In the World, Not of the World | Rev. Jeffrey O. Smith

Hear now the word of the Lord, first as it's written in portions of 1 Kings chapter 16 and 18.

1 Kings 16 · chapter mention

Now Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him.

And it came to pass, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nabat, that he took his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbal, king of the Sidonians.

And he went and served Baal and served and worshipped him.

Then he set up an altar before Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had built in Samaria.

And Ahab made a wooden image.

Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

And Ahab had called Obadiah, who was in charge of his house.

Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly.

For so it was while Jezebel massacred the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah had taken one hundred prophets and hidden them, fifty to a cave, and had fed them with bread and water.

And Ahab had said to Obadiah, Go into the land to all the springs of water and to all the brooks, perhaps we may find grass to keep the horses and mules alive, so that we will not have to kill any livestock.

So they divided the land between them to explore it.

Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself.

And in the seventeenth chapter of John, this is the Lord speaking to his disciples.

Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world.

And I come to you.

Holy Father, keep through your name whose those whom you have given to me, that they may be one as we are.

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name.

Those whom you gave me I have kept, and none of them is lost except the Son of Perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.

But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

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.

I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

Sanctify them by your truth.

Your word is truth.

As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.

And finally, from New Church Teachings, the work New Jerusalem and its heavenly teachings, number one hundred and twenty-six.

As for renunciation of the world, many believe that renouncing the world and living for the spirit and not for the flesh is a matter of casting aside worldly things, primarily wealth and status, going around in constant devout meditation concerning God, salvation and eternal life, and spending our lives in prayer and in reading the word and devotional literature, not to mention self-affliction.

This, though, is not at all what renouncing the world means.

It means loving God and the neighbor.

We love God when we live by his commandments, and we love our neighbor when we do things that are useful.

If we wish to receive the life of heaven, we must by all means live in this world and be involved in its responsibilities and dealings.

A life withdrawn from worldly concerns is a life of thought and faith, and yet is completely separate from a life of loving and caring.

Amen.

Here end our lessons from the Word.

Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.

Amen.

What do you do when someone around you is making poor choices?

Do you run away from that?

Do you escape from that situation?

Or do you stay in it and do what you can?

Let's say a friend does something to hurt other people or does something to hurt you.

Or maybe you just see them making bad decisions with their life.

Do you stay friends with them?

Or do you leave that friendship and unfriend them and let that friendship dissolve?

Maybe a little bit later in life you'll become part of clubs, or maybe you have a club of friends right now.

Well, if that club of people makes a bad decision and they do something to hurt people, or they do something illegal, do you stay with that club or do you leave it?

Adults and kids, when you grow up and become adults, you're part of a company, and that company is making unethical business decisions.

They're dealing dishonestly with their customers.

Do you stay in that business, in that company, or do you leave it?

Do you quit and find a different business to be a part of?

In today's story, we heard the story of Obadiah.

Obadiah feared God.

That means he loved the Lord.

Obadiah was the manager of Ahab's house, King Ahab.

And Ahab was the worst king that Israel had had up to that point.

Obadiah, he was the manager of Ahab's house, and there was this drought because of Ahab and how bad he was.

Obadiah and Ahab, they went out to find pasture and water for the animals because they were going to die soon because of the drought.

So Obadiah's there helping Ahab's house try to keep going.

Should Obadiah have left his employment?

He feared God.

He was a good guy.

Should he have left his job and gone and done something else, just run away from that situation?

Was he supporting evil by staying there?

And should he not have been there?

There are some other similar stories to the story of Obadiah that happened in the Lord's word.

One of them is Joseph in Egypt.

Joseph was an Israelite, and he served the Pharaoh in Egypt.

Now it doesn't say that Pharaoh was evil, but Pharaoh served a pantheon of other false gods.

And so did all of the Egyptians.

And Joseph was there helping Egypt thrive.

Also, we have stories of people like Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

They were serving under kings like Nebuchadnezzar and Darius.

Now Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, they worshiped other gods and they forced their people to worship them.

Not only that, Nebuchadnezzar was the one who conquered Judah and Jerusalem and took the Jews to Babylon.

And then we have Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Nebednego serving under those kings.

Were they supporting evil?

I repeat the question that we heard at the beginning.

Do you run away or do you stay?

The thing is, there's not really one right answer.

The right answer isn't just run away or stay.

The right answer is, are we following the Lord and are we following his commandments to love the people around us?

And if we stay in those situations, can we resist breaking the Lord's commandments?

And can we resist hurting other people with our actions?

You see, sometimes it is good to run away.

Sometimes it's a very good idea to run away from a situation that's not really what the Lord might have wanted happening in this world.

Especially if you are going to be in any sort of physical, emotional, or spiritual danger.

Now, of course, physical danger.

If your friends are doing something that's going to get you physically hurt, you might really think twice about doing that thing with those friends.

And if they do it regularly, you might think twice about how much time you spend with them.

But then there's emotional danger.

Sometimes there are people that you'll come across, or maybe you've come across them already, that will try to take advantage of you.

And they'll try to make you feel a certain way, and they might make you feel horrible about yourself, so they can kind of control you and manipulate you.

This is what we call a toxic environment or a toxic person.

Someone who doesn't really want to be your friend, but they act like your friend, but it's so they can control you.

This is emotional danger.

But then there's also spiritual danger.

Spiritual danger is if you stay in a situation or if you are in a situation and you're tempted and you might just break the Lord's commandments.

This is spiritual danger.

You're hurting your relationship with the Lord and hurting your path to heaven.

This is spiritual danger.

So if you get in one of those, physical, emotional, or spiritual danger, you should really consider not staying in a situation.

But then, sometimes it is a good idea to stay.

And if you look at our stories that we talked about today, first from our reading, Obadiah stayed in his employment under Ahab, and he was able to save alive 100 prophets of the Lord.

When Jezebel, Ahab's wife, was killing every prophet she could find.

It was good that he stayed.

He was able to do a good thing.

Joseph stayed in Egypt, and he was able to save probably, possibly millions of Egyptians and people from other countries during the seven-year famine.

Daniel and his friends, they stayed, and the Lord was able through them to provide fair and wise ruling in this big country of Babylon that otherwise might have seen a lot more corruption and more stealing and theft.

The thing is, people are different.

Some people, it's probably better for them to run away from a situation and escape from an unhealthy circumstances.

And for others, it really might be better for them to stick around.

And even better for the people in that situation for them to stick around.

Because the Lord might be able to use them to make things better, like he did with Obadiah and with Daniel and his friends.

Now, a decision that I make might be very different from the decision that you make.

And we have to make decisions based on where we are at.

And how do we make that decision?

Well, number one, most importantly, is you pray to the Lord about it.

Ask the Lord, would it be healthy for me to stay in this situation?

Can I do more good than harm if I stay here?

If I keep these friends, if I stay in this club, if I keep working in this company.

Today, our focus is on being strong in the world that can be a bit messy, and when situations can get a little bit hard.

Kind of like with Obadiah and Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Now, during our readings, we heard the words of the Lord in John 17.

It said, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one.

The Lord is saying, He doesn't want to take us out of this messy world, messy situations we get in.

We're with people who have messy lives all the time.

That's going to happen.

He doesn't want to take us out of that.

He just wants to keep us safe while we are in it.

Some people do try to run away from it all.

As soon as one little thing happens, they leave their best friend behind.

As soon as something happens in a group of friends, they leave the whole group of friends behind.

At the drop of a hat, they might move on to something else.

In a way, this is sort of renouncing the world, is running away from everything that happens around us and anything that we think might be a little bit bad because I don't want to catch that.

But we're told in our new church teachings that we sort of have to be part of this world.

The Lord put us here with our families that can be messy in and of themselves, with friend groups that sometimes we don't necessarily choose.

All of this stuff happening, the Lord puts us here, but so that we can possibly through him and with him make the world a better place.

Now, some we talked about running away, getting away from an unhealthy situation, but sometimes we run away too quick and too soon.

Now in our recitation, we had the words, forgive them their trespasses.

Sometimes when something happens that isn't necessarily unhealthy, it might be a bad idea, someone makes a bad decision, but at the beginning we can try to forgive them and see if we can stick around.

And again, if it's not an unhealthy situation for ourselves.

And we can't really run away from it all, can we?

We can't run away from every person who ever does anything wrong because we would have nobody around us.

But how do we sit how do we decide when to leave and when to stay?

Now, of course, prayer is a big part of that.

But also, I want to think of it that compare it to our immune system.

Now, your body has an immune system.

It's something that keeps your body healthy, and and when diseases try to attack your body, your immune system keeps you healthy.

When you catch a cold and then you get better, it's because your immune system worked and you got better from your cold.

If the people around you are catching colds and you don't catch a cold, it's because your immune system works and you didn't catch a cold.

Now, some people's immune systems work different from others.

Some are more efficient at stopping colds from happening, and some are just you might catch a couple of colds.

Your body's fighting every day.

Some people can be around people who catch colds, and others have to be much more careful.

You might hear about someone being immune-compromised.

That means their immune system isn't working as well, and they have to be careful the diseases or the sicknesses that they come in contact with.

Well, you also have a spiritual immune system.

Yours is fighting every day to keep you healthy so that you don't catch these spiritual colds, so that you don't get spiritually sick.

Now, some people's spiritual immune systems are just more resistant to health influence.

For example, they could be around some people who are being mean, and they don't start being mean themselves.

They can continue to be kind.

Whereas other people, they get in a group of people who are being mean, they're like, yeah, that person's that person's bad, I don't like that person.

They they become mean themselves.

It's almost like they catch a little cold from the group that they're in.

That's their spiritual immune system, maybe not working as well as it should.

Maybe sometimes if someone does something mean to you or to a friend, instead of responding sort of calmly and levely, you respond with anger.

Well, that also is hell working inside you, getting you to flare out in anger instead of trusting that the Lord is taking care of things and responding with love.

So, with your spiritual immune system, you need to be aware what are the limits of my spiritual immune system, which are gonna be different from someone else's.

Just because someone else can be in a situation doesn't necessarily mean that you should be.

How do you keep your immune system healthy?

Well, if you're a body, you take vitamins, eat healthy food, get some rest.

That helps keep your immune system healthy so that you can fight off disease.

How do you keep your spiritual immune system healthy?

Well, in that reading from John 17, the Lord said, Sanctify them by your truth.

Your word is truth.

The Lord's truth from his word is a thing that keeps us spiritually healthy.

So that we can be in situations that when people are being mean, we can be like, nope, I know that the Lord doesn't want me to be mean, and so I'm not going to.

It kind of keeps us healthy in those situations.

And so that we can be there, kind of like Obadiah and Daniel, be there in situations when it's not what the Lord might want to happen in this world, but we can be there to try to help make it better.

We are supposed to live in this world.

We're supposed to interact with people who are different, who think different, who make mistakes, that includes your family.

Don't abandon your loved ones and your community and your friends.

We're supposed to be there to help each other.

But at the same time, be careful.

Don't get yourself into dangerous situations.

Similar to how Obadiah was in a hard situation and was able to save those prophets.

We might see people making unwise decisions.

They might see people and experience people bothering us.

But the Lord just might have put us there to help to make a difference in the world, in one person's life, and read the Lord's word to keep up that immunity so that you can be there to help.

And so that you can stay healthy.

So let's end one more time with these words from Jesus.

I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

Sanctify them by your truth.

Your word is truth.

Amen.