or any subjective standard, it becomes relative. And that is what this passage is urging against. Relative morality leads to devastation. I saw pictures and videos this week of the flood in Gatlinburg. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but when I saw pictures like this and how hard some of the water was rushing, my first thought was, “I can see how people die in floods.” If you’re not on something secure and unmoving, being swept away isn’t fun. It’s deadly.
Just look at the church today. They’re battling whether to give into the cultural standards or to stand on God’s standards. The thought, supposedly, is that we need to reach more people, but I want you to look at this. This is from the UK, just between 2015 and 2020.
The red are the denominations that have stood opposed to same sex marriage. The others are those who have either given in or haven’t made a decision to stand against it. The only denominations that are not decreasing are those who haven’t given into the cultural pressure.
“Here is a simple but profound truth: If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, the society is absolute. Society is left with one man or an elite filling the vacuum left by the loss of the Christian consensus which originally gave us form and freedom.” -Francis Schaeffer
When the church accepts the changes of the culture, the church becomes no different than the culture. And the culture becomes god. This is what the Apostle Paul continually urged churches against.
We could end right here and you would get the point, I believe. But there’s more to this argument.
We need an unchanging moral standard outside of ourselves. Humans are fallible. We don’t live up to our own standards. We don’t even do what we say we ought to do. (Read about Francis Schaeffer and his recording device around neck analogy.)[3] We don’t live up to our own standards, and our standards are constantly changing. We need an unchanging standard outside of ourselves. We can’t be that standard. Only God is.
The unchanging nature of morality is rooted in the unchanging nature of God.
“The moral absolutes rest upon God's character. The moral commands He has given to men are an expression of His character. Men as created in His image are to live by choice on the basis of what God is. The standards of morality are determined by what conforms to His character, while those things which do not conform are immoral.” -Francis Schaeffer
This is called the immutability of God. God is unchanging.
Malachi 3:6: "For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed."
Hebrews 13:8: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."
Psalm 119:89: "Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens."
James 1:17: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change."
Numbers 23:19: "God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?"
Psalm 33:11: "The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations."
Isaiah 40:8: "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever."
You don’t want a God that changes. That’s what you get with Greek mythology. That’s myth. That’s not reality. Here’s the reality:
We will be judged by God’s standards, not our own.
2 Corinthians 5:10 – For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
When you stand before a judge if you commit a crime, you’re not judged by your own standards. You’re judged by the laws that be. It’s the same before the judge of all the earth. And we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, whether we believe we will or not.
Our only hope on that day is Jesus. Our only salvation on that day is Jesus. That’s why we are called to repent and believe here and now. Turn from our sins. Turn from the ways of the world. Turn to Jesus.
[1] https://albertmohler.com/2024/01/10/briefing-1-10-24
[2] Our Hymns, Our Heritage, by David and Barbara Leeman (Chicago: Moody, 2022), 166.
