We're going to continue our series on sin and temptation tonight.
And that was kind of like more of an intro text, what Ashley just read.
! We'll probably be revisiting that next week, but I think it's really good.
Tonight we're going to talk about the world and what the world is.
Last week John spoke on Satan, the identity of Satan and his purposes and his desires.
And this week we're going to talk about the world.
And in 1 John here, the verses we just read, the word for world,
it's not talking about the world in terms of like nature, creation, people necessarily.
It's talking about the world more like a negative way.
The way that the world is alienated from God because of its sin and because of the sinfulness of man.
And it has to do with the way of thinking, like an ideology.
It encompasses false systems of religion, false ways of thinking.
It encompasses a lot of different things.
And flip over to Colossians 2 really fast.
This is just another text to look at.
But the world and the devil and the flesh are the three things that we have to do with and fight against here in this life as believers.
And they're not necessarily separated.
As I said a long time ago, they kind of work together in a lot of ways.
It wasn't like today.
It was the devil.
And yet tomorrow is going to be the world.
It's all kind of in working together simultaneously to lead us away from God into sin.
Colossians 2 verse 8.
A great verse to kind of reference when we're looking at what it means.
Like the world, the cosmos.
It says,
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit.
According to human tradition.
According to the elementary spirits of the world.
And not according to Christ.
And that word for captive means like robbing, plundering, taking away, taking away from.
And false ideologies and false ways of thinking, false worldviews can rob you of the joy that you're meant to have as a believer in Christ.
And knowing Christ and walking with Christ, it alters how you think.
And if you do that, if you bind to another ideology of the world, you can miss out on so many things that Christ has for you.
And living in sin.
And so, when it talks about philosophy here in Colossians, it's not just talking about like an academic class of philosophy.
It encompassed a lot more back then.
More of like how you do life.
The purpose of life.
Who God was.
How you lived every day.
That's what philosophy really meant more then than like we would think of today.
Our main text, though, is going to be in the book of Daniel.
So, turn to Daniel chapter 1.
I don't know many other books to look at that speak about how to be in the world, but not of it.
To be the people of God, but at the same time live in the midst of a very sinful and broken and fallen environment than Daniel.
Some of us are just familiar with like Daniel's in the lion den, but you ought to go back and study this book at some point.
And really, ring it out.
It's so rich and powerful.
So, I'll give you a background.
We're going to be in chapter 1.
We're going to go through the first few verses.
We'll read through.
Right now, we'll read 1 and 2.
It says,
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with some vessels in the house of God.
And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God.
And to know what's going on a little bit, Judah, do you remember like there was at one point a united kingdom where David reigned as a king and there was this one nation.
And then his son Solomon reigned after that and it was one nation.
After Solomon died, the kingdom split apart.
There was ten tribes that went to the north and that was Israel.
And their capital was Samaria.
And in the south, there was two, and that was Judah.
And their capital was Jerusalem.
The northern kingdom had been wiped out by the Assyrians before the Babylonians were kind of on the scene.
So Judah remained.
But Judah continued to rebel against God and not honor God in the way that they worshipped and with their lives.
They confessed Him with their mouths, but their hearts were far from Him.
And God constantly sent prophets.
He sent Jeremiah.
He sent many other prophets to speak to them and say, this is not good.
You're rebelling against God.
You need to repent and turn back to God.
And they continued on in their sin.
They ignored all God's warnings.
And finally, God gave them over.
He judged them for their rebellion.
And His instrument of judgment was Babylon.
It was Nebuchadnezzar.
And this is around like 605 B.C., so a very long time ago.
So you can go and read about Nebuchadnezzar, even just other literature outside the Bible.
But he was a real guy.
And he took Jerusalem over, conquered the city, and took a lot of the things that were in the temple back to lay before one of his false gods, one of his idols, to kind of just say, you know, look what my God did.
And to mock the God of Israel.
And so God was judging them for their rebellion.
And just to know, like, also kind of what's going on in these first few verses, we'll read the next part right here.
And it says, the king assigned them a daily portion.
Oh, excuse me.
Let's give something I did.
I apologize.
No.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
In verse 3, we begin to kind of see, like, this system that Nebuchadnezzar had in place.
It wasn't just, let's just wipe them out and kill them all.
Let's absorb their culture into the Babylonian culture.
I can't tell you, like, how many ancient cultures I've heard about or read about that existed.
And they once were kind of like a proud and powerful people.
But at a certain point, they were conquered and they were completely absorbed into a stronger country.
Their language was lost.
Everything was disappeared, in essence.
So, it's very crazy in America, in and of itself, that Israel is even there today.
It's nuts.
To see, like, it only has to do with God's grace and God's power that's preserved them.
Because he has a plan to do some things at that point.
And it says in verse 3, excuse me, yeah, yeah, verse 3.
The king commanded Athanas, the chief eunuch, to bring some people of Israel, both from the royal family and the nobility,
use without blemish and good in appearance, and skill in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning,
competent to stand in the king's palace and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans.
The king assigned them a daily portion of food that the king ate and wine that he drank.
They were educated for three years.
At the end of that time, they were to stand before the king.
And among them, among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah.
And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names.
Daniel, he called Belshazzar.
Hananiah, he called Shadrach.
Mishael, he called Meshach.
And Azariah, he called Abednego.
So that's going to be kind of our text.
But again, like I said, Daniel is the perfect story to see what it's like to belong to God
and to have a living, walking faith in the living God, but to live in a totally fallen and hostile environment.
So we're going to look at a few things first.
But first of all, it's important to have three points.
But first, it's important for you to know what Babylon is.
And it's not just like an ancient city.
A lot of the guys who have gone to war in Iraq, they can go and actually see a lot of the old ruins of Babylon
and the palaces that are there.
It is a location, but it implies a lot more than a location.
Some of you might remember a little Bible quiz here.
Way back in Genesis, a long time ago, in chapter 11,
God had commanded the people to go and scatter and fill the earth and subdue the earth,
and they refused.
And instead, they built these massive towers to basically glorify themselves
and show the power of their ingenuity.
And they actually say, let us make a name for ourselves.
A name for ourselves.
So in a way, they were trying to show the glory of who man was.
And God, remember, He scattered them.
At that point, the world had one language.
And He scattered them, and He confused their languages, and they couldn't work together.
So that was called the Tower of Babylon.
And that's where we get Babylon from.
And it means like to confuse or to mix or to mingle.
And Babylon symbolizes humanity's ambition to dethrone God
and make their own name rather than to glorify God's name.
It's basically like a worldly city where man tries to exalt himself in the position of God.
So that's what it is.
It's a way of thinking.
It's an idea.
It's not just a location.
It's a location.
It's saying, I'm not going to live for God.
I'm going to live for myself.
I'm going to make a name for myself.
And so here's some of the points I have for you.
The first one, and my goal here is to kind of expose kind of a process of the world around us,
the fallen world, will try to put you through and expose you to as a believer.
And this is going to be a two-part thing.
I'll probably finish this next week.
This week, I'm going to try to focus more on your identity as a child of God.
Next week, it will be a little more, I don't want to say practical,
but it will be like things like media or music, the kind of stuff that we are around all day,
that kind of stuff, and how it's influencing us.
But this is more about our identity as the people of God.
So the first point is, the world will try to befriend you.
The world will try to befriend you.
Look at verse 5.
It says,
The king assigned them a daily portion of food that the king ate and wine that he drank,
and they were to be educated for three years.
At the end of that time, they were to stand before the king.
Okay?
So this was a way of like indoctrinating these guys.
And notice that, whether you know it or not, you've been indoctrinated your entire life.
Like from, you know, when you started going to school,
and the environment you were in, you were told what was important,
you were told what to live for, have a good job, you know, get married,
make a lot of money, be secure, provide.
That's what your goal in life is.
And you're told that at a very early age.
And that's what you kind of go along hearing.
And some of you are even still hearing that today.
So, in this text, Daniel and his friends are offered very rich food
and all the privileges of being in like a Babylonian court, status, comfort.
And their hope is that they can indoctrinate them
and kind of wean them off of their way of like belonging to the true God
and make them actually think and act like Babylonians
and basically just kind of absorb them.
And so, they, we might ask like a lot of nutritionists out there
who try to like argue, well, with Daniel and his friends,
they didn't eat the king's food and drink his wine
and that's an argument for being a vegetarian or something.
And I'm like, what?
That has nothing to do with that really.
But in the text, you should know just like what's going on
when it talks about the food.
Because it kind of is a, they're making a pretty bold statement
when they refuse to partake of this food.
To indulge in the food would be to like honor pagan gods
because this food was dedicated to the gods of Babylon.
And for them to eat of it would be like a way of honoring them
in an Eastern, you know, ancient Near Eastern culture
and then there today as well.
To share a meal with somebody is almost to make a covenant with them,
like to befriend them.
Say like, okay, we're cool.
Let's share a meal together.
And so, they were like, we're not going to do that.
It's symbolic.
So, they refused to do that.
And so, I've been trying to really think about the best way to approach this.
And I had a book, I don't know if I brought it up here with me,
but I don't really need it.
It's a book that I read a long time ago when I was in school.
It was called The Paradox of American Power.
And it was written by a Harvard professor called Joseph Nye.
He wrote several books dealing with like diplomacy
and international politics and war.
And he was the former, I mean, in case you just think of just some other wacky dude out there,
he had some pretty crazy experience.
He was the former chairman of National Intelligence Council,
assistant secretary of defense during the Clinton administration.
So, he knows a pretty good bit about foreign policy and diplomacy.
And in this book, he talked about two kinds of power that nations or states or political leaders try to use
when they want to go into another country and move that country towards something,
just like we've done with a lot of the places throughout history,
recently, Afghanistan, Iraq.
So, the two kinds of power are these, and these are helpful to know.
We're going to make a spiritual connection to these.
The first one is called soft power.
Soft power.
It means the ability to obtain what you want through attraction,
by use of your values, your cultures, your policies.
And you go and you try to influence the way they think about things.
You teach them about democracy, that kind of stuff.
And then another kind of power is called hard power.
And that has to do with, like, obtaining what you want through military might,
you know, air, land, sea, type things.
And you, through a coercion, you try to bend them to your will through force.
So, soft power and hard power.
An example is like, you know, America goes into a country somewhere,
and they want to establish it and secure it and make it a democratic state.
That's kind of like their goal.
So, soft power would be like, we come there, we try to educate them,
we give them our entertainment, our movies, our music, our clothes,
and try to show them, you know, what things are like,
and kind of like begin to change their way of thinking.
And, on the other hand, hard power would be what?
It would be like military force, like we've done in a lot of places.
And usually, a political force uses both of those, both hard power and soft power,
to accomplish that.
Two so-called successes would be South Korea and Japan,
whether or not they're really successes.
But they look very Western now as compared to what they did a long time ago.
And Vietnam, not so much.
So, we see where both were used there, and it failed.
So, hard power and soft power is a good way to think about things we relate to the world
and spiritual warfare.
But a spiritual application of this is that Satan is using the world system
of like a Babylonian way of thinking.
He's using both hard power and soft power in the world,
and he's using them both against the church.
So, he really employs hard power.
You could tie that in with like persecution, hostility.
Nations like North Korea or China or Sudan,
where believers are beaten, imprisoned, killed, exiled.
That would be, you know, hard power.
Nigeria, places like that.
People are facing physical persecution and death.
That's the end there.
But, let's see.
What's a lot scarier here is that Satan hasn't chosen to apply that power here at all.
He's chosen something a lot more subtle.
He's chosen to use a soft power approach with us here in America.
And what is his scheme and what is his goal?
How does he apply this?
Let me read you a quote by Charles Spurgeon.
He said,
Prosperity is much harder to bear than adversity.
As the finding pot to silver and the furnace to gold,
so is prosperity to a Christian.
Many a man will pass through trouble and praise God under it.
When he who has tried with no trouble will forget his God,
decline in grace, and grow almost a worldly.
Believe me, there is no greater trial than no trial.
And that's really profound.
I know that to be true.
Think about it.
Like, the wealth and prosperity in America,
that's certainly not a bad thing.
Remember?
Like, those things are not called good or evil.
That's how we use them.
And our fallen natures like to use those things
to indulge in our own simple pleasures,
to use them for evil and not good.
And so the enemy has, like, lulled us to sleep in our prosperity.
We've fallen asleep in our liberty.
Think about it.
Which one would you rather have?
Someone's like,
I definitely don't want persecution.
Please don't send that my way.
I'm pretty comfortable where I am.
But if you want a closer walk with God,
a lot of times,
like I would think,
if you come to me with, like, a sword or a dagger or a pistol,
I'm going to run, like, straight to Christ.
You know, I'm going to, like, cling to Him.
He's going to love me, protect me, give me peace.
Even if I die, I'll die, like, holding on to Him.
And, but, if you came up to me and, like,
offered me on a platter everything that I could possibly want,
everything that my flesh would enjoy,
I might pause and think about it like,
hmm, you know, that looks really good.
So it's very, very, very subtle.
So it's the things of the world,
a Babylonian way of thinking,
like, to help us forget about living for God
and then forget about our identity as the people of God
and live for ourselves and indulge in ourselves
and build our own kingdoms
and build up our own names rather than God's.
So, the Babylonian way of the world
will try to lure you in
and get you to do that.
Turn to James 4 real fast.
We're constantly bombarded by a message
that says that Christ is not enough.
We have to have Christ plus all this stuff to be happy.
Turn to James 4, verse 4.
Remember, part of the tactic is
the world wants to befriend you,
just like we see in our story here.
James 4, verse 4.
James is telling them how it is.
He says,
You adulterous people,
do you not know that friendship with the world
is enmity with God?
Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world
makes himself an enemy of God.
James was written a very long time
after Daniel and his buddies were in Babylon.
But they knew this.
They understood this truth.
But hundreds of years before James wrote that,
so what did I say?
No.
We won't compromise.
We will not give in to this.
We're not going to worship your gods.
We're going to remain who we are.
So, if you remember,
eventually,
they bargained with the king,
verses later,
and say,
give us vegetables
and all that kind of stuff,
and we'll see who does better
and performs better,
and they actually do.
So, the king is cool with that.
So,
we are the people of the living God,
and we can't be friends with the world.
The world is not
really wanting to be your friend.
It's wanting to lure you in
and destroy you.
So,
that's the first point,
is the world will try to befriend you.
Secondly,
second point is,
the world will try to tell you
what is important.
And you need to kind of hold your hand in Daniel,
so go back to Daniel,
and just kind of keep your hand there.
We're going to flip back and forth there
throughout the night.
But,
back in Daniel.
So,
the world will try to tell you
what is important.
It said,
the king commanded
Athanas,
the chief eunuch,
to bring some of the people of Israel,
both of the royal family
and the nobility,
used without blemish,
of good appearance
and skillful and all wisdom,
endowed with knowledge,
understanding,
and learning,
and competent to stand in the king's palace,
and to teach them the literature
and language of the Chaldeans.
So,
they only got the very best.
They got these
really young,
strong,
educated,
part of the nobility of Judah
to come and be in the court,
and in hopes of,
like,
changing their worldview
and absorbing them
into a Babylonian
way of thinking
by teaching them the literature
and the language
of the Chaldeans.
So,
what's kind of,
what can you learn here
about the Babylonian way
of thinking,
as opposed to what
the people of God
should live for
and think?
And it is this,
and it's so true.
Satan in the world
will tell you
that your beauty,
your youth,
and your intelligence
are the most important things
to live for.
And,
that's why you see
all these people
on TV
just trying to,
like,
extend,
you know,
trying to live it up
like they were
their teens
and,
you know,
young adult life
when they're 50 and 60.
the world
will tell you
that youth,
beauty,
and intelligence
are the most important things.
And that's what you should
vigorously devote
your life in,
to being in those things.
That's what the world
will teach you.
You should pursue
those things.
So many of you
are stressed out,
depressed,
and lonely
because you're trying
to prove yourself
to others
and to yourself
as well.
And so many of you
have bought into
that lie.
And,
the more and more
you can think
with a different worldview
that this is not
who I am.
I'm not to live this way.
These are not
the things that are important.
Youth,
beauty,
and intelligence
are all going to fade.
Every one of you
pretty girls in here,
you know,
you might not look so
pretty when you turn 80.
You know,
and eventually when you die,
you're definitely
not going to be looking pretty.
Okay?
If something can be
taken away from you,
it's not worth living for.
That's what I tell people
all the time.
If it can,
it's not worth it.
If you can,
but if you can be
in a prison
and be beaten
and tormented
and even killed,
they can't take Christ
away from you.
That's like worth living for.
Christ is,
is the only valuable thing
that will last.
And it can't be
taken away from you.
And He won't leave you.
He won't let go of you either.
So,
your youth,
beauty,
and intelligence
are not
the most important thing.
So,
what I'm going to do here,
right now,
I'm trying to be careful
in my language.
I'm trying to
just show you
that I care,
that I'm not just trying
to deliver a sermon.
It's the kind of talks
that I have to tell
people every day,
occasionally
share with a girl,
and I have to
preach this to myself
every day.
but,
I'm going to address
this girls and guys
separately.
But first,
I have some harsher stuff
for the guys,
hopefully,
later.
But,
for girls,
you need to understand,
you've heard this
probably many times,
but I don't think
a lot of you understand
that your worth
is not
in your outward appearance
at all.
But the world
would have you
think that way.
You're concerned
with so many things.
I talked to a girl
that I'm really good
friends with,
and I think that she
leads a lot of women
here,
and Christ Family,
and on campus.
And she told me
a while back
that probably eight
out of ten girls
really, really
are self-conscious
about going to wait.
They're always thinking
like,
man,
I just don't,
I don't look good.
I'm constantly,
I constantly be
dieting and exercising
just to slim down.
And,
like,
glamour and fashion,
some of you spend
hours in front of a mirror.
Some of you
spend so much money
just to make yourself
really pretty
on the outside.
Here's a journal
from a girl
from, like,
the late
1990s.
She said,
this was like her
goal.
I will try to make
myself better
in any way
I possibly can
to help with my budget
and,
with my budget,
making money
from babysitting.
I will lose weight.
I'll get new lenses.
I'll get a really
good haircut,
good makeup,
new clothes,
and all the accessories.
That's like,
kind of like a,
that's what her goal
was,
just to,
in her life,
was to do that
at that point.
all kind of
magazines
for teenage girls
that are indoctrinated
with this stuff
at an early age
and they're told
this is the most
important things.
They're told things
in, like,
magazines,
like Teen Magazine.
I've never read one,
so don't think that,
but,
like,
I've seen them around.
I know they exist.
And,
they'll,
they talk about,
like,
the latest fashion styles
and beauty tips
and the celebrity gossip,
all that kind of stuff,
just to,
to suck you right in.
And,
they have these questions,
like,
they send into these,
magazines,
where they,
there are things like,
you know,
my mom won't let me
wear makeup,
like all my other friends
and my face
looks so dull.
What can I do
to look more pretty?
And,
I'm like,
oh,
just,
you know,
wash your face
and exfoliate.
like,
that's not going to help.
Because,
there's a deeper problem there.
All that's revealing,
I mean,
you're,
you're told that
from a very,
very early age.
And,
all it reveals
is that
so many of you
are self-conscious
and insecure
and you feel invisible
and you have to,
like,
make yourself visible.
And,
some of you
are depressed
and lost
because you feel that way.
but,
I want you to,
to hear this word
from Proverbs 31,
30.
I'll read it to you
and then we'll turn
to a different placement.
It says,
charm is deceitful
and beauty is vain
but a woman
who fears the Lord
is to be praised.
That's very,
very powerful.
We've got to just
commit that on the memory
and every time,
every morning,
just think about that.
A woman who fears the Lord,
respects the Lord,
knows the Lord,
is to be praised.
We'll turn to
1 Peter 3
really fast.
Some verses
for you to meditate on.
1 Peter 3,
verse 3.
It says,
Do not let your adorning
be external,
the braiding of hair
and the putting on
of gold jewelry
or clothing you wear,
but let your adorning
be the hidden person
of the heart
with the imperishable beauty
of a gentle
and quiet spirit
which in God's sight
is very precious.
That's amazing.
That's beautiful.
That's something
that can't be taken away
from you.
It's the work
that God has done
inside of you
and He's made you
who you are
and you found
your identity
in Him.
And because He says,
you belong to me
and I love you,
you don't need to care
about what any guy
thinks about you
at all
or what anybody
says about you.
You're accepted
in your love
because of Him.
I read a really
tragic story
about a woman
in 1980
named Judith Bucknell.
She was like
a lot of women
today.
She wasn't like
her struggles
weren't unusual.
She struggled
with all the stuff
that most people do,
getting old,
getting fat,
getting married,
surviving,
making enough money.
That's the kind of stuff
that she had to deal
with every day.
She wasn't a prostitute.
She didn't sell drugs.
She wasn't on welfare.
So a pretty normal woman.
She exercised.
She wore designer clothes.
Had an apartment
that overlooked
the San Francisco Bay.
She had a lot of friends
or so-called friends.
She had a lot of acquaintances.
And in 1980,
she was 38 years old
and she ended up being
homicide victim
number 106 in Miami.
She was murdered
during the summer.
She was stabbed seven times
and then she was
strangled to death.
And she kept a diary
of her very,
very lonely life.
And this is how
we know.
This is what
she was seeking,
you know,
to be loved by a man.
This is what happened.
She says,
I'm alone
and I want to share
something with somebody.
Where are all the men
with the flowers
and the champagne
and the music?
Where are all the men
who call and ask
for a genuine,
actual date?
Where are all the men
who would like to share
more than my bed,
my booze,
and my food?
I would like to have it
in my life.
Once before,
I pass through my life
in a kind of
sexual relationship
which is a part
of the loving relationship.
I see people together
and I'm so jealous
and I want to throw up.
What about me?
What is going to,
who is going to love
Judy Buck now?
I feel so old,
unloved,
unwanted,
abandoned,
and used up
and I want to cry myself
to sleep every night.
That's,
a lot of you,
you feel that way.
And,
her heart died
long before
she was murdered.
That's the,
that's the truth.
And that's what
a continual indoctrination
into the world
and giving in to sin
and what sin looks like,
that's like what
it will lead to.
It leads nowhere.
It leads to,
to misery and death.
And,
you need to be told
that your value
is not in your outward appearance.
It's,
it's in the hidden
portion of the heart.
It says that God
formed man
from the,
from the dust,
from the earth.
And he will go back to that.
I will and you will.
And,
there's something,
there's a spiritual significance
in that.
And it's to say
that your,
your,
your worth
and your value to God
is not in your outward appearance.
Because you're going to go back
to the dust.
It's something else.
It's just who you are.
It's your,
your spirit inside.
And here God's made you.
So,
don't buy into those,
those lies.
It's very easy to do.
You're told that every day.
And so guys,
like the next,
it's,
it's for us.
A lot of the girls do what they do
because we tell them
that's what we like
and that's what we expect.
So I,
I think the blame
goes all the way back to us.
It's,
it's completely
our,
our issue
to deal with.
Some of,
some of us spend
hours looking in front of the mirror.
They might be in the weight room
and not in the glamour room.
We,
we watch ourselves
work out.
We,
we like how we look.
There's,
there's two different kinds of guys.
A lot of times
there could be more,
but there's one time
that they're going live
is just to work hard
to,
to stay athletic,
um,
to show off
and,
uh,
to get a good job
and a good looking wife
and make lots and lots of money.
And that's what they're indoctrinated with.
And they,
they vigorously pursue those things
with everything that they are.
And their,
their ego is to conquer the world
and conquer women
and their power hungry
and they're bent on making a name
for themselves.
So,
God despises that.
He hates that.
And if you keep going that way,
um,
it's going to end
in your eternal ruin.
Uh,
your,
your kingdom is made of sand
and your glory is fading
very,
very fast.
Um,
I'm only 29.
I already feel like,
man,
I can't do nothing like I used to do.
No,
I know Nathan feels it
and a lot of us
who are a little older than you guys
are already,
are already feeling it.
We're not even
have gray hairs yet
and we're feeling it.
So,
those kind of guys,
you should know,
like,
women are not like toys
for your amusement.
They're,
they're beautiful.
They're actual people
and they're creating the image of God
and you're to,
to love them
and honor them
and protect them
and not to use them
for your own entertainment
and amusement.
Um,
it really
is aggravating
and
I have a hard time
dealing with guys like that
and I have a hard time
loving guys like that.
Um,
that's probably like
the hardest time for me
to sit down
and actually share
the gospel with.
And,
um,
turn to this,
Jeremiah 9,
a verse,
a verse for you guys
and for everybody else too,
but,
uh,
Jeremiah chapter 9,
go to verse 23.
So,
what is,
so what is,
what is God,
what does He value
in a man?
Jeremiah 9,
verse 23.
It says this,
Thus says the Lord,
Let not the wise man
boast in his wisdom,
let not the mighty man
boast in his might,
let not the rich man
boast in his riches,
but let him who boasts
boast in this,
that he understands
and knows me,
that I am the Lord
who practices
steadfast love,
justice,
and righteousness
in the earth.
From these things
I delight,
declares the Lord.
So,
a man who knows God,
a man who fears God,
loves God,
walks with God,
and wants to live
and die for God.
That is what
a man is.
So,
that,
that one power-hungry,
egotistical man,
there's another kind of
a breed that really develops,
particularly like in an
amusement-centered culture,
is the lazy
and apathetic man
who,
his goal is just
to abuse himself
to death.
To always have,
he's the guy
who spends hours
sitting in front of
Xbox,
watching TV all day.
That's his goal,
just to get home
and do that.
To get my stuff done,
just isolate myself.
And,
I don't want
problem with nobody,
I just want to chill
and just be relaxed
for the rest of my life.
And,
those guys,
you should know
that men
were not made for that.
You weren't made
for laziness
and sitting on your butt
all day.
Men were made
to work,
fight,
labor,
and conquer
for God
and his kingdom.
To go out
and to live for him
and to share the gospel
and to lead others to him,
to serve him
for the glory of God.
Another verse
I'll read to you
if you don't have to turn there.
It's worth going back
and reading.
It's in 2 Samuel
chapter 10.
And in this text,
David is starting
to be surrounded
with a lot
of different enemies
and he sends
his main dude,
Joab,
who is a pretty
awesome dude.
He's a warrior
if there ever was one.
And he took some
pretty beastly guys
with him
and they went
to the battlefield
and they were surrounded
on both sides.
And Joab
told him,
his buddy,
he said,
you take some men
and go fight those guys.
I'll take some men
and go fight those guys.
And if you need help,
I'll come help you.
And if I need help,
you come help me.
And this was his line.
And I say this
because this should be
our mentality
for the kingdom of God.
Very awesome verse.
I think people should memorize.
Guys should memorize.
They knew what they should do
and they trusted
in the sovereignty of God
and they just went right at it.
This is what he said.
And this is what he told
his guys.
He said,
Be of good courage
and let us be courageous
for our people
and the cities of our God.
And may the Lord do
what seems good to him.
That was kind of like
his thing.
Let's go
and let's go
and let's do battle
for our people
and the cities of our God.
That's what we are made for.
We are made to live,
to work,
to conquer
and live for
the kingdom of God.
Not to waste hours
sitting on our butts
watching television
and playing Xbox.
So there's
two different kinds
of guys there
in a lot of ways.
I'm sure there's others,
but there are two
that I see a lot.
And
which leads us
to our third point.
We'll deal with
some more of that
other stuff later
about how the world
tries to
indoctrinate you
and tell you
what's important.
Number three,
the world will try
to make you
forget
who you are.
The world will try
to make you
forget
who you are.
And I'll go back
to Daniel.
Daniel,
I'm going to look
at verse
six and seven here.
It says,
Among these
were Daniel,
Hananiah,
Mishael,
and Azariah
of the tribe
of Judah.
And the chief
of the eunuchs
gave them names.
Daniel,
he called
Belshazzar.
Hananiah,
he called
Shadrach.
Mishael,
he called
Meshach.
And Azariah,
he called
Abednego.
So this isn't
just like a
cool thing.
I don't know
any name.
You know,
we can go to
some countries,
you know,
other places
in the world,
like give me
an American name.
What an American name?
It's not like
a cool thing
like that.
This is another
way of like
indoctrinating them
and changing
the way they
thought.
Taking their
minds off of
God and who
they were as
the people of
God.
It was a way
of brainwashing
foreigners to
the ways of
Babylon.
And think about
this.
These guys
were part of
the nobility
of Judah.
They were like
the royal,
you know,
of that royal
line.
And as
people who
are saved
and who know
Christ,
we are part of
like the nobility
of Christ.
We are joint
heirs with
Christ.
We are a
part of a
spiritual,
far greater
nobility than
something this
world could
offer.
And that's
who we are.
And their
names,
there's a
Hebrew name
connecting them
to the
living God,
the true
God.
And Daniel
means Yahweh
is our
judge.
Pretty
powerful.
It means
like God
will always
do what's
right at all
times.
those are
the name
he was
given means
Baal,
protect the
king,
the false
God.
He was
given that
name.
Hananiah
means Yahweh
has been
gracious to
us or
has been
good to
us.
Shadrach,
the name he
was given
was called
command of
Akut,
another
pagan
god.
Mishael,
it says,
it means
who is like
our God
or who
is equal
to God
or Yahweh.
His name
Meshach
was called
Abednego,
a servant
of Nago
who was
the god
of vegetation.
And
Azariah
means Yahweh
has helped
us.
And
so
they were
given these
new names
to basically
change who
they were
to make
them think
differently
because their
names reminded
them every
day,
like,
I belong
to the
living God.
I serve
the true
God.
I'm a son
of the
real God,
the living
God.
And so
they changed
their names.
So,
what's profound
here,
guys,
is like,
there's many,
many other
people that
are taken,
you know,
thousands
of Jews
were taken
into captivity
in Babylon.
many of
them.
And
only these
names are
the ones
recorded or
remembered
by people
that wrote
these down,
you know,
and told.
It's the ones
that Daniel
wrote later.
And
so,
it means
that they
were just
like absorbed
into the
Babylonian
culture.
They became
like Babylonians.
And
that's very,
very scary.
Years and
years later,
okay,
like hundreds
of years
later,
Cyrus conquered
Babylon.
He was from,
you know,
the Persian,
the Persian king,
the Medo-Persian
empire.
And part of
his policy
was like,
let all the
other people
go back to
their homeland.
And that's a
good way to
control them,
you know,
cooperate with
them,
give them,
you know,
back their
homeland.
As long as
they like show
homage and
give us money
and respect us
and obey our
commands,
that's cool,
but let them
go back to
their homeland.
So,
he allowed
all the Jews
to go back
to Judea
and to
Jerusalem.
And that's
where you get
the books of
like,
you know,
Esther,
Nehemiah,
Ezra,
that's where
those books
kind of come
into play.
And in
Nehemiah,
something really
crazy you
could pick up
on is that
he noticed
that a lot
of the children
that were there,
they didn't even
know the language
of Judah.
they had been
taught the
language of
all these
other nations
that were in
and they
had broken
God's law
about intermarrying
because that
was the way
of God
preserving his
identity.
It's like,
it'd be like
a believer
marrying a
non-believer
today.
And eventually,
like your kids
don't know,
like the language
of the living
God,
they speak the
worldly language
and the
language of,
you know,
building your
own kingdom,
the language of
Babylon.
And this is
what he said,
Nehemiah 1324,
he says,
half of their
children spoke
the language
of Ashdod
and they
could not
speak the
language of
Judah,
but only the
language of
each of the
people.
So,
the point
here is like,
will you
last?
And,
will you
last?
Will you
remain the
people of
God or will
you be
absorbed by
the culture
and ideology
of the
world of
the Babylonian
way of
thinking?
Fraternity
people,
sorority
people,
will you
be renamed?
Will you
take on a
new name?
Like,
yeah,
this is who
I am most
of the time.
They call me
this and
that's who I
really am.
I find my
identity in
that persona
or in that
way of
thinking,
you know.
People in
the military,
who's going
to influence
who?
You know,
a lot of
people are
going to go
there and
I'm going
to be
Jesus in
that place
and maybe
three months
later,
they're like,
man,
I made a
bad call.
They're
influencing me
far more
than I'm
influencing
them.
And years
and years
now,
when you
look into
the future
after school
and all
that,
will you be
speaking like
the language
of the people
of God
or will you
be totally
off?
The world
is that
deceptive.
It'll pull
you right in.
It's very,
very good.
It's so
subtle.
There's things
that look
good,
but they're
not God.
It's not
the blatant
things.
It's the
things that
are not
evil in
themselves
that we
turn into
evil.
So,
don't be
renamed.
Don't be
absorbed in
the Babylonian
way of
thinking.
Last text
we'll look
at,
Deuteronomy
7.
Deuteronomy
7.
Turn there.
And like I
said,
guys,
next week
we'll try
to look
at some
more of
the everyday
things that
we engage
in that
the world,
the system
of the
world,
and Satan
uses to
actually
change the
way we
think.
Deuteronomy
7.
And you
should know
like in
this context
God is
speaking to
the people
of Israel
that he's
brought out
of Egypt.
But they
were God's
chosen people.
At that point
he chose
that nation
to manifest
himself to
and to
give us
commands to
not necessarily
to save
them all
because a
lot of
them
were
about
against
God
and
were
killed
but
to
manifest
himself
as
God
to
them.
And in
the same
way,
believers
are the
people of
God.
We are a
chosen race,
a royal
priesthood,
a holy
nation,
a people
for God's
own possession.
This is
who we
are.
So we
need to
understand
a lot
of it
is an
identity
thing.
We must
understand
who we
are.
You have
to be
told
every day
this is
who I
am.
I belong
to Christ.
He bought
me with
his blood.
I'm a
part of
his body.
He's my
savior.
I love
him.
I want
to follow
him and
live for
him.
This is
who I
am.
I'm a
new
creation.
The old
is gone
and the
new
has come.
You have
to think
that way
every day.
And if
you don't,
you're
going to
begin to
buy into
this thing
that your
worth and
your value
and all
that is
found in
another
place
outside of
God,
the one
who actually
listen to
this.
This is
Deuteronomy
7,
verse 6
and 9.
Yeah,
verse 6
through 9.
It says,
For you
are a
people
holy to
the Lord
your God,
set aside,
you know,
set aside
for God.
The Lord
your God
has chosen
you to
be a
people for
his
treasured
possession
out of
all the
peoples who
are on
the face
of this
earth.
It is
not because
you were
more than
number than
any other
people that
the Lord
set his
love on
you and
chose you,
for you
were the
fewest of
all the
peoples.
So in
other words,
it wasn't
how cool
you are.
It wasn't
what you
could do.
It wasn't
how beautiful
you were on
the outside.
It didn't
matter.
It didn't
matter.
That's not
why God
chose to
set his
love on
you.
Verse 8,
But it
was because
the Lord
loves you
and is
keeping the
oath he
swore to
your fathers
that the
Lord has
brought you
out with a
mighty hand
and redeemed
you from the
house of
slavery and
from the
hand of
Pharaoh,
the king
of Egypt.
Know
therefore the
Lord your
God is
God,
the faithful
God who
keeps covenant
and steadfast
love with
those who
love him and
keep his
commandments to
a thousand
generations.
the Lord
has,
I mean you
should know
this as
well,
like slavery
in Egypt
and Moses
and Pharaoh
and all
that,
they were
types and
prefigures
of a
greater slavery
like their
bondage in
Egypt was
a picture of
a greater
slavery that
every human
has and
that's the
bondage of
sin.
We all
have that
and Pharaoh,
you know,
pretty bad
do but
nothing compared
to Satan.
So in the
same way we
were slaves,
we were
slaves,
to sin,
we were
dead in
sin,
we were
rebels
against
God,
hostile
towards
God,
God only
had wrath
focused on
us and
we were,
it says in
scripture that
we belong to
the devil.
We did his
will,
we carried out
his will
before we
were in
Christ.
And it
says that
he brought
us out
with a
mighty hand
and redeemed
us.
And he did
that through
Christ.
So he
bought us,
he delivered
us out of
slavery and
death and
gave us
himself,
gave us
Christ to
be our
all in
all and
he can't
be taken
away from
us.
And he
did this
purely out
of grace.
We did
not deserve
it,
just like we
just read
here.
Purely out
of grace.
He loves
you,
not because
you're awesome
and cool.
He loves
you just
because he
chose to
for no other
reason.
Because it
brought him
favor and it
glorified him
to love
something that
was so
unlovable.
And it's
not that
God just
is love
or has
love or
is loving.
It means
that he is
in his very
nature,
he's love.
He defines
love.
So therefore
he is loving.
It comes
out of who
he is.
And the
Lord saved
us and
called us
his people.
And we're
to live for
him.
We're not
to be
absorbed into
the culture
and way of
thinking of
Babylon in
this world.
And it's
going to be
an everyday
fight.
It's not
going to be
over until
Christ comes
back and
cleans house.
So we
need each
other.
We need to
be reminded
of these
truths.
So next
week we're
going to
talk more
on the
things that
surround us
every day
and try to
prepare a
difficult thing.
Pray for me
and John as
well as we
kind of tread
this line
between law
and grace.
You know,
like we can't
be like,
hey, stop
doing that.
Stop doing
that.
Stop it.
That's not
the point.
There's some
things that
can be used
for the glory
of God and
we need to
be aware of
those things.
And some
things we
should stay
just blatantly
away from.
And so
we'll talk
about some
of that next
week.
So yeah,
let's be the
people of God
and encourage
each other,
remind each
other about
who we are
every day.
And so
let's pray
and then we'll
just kind of
respond to
just the time
of singing.
And Father,
you are
worthy to be
praised.
You are
worthy to
of our lives
and our
energies,
everything we
are.
And even if
you led us
to death,
you're worth
dying for
and shown
to be
magnificent
in the way
we die.
and Father,
if we have
you,
nothing can
take you
away from
us.
You're
holding us
with your
powerful right
hand and
no one will
snatch us
out of your
hand.
And if we're
in Christ,
we cannot be
condemned.
Father,
we praise you
for not just
leaving us
in darkness
and in a
place of
misery in
the world.
But for
calling us
out and
saving us,
bringing us
into the
light and
making us
your people,
making us
your children
and delighting
in us and
giving us
new names
as your
sons and
your daughters
and help
us to be
reminded that
Lord and
the price
that it was
to bring us
to that
place,
the precious
blood of
Christ.
And he
bought us
and purchased
us with
his own
blood.
And we
are his
and we
are the
church and
we belong
to him
exclusively,
not to have
any other
lovers.
And Lord,
we are also
called to each
other and we
need each
other to
remind
ourselves of
the gospel
every day
and to
fight the
good fight
that's in
front of us.
And Lord,
help us to
remain your
people and
to live like
your people
while we
are here on
this earth
until you
come back
or you
take us
to be
with you,
to set our
minds on the
eternal and
the unseen
rather than
the seen
and the
temporal,
to be
strangers
and pilgrims
and aliens
and travelers
in this earth
and not to
become settlers.
And to
keep our
hope and
our joy
fixed on
Christ.
And Lord,
we love
you and
praise you.
Thank you
for your
word that
reveals this
truth to
us.
And may
we just
continue to
think of
these things
tonight and
in the
coming days.
In Christ's
name,
Amen.