Contradistinct to the world
Exiting Egypt, with nothing but what was in their backpacks, they were to change the world. Slave-Israel overnight became a new nation totally different from the rest of the world. God gave them a reverse culture. This was to prepare and fit them as His people. He said “Learn not the ways of the heathen…”

That is why Abraham lived the Bedouin life outside the influences around. He had to get the old culture out of his system. Centuries later Moses came to Abraham’s descendents and urged Israel “Follow all (God’s) commands and the Lord God will set you high above all nations on earth”. (Jeremiah 10:2, Deut 28:1).

God is like that, He makes us, His born-again children, different and distinctive , contrary to what the whole world believed then:

• “The last shall be first”. “Love your enemies…”
• “The greatest among you will be your servant”
• “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth”
• “He that would save his life shall lose it”
• “Blessed are they who are persecuted”
• “As poor yet making many rich”
• “Dying yet we live”

(2 Cor 6:9-10, Matthew 5:5, 5:10,16:25, 23:11)
 
Israel bought its freedom at a knock-down price, but they soon doubted the bargain. “We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt. The cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic.” (Numbers 11:5)
Cucumbers! A lure back to the iron furnace of slavery. Cucumbers – yet they were the chosen agents introducing the greatest change in history, leading a new and fundamental new order of life for man on earth. God had come down from heaven and made them “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people!” (1 Peter 2:9 NKJV). But, unfathomably their minds were on cucumbers.

God said He did love them but not because they were greater than other people but that He just loved them - for no other reason (Deut 7:7-8). They did not choose the Lord, but the Lord chose them. They were nothing special but chosen. Escaping Egypt’s grinding slavery, they left Egypt with rucksacks on their backs, a dozen fractious clans, unreliable, superstitious and worshipers of Egyptian gods. The Lord led them with favour and infinite patience and showed them how to live. He commissioned them with a national purpose, a purpose beyond their own self-preservation that no other nation can claim even now, nearly 4000 years later.

Amazing Advantages
No nation ever had their amazing advantages. The principles of civilised life laid down in their Levitical code were not known in other nations and empires until the Gospel lightened their darkness. “What great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments? People will hear all these statues and say “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people”. (Deut 4:8/6)
 
That was then, but we are reminded “These things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come”. (1 Cor. 10:11). We are at that stage and those people upon whom the ends of the age have come. The new humanity, with a new life, a new nature, a new destiny, sprouting like a golden harvest from the soil of the old.

What once happened with Israel and Moses, the Christian represents today – a revolution in life principles and in purposes. Believers are revolutionary, they are disturbers. Paul and Silas met violent opposition in Thessalonica. The accusation was “those who have turned the world upside down have come here too” (Acts 17:6). It was a compliment. Jesus came to achieve that result.

A Reverse Culture
Like Israel, new, unique and contrary among the heathen nations; God is today calling out another new people, distinctive, born-again “from above” people with a reverse culture. What Israel was called out to be, in Christ Jesus we are, millions of us, “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people”. (1 Peter 2:9)

The language of the Kingdom is rather strange to the ears of the world. The first great discourse of Jesus (Matthew chapters 5, 6, 7), seems to describe an upside-down world. He begins with the Beatitudes, with such reverse judgments as “Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who are persecuted.” and goes on to say ”love your enemies.” The Kingdom of God is the right way up against the topsy-turvy state of false messiahs, false prophets, disagreements, competing aims, dangerous political prejudices, ingenuity devoted to contriving more clever weapons to tear fragile flesh apart, accessible to demented fanatics. Wise observers see the mass of the public being manipulated by media hype conditioned and taught to be “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” (2 Tim 3:4). The world indeed is a worldly place consisting only of material values.

To the heathen born and bred, the new Israel was mad, contrary to sense. They were not dependant on slaves, trusted God for their safety, mocked the great high gods, did not believe in the signs of the Zodiac, were kind to children and animals, pre-occupied with justice, caring for the poor, generous with their money, and worshiped a God they could not see or describe. But they were way in advance of their times, given the spiritual tools of a new creation, a new global order.

Marked by Holiness
Many religionists wear certain clothes or physical marks to show their religious allegiance, but Jesus gave no instructions whatever about dress, ornament or hair style. He wants us known by what we are, not by what we look like. The difference with Christians is that we are not different at all, except in heart and character. The Bible forbade the people of Israel to be tattooed or make marks displaying their religious devotion in the flesh of their body. It was a heathen practice, but the people of God were to be marked but by their holiness. This Levitical principle holds good today.

Christians are not ordinary people with religion as a hobby. The world has its absorbing enthusiasms, and its “fans”, football and sport fans. But Christians are not “God fans” or just religious enthusiasts. We are different in depth. We are different not merely in what we do or even in our lifestyle, but in nature. “We are partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), directed by instincts the world knows nothing about. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God THEY are the children of God” (Romans 8:14) – and that is their mark! The Bible uses the figure of marriage. Jesus referred to Himself as the Bridegroom and Jehovah said he was Israel’s husband. What a wife is for her husband, and a husband is for his wife, we are for God, for Jesus.

We live and work and aspire like all mortals on the planet, eat, and dress in fashion, enjoy the good things that men and women do, like the worldlings. But we are not wordlings. The kind of clothes we wear is not a mark of our faith. Jesus said the Pharisees made long prayers in public, and wore flamboyant religious accessories on their head or wrist. The children of God don’t use such outward indications, by their fashions, but walk the streets like any other person. But they are clothed with humility, and wear the garment of praise. Their difference is in themselves, identified with love, and faith, and their way of life.

Being Different
The great distinction is that the followers of Christ are in the world but not of it. “Do not love the world or the things of the world. … The world is passing away and the lust of it” (1 John 2:15-17). We do not invest our ambitions and ultimate hopes in the passing, temporary earthly show, but in the eternal things, in the truth, the realities, and the callings of God. To invest in this passing show leaves us with only ashes in our hands. Like the poet said “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

We have to be concerned when our lives as followers of Jesus carry no distinction, when we are known only as religious adherents and our faith is no more than a subject we study. The godly are to be as normal and ordinary but by their life, impossible to miss. We are not supernaturalists, or just believers in miracles, but lovers of God.

The first man of faith and the only one was Abraham, and God called Himself ‘the God of Abraham’. People didn’t know God but they knew Abraham, and they only understood God through Abraham. God identified himself with Abraham’s life. Knowing what Abraham was like they knew what God was like. Abraham was different, and they knew God was not like any other of their gods.

Without distinction we will never win the world. Jesus said “If you were of the world, the world would love you. Yet because you are not of the world but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19). But the Kingdom is an upside down state – by standing in contradistinction to the world we draw people into the Kingdom. For the followers of Jesus to live like the world and be like the world, impresses nobody to leave the world.

The world is weary of being the way it is. After thousands of years and dozens of political and social experiments, Jesus alone has the answer. That answer is our open secret – to be told to all: “Go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is Lord.”