“And I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people,
lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.”
(Rev 18:4, NKJV)
In the last two teachings we established that all people are raised in a secular world. This entails that we are taught to judge all things with our soul, and are mostly ruled by our senses. When Adam sinned, man was cursed to till the ground, which has brought about thousands of years of involvement with the self. Once you are born again, you are able to judge yourself as a spiritual person, but you also gain a spiritual perspective from which you judge the world. It does however remain important to purposefully re-position your mindset outside the parameter of secular terms.
In 1 Chr 27:26 we read of Ezri, the son of Chelub, a man specifically responsible for “tilling the soil”. Like Cain he becomes a good example of the secularized person. Ezri’s name means helpful, in literal terms “run to support; hence, to help or relieve when in difficulty, want or distress; to assist and deliver from suffering; as, to succor a besieged city; to succour prisoners”.
His father’s name, Chelub, means “caged”! In the name Ezri one can also detect the roots of Ezra, a man called to rebuild the temple alongside Nehemia and Zerubbabel.
Ezra’s helpfulness was employed in fulfilling the agenda of the Kingdom of God, but because of Ezri’s secular world view, his efforts often culminated in little more than humanitarian crisis management. The reason for this, as the name of his father also suggests, is the fact that both were caged in by this secular world view, making no other prospects possible. Therefore they cannot help but to fulfil the words of Zech 13:5 – “but he shall say, I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the ground; for I have been made a bondman from my youth.”
Os Guinness calls these believers “refugees from the sleep of death”. In terms of The Matrix it is “the world that has been pulled over your eyes that you may not see that you are a slave”.
Accordingly we find that despite explicit spiritual and religious experiences and actions we still live secular lives, as if God is no reality, His existence not transforming the fabric of our own.
The word ekklesia, often used as a substitute for the word church, originally means to be called out. Called out from what? Ultimately, from the mindset of the world – secularization. Start praying that which Paul pleads for in Eph 4:23 (CEV) – “Let the Spirit change your way of thinking.” If this does not happen Rev 18:4 is the inevitable result.
- Sela: Pray Eph 4:23.
- Read: 1 Kings 11; Ecc 7; 2 Tim 2
- Memorise: 2 Tim 2:13
- For a deeper understanding: Read the classic text on secularization in the lives of believers, Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live?
