Pathway to Victory

Speaker 1

Hey, podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress.

And right now, your generous gift will have twice the impact, thanks to the Salt and Light Matching Challenge, active now through July 6th. To give a special matching challenge gift, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 2

Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's word with every day on this Bible teaching program on today's edition of Pathway to Victory.

Speaker 3

One reason some Christians are not making any difference in the world is that they're spiritual sellouts. They have sold out to an ungodly lifestyle.

They can't point out sin in the culture because they don't recognize it in their own life or because of their adherence to political correctness. That is, they won't speak out against sin because they don't want to be identified as a religious fanatic.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. You know, with our world as dark and lost as it is, it's tempting to live in a holy huddle, only interacting with the Christians around us.

But Elijah didn't shy away from being an influence in his culture, and neither should we. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress urges us to be an influence for God in our own setting.

Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message. Dr. Jeffress.

Speaker 2

Thanks David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. When Jesus commanded his followers to become salt and light in our world, some people equate his decree as a call for more missionaries or preachers or Bible teachers. Now that's certainly part of it, but in reality, anyone who loves Jesus and wants to obey his word is qualified to become salt and light.

I've written a brand new book on this topic. It's called Shine the Light. In my book, I've included several inspirational stories on how to become one of God's world changers. It starts, of course, right where you live, with a simple expression of God's love and mercy.

Well, I'm prepared to send you my brand new book when you give a generous gift to the Salt and Light Matching Challenge that's active right now until July 6th. This amazing million dollar matching challenge is an opportunity for believers like you to be a part of something bigger than a movement to boldly proclaim the gospel and stand for biblical truth. Plus, it will double the size and impact of your gift. Pathway to Victory is committed to being a light in the darkness of a world that's in desperate need.

By giving your very best gift, as the Lord leads you to this matching challenge, you're becoming salt and light, just like a missionary who spreads the good news. Please be prepared to take down our contact information right after today's message. We can't succeed in reaching our goal without supportive friends like you.

Now let's turn to 1 Kings, chapter 17 for our next study. I've titled today's message "Determine to Influence."

Speaker 3

Your culture, Determining to influence your culture for God. Now, let's first of all look at God's mandate to actually even care for our culture. You know, some people actually believe that God has no interest in what is happening in the world. And yet from the very beginning, God gave man the mandate to take care of the world in which he placed him. In Genesis 2, verse 15, the Bible says, the Lord God took care of and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.

And that leads me to a definition of culture. Write this down. Culture is what human beings make of the world. When we talk about culture, we're talking about what human beings make of the world. Now, to be honest, human beings have done some good things for this world. I mean, we have improved things. We have cultivated the earth that God has planted us in. That is a good thing. But if we are honest, we'd also say that there has been a deterioration of our world as well. What is our place in that culture that seems to be unraveling more day after day?

Well, in Ephesians 2:10, Paul gives us an interesting word picture of what we are to be in this deteriorating culture. He said, we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. He said, God has created us as his workmanship. That word workmanship is the Greek word poema. We get our word poem from it. Last time we talked about the story that God is writing in your life right now. Your story is like a poem. God is writing through your life, not to be put on the shelf somewhere, but to be read by those around you. God wants others you come in contact with to see your life story, to see your stand for God.

Of course, the key word is come in contact with to influence our culture. We have to come in contact with our culture. You know, God left us here not to isolate ourselves from the culture, not to identify with the culture, but to influence the culture. And yet I think you'd have to agree with me on the whole. Christians aren't doing that great of a job of influencing the culture, are we? I mean, look at what's happening. And that's amazing when you see our culture unraveling with as many Christians as there are in this country, supposedly.

You know, one survey says that one fourth of the US Population claims to be evangelical Christian. Somebody put that in perspective pretty well. You know, a pound of meat would probably be influenced by a quarter pound of salt. Don't you think if you had a quarter pound of salt, you could really flavor a pound of meat? If a quarter of our population are Christians, why are we having zero influence on this culture? I think there are two reasons that I want to mention to you today.

One reason is some Christians have become what I call silo saints. Instead of being salt that penetrates the meat, flavors the meat, preserves the meat, these Christians remain in the salt shaker, totally isolated from the meat. They become silo saints, and they actually pride themselves on that. They say, well, I don't want to get involved in the culture. Is that what God has called us to do? No, but there are many Christians who fall for that and even justify that.

Not long ago, I was on a panel discussion at a seminary. And during the Q and A time, one of the students asked me this question. Dr. Jeffress, why do you find feel that conservative Christians have the right to impose their values on a secular, pluralistic society? Why do conservative Christians have the right to impose their values on a secular society? And my answer to him was, look, society is always going to be influenced by somebody's set of values. The only question is, whose values are going to impact a society? Some set of values impact any culture.

For the first. And I gave him an illustration. I said, for example, for the first 160 years of our nation's history, we said that marriage should be between one man and one woman. That was the biblical principle, one man and one woman. In 1885, the Supreme Court, Murphy vs Ramsey, said, Marriage is a holy estate of God consisting of the union of one man and one woman. That was our value. That was imposed, if you will, by our adherence to the Judeo-Christian belief. But then suddenly, in 2015, the Supreme Court decided to change that. In Obergefell vs Hodges, they said, we're gonna have a new set of values that influence our policy. The new value is marriage is whatever you want it to be. And the Supreme Court imposed that value on our nation. And believe me, it is imposed on us. If you don't subscribe to that value, if you don't bow down to it, you face fines or even bankruptcy in your work.

So remember this, somebody's values are already always going to be imposed on a society. It's just a question of whose values are going to be imposed. Silo saints don't understand that. You see, they believe what they believe, first of all because they see a false dichotomy between the sacred and the secular. They say, now the church is sacred, but the government, ooh, that's secular. That's bad. As we've seen, God actually designed both institutions to carry out his purpose. He designed the church and he designed government.

And this idea that the church should not have any influence on governmental power policy, that is something only infidels and unbelievers really believe. You know, that's why, by the way, liberals always are happy to talk about freedom of worship. Oh, we believe in the freedom of worship, but they never talk about what the Constitution says, the free exercise of religion. You see, the freedom of worship means basically these infidels, they don't care what we do on Sunday morning at 11 o'clock in our own church or Saturday in our synagogue, they're okay with that. If those nutcases want to worship some imaginary being, that's fine. They say we're all for the freedom of worship.

But that's not what the Constitution says. The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of our faith, not just on Sunday mornings, but in every part of our life. But it's the infidels, the secularists, who have drawn this false separation between faith and everyday life. These silo saints also have a false understanding of God's sovereignty. They think God is only interested in the church and in Christians. His rule is limited to church and to the Christians. Is that what the Bible says?

Listen to Psalm 103:19. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his sovereignty rules over all. God is not just the ruler over the church, he's the ruler over government. He's the ruler over all creation. And while it's true, not everybody recognizes that rule, it's God's will that people submit to his will. Not just in the future, sometime, but right now. It is God's desire that every people, every nation submit themselves to God's rule. Rule now, not in the future.

If you don't believe that, how many of you have ever said the Lord's Prayer before? Come on, admit to it. What have you really prayed? If you've prayed the Lord's prayer. Listen to this. Matthew 6, 9, 10. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When you're praying for the Lord's will to be done, you're not talking about in the future. You're saying, God, I want your will being done right now on earth, as it's being done right now in heaven.

Let me ask you something. Do you think it's part of God's will for 1.3 million children to be butchered in the womb every year through abortion? Is that part of God's will? Is it God's will for Christians to be persecuted? Not just marginalized, but persecuted, put in boiling oil, having their heads chopped off in the Middle East, around the world? Is that part of God's will, the persecution of his followers? Is it God's will for immorality to continue and for marriage to be redefined? Is that part of God's will? Of course it's not.

The idea that we can just remain cloistered together and not try to impact our culture for good is an idea that is absolutely foreign to Christianity. The fact is, spiritual silo people are isolating themselves from the culture. That's why they have no impact on the culture. They live in their silos. They are silo saints.

But there's another group of Christians who are having no impact on this world because they are what I call spiritual sellouts. No, they haven't isolated themselves from the culture. Instead, they have identified with the culture. They have become so much like the world that you can't tell the difference between these Christians and unbelievers. They have adopted the world's value system. They are like the salt Jesus talked about in Matthew 5 that has lost its saltiness. It's become worthless and deserves to be thrown out. That's what he's talking about. Salt that has lost its savor, that has lost its bite. It's become diluted, and therefore it is worthless. Many Christians are like that.

They refuse to recognize sin. They have a reluctance to recognize sin in the culture because, frankly, they don't recognize sin in their own life. They have so adopted the world's value system. One Christian philosopher described the process of how sin has become acceptable to the world and even to Christians like this. He says, as any sin passes through its stages, from temptation to toleration, to approval, its name is first euphemized, then avoided, then forgotten. A colleague tells me that some of his fellow scholars call child molestation intergenerational intimacy, end of quote. That's a euphemism. A good-hearted editor tried to talk me out of using the term sodomy. That's avoidance. My students don't know the word fornication at all. That's forgetfulness.

If we can't truly call sin sin, if we can't label it for what it is, sodomy, fornication, molestation, no wonder we have become like the world. How many churches today do you know of that will call sin sin? They avoid it and then they forget it. A friend of mine says it very well. The sins of the culture soon become the sins of Christians and the sins of Christians become the sin of the church. One reason some Christians are not making any difference in the world is that they are spiritual sellouts. They have sold out to an ungodly lifestyle. They can't point out sin in the culture because they don't recognize it in their own life or because of their adherence to political correctness.

That is, they won't speak out against sin because they don't want to be identified as a religious fanatic. They're afraid of any personal loss in popularity or job promotion or even harmony in their own home that taking a stand for Christ will cause. So what happens whenever they are with a Christian who will take such a stand? Instead of supporting that Christian, they back away as far as they can, not wanting to have any of that negative fallout. You see it all of the time.

And remember Peter, how he said, Lord, I'm with you to the end. But then when the heat started being turned up on Jesus and he started being arrested and going to the trials, what does it say? Peter started following the Lord. What, from a distance? From a distance. See, he wanted to keep his options open in case this thing didn't turn out too well. That's the same sentiment of a lot of Christians today. You know, oh, we're with you, brother. We're with you. Until there's some negative fallout. And then these Christians fail to speak up because they don't want to be identified with something that might cause them a problem.

I told you last time that one of the most memorable experiences of my life was preaching at the inauguration. But an equally memorable day was what happened the day before the inauguration. On that Thursday night before the inauguration, I was walking into the studios of Fox News in Washington, D.C., and my cell phone started to ring. So I answered the phone and the person on the other end said, you just need to know that the breaking news on CNN and NBC is that President Trump has chosen a, quote, inflammatory pastor who is noted for his anti-Muslim comments to lead the service tomorrow. That would be me, by the way.

And so when I got that news, I'm telling you, the blood drained from my face. I was getting ready to go on television to talk about what I was going to be preaching tomorrow. That day, that next day, I knew I wasn't going to be preaching anything. I expected that cell phone to ring at any moment and the chairman of the inauguration committee to say, thank you for being willing to do this, but we highly recommend you bow out. And I wouldn't have blamed them, by the way, for doing that. They didn't need that kind of baggage on such a festive occasion.

Well, my phone did ring and it was the person in charge. And they said, pastor, we just want you to know we're standing with you on this. We're standing with you. And by the way, it's not because they necessarily agreed with everything I believe, not at all. But they also recognize that I represented the beliefs of millions of Christians who believe what the Bible says. Now, what stood out to me was they were willing to take a stand that a lot of Christian leaders aren't willing to take. They had the boldness to take a stand. I've seen many, many Christians shrink away from.

I have to tell you, one of the great disappointments of my ministry through the years has been friends, leaders in the church who, when the temperature started to get a little hot, they shrank away. They found some reason to quit coming to church. They found some reason to join another fellowship that wasn't quite as controversial. By the way, Paul knew something of that disappointment. In 2 Timothy 4:10, he writes, Demas having loved this present world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica. Demas was one of those. I'm with you, Paul, until the very end, or until it becomes unpopular. Demas loved his freedom more than he loved the apostle Paul and Christ.

You know, both of these reasons explain why we don't make a bigger difference in our culture. Some Christians have isolated themselves by becoming silo saints. Some Christians have identified with the culture by being spiritual sellouts. But of these two extremes, you know, the one I think is the most dangerous? It's the isolation from the culture. I mean, the fact is, I don't know any Christian who tries to justify his being like the culture with a Bible verse. Well, here's the verse that explains why I commit adultery. Here's the verse that explains why I'm involved in fornication.

And yet it's the isolationists who say, oh yes, I'm doing the right thing by not sullying myself getting involved with non-Christians. After all, if I get involved with non-Christians, I'm gonna become like them. You know, in John 17, beginning with verse 11, I want you to listen to this prayer that Jesus prayed not just for his apostles, but also who would come to know him in centuries later through the witness of the apostles. Did you know this is the prayer that Jesus prayed for you the night before he was crucified?

And look at it with me, John 17, 11. And then down to verses 14 and 17, he says to God, now I am departing from the world. They are staying in this world, but I am coming to you. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I'm not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Make them holy by your truth. Teach them your word, which is truth.

Notice Jesus said, I'm not asking you to isolate my followers from the world. Don't take them out. Then they can't do any good. And I certainly don't want them to identify and become like the world. They're not of the world. And that's why God, I'm praying, make them holy, separate, apart from the world. His prayer was that we would influence the world. Jesus understood and modeled how to do that, how to influence the world without isolation, without identification.

And so did Elijah. Elijah is a perfect illustration of somebody who influenced his culture rather than isolating or identifying with it. As my old professor Howard Hendricks said, when Elijah burst on the scene, he came to a nation that was on the skids. He writes, there was a mania of mediocrity. Seven thousand believers were huddled in a cave in silent protest. We don't want to get involved, they cried. But this man Elijah stands out like a spiritual colossus in the midst of a generation of perverts and spiritual pygmies. I love that phrase. Doesn't that describe the world in which we live? A world filled with perfect and spiritual pygmies? And yet in the middle of that, Elijah was a giant.

Speaker 2

If you feel unsettled in this culture, if you're beginning to feel like an outsider as a Christian, that's because God is preparing you to make an impact. It's impossible to be at peace with a culture that is clearly at odds with God. And if you're ready to begin a journey of discovery and if you're ready to begin making a difference for Him, I want to send you my brand new book, *Shine the Light*. It will come to your home with my thanks for your generous participation in the Salt and Light Matching Challenge.

This time-sensitive matching challenge has a goal of $1 million, which means after it's matched, it will total $2 million. Every gift, no matter the size, will help us hit the target. So if you're able to give $100, it will become $200. Due to the matching challenge, a gift of $500 will become $1,000. A $5,000 gift would be matched until it became $10,000. In the end, these proceeds will empower us to shine the bright light of the gospel not only here in America, but around the world.

As we conclude today, let me give you an encouraging word. Your generous gifts are truly making a difference. Let me give you a glimpse into one life. Ricky from Arkansas wrote Pastor Jeffress, "Considering the evil we are witnessing in our nation today, your teaching gives me hope. I believe Satan knows if he destroys the United States, the rest of the world will fall in line and follow him. I pray the rest of our nation will realize it before it's too late."

That is why we need your voice preaching truth and light into our dark nation. Thank you, Ricky, for that encouragement, and I promise to continue preaching with boldness as you continue to support Pathway to Victory with your generous gifts.

Thanks so much,

David.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. Today, when you invest in the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you the brand new book by Dr. Jeffress, *Shine the Light*. Call 866-999-2965 or visit our website ptv.org, and when your gift is $100 or more, we'll also send you the complete, unedited collection of audio and video discs for the *Shine the Light* teaching series.

Remember, every dollar you give right now will be doubled in impact by our Salt and Light Matching Challenge. That's until we reach the goal of $1 million. So please get in touch right away. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. You could write to us. Here's that mailing address: P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas. Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins, wishing you a great weekend. Then join us Monday when we continue our series called *Shine the Light* right here on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible.

And right now, your ministry gift will be matched and therefore doubled in impact thanks to the Salt and Light Matching Challenge. Take advantage of this opportunity to double your impact before the deadline on July 6th. To give toward the matching challenge, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.