SERMON: DARE TO BE DIFFERENT!

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IN THE WORLD BUT NOT OF THE WORLD

Note: this is not a full sermon. It is the skeleton of a sermon. To use it as a class or sermon, you must put flesh on it and give it color. Breathe your spirit into it that it might live. Better yet, let God breathe HIS Spirit into it that it may help others live.

Background Text: John 17:6-19

PURPOSE:   Challenge the church to be different from the world.

THEME:         We are called to be light in the darkness of this world.

I.       INTRODUCTION

A.    WHAT DO THESE TEXTS HAVE IN COMMON?

1. 1 Samuel 8:19-20. But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.
2. Philippians 3:20 Their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. 1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
4. 1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
5. John 17:14-16 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.