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THE DEADLIEST COMPUTER VIRUS

It was a terrifying cover article in Christianity Today, the March 5, 2001 issue. The title was this: "Tangled in the Worst of the Web." And writer Christine J. Gardner described how many pastors today, the spiritual leaders of their flocks, are getting sucked into a private prison of their own choosing: Internet pornography. With literally thousands of sexually explicit, hardcore sites just a mouseclick away on their laptop computers, a startling percentage of ministers are losing their way. The "three A's" of online porn — accessibility, anonymity, and affordability — make it just too easy to hit the delete button on the seventh commandment.

As we get started here on a radio series about the Old Testament prophet Elijah, we have to ask this Tuesday question: How it is that the sinful culture around us comes into our homes and our minds and seeks to destroy us? Back around Grammy Awards time in 2001, moral leaders everywhere were upset about something called The Marshall Mathers LP. Marshall Mathers, in case you don't recognize that particular artist, has a notorious nickname: Eminem. He's the rapper whose crude, explicit lyrics are startling even to the most jaded listener.

Was it possible that the Grammy voters were going to give the coveted "Album of the Year" award to HIM? Even with Napster listeners getting free pirated copies of their own, was it possible that seven million people had actually bought this wretched piece of audio trash? And much of mainstream America heaved a huge sigh of relief when he didn't win, when the "Best Album" trophy instead went to Steely Dan, for their album "Two Against Nature," which only dealt with the issues of drugs, pedophilia, and incest.

I guess what we see on Grammy night reminds us of the old expression, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Friend, culture has always been a potential poison surrounding the man or woman of God. It was that way in Bible times as well, as we study the experience of Israel and the prophet Elijah. Clear back in Exodus chapter 34, we find this warning from God:

"Do not make any treaties with these people." (Speaking of the surrounding nations, the heathen neighbors living all around Israel.) "If you do, they will invite you to participate in worshiping their gods and sacrificing to them. To be polite you will be tempted to accept their invitation and become involved in their fertility rites and eat their blood-filled meat which was offered to their idols. The next thing you'll know, your sons will marry their daughters and these women will lead your sons to worship their gods."

Well, you might think that wasn't really so very raw: just a warning about believers' kids marrying non-believers' kids — which Christians still worry about today. But let's go over to a parallel passage in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 18. Here are verses 9-12, and we're using the very colorful paraphrase entitled Clear Word:

"When you cross the Jordan and enter the land the Lord your God has given you, you are not to adopt the disgusting habits of the people now living there."

Now notice this list, and really, it could come right off a track of an Eminem Top 40 hit:

"You are not to get involved in magic, witchcraft, sorcery, divination, casting spells on people, interpreting signs, making your little ones walk through a bed of burning coals or sacrificing your infants to some local god. You are not to consult spirit guides or try to communicate with your dead relatives, or with someone who supposedly lived a long time ago to get some message or spiritual insight from them."

And then the Lord closes with this P.S. in verse 12:

"The Lord your God hates this kind of thing [demonic practices] because of what it does to people."

Well, friend, despite all the warnings from heaven, this is exactly where the Children of Israel went. The culture around them infiltrated their communities and their families and their worship. The nation of Israel was a juggernaut on the battlefield: surrounding nations trembled with fear when they saw the "armies of the Lord" approaching. But when it came to Internet porn and rap videos and drug addiction, the people of God were an easy pushover for their enemies. Dr. Beatrice Neall, who used to live as a missionary in the foreign culture of Vietnam, recently wrote a Christian study curriculum which included the Elijah story, and she makes this insightful observation about what happened when Israel entered the pagan territories of Canaan:

"Because of the degrading practices of its people, Canaan was ripe for conquest," she writes. "The conquering Israelites themselves, however, were seduced into idolatry. They might have won the military battle, but they lost the war against culture."

One of the biggest reasons why the Baal culture won out was because of a disastrous marriage in the king's court. Here in I Kings 16, where we're studying this Elijah story, verse 30 describes how King Ahab, son of Omri, was a fiasco as a leader.

"[He] did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him."

And by far his worst mistake is in the very next line:

"He also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him. He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than did all the kings of Israel before him."

I'll tell you something. It has to be this terrible marriage, this very fatal attraction, that the Apostle Paul was thinking about when he wrote, hundreds of years later in his second letter to the Corinthians:

"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"

Well, what does this mean here in the 21st century, where culture is sometimes screaming at us and sometimes silently slipping into the house under the cracks in the back door? For sure we're taught in the Bible that a Christian should never consciously and deliberately unite him- or herself in marriage to a non-Christian. The culture of secular poison is simply too overpowering. And worldliness has a gravitational force which, unfortunately, always heads down.
And this is the Christian's challenge today. We read in the Old Testament book of Ezra, chapter 10:

"Now make confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers, and do His will. Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives."

That's an expression sometimes quoted by our friends in the Amish faith community: "Be ye therefore separate." And we read in Revelation: "Come out of Babylon, My people." Yet Jesus Himself, in a long soliloquy to the disciples, His friends and followers, said, first of all — this is in John chapter 15:

"If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world." And then He adds: "This is why the world hates you."

So friend, even if we live right in the X-rated section of one of the world's great and wicked cities, God's people are "not of this world." We don't belong here. If you and I are getting along really well with the world, finding ourselves comfortable with its culture, and finding that the world is pretty comfortable with us, that's not a good sign.
However, a few pages later in this same sermon, Jesus has a prayer to His Father — chapter 17 now — and towards the end of it, He says this:

"My prayer is not that You [Father] take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one." Another version says: "Keep them from the evil that's in the world."

Maybe you remember the classic line: "In the world, but not of the world." God has left us in this world, but we're not to love it. We're not to love the things of this world, especially the poisons that are all around us, and that are glorified on the Grammy Awards program, the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the People's Choice Awards and all the rest.
At the same time, Jesus deliberately left His disciples down here, to be the salt of the earth. To affect the world instead of the world affecting them. You know, friend, infection can go both ways. There's such a thing, Christian writer C. S. Lewis liked to point out, as "good infection." This medium right here, radio, can be used either to mock God or to proclaim His goodness. It goes both ways: always has, and always will. God originally intended that the Children of Israel, His chosen people, were to be a light to the surrounding nations, not the surrounding nations being a cloud of compromise and confusion to them. What a tragedy that the rivers of Baal flowed with more power than the gracious currents of heaven's influence.
And so God needed an Elijah. In every age, an Elijah is what He needs. Maybe you . . . could be one.