Which way will you choose?
Psalm 1:6
(NIV) "The LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction."
(GNT) "The righteous are guided and protected by the LORD, but the evil are on the way to their doom."
Jeremiah 6:16
Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.
The way of the world (the "worldling" - James 4:4, 1 John 2:15-16) is seeking the "good life" of self, stuff, sex, and power, while bearing the burden of pride and sin, and walking toward death.
The Way of Jesus (of the disciple of Jesus - John 8:31, 15:8, 1 John 2:6) is turning the opposite direction and seeking the Holy life of godliness, self-sacrifice, simplicity, fidelity, and servanthood, while bearing the cross, which leads to eternal life.
The way of the worldly believer (the "carnal Christian" - 1 Corinthians 3:1) is to attempt to walk between the two paths, resisting the cross and still carrying the burden of self and un-surrendered sin.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
At the entrance to that strait gate there is a notice that says:
"Leave yourself outside."
“The Mind of the World”, God’s Way of Reconciliation, Studies in Ephesians 2
Their little life is entirely controlled by the organization of the world. They think as the world thinks. They take their opinions ready-made from their favorite newspaper. Their very appearance is controlled by the world and its changing fashions. They all conform; it must be done; they dare not disobey; they are afraid of the consequences. That is tyranny, this is absolute control—clothing, hair style, everything, absolutely controlled. The mind of the world!
Most lives are being controlled by it and governed by it, all their opinions, their language, the way they spend their money, what they desire, where they go, where they spend their holidays; it is all controlled, governed completely ... by this world, the mind of the world, the age of propaganda, the age of advertising, the mass mind, the mass man, the mass individual, without knowing it. Is it not tragic?
But that is man in sin ... he is controlled by the mind of the world.
Great Doctrines of the Bible, “The Symbol of ‘Babylon’ in the book of Revelation”
“The Great Harlot Babylon” stands for the Seductive Power of the World to attract us and to draw us away from God and from the Lord Jesus Christ…a superficial charm that is devilish and foul and ugly and pestilential and yet is so seductive that it deceives God’s people.
When the devil fails to destroy us by means of his secular power, or his false religions, he comes to us in this most pleasant and seductive manner, and perhaps suggests that we are working too hard or that we are being over strict or that we are really going too far and rushing to extremes. In this most plausible way, he puts his case to us and, before we realize what has happened, we have listened to him and, for the time being, have become ineffective.
Fellowship With God, Studies in 1 John
According to the Bible the whole mind and outlook of the world (2 Corinthians 10:5 “arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God”) is opposed to God; it is under the dominion of Satan and in the grip of the wicked one. (1 John 5:19) Because it is a world that is opposed to God, it will be doing everything it can to drag (Christians) down. It will try to fill their minds here with things that will try to satisfy them and thereby keep them from God and Christ.
David Platt "Follow Me"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr-RvWSH9ng
Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live.
https://www.christianbook.com/follow-me-call-to-die-live/david-platt/9781414373287/pd/373287
Jeremiah 15:19c (NLT)
You must influence them; do not let them influence you!
Matthew 7:14b (ESV)
...the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.
2 Corinthians 6:17
Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord.
2 Corinthians 10:5
We demolish arguments and every pretension ("strongholds") that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
A.B. Simpson on 1 Kings 18:21
Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”
Elijah was right in his pungent question, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" The undecided man is a halting man. The halting man is a lame man and a miserable man, but the out-and-out Christian is the admiration of men and angels and a continual joy to himself.
John Owen "The Filth of Sin Purged by the Spirit and Blood of Christ"
God designs affliction to wither all the flowerings of this world in the minds of men; to reveal their emptiness, vanity, and insufficiency to give relief. Affliction intercepts the delights that are apt to emerge between the world and our affections and by which our minds are polluted. (James 1:27)
Thomas Watson The Lord's Prayer
God's children must see the world's emptiness to be acquainted with Christ's fullness.
Thomas Case A Treatise of Afflictions
The dust of the world (so) fills our eyes that we cannot clearly see it (for what it truly is).
Matthew Mead A Name in Heaven in Voices From The Past Puritan Devotional Readings
http://www.gracegems.org/28/mead_name_in_heaven.htm
Never talk of a name in heaven, as long as your heart is buried in the earth.
How do we know we are weaned from the world?
1. When we have heavenly affections amidst earthly possessions.
2. When we reckon our happiness by divine fruit instead of worldly accommodations.
3. When we bear worldly evils, troubles, and losses with a holy quietness and satisfaction of spirit (Hebrews 10:34).
4. We choose holiness, affliction and loss, rather than sin, pleasure and preferment (Hebrews 11:24-26).
5. We are able by faith to overcome both the smiles and frowns of the world.
When the world smiles upon us with its spendours, honours, riches, pleasures, delights and glories, can we look upon all these as small things in comparison with Christ? Or, when the world frowns upon us with crosses, losses, sufferings, reproaches, can we overcome them by laying aside carnal fears, and by patience, look upon afflictions and sufferings for Christ as our honour and happiness? To have the world, and yet to be weaned from it; to possess the world, and not to be possessed by it; to live above all, amidst the enjoyment of all - these are great mercies.
John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress, The Seventh Stage, "Pilgrim and Hopeful meet Mr. By-ends and his companions"
http://pilgrim.martintw.com/Pilgrim's%20Progress%201,%20Stage%207.htm
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones "Christian and Non-Christian" on Vanity Fair
http://articles.ochristian.com/article529.shtml
The true Christian, because of what has happened to him, because of this regeneration, because of the work of the Spirit, because he has been made anew, is of necessity a different man, and should show himself to be a different man. But not only does the Christian know that he is different, the non-Christian also knows it. At once the Christian and the non-Christian are aware of a difference between themselves. They are aware of a lack of affinity...and we are aware of a difference, of a barrier, that we belong to different realms and to different positions entirely. We can have social relations with non-Christians, but the whole time we are aware of this difference, we are not at home in that atmosphere...we are aware that we do not belong to their world. And they too are equally aware of the fact that we do not belong to it.
George Swinnick The Fading of the Flesh
O Christian, may you walk so that the world may know you are above their fears, and that all their allurements are below your hopes!
The things of the world cannot advance the soul in the least. Like shadows that are ever so long, the body is not taller.
O friend, the portions in the world are like candles that are consumed by use, and then go out in a stink, compared to God your eternal portion! Here is God, there is the world; here bread, and there husks; here substance, there a shadow; here a paradise, there an apple (of death); here is fullness, there is emptiness; here a fountain, there a broken cistern; here are all things, there is nothing; here is heaven, there is hell; here eternity of pleasure, there eternity of sorrow and pain.
William Gurnall The Christian in Complete Armour
He who gave man a countenance erect, to walk—not creep on all four, as some other creatures, with their back upon heaven and mouth to the earth—never intended his soul should stoop so below itself, and lick the dust for its food; but rather, that it should look up to God, and enjoy himself in enjoying communion with him that is the Father of spirits. If it be so bad a spectacle to behold a man bowed down through the deformities or infirmities of his body, as to go like a beast on all four, hands and feet; much more, to see a soul so crippled with ignorance and sensual affections, that it cannot look up from the earth where it lies a groveling, to converse with God its Maker.
Richard Sibbes
David's Conclusion; or, The Saint's Resolution (1639) on Psalm 73:28
God's children are swimming upstream and live contrary to the course of the world. They are living among men, and live as men do, but are moving in a different direction than the world, and are carried along by the Holy Spirit. Others may take whatever course they desire, but let us take this course: to draw near to God.
It mars our profession to go about heavenly things with earthly affections, and to seek Christ not in Christ, but in the world.
Put the world in its place, under your feet. Use it as a servant all your days, but not as your master.
John Flavel, The Fountain of Life Opened Up, or A Display of Christ in his essential and mediatorial glory, Sermon 7. “Of the Solemn Consecration of the Mediator”
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/f/flavel/fountain/cache/fountain.pdf
Let not Christ and the world share and divide your hearts in two halves betwixt them; let not the world step in and say, half mine. You will never do Christ right, nor answer this grace, till you can say, as it is, Psalm 73: 25, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and on earth there is none that I desire in comparison of thee.” None but Christ, none but Christ, is a proper motto for a Christian.
Thomas Chalmers The Expulsive Power of a New Affection
We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our heart, than to keep in our hearts the love of God.
Charles H. Spurgeon
On Genesis 1:4 "God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
Light and darkness have no communion; God has divided them, let us not confound them. Sons of light must not have fellowship with deed, doctrines, or deceits of darkness. The children of the day must be sober, honest, and bold in their Lord's work. We should by our distinct separation from the world divide the light from the darkness. In judgment, in action, in hearing, in teaching, in association, we must discern between the precious and the vile, and maintain the great distinction which the Lord made upon the world's first day.
“Decision: Illustrated by the Case of Joshua”
The great guide of the world is fashion, and its god is respectability—two phantoms, at which brave men laugh. How many of you look around on society to know what to do. You watch the general current, and then float upon it. You study the popular breeze and shift your sails to suit it. True men do not so. You ask "Is it fashionable?" Fashion is the law of multitudes, but it is nothing more than the common consent of fools.
Thomas Guthrie Speaking to the Heart, 1862
You will make the world better, or it will make you worse. God help you by His grace and Holy Spirit so to live in the world as to live above it and look beyond it.
Henry Alford The Year of Prayer; Family Prayers, 1866
Teach us day by day what Thou wouldest have us do, and give us grace and power to fulfill the same. May we never from love of ease, decline the path which Thou pointest out, nor, for fear of shame, turn away from it.
Octavius Winslow Daily Walking With God on Romans 12:2
The world, and the love of it, and conformity to it, may please and assist the life of sense, but it is opposed to, and will retard, the life of faith. Not more opposed in their natures are the flesh and the Spirit, darkness and light, sin and holiness, than are a vigorous life of faith and a sinful love of the world. Professor of the gospel! guard against the world; it is your great bane: watch against conformity to it in your dress, in your mode of living, in the education of your children, in the principles, motives, and policy that govern you. Grieve not, then, the Holy Spirit of God by any known inconsistency of conduct, any sinful conformity to the world, any inordinate pursuit of its wealth, its honors, its pleasures, its friendships, and its great things. Pray against the sin of covetousness, that canker-worm that feeds at the root of so many souls; pray against the love of dress, that sin that diverts the mind of so many professors from the simplicity of Christ, and takes the eye off from the true adornment; pray against a thirst for light and trifling reading, that strange and sinful inconsistency of so many, the certain tendency of which is to starve the life of God in the soul, to engender a distaste for spiritual aliment, for the word of God, for holy meditation, and for Divine communion and fellowship—yes, pray against the spirit of worldly, sinful conformity in everything, that the Holy Spirit do not be grieved, and that Christ do not be dishonored.
J.C. Ryle
Practical Religion, 1878, “The World”
https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/ryle/Practical%20Religion%20-Ryle.pdf
(Worldly Christians) linger on through life with aching, dissatisfied hearts with too much religion to be happy in the world, and too much of the world to be happy in their religion.
Holiness "Moses, an Example" 1879
http://www.gracegems.org/Ryle/holiness9.htm
There is a common worldly kind of Christianity in this day, which many have - a cheap Christianity...
which offends nobody,
which requires no sacrifice,
which costs nothing — and is worth nothing!
You must choose whom you will serve. You cannot serve both God and mammon. You cannot be on two sides at once. You cannot be a friend of Christ — and a friend of the world at the same time. You must come out from the children of this world — and be separate. You must put up with much ridicule, trouble and opposition. You must be willing to think and do things which the world considers foolish — and to hold opinions which are held by only a few. It will cost you something.
Are there any sharp corners in your religion, anything that ever jars and comes in collision with the earthly-mindedness around you? Or is all smooth and rounded off and comfortably fitted into custom and fashion? Do you know anything of the afflictions of the gospel? Is your faith and practice, ever a subject of scorn and reproach? Are you thought a fool by anyone because of your soul? Have you left Pharaoh's court — and heartily joined the people of God? Are you venturing all on Christ? Search and see!
The Upper Room, Being a Few Truths for the Times, Chapter V Jeremiah 6:16 “The Good Way”, 1883
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/ryle/upper_room.vii.html
The way of the world is a way which will not bear calm reflection now, and of which the end is shame and remorse. Men may ridicule and mock you, and even silence you in argument; but they can never take from you the feelings which faith in Christ gives. They can never prevent you feeling, “I was weary till I found Christ, but now I have rest of conscience. I was blind, but now I see. I was dead, but I am alive again. I was lost, but I am found.”
F.B. Meyer
Trust in God gives clearness of vision. When we are thinking partly of doing God's work in the world, and partly of lining our own nest, we are in the condition of the man whose eyes do not look in the same direction. There is a squint in our inner vision. We are endeavouring to serve two masters, and our judgment is therefore distorted. Who has not often experienced this? You have tried to ascertain God's will, or to form a right judgment about your life, but constantly your perception of duty has been obscured by the thought that, if you decided in a certain direction, you would interfere with your interests in another. Your eye has not been single, and you have walked in darkness. When, however, you feel so absorbed in God's interests that you are indifferent to your own, all becomes clear, and you leave Him to care for all results.
A.E. Kittredge
I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins (Hebrews 12:1), and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love. By the Cross - God's hammer, God's fire.
G. Campbell Morgan The Great Physician, “Demas”
A.W. Pink The Life of Elijah
God has not called His people to 'win the world to Christ'; rather He requires them, by their lives, to witness against it. God leaves His people here to witness for Christ, and the only way to do that is to walk with Christ. (Hebrews 13:13)
A.W. Tozer
The Root of The Righteous
Bear your cross, follow your Lord and pay no heed to the passing religious vogue. The masses are always wrong. In every generation the number of the righteous is small. Be sure you are among them.
The Set of the Sail
Whatever promotes self, cheapens life, starves the soul, hopes without biblical grounds for hope, adopts current moral standards, follows the way of the majority whether it be right or wrong, indulges in the pleasures of the flesh to make bearable the secret thoughts of death and judgment - that is the world.
The Size of the Soul
The Christian should (and will if he is Spirit-taught) reflect the will of God in any given situation. His one concern is with God’s will. His one question in any set of circumstances is “What does God think of this?” To him nothing else matters. What the current popular attitude may be is of no importance to him. He will approve or disapprove altogether as the written Word and the indwelling Spirit indicate. Religious vogues, passing moods or popular notions will affect him not at all. His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.
The Warfare of the Spirit
The mighty error of the world has been to take for granted what someone has called "the rightness of the customary." The values, attitudes and practices of the majority in any given period constitute a code accepted as binding upon all members of society. Any aberration from this code on the part of anyone excites immediate attention and may even bring the charge of being "mentally ill." And unless I miss my guess I believe that the advocates of the customary are preparing to use the threat of being charged with mental illness as a whip to bring everyone into line. Incidentally, they tried that on Jesus and it did not work.
Renewed Day by Day
When Christianity exercised a dominant influence over American thinking, men conceded this world to be a battleground. Man, so our fathers held, had to choose sides. He could not be neutral; for him it must be life or death, heaven or hell! In our day, the interpretation has changed completely. We are not here to fight, but to frolic!
Jesus, Our Man in Glory, from a c.1960 sermon series on Hebrews
People remark how favored the church is in this country. It does not have to face persecution and rejection. If the truth were known, our freedom from persecution is because we have taken the easy, the popular way. If we would love righteousness until it became an overpowering passion, if we would renounce everything that is evil, our day of popularity and pleasantness would quickly end. The world would soon turn on us.
That Incredible Christian
The masses of professed Christians simply do not have the moral muscle to enable them to take a path so downright and final as (the way that Jesus laid out). When will Christians learn that to love righteousness it is necessary to hate sin? that to accept Christ it is necessary to reject self? that to follow the good way we must flee from evil? that a friend of the world is an enemy of God? that God allows no twilight zone between two altogethers where the fearful and the doubting may take refuge at once from hell to come and the rigors of present discipline?
C.S. Lewis, "God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics"
Jesus Christ did not say, "Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right."
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount
The gate (Matthew 7:13-14) is strait and narrow, it brings me face to face with judgement, face to face with God, face to face with the question of life, my soul and its eternal destiny.
The Christian is altogether different from the world. He is a new man, a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) he belongs to an entirely different kingdom. Not only is the world unlike him; it cannot possibly understand him.
If you and I are not problems and enigmas to the non-Christians around us, then this tells us a great deal about our profession of the Christian faith.
(If the world thinks my values fit the culture, my values are not fit for the Kingdom of God.)
Truth Unchanged, Unchanging
The gospel of Jesus Christ confronts and challenges the modern world with the statement that it alone has the answer to all man’s questions and the solution to all his problems. In a world that is seeking a way out of its tragedy and its troubles, the gospel announces that the solution is already available. In a world that is feverishly looking to the future, and talking about plans for the future, the gospel proclaims that the search is not only mistaken in direction, but is also quite unnecessary.
John MacArthur
Don't let us be like the world. Let the world want to be like us.
CAUTION
Horatius Bonar God's Way of Holiness
Seeing we must protest against the world on so many important points, let us try to differ from it as little as possible on things indifferent (of no importance or value one way or the other), always showing love to those we meet with, however irreligious and unlovable, especially avoiding a contemptuous spirit or an air of superiority.