“Keys To Cultural Impact”
John 17:6-26
Sermon Series: “Modern Family”
Introduction: Why preach on this topic in the middle of a series about family? There are two basic reasons. One reason is that I think it is something the church in America needs to hear on July 4th weekend. We are called to impact our culture by being missionaries to our culture. A second reason is that families need to hear this message. We are called to this as families as well. This is a challenge to parents to raise their children with this focus. This is a call to teenagers and young adults to adopt this as part of their life mission.
Jesus said in John 17:18, “As you [the Father] sent Me into the world, I also have sent them [believers-us] into the world.” “Sent” is the Greek word, “apostello,” and it means, “to send forth on a certain mission.” This means that Jesus came into the world to save the world, and He now sends us into the world on the same mission. The world is made up of many different cultures, including the one in which we live. Jesus came into a totally different culture. He left a perfect culture and came into a sinful one. He personally interacted with a sinful culture and loved sinners without ever sinning or condoning sin. Jesus is calling us to be missionaries in our world. This means He is calling us to interact with a sinful culture and love sinners without sinning or condoning sin. This is quite a challenge, but it is our mission.
It is important for us to see ourselves as missionaries in our culture. If we go on a mission trip to another country, we do not have a problem with thinking this way, but it seems to be a challenge for us to think this way in our day to day lives. As we talk about being missionaries in culture, it is crucial for us to have some understanding of culture so let’s begin by defining culture. Leslie Newbigin defines culture as the “sum total ways of living developed by a group of human beings and handed on from generation to generation.”
God has given us what is often called The Cultural Mandate (Genesis 1:26-28, see also Jeremiah 29). This is the fact that we are God’s image-bearers who have been given delegated authority over the earth. We are stewards of God’s creation called to reproduce and build culture that honors God. However, everything is now skewed by sin. In addition, Mark Driscoll points out that the early work of the gospel was primarily urban. The city is upstream, and rural is downstream. Culture flows downstream. Stop fishing the junk out of the stream and move upstream to change things. Get as far upstream as possible. Here are some key elements of culture:
1. Language-
2. Family-
3. Technology-
4. Behavior/Morality-
5. Visual and Musical Arts-
6. Dress-
7. Laws-
8. Social and Political Organizations-
9. Beliefs-
10. Religion-
11. Traditions-
12. Stories-
With that said in the way of introduction and background about culture, here are five keys from John 17 to impacting the culture:
1. The unity of believers (v. 11, 20-26). In verse 21, Jesus prayed for us “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” How is the world going to see the love of God and believe in Jesus unless they see it in believers?
2. Expect to be hated by the world (v. 14-16). If we are gospel missionaries, we can expect that God will use us to impact the culture by reaching some, but we will also be hated and rejected by others. This happened to Jesus and the apostles.
3. Sanctify ourselves (v. 17, 19). “Sanctify” means “to set apart unto God.” This refers to our spiritual growth. Godliness is crucial to impacting the world, but this happens while we are engaging the world and not while hiding from it. If we are going to impact the culture, there are three categories we need to keep before us:
Receive – Redeem – Reject
4. Immerse ourselves in Scripture (v. 17). In order to grow spiritually and impact the culture, we must know the truth, and that only comes through immersing ourselves in God’s Word.
5. Recognize and obey our calling to be missionaries to our culture (v. 18).
A. Jesus was a missionary so we cannot be like Him without being a missionary.
B. We are to have the heart of Jesus toward those who are far away from God.
C. Living as a missionary is to be a part of our day-to-day lifestyle.
D. We are to reach out to our communities and world as churches by going individually and sending out missionaries (Matthew 28:18-20).
