Summer 2025 | The Babylon Mindset - Romans 12:2 | August 17

You are listening to teaching from Mountainside Church in Boone,

North Carolina, where we live as real people who are a part of a real family

serving a real God in the high country.

To learn more about our church, stay connected, or partner with us, visit mcboone.com.

Well, you all know me, except for you. Hi, I'm Eric.

So I'm preaching today on the, I guess the sermon title is Reading the Bible Counter-Culturally.

And it goes with our summer break theme where we've kind of talked about different

aspects of reading God's word.

And I want to start by reading Romans 12, 2, which is going to be kind of the key verse for today.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of

your mind so that by testing you may discern what is the will of God,

what is good and acceptable and perfect.

So Scott and I had a conversation a few months back where we talked about what

it means to be countercultural. I bet you didn't know you were going to get called out in my sermon.

He's not getting called out. But we were talking about politics, honestly.

And one of the things that turned in my mind in that conversation is that while, you know,

our political world feels very divided right now, and it is,

the reality is that what it means to be countercultural isn't to take a stance

against one side or another in politics or to, you know,

say Merry Christmas when other people say Happy Holidays or whatever. whatever, right?

There are many little, I mean, we literally have this term, the culture wars,

right? Which, you know, that's not really what I'm going to get into.

But what was turning in my mind was that,

Jesus preached a very counter-cultural message, and we're going to kind of explore some of that today.

But it was radical in a way that transcended politics or the differences between

the cultures of this world.

It was something that went against the very core of the values of this world,

stuff that every culture shares, values that every human culture around the world shares.

Yeah people kind of like i think we share the

same values but what happens is we we have these fights about like what is going

to maximize those values for our group right so well i'm not going to give examples

or or what's going to maximize my values against another group is another way

but that other group might be valuing the same thing they just want to maximize

their values against me, right?

We talk about money, like I want to make more money than my competitor.

He wants to make more money against me, but the reality is we're both valuing money, right?

So James says in chapter four, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and do not have, so you murder.

You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. 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.

Now, he's not talking about the loving your neighbor kind of friendship with the world, right?

He's not talking about being friends with unbelievers, even God so loved the

world that he gave his only begotten son and so on.

He's talking about allegiance to the kingdoms of this world and allegiance to

their values, valuing what they value, wishing to live by those values,

wishing to be a friend of the world in that way.

There are things that are so ingrained that people don't recognize them,

that we don't even realize they're what we value. There's this little parable

that this guy, David Foster Wallace, who probably someone in here has a better

idea of who he is, honestly, than I do. But he's like an author.

He gave this speech and said this parable. But it's useful. He talks about this

old fish is swimming along and he comes upon two young fish and he says, how's the water?

And the two young fish are kind of like, and they like swim by and then one

of them says to the other, what the heck is water, right? The point being,

fish just exist in water.

They don't think about what water is. In the same way, these are values that we just exist in.

And if we're not being transformed by the renewal of our minds,

we won't think about what they are either. And we won't question those deeply held assumptions.

So what are some of those values? In no particular order, I want to bring up

four that I think are pretty universal.

These aren't just American values. We have some other American values that I

think can be questioned according to the Bible, like individualism is a pretty

big one for Americans that I think we probably overemphasize compared to the Bible.

But that's not the same across cultures. Other cultures are very collective.

These are things that I think everyone pretty much holds in common.

So in no particular order, money.

We see it as normal, right, and praiseworthy to accumulate wealth.

Not to hoard it, you know, and make sure you give your 10% to the church,

but you know, you're trying to get yourself into a better financial position,

if not just outright trying to get rich.

And that's the, you know, in, in America specifically, I know I said this wasn't

about America, but like, it's the American dream, right?

To be upwardly mobile, to, to be financially comfortable, to have more stuff,

nicer stuff, more money, right?

We don't, we don't really often question whether that's the right way to live.

Another one is status. Now you might not, you know, want to be an Instagram

influencer with, you know, 2 billion followers or whatever.

Probably nobody here does. I don't know if you do. I question your judgment,

but, but we do, we do look up to those who have status and we desire status

for ourselves. We want people to think well of us.

We want to be recognized for what we're good at. And we don't really often question that either.

And, you know, probably we even want to be the best at something good,

you know, like praying or praying.

Playing praise music or preaching or serving or, I don't know,

managing people's finances.

Calling you out, Tori. I know you want to be the best accountant out there.

But we're not going to brag about it or anything. But we do.

We hope people notice how good we are at stuff.

Another one is power over others. And we might soften this and call it authority

or or think of it as hierarchy, right?

And it's not necessarily that each of us wants to be in charge.

Some people definitely don't, but we do hold that as a cultural value that someone has to be in charge.

We wanna know who's in charge, who gets to tell who what to do,

whether that's in government or business or the church or the family.

These are things we think about and these are things that we often see the disciples

asking Jesus about, right?

We inherently think it's a positive thing to be in a role of authority.

And I think maybe there's one value that kind of pulls these all together.

And that's security. We want to have security on our own terms.

So, you know, we want to have enough money, enough power, enough status,

the respect of others to make sure nothing bad happens to us or to to those

close to us. Right. We want we want that on our terms.

We want enough of that to feel good about it. Right.

And kind of like with money, I think you might ask, you know,

well, how much is enough?

And just a little bit more. Right. That's that's how we how we think we want

just a little bit more security. We want to make sure, you know,

we avoid all those bad things. Right.

And there's probably more. But those four were some of the ones that I think

are are pretty universal.

They're part of the the water that the human culture swims in to the point that

without the consistent renewal of our own minds, we're going to swim in that

as well without even, you know, asking ourselves, what is water, right?

And you might call the combination of these values a Babylon mindset.

And I say that because in the Bible, we see Babylon mentioned,

you know, throughout the course of the biblical story, all the way to Revelation.

And Babylon is representing the kingdoms of this world, right?

The empires and the kingdoms of this world.

And so that's the way the kingdoms of this world think is that,

you know, I mean, what I just described, right? Money, status, power, security.

And Jesus came talking about the arrival of the kingdom of heaven,

right? We're not in a kingdom of this world.

We're in a kingdom not of this world. The kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of

God. And he talked about that so much.

You might say the gospel is about the arrival of the kingdom of heaven on earth,

the crowning of the king and the invitation to kneel before that king.

But that's a topic for another day, although it is, you know, super important.

One of the most important things, perhaps. But for today, what I want to point

out is that we belong to that kingdom and as subjects of the king of that kingdom of heaven.

We're in fact given away out of the slavery of the Babylon mindset.

So what I want to do now is I want to read some scripture together and let that

scripture, and this is going to be, I think, all teachings of Jesus that I bring

up, but there is more in the New and Old Testaments.

Let that interrogate our mindsets. And so I don't have slides,

sorry. So you'll have to turn with me in your Bibles to Luke 6.

And this first thing that I'm going to read from is called the Sermon on the

Plain. It's very similar to the Sermon on the Mount, but there are a few differences.

They're both kind of examples, I think, of Jesus' teaching that present a lot of his core teachings.

All right, I'm gonna start reading from verse 20.

Oh, Luke six, starting in verse 20.

And he raised his eyes toward his disciples and began saying,

blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Now, the Matthew Beatitudes are more famous, but I'm sure you see the resemblance here, right?

And I'm not downplaying the Matthew Beatitudes, but I do think we sometimes

look at some of those and we can be,

you know, we say to ourselves, well, you know, I'm poor in spirit,

but in reality, we're quite wealthy in money, right?

Or, you know, I hunger and thirst

for righteousness, but meanwhile we're gluttonous for food and drink.

But here, like, this hits a little different, right? Not blessed are those who

hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are you who are hungry. Not blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are the poor, right? You who are poor, straight up.

And Jesus said both things, and the ones in Matthew have important and also

counter-cultural meanings, honestly.

But these ones like they kind of hit you're like whoa like this comes right

against our our faith and finances here in this world right it's not there's

no kind of you know well i'm poor in spirit well i i hunger and thirst for righteousness you know.

Blessed are you when the people hate you and when they exclude you and insult

you and scorn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.

Rejoice on that day and jump for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.

For their fathers used to treat the prophets the same way. So do we want the

praise that comes with status and success according to the values of this world?

But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.

Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will be hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when all the people speak well of you, for their fathers used to

treat the false prophets the same way.

So, I mean, to me, this is one of the things that really sets apart the Beatitudes

and Luke. They come with woes for the reverse, right? Like, this is hardcore.

Woe to you who are rich, well-fed, happy, and well-spoken of.

Like, that's pretty intense. And I want to be careful not to say that,

you know, Jesus isn't against laughter, okay? That's, but like you could get there.

If you take a very literal interpretation of these verses, you could get there, right?

So don't, don't overthink it, but also don't underthink it.

There's definitely something to be wrestled with here, right?

It's hard to look at these verses, believe Jesus meant what he said,

and then just go on with the Babylon mindset of, you know, get rich,

gain status, maintain power structures, eat, drink, and be merry, right? Right.

Then he says, but I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.

Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who are abusive to you.

Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also.

And whoever takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic from him either.

Now, obviously this is the greatest hit, right? From the Sermon on the Mount

as well. It's familiar, but man, like how challenging do we do it?

The best case probably if someone hits me on my cheek is that I'm just going

to like act like it didn't hurt because I don't want them to get a rise out

of me, right? I'm like, nah, you know, you got nothing.

But like, that's not like, my heart posture there is not, you know,

one of humble submission. It's one of like, I'm better than you,

right? That's not, it's not better.

Like, it's maybe better than if I hit them back and start a brawl, but like, barely.

Give to everyone who asks of you and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.

So we value generosity, right? You know, we, like Zach mentioned,

you're actually a very generous people and Mountainside has more than enough

and that's a huge blessing.

But man, this is a generosity that like doesn't make sense. Like...

Whoever takes away what is yours, don't demand it back. So I have it on good

authority, Scott, this whole sermon's basically from you, that Lowe's Hardware

for a long time didn't prosecute shoplifters.

Well, criminals figured this out and then they started criming Lowe's Hardware

so hard that they had to change the policy, right?

Is that more or less correct? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

Isn't this what's going to happen to us, right? If we obey Jesus on this,

if we don't demand back from him who steals from us?

Treat people the same way you want them to treat you. If you love those who

love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?

For even sinners do the same.

And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you?

Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount.

Again, this just goes right against that Babylon mindset, right?

The Babylon mindset says, to take care of yourself and those around you,

those close to you, those like you.

And Jesus isn't saying not to take care of those people, but he's saying,

expand your reach, right?

Not just them, but your enemies as well.

Love, do good for, and lend to those who don't love, don't do good for,

and don't lend to you or won't repay you.

But love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return.

Expecting nothing in return. Again, won't I just get bled dry?

And your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High,

for he himself is kind to ungrateful and evil people.

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

So, I don't want to leave the Sermon on the Mount out, so let's read a little from there too.

We're going to go to Matthew 6 now, starting in verse 19.

Read to 34, the whole thing. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,

where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal,

but store out for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust

destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body, so then, if your eye is clear,

your whole body will be full of light.

But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

So if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness.

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other,

or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life as to what you

will eat or what you will drink, nor for your body as to what you will put on.

Is life not more than food and the body more than clothing?

Look at the birds of the sky, that they do not sow nor reap nor gather crops

into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not much more important than they? And which of you by worrying can

add a single day to his lifespan?

And why are you worried about clothing? Notice how the lilies of the field grow.

They do not labor, nor do they spin thread for cloth.

Yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow

is thrown into the furnace, will he not much more clothe you? You of little faith.

Do not worry then saying, what are we to eat or what are we to drink or what

are we to wear for clothing? For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things.

For your heavenly father knows that you need all these things,

but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be provided to you.

So do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Ellie, my daughter, a couple of years ago said, wait, we read this verse,

this last verse and I asked her like, what does it mean?

She goes, oh, don't worry about getting in trouble tomorrow because like,

you're gonna get in trouble today.

Pretty close. But like, this really strikes at the heart of that idolatry of security, right?

I mean, Jesus is basically saying like, don't seek your own security.

Don't worry about that. I got it. Right. And we can hear that.

And in my own mind, I hear the little, but right.

But like, I got to make plans. Like, but I got, I need a retirement account.

I'm not saying you don't. Okay. Like this question of discernment,

maybe you don't, I don't know.

But, but we had like, I think we instantly, we hear that and we're,

for me, at least, it makes me really uncomfortable.

Like, am I really, like, how much am I not supposed to worry?

Like, all the way not worry? Like, but like, I should worry a little bit.

Like, I do worry a little bit, right?

It's like, it's incisive. Yeah.

Let's do one more. This is a short one. Matthew 20 verses 25 through 28.

Matthew 20:25–28

But Jesus called them to himself and said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles,

domineer over them, and those in high position exercise authority over them.

It is not this way among you, but whoever wants to become prominent among you

shall be your servant, and whoever desires to be first among you shall be your slave.

Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve,

and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So, do we actually look at leadership and hierarchy and authority in this way?

Even in the church, we struggle with this much less in, you know,

politics and business, right? How about in the family?

Like, is this how you live in your family?

Not always for me. Like, I was just, you know, I don't want to throw you all

under the bus and not include myself. Like, no.

Do we deliberately become of low status, like the little child that Jesus brought

to the disciples and demonstrated as an example of what we should be like when

they asked again about hierarchy and authority and power?

Time doesn't even allow us to address all of the counter-cultural things that

Jesus taught, much less the rest of the New Testament or the Old Testament.

We didn't talk about risking your own status by hanging out with the socially undesirable.

We didn't talk about doing your good deeds in secret so you don't risk doing

it for recognition. My goodness.

Treating the poor the same as the rich or nonviolence or forgiving over and over again.

And more, I thought I could get him. I did not forgive that fly.

Don't think you have to. It's okay.

But like, there's so much, right? And that's still, I'm really just referencing,

pretty much almost exclusively referencing direct teachings of Jesus,

much less Paul and James and all the others.

Guys, what if a people actually lived like this?

Like, that would be radical, right? Because it is an individual calling,

but it's also, it's a calling for the people for his own possession who are

zealous for good works, right?

That's what Titus describes, where Paul describes as in his letter to Titus,

that Jesus purified for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

The more I examine it, the more I realize the way of Jesus strikes at the heart

of the subconscious values of every human society.

It's not just that we don't, you know, drink smoke chew

or go with girls who do right it's it's a lot more

than that it's a whole flipping on the head of

the world's value system so how do

we get there because i fear that what i've

said so far is just going to come across as a blunt force

cuddling with all of the

things that we're not doing right right

like i i certainly read this

and preach this and i'm like oh it's tough

and if it hits you that way take

a deep breath because i think this this is an invitation not

a inquisition and i didn't write this down or really plan to say this but like

when i was a kid you know i think i would hear stuff like this and be like crap

i'm not saved like let's try this again you know like keep praying the jesus

prayer until it takes right and that's not that's not really what this is about.

I like, you know, if you're, if you're obstinately disobeying God in some way, like that's a problem.

You definitely need to repent of that. But I think, I don't think that's where we're at.

I think we, we are being sanctified and we struggle to get to the,

what Jesus, you know, with like one of his summary statements of the Sermon

on the Mount is like, you are to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

We're not there yet. Like, he understands that.

Obedience is still important, but this is not a condemnation is what I'm trying to get at.

And I think like, I want to come back to the verse that we started with because

I think this is what is needed to not be conformed to this world,

but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.

So that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God,

what is good and acceptable and perfect.

I think we just addressed what it looks like to be conformed to this world, right?

It's to have that Babylon mindset, to be wrapped around the axle of money,

status, power, and to be absorbed in the acquisition of security on our own terms.

So then how do we get transformed by the renewal of our minds?

Now, Romans 12 doesn't give a clear blueprint for that.

Although, if you read it, it will give you yet another good set of examples

of what a transformed life looks like.

And so I do think I have some ideas though, and they don't come from the how

to be transformed by the renewal of your minds chapter.

Again, you know, unfortunately there were, well, who am I to say,

unfortunately, I didn't write the book.

That's not in there, right? Not in those words, but I do think they're biblical.

And I want to, I want to start off by laying the groundwork in this by asserting

that you do what you believe and you believe what you do. Faith without works is dead, right?

So when I don't follow Jesus' teaching, let's just take a small example.

When I speak ill of someone who I dislike rather than praying for them, right?

I'm demonstrating that whatever I intellectually accept about Jesus' teaching,

I still think my way's better.

I don't really fully believe it, right? Because if I believed it, really, I would do it.

But what I actually believe is that what's gonna be best for me right now,

most gratifying or whatever, is to like talk trash, right?

But on the other hand, when you follow Jesus' teaching, especially when,

you know, it doesn't make sense to you when you're like, okay,

okay, God, you know, then you're showing that regardless of what you might,

what intellectual hesitations you might have about that, you do believe that his way is better.

So yeah, you believe what you do and you do what you believe.

And so then I want to point out the words of Jesus in John 6,

John 6:28

verse 28, 29, if you want to read it.

But the crowd asks him, what must we do to do the works God requires?

And Jesus answered them, the work of God is this, to believe in the one he has

sent. So talking about himself, right?

Now, to believe in Jesus means, of course, to believe that he is the son of

God, the Messiah, the king over all the earth, the savior of the world,

and to put your faith in him for your salvation.

That's all part of it. I think it's also to believe the words he said, right?

And Jesus knew that if you believed him, it would lead to action.

The work of God is to believe in him. And so, yeah, it will follow directly

that the belief in him will result in doing the good works that God has prepared

ahead of time for us to do.

But what do we do though, if we find that although we've put our faith in him,

right? Although he is our savior.

Our actions don't always indicate that we believe everything he said.

I think the answer, at least in part, is to pray for the renewal of your mind.

I think there's a good example of what this prayer can look like in Mark.

I didn't write down the reference, but you'll just have to trust me.

The father of a boy oppressed by a spirit tells Jesus, I do believe, help my unbelief.

And I think this is essentially the prayer we need to pray, right?

Like there's a part of us that believes, but

there's a part there's there is unbelief right and

that's where we need help is to get that unbelief all the

way to belief to ask

god to renew our minds and as you read scripture when you come to these kinds

of radical teachings which some of the examples of which we we read today that

maybe honestly sound a little crazy ask god to help your unbelief ask him to

make you aware of where you're unwittingly swimming in the water of the culture.

Pray to see your finances, your stuff, your time, your talents,

not as your own, but legitimately as his.

Pray to see your enemies as God sees them. I found that to be a really helpful

prayer practice to ask God to show you your enemies through his eyes.

And if you don't have enemies, because you're better than me.

Pray to see the people that you think kind of suck as God sees them, okay?

Like they're not your enemies, but like, you know.

And however you see them, pray for them, pray blessing upon them.

You can do that even if you don't like it.

I'm 100% sure all of you can pray for the people you don't like. You could just do it.

Pray that God would shake up your definition of success. Pray that he would

change your view of power.

Pray that he would relieve you of that deep-seated impulse to provide your own

security and ask him to conform your mind to his and not to be conformed to this world,

and then i think pray for discernment paul goes on in romans 12 to say that

being transformed by the renewal of your mind will lead to you being able to

discern what is the will of god kingdom mindset does take discernment it's it's

not going to look the same for each person maybe for example you decide to go

to college to become a doctor.

Now you might do that because doctors make good money and you wanna make good money, right?

Or you might do it because you wanna help people and heal them.

And for that matter, you might wanna make good money because you wanna be really

generous with it and give it to people in need.

Or you might be trying to make sure that you are getting enough comfort and

security that you feel good about where you're at, which it's always gonna be

just a little bit more, but you'll get there someday.

So the heart posture in this is obviously important, right?

And unfortunately for us, you know, the heart is deceitful above all things.

So it takes a lot of discernment and it's not easy. I think there are some rules of thumb.

I think the Babylon mindset always seeks to take care of yourself or the people close to you.

Whereas the kingdom mindset is always cruciform, which is a fancy way of saying

cross-shaped, which is a fancy way of saying basically laying down your life for others.

Right and for you know

for god and others to sacrifice um and

then finally i would add in addition to reading

your bible letting it interrogate your mind praying asking god to conform you

to his mind and not to the ways of this world i think don't hesitate to take

the opportunities for those little radical acts if you're faithful with a few

things as the parable goes,

then God will give you more opportunities to grow in faithfulness.

Maybe God will call someone here to sell all their possessions and give them

to the poor. I don't know.

Perhaps it will help you to practice by giving some of your possessions to the

poor, like more than you're comfortable with.

But God will use those little acts of obedience to train you for bigger acts of obedience.

And he'll, he'll use them to renew your mind.

So as, as Jesus put it, you know, whoever,

everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise

man who built his house on the rock and the rock, excuse me,

and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and slammed against that house.

And yet it did not fall for it had been founded on the rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be

like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rain fell and the

floods came and the winds blew and slammed against that house and it fell and its collapse was great,

so hear the words put them into action and ask god to to help you because we all need it,

yes status.

Music.