The Christian and Worldliness — Vance Havner

Christ’s High Priestly Prayer for His Disciples

We turn to John 17. I don't think I've ever heard anybody ever use that chapter to talk about worlds, but John says more about the world than anybody else in the Bible. You'll be amazed if you go through the Gospel and the Epistles how many times he uses the word world.

And in this chapter, he gives us, of course, the high priestly prayer of our Lord. This really is the Lord's Prayer. The one we call the Lord's Prayer is his, only in the sense that he gave it up. He didn't have to pray for himself.

But he prayed this one in the first five verses, he did pray for himself. In verses 6 to 19, for his disciples. And in the rest of the chapter, for all believers. But since we're disciples too, we'll read the middle portion.

I want you to notice how many times the word world occurs. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Thine they were, and thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word.

Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

I pray for them, I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me. For they are thine, and all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. And now I am the more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee.

Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, to think of thee one as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in my name. Those that thou gavest me, I have kept.

And none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled, as it says.

I have given them thy word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth. As thou hast sent him into the world, even so have I also sent him into the world. And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through this root.

Distinguishing True Separation from Worldly Christianity

Now, we have two extremes today on this business of separation. We have some people who are such separators that they become super-separators, and that's the way they can't endure their own company after a while.

Then we have others who, to use the scripture, fear the Lord and serve their own gods. I wouldn't have thought you could do that if I had read it in the Bible. But I suppose that means people who go through devotions of worship on Sunday morning and then live to serve their own gods all week.

They can't claim to be the Lord's sheep, but they're more of the devil's goats. Worldly Christians, they're called, which is a misnomer to begin with. Billy Sunday used to say, you might as well talk about a heavenly devil than to talk about a worldly Christian.

The Bible says the prince of the world is the enemy of God. That's a pretty strong statement. Somebody asked me some time ago, how can a Christian be God's enemy? Well, I didn't write it. There it is.

I am convinced that a large percentage of people that we call worldly Christians are not Christians, for one thing. A sheep may fall into the meadow, but a sheep's not allowed in the meadow. Jesus said, My sheep, hear My voice, and they followed Him.

It's a mark of a sheep to follow a shepherd. It's a mark of a Christian to follow the Savior. We need to brush up on our Bible zoology. The Bible compares you and me to different animals, and just between us, gentlemen, the comparisons are not very complimentary.

The Bible says, for instance, don't be like a mule. The trouble with a mule is, a mule is often backward about going farther. We have a great many Christians like that. And then Peter says, speaking of false teachers, that the dog has returned to his vomit again, and the sow that was washed along in the mire.

Now, that isn't that again. It isn't anything you can do about it. Maybe you can. But it's very expressive, and it's a perfect description of false teachers who return to their old ways. We're not to judge people, of course.

The Lord knows them that are His. But let every one that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity. That's the best evidence that you ought to want to hear. When I see a bird that looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and has webbed feet like a duck, and runs around the water like a duck, and prefers the comedy of ducks, it's hard for me to resist the conclusion it must be a duck.

When I see a church member who'd rather be in the theater than God's house, watching the filth of Sodom and Gomorrah in the living room than communing with the Lord, I'm driven to certain conclusions.

The World God Loves and the World Christians Must Reject

Birds of a feather flock together. Where you feel at home is where you belong. Of all your crowds, you're most at home with. That's your crowd. The Bible says we know we've crashed and death and life because we love the brethren.

I suppose you don't love the brethren. Well, that's not your crowd. I read that Peter and John being let go went into their own country. Where do you go when you're let go? I hate to track down a lot of church members when they get a couple hundred miles away from home.

When Peter got out of jail, he asked for a prayer meeting. You naturally gravitate to whatever attracts you most, and eventually you show love. Where it hurts, you belong. Now, why does the Bible say that God so loved the world and then that we're not to love it?

Well, of course, the world God so loved, the world of lost souls. We all love lost souls. Indeed, a great English preacher said that if we love this world the way God loves it, we wouldn't love it the way we shouldn't love it.

That's about the best way to put it, isn't it? You just get people to love this world like God loves it, and they won't love it the wrong way. But when the Bible says love not the world, it means this present age, etc., which politically and economically and socially and religiously even, is under the devil, the god of this age, the prince of the power of the air, the prince of this world.

The whole world lies in wickedness. Galatians 3 .4 says our Lord came to deliver us from this present evil world, not to make us at home in it. Ephesians 2, verse 2, says before we were saved, we walked according to the course of this world.

Well, that indicates that after we're saved, we ought to walk some other way. Now, I want you to notice four things that Jesus said in these verses that I read to you. And if you've had any trouble about where you belong in this world, this ought to get you forever located.

Believers Are Called Out of the World

He says in verse 6, I have manifested thine name to the man which thou gavest me out of the world. The church is the outcalled one, the one for churches, and the New Testament means that. The outcalled one.

God's not saving civilization today. Civilization isn't going to be saved. Civilization is a government. God never started out to save civilization. God's saving people out of civilization. He's taking out a people for his name.

And our home is with him, our new position, our citizenship in heaven, our position with Christ in the heavens. My kingdom is not of this world, he says. And when you are saved, you are taken out of this world in an experience that puts you in position with him, and you ought to be in condition with him, too.

In standing with him, you ought to be with him in state, too. The Bible says we're pilgrims and strangers, exiles and aliens, as one of the new translations puts it. Old Matthew Henry said, this world is our passage and not our portion.

I like that. This world is not your rest. Here have we no continuing sin. The next time this world offers you some of its attractions, tell them, and know that you're not a stranger here. A good way to answer it.

It's just passing through. Hey, I don't belong. I got to an old-fashioned Methodist tent meeting some time ago. They're pretty hard to find now. But I rotated by them. When I got there, they were singing one of those old songs that isn't very high-brow music.

It's got a lot of truth in it. I feel like traveling on. Well, they must have, because they sang about ten verses. And then they all sat down, and the old lady got up and started over. They all got up and traveled some more.

I said, is this crap going someplace? No. Well, it ought to be like traveling on, because you were made for a better world. A dog is happy in this world, because this is the only world a dog will ever have.

But you were made for a better world. You can't think you're sitting home here to save your life. You can buy that fifth-level house and put that swimming pool in the backyard and buy a boat and everything else, but you can't think you're sitting home in this world because you're in a frenzy, because you're not a person.

And Jesus said, we've been saved, our world. Now, in verse 11, he makes a further comment along this line, and now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world. I thought I just got through saying we've been saved, our world.

Christians Must Remain in the World Without Belonging to It

We have, but we have to live in its paradise and pray in its doors and go to its schools and mix with its people. And we shouldn't. We're the son of the earth, and we can't affect him if we're not wedged into the putrefaction of modern society.

Now, the old mystics back in the Middle Ages tried to make themselves holier by escaping the world. They hid in holes, caves, which you don't make yourself holier by hiding in a hole. Takes more than a hole to make you holier.

Paul says we're not to accompany with fornicators, yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous or extortionist or idolatrous, but they must leave throughout the world. We have to meet with its people.

I think some of these old mystics were really mistaken, and our Lord says in verse 15, and that ought to help us still further in this getting oriented in this world, I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them in the earth.

Now, that's a good prayer to pray for your children. The Lord doesn't take them out, takes them through. I mean, I'll do that. You must pray that prayer for me. I used to hear him in the Midlands, and I'd pray.

I don't know when he slept sometimes. I think he was saying, don't take them out, take them through. And you can, and you will. Now, Jesus was not a mystic. He was not a recluse. He wasn't a hermit. Out were across the crowded ways of men, you found my Lord.

He went to the weddings. He was a friend of publicans and sinners. He was criticized as a Pharisee. The only people who ever gave Jesus any trouble down there in his nation were the people who went to church, read the Bible, and prayed in public for all the time they would live clean, moral lives in front of his own people.

That's the only time he gave him trouble. He got along all right with the publicans and sinners, but he was criticized as a Pharisee who were separated from sinners but not from sin. There's a lot of difference.

Now, he associated with the world, but he never had fellowship with it, so that brings us to the third comment, and this is so important that he said it twice. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world, verse 14, verse 16.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. When the boat's in the water, that's one thing, but when the water's in the boat, that's something else. We're not to be conformed to this world, but we're to be more than just non-conformed.

Nonconformity, Holiness, and Separation from Worldliness

That is know that that person, Romans, says. The fact is, it's always an instinct to take a text that starts with the word and. A preacher ought never to take as a complete text any verse in the Bible that starts with and, because that's inept.

The Lord hasn't said all that that he needs to say in that text. I've heard sermons, only you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Well, that's fine, but it starts with and, and what goes before it is.

He continues, my word is energy, my disciple is indeed and. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. See, you're not getting the whole dose if you start with the second verse. Same thing here.

And be not conformed to this world. What's the verse? Just support. I beseech you that you present to others a living sacrifice and so on, and. And you see, it makes sense, and you get all the connection.

We're to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, we're to have no fellowship with the unproofful works of darkness, and now here's John again. Love not the world, and these are the things that are in the world.

If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Three times in that verse. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the private life is not of the Father, but is of the world.

Why is that? And the world, that's what the way is, the lust thereof, that he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. That's the verse on the movie Thimblestone up in Massachusetts. But look how much world here.

And I like the way Living Letters puts this. For all these worldly things, these evil desires, the craze for sex, the ambition to buy everything that appears to you, and the pride that comes from wealth and importance, these are not from God.

They are from this evil world itself, and this world is fading away, and these evil forbidden things will go away, but whoever keeps doing the will of God will remain forever. And I think that's terrific.

Worldliness Includes Ordinary Life When It Replaces God

But what is world? Some preachers, when they preach on worldliness, they talk about card playing, dancing, smoking, thirty-four other things, and then that's it. Well, of course those things are of the world.

But you haven't even scratched the surface of it. That's all you're going to say about worldliness. What is worldliness? Jesus said that it was in the days of Noah and Marge, and it'll be when I come back.

How was it? They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, buying and selling, planting and building, and that's all that most folks are doing now. And when that's all you do, or when you do it to the neglect of God, that's worldliness, whether you smoke or play cards or dance or not.

You stand on any street corner or in any hotel lobby and listen to people talk. What are they talking about? Ninety percent of the conversation is about eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, buying and selling, planting and building.

They're not prepared. They'll do it every day. I know a farmer who raises his hogs. That's all he does. That's all he lives for. Terrible thing to live for, and that's all he lives for. He's always selling more hogs, buy more land, raise more corn, feed more hogs, buy more land, raise more corn, feed more hogs.

I've heard of going to the dole. He's gone to the hole. I don't think he ever danced. I don't think he ever gambled. But he's just as worldly as some young blade on the dance floor at two in the morning, because all he lives for is this world.

And it doesn't have to be something vicious. Making a living is worldliness if that's all you do. Anything, if it's all you do, is a neglect of God. That's the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, the lust of the flesh in one form or another.

It may be religious, but righteousness has no fellowship with unrighteousness, light nor communion with darkness. He that believeth no more with an infidel. The temple of God has no agreement with idols, and the Christ has no calling for it, which is a Latin-ish form of the word in the original, which means symphony, the musical term.

I've heard of the unfinished symphony. This is the impossible symphony. There's no harmony between Christ and people. You can't get any tunes out of that. Cantor Morgan says that Christian life is lived in the midst of gigantic forces opposed to Christ and God.

That tells you we're in a pagan culture today that's no friend of the greatest to help us own to God. And even in evangelical circles, we are developing a new worldliness. I'm not talking about Bonhoeffer and his getting the church out into the world.

I'm talking about plain old-fashioned worldliness now. I'm kind of used to preach that. You can't serve two masters. Bill McDougall, that's a sinner for me in California, I remember in a meeting. He used to be with Fuller's Old-Fashioned Revival, like Forte.

He grew up in Hollywood, and he was an old sinner, because the Lord saved him. And I said, Bill, now give me the lowdown. I've been a preacher all my life. What do you think? You think you can live in Hollywood, live for Hollywood, live for the Lord?

He said, no. You're going to live for God, and live for God. You're going to live for the devil, live for the devil. You can't work both sides of the street. Now, we've changed our view on that today by I do believe that there are those who think that it can very not such things.

We're going to go right back to singing in the nightclub. It's all right. As long as you aren't just singing, I'd rather have Jesus. If this thing keeps up, I expect to be the Christian priest talking one of these days.

I asked him, how do you do it? He says, well, when I pick one pocket, I put a gospel tract in the other pocket. He said, that's ridiculous, no more so than a lot of things I am hearing today. Alexander MacLaren says the measure of our discord with the world is the measure of our accord with the sinner.

The World Hates Those Who Belong to Christ

Now, Jesus said, I've given him thy word, and the world has taken him. One day his brother said, John 7 says, why don't you go up to Jerusalem and preach? Do you mean, do you want some publicity to get out of the backwoods and help out poor people?

That sounds familiar. Jesus said, the world cannot hate you, but me it hates, because I testify of it that its deeds are evil. Now, you turn then to John 15 and 18 and 19. If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love you no more. But because you're not of the world, that I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hated you. Don't you see how much John has to say about the world?

Now, they tell me today that a Christian can be popular in this world. That's a lie. You can be respected, you can be a success in the eyes of the world. You'd be great if you were a success. But this, my Lord said, if the world hates you, it hated me first.

Now, if you were of the world, it would love you, but because you're not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, that's the very thing you have here in this chapter. There, the world thinks you're pretty good.

No, the world hates you. And this is not the modern pitch, I grant you. Campbell Morgan says the world hates Christian people if they see Christ in them. The measure in which the world agrees with us and says we're a fine-touch Christian, we're sobrongo with it, is the measure in which we're unlike Jesus Christ.

You remember a year or so ago that you were on the morning of the Scream when one of the Beatles said they were more popular than Jesus Christ? Well, I didn't get excited. Of course they're more popular than Jesus Christ, or they were.

When did Jesus Christ ever say anything about coming down here to be popular? Came down here to die and be crucified as a criminal outside the city gates. If you follow him, you won't be popular either.

Engaging the World Without Compromising the Gospel

We're trying to compromise with this world in order to influence it, and that's like a woman marrying a man to reform him, and instead of the man being reformed, she's deformed. It doesn't work. Somebody wrote to Billy Graham, says that many of our young people want dancing as part of church activities, and they say if it don't cooperate, they'll go elsewhere, go to a church.

He says it's not always easy, that keeps everyone amused. My boy asked me the other day to let him go hunting with my rifle. I love him and want him to enjoy life, but I loved him so much I said no. There are two ways of handling youth programs.

One is to build a recreational program which competes with the world of card, dancing, smoking, and so forth. The argument is, if you don't do these things in the church, you'll do it elsewhere. The other is to build a youth program around a serious, strong spiritual challenge.

The church is not a recreational club, it's a spiritual armory, and we're in a war against the forces of evil. Is that how you read it? And then finally, my Lord says in the 18th verse, as I was sent into the world, even so, I was also sent in, into the world.

Sent Into the World to Win People Out of It

Now, we're not to go around looking down our noses at everybody who doesn't always eyes and cross on his teeth like we do. We're not to be tarry-eyed. But we are different from this world. And that's not easy today.

I remember being down in Troy, Alabama a few years ago, along with our commencement time, and the president of the senior class in high school got straightened out of the meeting. He said, I don't know what it's done for other folks, but it was worth your coming here for what it's done for me.

He wouldn't go to the junior-senior column. Of course they were on his neck. Two years later, I was in Florence, Alabama at a meeting, and a good-looking girl from Arkansas one night said she was from Troy, and I asked her, Do you know this boy?

She said, Yes, he's my boyfriend, and he's getting ready now for pre-med, and he keeps talking about your meeting. There's a team that might line up for the Lord, and nobody knows what they might accomplish.

That's the crowd I'm after. I wouldn't give a dime a dozen for this crowd that runs down the church aisle and says I'll go and never go. I'd rather have one on my side, and I get them all over the country.

I get a better response today from young people than I've ever had in my life. I had a better response from teenagers. I don't go around lamb basting them. I think we've got plenty of good-looking, red-blooded young people who are trying to live for the Lord.

I speak plainly. I make it hard, because Jesus did not. The harder you make it, the better grade of disciples you get. And the worst thing in the church today is this cheap Christianity that we're beset with.

Cheap dedication, cheap salvation. They're taking Jesus as Savior, and they won't have Him as Lord, and you can't get saved by accepting Jesus as Savior, if you will not confess Him as Lord. Nobody ever got saved accepting Jesus as Savior, who willfully and knowingly and deliberately rejected Him as the Lord of their life.

We've got too many folks trying to get to heaven and want to have their kids religion, come in and say, just stay out of. But I find that when you lay it on the line, kids that mean business are pushing it all away, some of the other crowds.

They don't want a preacher to try to out-cheapen the prophet in order to get him to run down the aisle and shake hands with the preacher. I didn't, when I was a boy. And certainly the Lord didn't do it.

The other day I heard of a chap who was pretty good at cracks, and the coach said, now you just might set set. And you just might shake the world, but before you ever shake it, you're going to have to renounce it.

No late hours, no this, no that, if you're going to be the best runner. Patrice Fleming, the champion girl skater, all she lived for was skating. Cut out just about everything else. And I think of the way some of these acrobats and athletes, and I think of Van Cliburn, who came to my meeting, which is all four states has played the Overture in.

I had a chat with him after the service. I think he's a fine Christian young fellow. Anybody would like to play a piano like Van Cliburn, but very few people want to practice like that. When you think of the way this world is willing to go through all kinds of rigid discipline to win incorruptible crap, and then the sloppy, slouchy, slovenly way that most church members live.

I'm not surprised they're not making much of an end on the world. Why, there's never a preacher standing up and saying, I ain't in your heart to sit there and show it. For Jesus Christ. So in Tulsa, I was out in New Mexico a few weeks ago, and I had a question and answer period after the service with the young people one night, and of course they always asked the same questions.

I could tell you in advance what they did. After they'd asked all of them, I said, now let me ask one. I said, I never knew what was coming. The thing I noticed in all of these question and answer periods is, it's always what's wrong with dancing, what's wrong with this, what's wrong with that, what's wrong with gospel jazz, what's wrong with...

And nobody ever asks, how much like the Lord can I be and how little like the world? They're always asking, how much like the world can I be and still be a Christian? You're off on the wrong foot the minute you ask that question.

That's like asking, how near the precipice can I walk without a balloon? Why doesn't somebody say, how much like the Lord can I be and how little like the world? The big idea today seems to be, now, I'm going to be just as well as I can still be a Christian.

I'm going to look like it, I'm going to talk like it, I'm going to like what's left as far as I can. I'll go just as far as you can go. Now, psychologically and spiritually and every other way, that's getting off on the wrong foot.

Certainly not like Jim Edmonds. Before he went to Ecuador, he took about an hour or so, and he said, I went with a friend to television, like I prepared to be interviewed. God convicted me, and then he quoted the verse, keep thy eyes like a holding feast.

And then there follows a statement that sounds like one of the old mystics. And this was a young chap, a good-looking young chap. He said, saints are made up. You've been saved out of the world. You're still in the world, which they're not all for.

But you've been saved out of the world, to go right back into the world, to win people out of the world. And that's the only business you've got in this world. Now, will you never forget that young people?

Take a red pencil and make a big ring out of these verses in John 17. I've been saved out of the world. I'm still in the world, but I'm not all for it. But I've been saved out of the world, to go back into the world, to win people out of the world.

And that's the only business I've got in this world. And if you're going to do that, you've got to keep yourself clean from the coats in the office, and the rooms, and the surges, and the nurses, and keep themselves immaculate.

Because for the sake of others they set themselves apart, and Jesus said, Give for their sake. I thank you, Father, and say, For God's sake, be ye holy, for I'm holy. For my sake, be ye holy, that bear the vessels of the Lord.

For their sake, I thank you, Father. I set apart myself. That is separation. It's not just quitting two or three things. It's saying, Good-bye Lord. All over this country, when I preach in revival, I first got the idea in Waco, Texas, when there was a meeting across the street from Baylor University in 7th and James Church.

And Wednesday night, we combined the prayer meeting with the DRH, the Baylor Religious Hour, and the gymnasium with the faculty, the students, the church members, and the great Baylor choir behind me.

And I said, Now, choir, I want you to sing that old song, The Way of the Crow, for me and Tony. And everybody remembers the first verse, and we can take a vote here and have unanimous vote on the first verse, and the way of the crow.

We'll all agree on that, and I said, If you want to throw a shoe over me, you try singing that last verse for me and Mrs. Then I bid farewell to the way of the world, the way it never was. Oh, does that ever separate the men from the boys when you get around to that last verse.

And all over this country, I have told them, I've always had a certain invitation. Everybody sang the first verse to me. And I said, Now, nobody's ready to sing the last verse unless you said goodbye world, the cross before me, the world behind me.

I've decided to follow Jesus. I said, If you've told this old world goodbye world and not get it, that's the same if you're qualified. But I'm tired of this business thing of, Then I bid farewell to the way of the world.

And I can't wait to get out of church to see Ed Sullivan or Frank Knox or Hopper or whatever. Oh, no. Then I bid farewell. That's what it is. It's separating. That's all it's saying. Dear Lord, we've been in a terrible condition tonight.

It's how that's not called us out of the world. Sometimes it gets pretty rough down here, Lord. We're still in it, but help us not to be of it. But help us so to live that we'll be able to go back into it to win another dollar.

And help us remember that that's our only business in it. For Jesus' sake. Amen.