Worldliness: Entertained by the World

12 01 2009

Titus 2:11-14

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Goal for this sermon

To get us to be more discerning about how our entertainment choices effect our love for God.

Isn’t discussing TV, movies, music legalism?

No, legalism would be for me to hand out a list of tv shows that you cannot watch and say in order to be a member of this church don’t watch these shows.  Mostly the Bible is not concerned about making a list, but identifying the condition of our heart.

Entertainment is not Sin.

First of all let me say that entertainment is not a sin.  Sherri and I have a line item in our budget called entertainment. We spend that money on food, movies, date night, bowling. We like to have fun!  Entertainment is not wrong.

What is undetectable is more difficult to fight.

  • Though entertainment is not a sin, it can lead our heart away from loving God first and foremost.
  • “I believe that the challenge of living with popular culture may well be as serious for modern Christians as persecution and plagues were for the saints of earlier centuries…. Enemies that come loudly and visibly are usually much easier to fight than those that are undetectable.” Ken Myers

Things that contribute to being blind sided by the world.

  1. our own Biblical ignorance.
  2. Failure to maintain our relationship with God daily.
  3. The ease of worldly thing coming into our homes

  • The more we see something the more prone we are to except it.

Excuses we make about Entertainment

I don’t really listen.

  • Have you ever started singing a song and it got stuck in your head, but you didn’t know how?
  • advertisers spend $215 billion annually on tv commercials

I just want to relax.

  • Living in entertainment without thinking about it is the biggest danger.

  • “No one with common human feeling will object to the simple pleasures of life, nor to such harmless forms of entertainment as may help to relax the nerves and refresh the mind exhausted by toil. Such things, if used with discretion, may be a blessing along the way. That is one thing, however, the all-out devotion to entertainment as a major activity for which and by which men live is definitely something else again.” A. W. Tozer The Great God Entertainment

I see it and hear it all the time anyway.

  • I told my mom when I was a teenager that the reason I didn’t have any friends was because she didn’t let me go the the movies to watch the latest thriller. All my friend would talk about it at school and I couldn’t join them because I didn’t know anything about the movie.

I Don’t watch TV that much.

  • In a Roper survey 96% of people polled claimed they watched less tv than the average person.  Worldliness p. 43

It doesn’t effect me.

  • We are more likely to do what we see most often. We are less likely to do what we see very seldom.

  • “We’re more easily tempted than we know or are willing to admit.”

  • They have even identified the songs. If you ask what the tunes of Aerosmith, Eminem, Don McLean, Bruce Springsteen, Tupac Shakur and Meat Loaf have in common with the theme tunes of the American children’s television show Barney, there is only one answer: all have been used to torture people. http://www.newstatesman.com/200611060029

  • “The drift toward worldliness is subtle, gradual, and internal. And if we assume we’re immune to it, that’s a sure sign the drift has begun.” worldliness

How do we know if our attitude toward entertainment is sinful.

  • If you would rather spend money on entertainment than on godly things.

  • If entertainment becomes something you must have and the things of God become something you can take or leave.

  • If entertainment consumes our time, but we don’t have time for God.

Other thoughts

  • We should watch with discernment!
  • Don’t base the appropriateness of a show on its rating alone.
  • Accountability

Who wants to be a millionaire when God has given us the best deal or no deal. You can be a nice family guy and go the south park and still be on an island lost. CSI’s in Miami or New York cannot solve the cold case with our hearts. God’s law and order through Jesus can lead to the prison break of our souls, if we turn from our American idols. Then we can walk out of the ER and into the Smallville that is our world and rewrite the secret life of the American teenager. The 24 hours that come as the world turns do not have to be run by a wheel of fortune, but by God who is the king of hill and of queens. God can take the bones of our anatomy (not just grey’s), reconfigure the numbers, and make housewives that are desperate for Him.


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Worldliness Part 1 – 1 John 2:15-17 & 2 Tim. 4:10

5 01 2009

Definition: Worldliness is the enemy of God that draws our hearts subtly away from Him.

It is loving the world to the point of being like the world. Why is being like the world bad?

Worldliness is the enemy of God

James 4:4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

1. The world is the enemy because it crucified our Lord.

    • John 17:14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

    2. The world is the enemy because it distracts us from loving God. 15

    3. Worldliness is the enemy because it stops evangelism dead in its tracks.

    • When God’s people begin to love the world it effects how others view God. When believers act like the world, God is not glorified or magnified instead he is denied and crucified.
    • “I believe that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church.” Spurgeon in 1906

    Worldliness is a matter of the heart.

    • 2 Tim. 4:10 Demas – Turning back was a symptom to the real problem – Worldliness in the heart.
    • It is an issue of what we love and love comes from the heart.
    • “I define worldliness as being attached to, engrossed in, or preoccupied with the things of this temporal life.” Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins
    • Matt.6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money
    • Therefore it is not about tv’s, radios, clothes, money, and possessions mainly, but it is mainly about our heart being in love with the world.

    Worldliness is a subtle sin.

    • It creeps in when no one is looking.

    Anyone can fall into worldliness.

    • Demas was a missionary. 2 Tim. 4:10
    • Why is this command so straight forward?
    • It is straight forward because it is a serious problem.
    • It is straight forward to motivate us to not love the world.
    • If I say, “A person who says they love God but is completely worldly is ought to change,” that would be true but to say another way would be more motivating and true.
    • “A person who says they love God but are completely worldly in their action is like a woman who says she loves her husband while working the street corner.”
    • The Bible uses the word “whore” to describe those who love other things more than God.
    • Jer. 2:20 For long ago I broke your yoke and burst your bonds; but you said, ‘I will not serve.’ Yes, on every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down like a whore.
    • Am I worldly? In what areas of my life am I worldly?
    • “Imagine I take a blind test in which my task is to identify the genuine follower of Jesus Christ. My choices are an unregenerate individual and you. I’m given two reports detailing conversations, Internet activity, manner of dress, iPod playlists, television habits, hobbies, leisure time, financial transactions, thoughts, passions, and dreams. The question is: Would I be able to tell you apart? Would I discern the difference between you and your unconverted neighbor, coworker, classmate, or friend.?” C. J. Mahaney, Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World.

    The Good News

    • Jesus Died for us to overcome the world.
    • Gal. 6:14 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
    • 1 John 5:5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?


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    Adaptation or Worldliness?

    27 11 2007

    Rom. 12:2 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. ESV

    1 Cor. 9:22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. ESV

    Sunday night I preached on the challenge of living like Paul did in 1 Cor. 9:22 and not being comformed to the world (Rom. 12:2).   It is very important that we do both and not neglect either one.  If we neglect adapting to our culture (1 Cor. 9:19-23), then we neglect the missions thrust.  If we neglect the Romans 12:2 passage, we become worldly and do not impact God’s kingdom as we ought.  To go more to either side is to hinder the gospel.  In my opinion many traditional churches, neglect becoming “all things to all people.” Therefore some are not saved. 

    Click Here to read an interesting article on this topic by Ed Stetzer.  He serves as the Missiologist and Director of the Center for Missional Research at the North American Mission Board in Alpharetta, GA and he is co-pastor of Lake Ridge Church in Cumming, GA.


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