Main Session 3 - Sunday Afternoon

Al Mohler spoke this afternoon in a slightly shorter session, but with a crucial message. Here's all I could get down from "Discern Your Culture."

If there is any one thing lacking in the church today, it would be discernment. How can the church be so swayed by the culture? How can Christians find themselves so indistinguishable from the world? So influenced by sin? It has to be a lack of discernment.

I liked being a Boy Scout, especially in Florida, because it brought me into contact with snakes.
In Florida, there are two snakes very much alike. The Scarlet King Snake, and the Coral Snake.
“Red and black, friend of Jack; red and yellow, kill a fellow.”
And I came across a snake and forgot the poem. I’m like “Got the right stripes, you’re a pal; got the wrong stripes, this is the end of Al!”

I grew up in Charlie the Tuna’s generation. Charlie confused looking for tuna with good taste, with looking for tuna that tasted good.

Discernment is a matter of taste. Which do you prefer. Discernment is also knowing how important something is. Discernment is knowing what is central and what is peripheral. What is a taste issue and what is a truth issue?

Discernment is crucial, and absolutely synchronous with maturity.

How do we discern the culture? Define culture. Art? Starbucks? Parthenon?

Culture is a system of language, products, institutions, symbols foundational to human coexistence.

Culture is more than just the language – it’s the symbols, There’s overt communication and covert communication. This generation is an excellent example of that.

My 15-year-old son has a t-shirt, and it says “I can please only one person a day. Today isn’t your day, and tomorrow isn’t looking good either.”

What do cargo shorts mean? How much do you have to carry, anyway? You’re saying something with it. People are communicating by how they dress. Ladies, please understand what you’re saying by how you dress.

Discernment is necessary in a culture. We’re communicating in linguistic terms. The symbols are all around us. Aristotle said there was a problem in human understanding that he identified by a fish. If you ask the fish what it is to be wet, he can’t give you an honest answer. Wet is all he’s ever known. If you want to know what wet’s like, you have to ask someone who’s not a fish.

For so many people, it’s like the fish. We just know what it’s like to swim in the stuff. We don’t discern.

Five wrong thinkings.

1. Let’s just jump in. Get wet in the culture, assume it’s fine. (This is disastrous for the church).
2. Let’s stay completely dry and remove ourselves from the culture. (Good luck. how are you going to do that?) Thinking we’re not in the culture, when we are. It’s impossible to not be in the culture somehow or other. The Amish have made a serious effort to remove themselves from the culture. It can’t be done! An Amish father confessed that he was concerned about the younger generation because his daughter was talking about Madonna. (He thought she was investigating Catholicism.)
3. Take a dip. Drop in the culture where we find it convenient, thinking we can emerge safe and dry ourselves off.
4. Take a sip. Thinking that a short immersion will familiarize you with the culture, like going to an Italian restaurant will ramiliarize you with Italy.
5. Observing the culture will familiarize you with it. (National Geographic.)

The most dangerous aspects of the culture may well be the ones you don’t see anymore. The last things we often see with the eyes of Christ are the things closest to us that we don’t think about.

Matthew 22:23

Jesus confronts the Saduccees when they bring their black-widow story. It’s a setup. Jesus explains that they are mistaken, not understanding the Scripture. “Listen boys, it’d be a good thing if you read the Bible.” Then he explains the answer.

Jesus confronts the Pharisees when they try to do better than the Saduccees. “No one dared to ask him another question.” IN doing so Jesus gives a global commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

We’re talking about discernment. Discerning the law, morality, etc. Jesus says here’s the first issue. God comes first! Love of God is the first commandment. This commandment is comprehensive – loving God with heart, and soul, and MIND.

And then, without being asked, Jesus gives the second commandment – You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Upon these commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. Love of God, first, and love of neighbor.

Why do we love our neighbor? We love our neighbor because we love God, and God loves our neighbor.

So why do we discern the culture? Because we love God and we love our neighbor.

If we truly love God, then we will love our neighbor, and we’ll e concerned about our neighbor, like any human being – made in the image of God, and deserving of our treatment of them as our neighbor, because God has made them our neighbor.

This means tat every culture on the planet is our concern. We have to tie the Great Commandment with the Great Commission – go into all natiions and make disciples. We have to become somewhat adept in that culture, first just with language even.

Augustine: There are basically two cities: the heavenly city and the earthly city. On earth, no matter where we are, we are resident aliens. Rome can fall, but the church will not fall. God’s reign will not fall.

There are two loves corresponding to these two cities. In the heavenly city, there is nothing but the love of God. In the earthly city, there is nothing higher than the love of man.

The heavenly city is eternal! Even as God Himself is eternal. “Remember, they can kill us but they can’t hurt us.”

But then a pitfall is to assume the earthly city is of no concern. If the heavenly city is marked by the love of God for Christians, then in the earthly city we must see that God’s love is our responsibility. We must reach out to our neighbor, we must wish the same things for them, to see God’s kingdom come in them.

we understand that no culture is a means of salvation. Every culture is pagan and seductive!

“For us, no place is home, and all places are home.”

As long as we’re in this life but a part of the terrestrial city, we have no home, but every place is home. Everything else is just a matter of seeking by God’s grace to be faithful where we are.

Exercise in systematic theology related to the culture.

The doctrine of mankind. (missed this one)

The doctrine of God. God created His world perfectly. He made huiman beings social creature, gave us a useful planet, made us intelligent creatures in an interlligent creation, tells us to be makers and builders and tillers of the soil. He gave us language, most importantly so that we can praise Him but also so that we can interact.

Paul at Mars Hill says that God has designed by his sovereignty the different cultures for His glory.

Revelation tells us that there will be men and women from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. We won’t all be speaking one language of something.

The doctrine of sin. Every single culture has fallen. And since the Tower of Babel, God has forbidden the cultures from exercising the ultimate sign of pride. So until the last day we’re left with an insurmountable problem of linguistic chaos.

God, for his glory, created us able to make and build things, but we revel in these things far too much. We think what we’ve created makes us Creators. And you don’t have to be elite to worship culture. A lot of us kids with our iPods and cargo shorts are.

Every culture becomes a form of seduction. God’s curse on creation explains to us why our aesthetic understanding, our understanding of justice, is corrupt.

Look at this modern art, atonal music, etc.! It’s looking at theh fallenness of man. It’s trying to call the ugly true, and the disorderly, beautiful.

Male/female roles are part of the culture, and that’s another thing we can corrupt. There is a different cultural role for men and women. But the world corrupts that. The world corrupts our sexuality.

Here’s something radical: All this is going to burn. There’s not going to be any architecture awards or Pulitzer Prizes in heavens. All this art, civilsations, etc. will burn! Many even before the Lord comes.


Jesus humbled himself not just to the form of man, but to be in a human cultural system. Even though He was the Lord of that system! This is why we don’t try to emulate him by dressing the way He dressed, or speaking His language. We obey him by doing what He did – being a part of our culture, the way He did.

We are not saved from the culture; we are saved from sin. We are left in the world, by God’s sovereign design, to be agents in the culture. Therefore no place is home for us, and every place is home for us.

The Doctrine of the Church. We must understand that we have a responsibility in this culture. The Church. It’s present in every culture, and it’s a counterculture in the midst of some other culture. And it has absolute symmetry to its contingents in other cultures.

When the Church, the people of God, is gathered in congregations, that’s where you find little tastes of the culture to come!

We’re not Lone Rangers. We are to be a part of a church. The Love of God immediately means the love of neighbor.

The doctrine of eschatology. It’s gonna burn! There will be no art museums in heavens. God’s people are only going to give themselves unreservedly to the worship of God and proclaiming what He has done.


Then we think about our culture and we realize that the real-life living of what we do is so influenced by it. All our presuppositions are being shaped by this culture. That’s why we need the Church, to figure out the Truth behind all these cultural conventions.

Even though the culture has always been a part of the world, we’re living in a time of serious trial.

It’s also unusual for us to have such access to culture, twenty-four seven. I have 12,000 songs on my iPod.

We are fish swimming in a giant toxic sea. We’re not just supposed to jump out of the water. But we’re supposed to swim as Christians.

Love of God – engage the culture for His glory, and for gospel witness.

What about art, music, architecture, education, all those things. Should you do them? Yes, for the glory of God. However you can do that. But you’ll never jump out of the culture. You must be in the culture – discern the culture – for the glory of God. And although you can’t jump out of it, you are given discernment to step back from it and hear the speaking God tell us what we need to know.

Christians need “detox” from time to time. We come with all the toxins, poisons, seductions, temptations, and we come to church and in the midst of God’s people, confronted by the word of God, the toxicity becomes clear. We are sanctified.

It won’t be done until Jesus comes. But until Jesus comes, we are to be discerning Christians in the midst of a fallen culture.