Sermon Transcript — December 24, 2005
I will admit that when I was first asked to give the sermon, I was a little nervous about it. I have had in the course of my service to the church and God and His people, I've had some adventures in the past. I've been paddled across a crocodile-filled river in a dugout canoe, and I've been chased by hippos, and I had a hungry lion roar outside my tent one time, and I dealt pretty well with that, but the thought of speaking to a thousand teenagers, that kind of set me back a little bit.
No, I'm actually very honored to have a chance to talk to you today, and I have some things that I hope you will find interesting and stimulating. We hope you're going to have a lot of fun at the winter family weekend. I'm sure that you will, but we also hope that you learn a few things while you're here, in fact I thought I would get that off to a good start right away.
You may be seeing some new words on your vocabulary test when you get back to school. There have been a few new words that have been added to the English language just recently, and these words have been created by modifying one letter in an existing word, or else adding a new letter to it. For example if you add an extra "t" to "inoculate" you get the word "inoculatte," which means to take coffee intravenously when you're running late.
You've all heard of the Doppler effect? Well, if you take one of those "p's" away, you get the "Dopler" effect, and that is the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. You've heard of "hepatitis?" If you change the "e" to an "i," you get "hipatitis," which is a terminal: "coolness" condition, and if you add a "k" to Armageddon, we heard about that this morning, you get "karmageddon," and the definition is - it's like when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right, and then like the Earth explodes, and it's like a serious "bummer."
Of course you've all heard of "reincarnation," and if you send change the "c" to a "t" you get "reintarnation," and that means coming back as a "hillbilly" in the next life. You change the "b" to a "g" in "Beelzebub" you get "Beelzebug," and that is Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
And finally my favorite new word that's being added to the English language, you've heard of the "ozone" layer, well there's a new word now, you add a "b" to it and you get "bozone," and that is the substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer unfortunately shows little sign of breaking down any time in the near future. So now you've learned something useful that you can take back with you from the weekend.
Well, as you know, maybe you know, I had the chance with my family to live in Europe for many years. We lived nine years in France, and I learned a little bit about the recent history of that nation, and there was a period that particularly fascinated me.
There was a time in Europe when as the sun began to set, thousands of people closed the curtains in their apartments. They turned out the lights, and they turned down their radios, some of which had been hidden during the day. And they tuned into a forbidden frequency. They kept the volume very low, and if they were in an apartment someone waited at the door to listen for footsteps because if they were caught listening to that particular frequency, they would be arrested and taken away to prison.
But they were hungry for news, real news, of what was going on in the world because there was a world war going on. And the news that they were getting on the official radio stations was false. So they would tune in, and they heard news, they heard some music, and then every evening they would hear strange coded messages. Nonsense phrases that didn't mean anything except to the people to whom they were destined. The message might be, "the chair is against the wall." Nobody had a clue what that meant except the people who were listening for that very phrase.
Some of them, many of them in France, were listing for a very special message. They waited for it for years. And then one night it came. The message went, "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne, blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone." You can tell that's French. It's a line from a French poem. And if I tell you the meaning of it, it probably won't enlightened you any farther. It means "the long sobs of the violins of autumn wound my heart with a languorous monotony" Now you understand, right? (Audience laughter.)
What does all that have to do with a sermon? Well, there's a secret meaning. at least there was a secret meaning, to that phrase. Most people who heard it on the BBC in the evening didn't understand what it meant, but thousands of others did. Any idea what it might have meant? Well, think about that for a little bit; we'll come back to that. I've given you a lot clue's actually in my introduction. You might be able to figure out what that means.
Now while you're thinking about that, let me tell you another story that happened to a teenager just a few years previous to what I just explained to you. Tiny Mulder was a teenage girl from the town of Drachten in the Netherlands, what we sometimes call Holland. And on a particular day of 1940, Tiny was nervous.
She was making her way through Amsterdam, but she hardly saw the beautiful canals because she was on a mission. She was quite nervous because if she was caught, she would be arrested and quite possibly executed. As she walked along the streets toward the train station, she touched her hat every so often to reassure herself. It was a green hat, and it was her only form of identification. She was carrying maps of German army positions, and those maps were intended to go to the allies. So she was carrying them to the port of Rotterdam where a contact would recognize her simply by her green hat. The contact didn't know her, didn't know her name didn't know who she was, and she didn't know the contact either.
The only way that they would know each other was that the contact would come up to her when they saw her wearing this green hat. And that contact would smuggle those plans across the English Channel to England where the allies were fighting for their lives and hopefully preparing for the liberation of Europe.
How did a teenager find herself in such a dangerous situation? Well, if you remember your history, you know that in 1930, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and he and the Nazi party immediately began preparing for what was to become a world war. They built a war machine like Europe had never seen before. It took them ten years to build modern airplanes, ships, tanks, and to train an army of young men who had been trained from their childhood to follow orders without question and to show no pity.
Then in September of 1939, this war machine invaded Poland, and World War II began in earnest. And one by one, in very quick succession, the nations of Europe fell to the Nazi war machine. Poland was followed by other countries like Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and France. By the end of 1940, all of the European continent except Switzerland, which remained neutral, was under the boot of one of several cruel dictatorships. Only Great Britain continued to fight in Western Europe.
And Europe, the continent was occupied. Perhaps that's a term you've heard before. It was occupied. That meant the Nazis sent in their own governors to rule the conquered nations and to make the people in those nations do what they wanted. They had to work in factories to produce arms and material for the German army.
The food that they raised in those countries, much of it was taken from them and sent off to the German army as it tried to conquer other parts of the world. And anyone who complained was arrested, sent to prison camps, or sometimes they just disappeared, killed in secret.
Secret police forces kept files on people, and they would pay others to act as informants. Low life criminal types would accept money to pass on information to the secret police about, you know, this guy over here, he's making negative statements about Germany or the Nazi party or whatever it might be, and those people could be arrested and taken away. All of this was called, "the occupation."
I had the privilege when I was first starting out as a student, to spend a summer in France while I was working on my French, which was quite atrocious at that time, thankfully it's improved a little bit since them. But he was a member of the church, and he told me his story. He was pretty old what I talked to him, but during the occupation, he was a Parisian, lived in Paris, and he really didn't like the Germans being there.
One time, one day, he was standing in line to see a movie at a cinema, and he saw some German soldiers marching by, and he turned to his friend standing next to him and he said, "Sale boche," dirty Krauts. That's all it took.
Somewhere in the line where he is standing there was an informant who turned him in in exchange for money. He never found out who it was, but very shortly thereafter, the secret police showed up his apartment door and took him away. And he spent the rest of the war working in various work camps in Germany and elsewhere, Auschwitz among them. He survived the war, but he was very weak by the end of it. And he was so weakened in fact, because food and conditions were not good, that he caught polio, lost the use of one arm, and of course that changed the whole rest of his life.
It was a very dark and frightening time for the people living under the occupation. It seemed at the beginning that the Nazi party was just too strong to ever be defeated. Every time they tuned into the radio, they would hear Hitler or someone else saying that the German Reich would last for a thousand years, and at the beginning, it seemed like it would.
Now most people living under the occupation, they just decided to look out for number one. They decided to be quiet, just keep their heads down, try to get along with as few problems as possible, don't cause any trouble, don't anger the occupiers, don't give the informants any material that could be used against them, and they just kept a low profile and tried to get along.
There were others, fewer, but others nonetheless, who took advantage of what they saw as an opportunity. "Hey, we can make some money off this situation." And so they turned informant, and if they were very good at working with the Nazis, they could get positions of power. They could rule the city; sometimes even rule a nation. At the very least they could make some money turning people in.
These people were called "collaborators." Co means "with," labor, "to work." They collaborated, they worked with the occupiers. And they tried to get ahead by doing that. So they turned in people that were speaking against the occupation; they helped ferret out Jews that they could turn in who were then taken away to the death camps that you've heard about. They helped the Nazis, and many of them got rich.
But there was another group also, also few in number. There were a few people who felt strongly enough about what was happening and determined enough and courageous enough to resist the occupying force. They came to be called, "the underground" or logically, "the resistance." And many of them acted with incredible courage to stand up against something awful and wrong and do what they could to stop it, and they risked their lives.
Many of them started as teenagers. They would gather information about German troop locations. They would help pilots who'd been shot down over Europe sneak back to England so that they could fly again. They saved thousands of Jews from being sent to death camps in Germany or Eastern Europe. And sometimes they would take even more active roles, blowing up bridges or downing telephone lines at crucial times and the like.
If they were caught, and many of them were, they were tortured to get them to reveal the names of their contacts. And many of them were killed. Their families were sometimes arrested and sent to concentration camps whether they knew what was going on or not. But through it all, the resistance kept looking to England and America and to a certain extent, Russia, who were still fighting to stop the Germans. The resistance looked for a day when Europe would be liberated, and the German soldiers would be beaten and chased back into their own country. That's what teenaged Tiny Mulder was doing that summer day in 1940. What happened to her? Well, I can't tell you just yet. You'll have to stay with me a little bit.
The reason I can't tell you right now is because when I was preparing the sermon, I went to my sermon consultants, my daughters. When I have a sermon to give for a younger audience, I consult with them, and when I explained the subject to them, they said, "Dad, a word to the wise, not too much history in the sermon, okay?" So I'm probably over my quota already, so we'll just take a break from Tiny Mulder's story. I'll try to get back to it before the end of the sermon, and I'll just ask you a question. Maybe this question's been in your mind already, "What in the world is he talking about that relates to me?" French poetry, a girl named Tiny, a last name that sounds like it comes from the X Files, a green hat; what does all this have to do with me? Well, actually I believe it does, and I'm going to try to show you that today.
What happened in World War II in the 1940's the Bible tells us is only a weak echo of something far worse that happened thousands of years ago. There was another war. A much more terrible war with more far-reaching effects. A terrible occupation began, and I'm here today to tell you that occupation is still going on whether you know it or not
Most of you young people no doubt have grown up in the church, and you know that before God created human beings, He created angels, thousands, millions of them, quite an angelic creation, spirit beings of great power. Some of them were created more powerful than the others. Some of them were given responsibilities to govern or guide or administer other groups of angels. The most powerful ones are called, "archangels," or we assume that they're the same thing as what the Bible calls, "cherubim."
There are only three angels in the Bible that are listed by name. Michael and Gabriel are two of the chief angels, archangels who are faithful to God. Michael in particular is a warrior angel. The Bible gives references to him standing up and fighting for Israel at different times in its history.
The third of the three that are named in the Bible was also one of God's most powerful angels, he was named Lucifer. He had a very important responsibility. He was one of the angels whose job it was to be in God's very throne room. And there are references in the Bible to the fact that his wings stretched out over the throne of God Himself.
He saw all that God was doing as he directed His creation. You can find references to this in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Those are probably passages that you have heard read before. But at some point, we don't know when, we heard about this in the excellent Bible study last night; I hope you were here for it, Lucifer decided he didn't want to serve God any more. He didn't want to serve. He didn't want to cooperate or submit himself to God. He wanted to take God's place, and there was a war.
There was a spiritual war; there was an angelic war, and I'm sure that it paled to insignificance any of the wars that we have seen illustrated in movies, even with all of the CGI graphics special effects you can get nowadays, and they're pretty jaw-dropping sometimes, it was nothing compared to what happened then. Turn with me to Revelation 12. We have a reference there which I find fascinating. I would like to know so much more about what happened then.
Revelation 12:7 - "(And) war broke out in heaven. . ." Now try to imagine this as we're going along. You can form your own images of what that must have been like. ". . .Michael and his angels fought (with) against the dragon; and the dragon. . ." That is Satan; he's identified as that a few verses later, ". . . and his angels fought." There was a war between groups of angels. Some were faithful to God, and some were attempting to throw God off His throne. What an amazing thing that must have been.
Verse 8 - "(but) and they did not prevail. . ." Satan and his demons. That's what the fallen angels are called now. " . . .nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.
Verse 9 - "So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan. . ." Now notice this phrase because we're going to come back to this in a moment. . . . who deceives the whole world. . ." Now that's pretty heavy when you think about it. Think of what that means. ". . .(who) he deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." Where was Satan thrown? He was thrown down here. This is probably where he was to start with. It would appear that God had given Lucifer certain responsibilities on the earth before human beings were here. We're sort of looking through a glass darkly, if you will. We don't know all the details, but it seems that was the case. And he tried to go up and dethrone God, and Michael and the angels with God's power threw him back down on the earth with his angels. And you know what? That's still where they are. They're still here. We'll look into that a little bit more in just a moment.
Verse 10 - "(Then) I heard a loud voice saying (in heaven,) 'Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of (our) God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down."
Now as I mentioned, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 show that that's something that happened in the past. It's possible that right before the end time Lucifer may make one last desperate effort to try this again. It's possible that Revelation 12:7, 8, and 9 is talking not only about a past event, but they may make a try again in the future. We don't know, but in any event we know that something like that happened in the past.
Remember we read, he's deceived the whole world, and that may seem like kind of a big thing to swallow, but that's what the Bible said. He's deceived the whole world. How does he do that? How does he deceive the whole world?
Well, let's look at a couple of other verses that show at least give us some glimpses of how he does it. Turn to II Corinthians 4:3.
II Corinthians 4:3 - The apostle Paul writing to the Corinthian brethren here , he said: ". . .Even if our gospel. . ." . . . our message, our good news. . . ". . .is veiled." Now you know what a veil is. A veil is something that goes in front of somebody's face to keep them from seeing. That's what a veil is supposed to do. If it is veiled, ". . it is veiled to those who are perishing." Now we're going to see that this veil is really thick. It's not just sort of a piece of screen that you can kind of still see through.
Verse 4 - It says, "whose minds the god of this (world) age has blinded. . ." That veil is thick. It's not something that you can still sort of see through, you know, they can kind of still see. They're blinded. There are a bunch of things they simply cannot see. And notice that Satan is called the god of this world. He's got a stranglehold on what's going on down here. He has occupied the earth. He's a foreign ruler who's taken over, who has no right to be here. But he's done it, and God has allowed it for the greater good of His plan in the end, and we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment as well.
Verse 4 - "whose minds the god of this (world) age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine (on) unto them." Now you know the funny thing is, maybe not funny but strange, these verses say everybody in the world is blinded, do they think they're blinded? If we went out and, you know, stopped somebody on the street and say, "Do you feel like your mind has been blinded?"
You know, they'd be calling the men in the white suits, "Oh, we got one here. Come quick." No, they don't. They think they see everything just fine. They're living in their own version of reality, but it's not reality. They can't see reality. They see an illusion because their minds have been blinded. The God of this world has worked his evil magic on them, if you will.
How many of you have seen the movie or know about it, The Matrix? Okay. Many of us who've seen it, I am not putting my personal recommendation on the movie, it's pretty violent in some places, but I'm kind of a sci-fi buff from a long time back, and the underlying idea of The Matrix, the movie, is very intriguing. Now some of you probably haven't seen it, so I'm going to just try to give you a brief idea so that you can understand what we're talking about here.
It's also about a group of resistance fighters. This is supposed to be a resistance far in the future. It's about a time in the future after a nuclear war when the world has been destroyed, and there's only a huge computer network sort of left, and it wants to keep functioning. But the atmosphere in the world has been so destroyed that there's no energy left in the world, the sunlight can't get through, and this malevolent computer system decides that the only source of energy that it has left is human beings. The energy field produced by the human body.
So it enslaves human beings and it turns us into a sort of a Duracell battery, and it takes the energy from our bodies and so it's able to keep itself functioning. Well now, people are obviously not going to like this idea, right? So what the computer does it plugs their brains, you know, it gets them all wired up into a cyber reality, a virtual reality, and human beings live out their lives in a fantasy world. They think, you know, that they're living in twenty-first century New York, when in reality they're living in these sort of cramped tanks full of goop with wires inside them, and their energy is being harvested, and while all that's going on, they think they're living in New York. Okay, it's science fiction.
Well, as the story goes on, a few people manage to get unplugged, and they see reality, and they begin fighting against this evil computer system. They fight the matrix. They fight its killer computer programs, and it's a pretty exciting story.
But you know what, I find that a fascinating illustration of what Satan, the Devil, has done to this world. He's got humanity plugged into an alternate reality. People think they know what's going on; they're absolutely sure of it. They think God doesn't exist. They don't believe Satan exists either. A lot of them are plugged into all sorts of false ideas. Many of them believe in false gods. They follow the gods of Hinduism. They follow the philosophy of Buddhism or Taoism. They follow Islam, or they follow a number of false versions of Christianity, and there are plenty of those round as well.
Some of them fall for evolution. But they believe God doesn't exist, we all just sort of, the world and the universe and all of its complexity, just sort of happened by chance. It takes a lot more faith to believe that then to believe that there is a Creator.
Or sometimes, Satan will just get people just so wrapped up in the activities, and I believe that's where he does the most damage in our country here in the U.S., he gets us so busy with stuff that we just don't have time even think about it anymore. And again we heard about that last night.
Satan has got most people believing he doesn't even really exist. Can you think of a better strategy to fool people? He can operate freely now because people don't even believe he's really there. Turn to II Corinthians 11 with me, please.
II Corinthians 11:13 - Paul's talking about some of the people that were working at his time, and apparently they were preaching Christ. And they were preaching that Jesus was the Messiah, but Paul said here: ". . . Such are. . ." talking about this category of people he was discussing, ". . . such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into (the) apostles of Christ. " Now think about that for a moment. There are people out there claiming to represent Jesus Christ, claiming to represent His church, but, and probably most of them don't know what they're doing; they've been fooled along with the rest of the world, but they're really doing Satan's work. Now they're not purposely doing that. They don't understand that that's what they're doing, but their minds have been blinded.
Verse 14 - "And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light." Satan likes to pass himself off as an angel of light; Satan likes to pass himself off as an angel of light when he's actually become a demon of darkness.
Verse 15 - "Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness. . ." They pass themselves off; they're disguised; they look that way, but they're not. It's an illusion . ". . .whose end will be according to their works."
That's what Satan has done. He's sort of disappeared from the minds and the realities at least of most people so that he can act freely. And so people reject God in many cases, or they adopt a false idea of Him, or they reject His laws; they reject His instructions. They think it's a burden. "Oh, God's law, man. Glad we can get out from under that." When in reality it's the very thing that would set humanity free from the suffering that it's going through right now with God's help.
And so, what do we have in the world today? Does the world looks like a pretty good place when you look at the world scene? You get wars; you get terrorism; you get messed up families; you get messed up sexuality; you get messed up lives; you get a lot of people that are suffering because things aren't working the way they're supposed to because they're plugged into Satan's matrix rather than seeing the reality of what God is doing in the world.
As I said, Satan has convinced most people he doesn't exist. In Job 1, I'm not going to turn there to save a little time.
Job 1:6 - "(Now) there was a day when the sons of God came (to present) presented themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them." So apparently every once in a while, God will still allow Satan in to talk to Him.
Verse 7 - "And the Lord said to Satan, 'From where do you come?' (So) and Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, (and) from walking back on it.' "
Wow. Get your mind around that. Now we can't see him, but he's just walking around looking for the trouble he can create. He's looking to see how he can keep people's minds blinded. And guess who he would like to blind more than anyone else? The people who've been disconnected from Satan's matrix because they can see reality. They can see it, and that's the first step to getting free of it. And that's the last thing Satan wants. So he'll targeted those who see what's going on first and foremost. Those are the ones he wants.
Satan hates people. You know why he hates people? Because he hates God, and he knows that the potential of human beings is one day to enter God's family fully to live on the same level of existence as God Himself and to be higher than Satan, and he hates that idea. Nobody's going to get in front of him if he has anything to do about it.
John 8:44 - Jesus said of Satan: ". . .He was a murderer from the beginning, and there is no truth in him." And he's the god of this world. He's the one behind a lot of what's going on down here right now. Is there a lot of misery and suffering in the world?
We are very privileged in North America, especially the U.S. and Canada, we don't see too much of that. But in my work for the church in Africa, occasional trips through Asia and other places, I see gut-wrenching misery, children who die very young for the lack of a few cents worth of a vitamin or a vaccination or something of that kind, people who spend their lives in grinding poverty, people whose life expectancy, even if they stay relatively healthy is measured in the 40's or the 50's. That's what they can expect to live.
You can expect to live, unless you do something dumb, to your upper seventies. That's kind of the average, unless, you know, you have a car accident or do something else you shouldn't. That's the way the world is today. It happens thousands of times a day. It's happening right now, today, as we speak in Iraq and Afghanistan and a bunch of other places you've probably never heard of.
Satan has occupied the earth, and he's bending it to his own use, and his use, his goal, his purpose is to twist people to the point where God can't use them anymore. That's what he wants to do.
So he's out there, busily twisting people every which way, every way he can to estrange them from their Creator.
Now most people today are living like the people in occupied Europe in the 1940's. They're keeping their heads down, "Oh, the world can be kind of a dangerous place. I'm just going to be careful and try and get through here with as little pain as possible. You know, avoid the land mines and the traps and everything, and just worry about me and my family maybe. and I'm just going to try to skate through with as little problem as I can."
Some people are collaborating with Satan. Now they don't know that they're doing that, as I said we've read the whole world has been deceived. But there are some people who are really participating in Satan's work of getting humanity twisted the wrong way. There are dictators in the world who crush people, and crush nations to get power for themselves. There are music stars who sing songs that glorify gang violence, and degrading sexual relationships. That's a good way to get people twisted, and they make a lot of money.
There are movie stars, some of the most beautiful people on the earth, who make money by taking various parts of their clothing off on camera, and making wrong sexual relationships look like about the best thing you can hope for in this life. And they're making a lot of money doing that.
Homosexuality, another way to get people twisted, is a growing theme in the world today. All of these are things that God despises and it makes people suffer. That's what Satan's trying to do, and there are collaborators helping him.
However, now here's a good news, and this is where you come in. There is also a small group of people who are resisting Satan. They understand what's going on; they know what time it is; they've gotten unplugged from Satin's matrix; they see the reality of the world; they see what God is doing; they know what's coming, and they're looking forward to a liberation. They're living in occupied territory, but they're looking forward to a liberation.
The plugs have popped, you remember that scene in The Matrix, they've slid out of the tank , and they get to open their eyes and look at reality, reality as God sees it. And God tells them, "Resist." He says, "I want you to join My resistance to the occupation of the earth." Now does that sound a little over the top?
As I was consulting with my sermon consultants, they read in the book here it said, this is what the blurb introducing my sermon was, "an evil power is taking over the world, and only a few people today are courageously standing up to resist it. Do you have what it takes to join the resistance?" And my sermon consultant said, "That's a little weird."
And the other one said, "It sounds kind of like you're trying too hard, Dad. You maybe want to back off a little bit; it's a little over the top." Does it sounds ridiculous to believe that God would tell you, "Resist?" Look in James 4.
James 4:7 - "Therefore submit to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you." See, if you're unplugged from the matrix and you know what's going on and you submit to God and you resist Satan, God will make Satan leave you alone. He'll say, "No, you can't touch that one. I have freed that one. I unplugged her. I unplugged him, so you just back off. "
What did God say there through the apostle James? He said, "Resist. Don't give in Don't go with the flow. Don't go along with it. Don't keep your head down and take the safe way. Stand up and resist." That's what He's called all of us to do. And if you do resist him, I will make him leave you alone, or at least I won't let him get too close. He'll still get a shot in once in awhile, but I'll grant you my protection.
Turn a couple of pages more to I Peter 5.
I Peter 5:6 - "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God . . . " See that's always the first step. That's what James said too, was it? ". . . submit, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. . ." Exalt, that means glorify. That means have a really good situation for yourself, to have a wonderful reputation.
Verse 7 - "casting all your care about Him, because he cares for you.
Verse 8 - "Be sober. . ." It means be careful, be alert. ". . .be vigilant. . ." Be watchful. ". . . because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."
Verse 9 - "Resist him. . ." Oh-oh, resist him.. He's out there walking to and fro on the earth seeking what kind of trouble he can stir up, seeking who he may devour, and I want you to resist him. You know he's out there, so be careful.
I had an interesting experience with a lion a couple of years ago, I mentioned that toward the beginning. It was my responsibility one year to organize a photo safari for some church members keeping the feast over in Kenya. So I went to check out a game reserve. I'd never done that before. And it's my first day out on the Serengeti. And, you know, when you're in a vehicle, animals don't pay much attention to you, because they know that the van is not going to try to eat them, and they can't eat the van, you know. If it's not going the eat them, and they can't eat it , they don't pay much attention to it.
So you can be in the van, and you can drive right up close to elephants, lions, cheetahs, sometimes leopards; you can get very close to them, and during the day they look really lazy. Lions lay around most of the day, you know, it's a big effort for them just to stand up, take a few steps, and they fall over on their side again. They're not real oppressive, just kind of lounging around. That was my experience with lions that first day. It was pretty cool.
So I came back to the lodge, where I was going to spend the night, had a good meal, a glass of beer, so I was nice and relaxed, just really enjoying this experience, and I went to bed in my tent. I was sleeping in a tent all by myself, and everything went really well until about midnight.
At midnight I heard a bloodcurdling, and I really understand the word - bloodcurdling - now, I didn't really understand it before, a lion's roar. There was a hunting lion, it sounded like it was coming right for my tent. I mean, it sounded like it was right outside there. And you know I was just waking up, and I had this - I immediately understood that I had two courses of action that I could pursue. One of them was to run for it. And then as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I immediately envisioned myself, slightly pudgy, in my white underwear, sprinting barefoot across the thorns outside, ooo, ooww, with a lion hot on my tail, and I immediately chose the second course of action, which was lay there real quiet and pray, and that's what I did. I had a really good prayer life that night.
Well, I found out little bit later, that there was actually, no one had told me this, that just down below my tent there was a water hole, and that's where the lion was. It was chasing something else not me. But I guarantee you from inside my tent, I was sure that lion was coming straight for me.
And to hear that roar, I suddenly understood this verse better. ". . .a roaring lion seeking who he may devour." I guarantee you, if you ever find yourself in that situation, you'll have a new respect for lions, and I still do. The next morning I was talking to some Italian tourists, a couple of tents over, and I said, "Wow, did you hear all that last night?"
They said, "We sure did. It sounded like it was heading right for your tent" (Audience laughter.)
That's our adversary. The bloody creature. He likes to kill. He likes to cause pain. He doesn't just like to just kill physically, although he'll do that if he can; he likes to kill spiritually. He wants to ruin you for eternity and prevent you from inheriting the eternal life that God wants to give you. And God says, "I want you to resist him."
So I don't think I'm being over dramatic when I say, "There is an evil power occupying the world." And there are just a few people standing up to resist him with God's help, because without God's help we could not, and God wants you to be a part of that resistance, too. You have that choice. Most of the people in the world don't, but you do.
Ephesians 6:12 - You've heard this passage many times. Slow down a little bit as you read it and think about what this means. "(For) we do not wrestle against flesh and blood," In fact we're not supposed to do that. We're not supposed to get involved in the world's wars. We have a higher calling, a more important calling than that . ". . .But against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age. . ." There are rulers of the darkness of this age. They're cooperating with Satan, the devil. And we're fighting them; we're resisting them; we'll talk a little bit more in a moment about how we do that. " . . .against spiritual hosts of wickedness. . ." Hosts means a whole bunch. And there is a lot of spiritual wickedness out there. We're wrestling against them. We're fighting; we're resisting that. We're resisting what's wrong with the world. That's what God tells us to do, and that's what He gives us the strength to accomplish.
Do you want to imagine kind of what a demon looks like? It's kind of hard to do that, we have so many false ideas out there, but I find a really good illustration, not what they look like, but just kind of what their character is. Imagine Orcs, nasty, twisted, evil, cruel, that's what the demons have become. And Satan's a kind of Sauran character, invisible, dark, powerful, giving the orders, and bent on the destruction of mankind. That's a reality that's going on. It's going on every day of your life. Ephesians 2. Turn back a couple of pages here.
Ephesians 2:1 - Let's start in verse 1 so we don't break the sentence in half here. It says: "(And) you He made alive. . ." That's what happens when you unhook from the matrix and start following God. ". . .who were dead in trespasses and sins,
Verse 2 - "in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience." He's a spirit who works in people, and when he's working in someone, what does it create? It creates disobedience, and obviously the context here is disobedience to God.
When Satan's in there and working in someone, he's a spirit working in people, they don't want to obey God. They don't want to obey God's law. They don't want to have anything to do with what God says is important. They want to disobey God. That's Satan's handiwork.
They don't want to cooperate. They don't want to submit. They want to disobey, and nobody is going to tell me what to do. You've heard that before? We heard about that a little bit last night. That's what happens when the prince of the power of the air starts working in someone, working his wicked ways.
But you also know the passage, I'm sure you've heard this one before, John 6:44, Jesus said:
John 6:44 - "No one can come to Me. . ." Why not? Because the world has been deceived. "No one can come to Me. . ." The world is veiled; they're blinded. "No one can come to Me unless the Father (who) which sent Me draws him;" See in the middle of this world that's been blinded by the god of this world, the Father steps in sometimes, and He pops all the wires off of somebody in the tank. He says, "Okay, I want you out of that matrix now. I want you to see reality, because I've got something I want you to do. I want you to be a part of my team that is resisting what's going on."
Turn to I Corinthians 7, also, if you would. This is a really important verse for our young people to understand, teens, young adults, those of you who have at least one parent who's made a commitment to God, and the Church of God.
I Corinthians 7:14 - "(For) the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, (and) the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband, otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy." You've probably heard this explained before. Now "holy" obviously doesn't mean - perfect, right? Anybody perfect here? No. It doesn't mean you're perfect, so what does it mean? Well, it means you're in a different category from most people in the world, most people your age. It means you've been unplugged from the matrix. You can see reality, and you have a choice to make.
God won't make you do the right thing, but He has opened your eyes and He's let you see that you have a choice. You can see both sides. Most people can't. They only see the illusion. You can see the illusion, but you can also see the reality, God's reality that's going on. Your unplugged. You have a choice to join God's resistance or not.
You remember there's a character in the matrix named Cypher? Remember him? Cypher was a guy who was in the matrix, managed to get himself unplugged, sees reality, joins the resistance for a while, and then, you know, he gets tired because he remembers, "You know, there was a lot of fun stuff when it was all an illusion." There's a famous scene where he's eating this cybersteak, you know. Not a real steak, just part of this illusion in cyberspace, and, you know, he says, "I know the steak's not here, but it tastes so good. It's so fun."
And so he sells his comrades out and makes a deal with the bad guys so that he can get hooked back up into the system again. He chooses a fantasy over reality. And he even sells out some of his colleagues to do that.
Church kids sometimes have to deal with a similar phenomenon. I know I did. I grew up in the church. Some of my earliest memories are of ceilings in halls like this as I was laying on my blanket, you know, counting the holes in the acoustical tiles during the sermons. And when I got to be a teenager, there were times when I knew Satan's way was wrong and God's way was right, but man, sometimes, it was hard. And I thought, you know, it would be easier if I just kind of ducked back down a little bit, just kind of go with the flow, and not have to be different all times. It's hard to resist. Just like it was hard for people in Europe to risk their lives to stand up to the Nazis. It was dangerous and hard. It's not easy. And Satan will try to get you to give up, he'll try to wear you out, and just make you go along with the flow again. And he's got all kinds of attitudes that he likes the broadcast. Satan is a master of the attitude. That's why he's called the Prince of the power of the air.
He's got all kinds of tactics: pride, "I know better; nobody's going to tell me anything;" anger, "It's not fair, I want what I want;" confusion, "Man, I don't know what's going on; how do you choose in all of this;" discouragement, "No use. I'll never make it even if I try;" hopelessness; he's got all that and more that he'll throw at you. You have a choice to accept those attitudes or not, but he'll put them there. He'll put them out in front of you, and his message is always the same in one way or the other: "Don't obey God. You'll not surely die. Come on, taste the fruit. It's really good." We've heard that before.
Don't listen to your parents. They were born so long ago. Man, they don't understand anything of what you're going through now. The world has changed so much; your situation is totally different that just forget what they might say. Think for yourself. Think for yourself. Make your own decisions. Hey, just come along with me. It'll be a lot more fun.
Satan's got all kinds of stuff he'll try to throw at you. He's got lots and lots of ways to keep people absorbed in other things so they don't follow or listen to what God has for them.
He says, "Hey, forget God; forget the church. I'll give you money. You want money? Plenty to be had out there. I'll give you ipods. That'll keep you busy for a while. How about MTV? You can watch that twenty-four hours a day and never get bored. There'll always be something new to titillate you.
"Want a car? We got cars. You what a boyfriend or girlfriend? Hey, I've got them lined up, I'll have one out there for you just shortly. You want computer games were you can blow people up? Shoot stuff? No problem. I've got all kinds of things to make you feel good. Just don't look at that other stuff over there."
Of course he doesn't tell you that it won't last. That in the end, a lot sooner than you think, it's all going to go away, and you'll have nothing but regrets. He doesn't tell you that. But people have been falling for that stuff ever since Adam and Eve.
God has unplugged you from the matrix. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? You have to make a choice. And even if you choose not to decide, that's a choice. So are you going to collaborate, or are you going to resist?
Now, when I was a teen, I don't know, maybe none of you ever thought this way before, but when I was a teen, this is the way I had it all figured out. I was a smart guy, and this is the way I looked at it. God's way is over here. That's good. I know God and what ever God does is good, so I'm sure that's a good way. But, you know there are few drawbacks, like I can't go out on Friday nights, and I can't play football. Now I understand over here also there's Satan's way, and that's bad. I'm convinced, Satan is bad. I sure don't want to go that way.
So, what I'm going to do is, I don't want to go the bad way, this is a little constricting, I'll just go the third road in the middle. This is Joel Meeker's road. God's way? Satan's way? Joel Meeker's way. I'll just kind of squeeze right in-between the two of them. I thought I had it all figured out, if it wasn't for few scriptures in the Bible that say you can't do it that way. Look at Romans 6. I was really disappointed when I found this scripture.
Romans 6:16 - "Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey. . ." And here are your choices: ". . .whether of sin (leading) to death, or of obedience (leading) to righteousness?" You know I didn't find my third option in there. That was the problem. There are only two.
You see life is not like a crossroads where you have unlimited numbers of options of directions you can take. You can take road "A", road "B", road "C", road "D" . . . When it comes to what God is doing, it's more like a pie chart. You can envision a pie chart right? And there's one wedge of it that's God's way, and all the rest of it is Satan's way.
Now if you stay, you're in that part that is what God tells you you're supposed to do, you're in option "A" that leads to eternal life. Once you get outside of that, the only other possibility there is, the whole rest of the pie chart, is disobedience. It's going the other way. There's no third option, so you have to make a choice. And even if you say, " I don't want to decide;" that's a choice.
If you say, "Not now, not now, not now, maybe later," enough times, eventually that becomes a "No. I'm not going to go the right way." And God knows at what time that happens.
So if you decide to resist, and we all hope that you will, it's your choice, there are a couple of kinds of resistance you should think about. One of them we could call passive resistance, that is just don't cooperate with Satan. Don't go along with the way of the world. Turn to James 1:27, if you would, just a brief verse here, but really interesting.
James 1:27 - "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble. . ." help those in need, ". . .and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." Keep yourself unspotted. Don't get dirty, and there's a lot of dirt and filth out there, and if you're not careful, some of it will get on you. James said, "Keep yourself unspotted." Keep yourself clean. Don't get swept along going the wrong direction. Don't get swept along in a lot of stuff that's going to lead where Satan wants you to go.
For a while when we lived in France, we lived in the region called Alsace, which is in eastern France, right on the Rhine River, which is the border with Germany, and people in Alsace grow up speaking a dialect of German. They're French citizens, and they speak French, but their first childhood language is a dialect of German.
So when the Germans took over Europe, they marched right into Alsace and started enrolling all the young men into the German army because they could understand enough German to follow orders. They weren't given a choice. They said, "Either you enlist in the German army or we're putting your family in prison." And that's actually what they did do.
So, a lot of young men ended up having to fight in the German army, and it was a really terrible time for the Alsaceans, but a lot of people in Alsace, they weren't strong enough to sort of take on the Germans militarily, but they did a lot of little things to bug them, to really bother them, you know, just poke fun at them, deflate them whenever they could.
One of my favorite examples of that, this passive resistance was in the town of Mulhouse, where I used to pastor there. There was a German language newspaper published, and at one point there was an article glorifying Adolf Hitler's book, Mein Kampf. You've heard of Mein Kampf? It means, "My struggle."
Well, strangely enough when the newspaper was printed, it didn't come out, Mein Kampf, it came out Mein Krampf. Someone had accidentally stuck an "R" in the middle of the title. And in the local dialect that changed the meaning from, "My struggle," to "My idiocy." The paper sold out immediately. People all over town were showing the newspaper article, snickering to themselves. The Germans were very upset, immediately arrested the editor and proofreader.
The editor said, "It was a typo."
The proofreader said, "Just as I was reading that part, the phone rang and I just missed that one word there."
They were sent to prison for four months anyway, just for good measure, but it was just a way of saying, "You know, we're not cooperating with you. We don't like you being here. We want you to go home."
Sometimes, when young men were called for service, they'd have to go in for a medical exam. And if they weren't fit medically, they couldn't serve in the German Army. Some strange diseases began appearing in Alsace.
One doctor developed a vaccination that you would break out in bright red spots twenty-four hours after he gave it to you. There was an epidemic. Young men all over Alsace were breaking out in these bright red spots, it scared the German Army doctors, and "Oh, no, we can't have you in the army."
Other doctors would put healthy arms in casts, and arrive at the fact that the arm was terribly broken and wouldn't be fit for duty for months. Others would take appendices out of patients, perfectly healthy appendix, they'd take it out anyway, then, you know, it takes you four months to get over something like that before you can serve.
There were lots of ways to just say, "We're not going to help you. We don't like what you're doing. You've got the upper hand for the moment, but we're not cooperating." And you can do that with Satan's occupation as well. Don't collaborate with Satan. Don't do his dirty work. Don't participate in it. Don't get pulled into wrong things, and you know the wrong things you're not supposed to get pulled into. Your parents have taught you. Other people may tell you, "It's not wrong. Go ahead, try it." But you know in your heart of hearts, you're really not supposed to do that.
Don't do things that will damage your health. Don't get into wrong attitudes, anger, hatred, superiority, hopelessness, and you have control over those things. You can decide to give into that or not. Don't cheat on your future husband or wife. I think you know what I mean by that. Don't break laws. Don't break man's laws. Don't break God's laws. Keep yourself unspotted from the world. Don't do Satan's dirty work for him.
There is also active resistance. Turn to II Peter 3. Active resistance is where you actually do something to shorten the occupation.
II Peter 3:10 - "(But) the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, (and) the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. " That's the future. Nothing is going to change that. That is coming whether you believe it or not, and whether you like it or not, or whether I believe it or not, or whether I like it or not. It's coming. God said, "It's coming." That's the future.
Verse 11 - "Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved. . ." Since we know that's coming, ". . .what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness," Since you know what's coming, doesn't that mean it should have an effect on the way you live your life? Now look at verse 12:
Verse 12 - "looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God. . ." When you really think about that, that is incredible to think about. It says, "You, we, God's people can hasten the coming." It means God has allowed us to participate in His plan in such a way that according to what we do, the day might get moved up, or it might get moved back. That's the way I read that verse. ". . .hasten the day," make it come faster. When we're participating in active resistance against Satan, we can bring things about, with God's help, or God will bring them about, that's probably a better way to put it, more quickly.
One of the most heroic of all the resistance movements in Europe during the war was in Germany itself. It was called, "the white rose" movement, or group. And it started in universities with teenagers, eighteen, nineteen years old, and some of their professors as well.
The most famous of them are Hans and Sophie Sholl for reasons that I'll explain to you in a moment, but there were many others involved as well. One of the things they did was write up tracts. They just wrote sort of essays about why Nazism was bad, and how Germany deserved better than that. Don't go along with them. And they copied them, which was dangerous in itself. And they distributed them on their university campus in Munich which was the spiritual heart of Nazism to start with, and they did that five times, and others were involved in it as well risking their lives just to say, "Don't go along with it."
Hans and Sophie are famous because they were captured. I think Sophie probably partly was famous because she was an incredibly beautiful young woman, nineteen years old, and very brave. They knew that if they were caught, they would be executed, and they were caught, and they had their heads cut off. But they were willing to take that risk because they knew it was wrong, what was going on.
Tiny Mulder, to get back to her, I said I would tell you the rest of her story, she delivered those maps on that day in the Netherlands, and on many other days. And as the occupation went on, she had more and more responsible jobs to do. She saved pilots who had been shot down over the Netherlands, got them back to England again.
She saved the lives of many Jewish children because the Nazis would kill Jews no matter how old they were. She even adopted one into her family, which was incredibly dangerous, and she was a very bright young woman. At one point, the Germans were almost on top of her, right next to where she was, and she found this pilot. She quickly put him in these civilian clothes, took his arm in her arm, put her head on his shoulder and they walked right by the German troops, because the Germans were thinking, no pilot can get a girlfriend that fast. She saved his life at the risk of her own. And by the end of the war, as young as she was she was running her own resistance cell.
Resist Satan actively. Learn your Bible; read your Bible. Timothy knew it from his youth, the Bible says. You can learn it, too. Make the decision to let God guide your life. Do what you can to help prepare the way for the return of Jesus Christ. Pray every day, "Thy kingdom come."
Get involved in your congregation. Tell your pastor you're willing to help out. Get involved. Help people. Serve people. That's active resistance, and every time you do that, spiritually you're giving Satan a kick in the shins, saying, "I want you out of here. Your time is almost over, and I'm looking ahead."
June of 1944, the allies landed in Normandy. Little by little, they pushed the Germans back, and they liberated occupied Europe. When that was happening, the collaborators started having a real sinking feeling in their stomachs, because they thought the Reich was going to last a thousand years, and they'd turned on their friends and neighbors to get ahead a few bucks, and now they were losing. And in reality, the Germans didn't give a fig for them, just like Satan doesn't give a fig for those that cooperate with him.
And when those areas were liberated, the women who had collaborated with the Germans were stripped to their underwear, their heads were shaved, and they were marched half naked through the streets of the village as a sign of their shame for what they had done. The men were tried and executed. It was a shameful, shameful way to end.
But others who had worked in the shadows, unknown to the world, despised by many people were suddenly revealed as heroes. Almost all of the new governments formed in Europe after the liberation were formed around people who had been part of the resistance because their citizens knew we can trust these people to stand up for the truth, and what's right. They will risk their lives to do the right thing, and I think you can see some parallels.
The Church of God today, not very impressive to people in the world. Hebrews 11, I won't turn there, but you can read verses 33 to 40, talks about all the things some of our predecessors in the faith had to do. They were beaten; they were whipped; they went around in skins not having a place to live or food to eat, and then it says, ". . .the world wasn't worthy of them.. . ." in God's eyes.
It says those people who are sort of invisible in the world, the world was not worthy of those people. That's pretty high praise coming from the Creator of the universe. At the return of Christ, some are going to be ashamed, and some are going to be very thankful and proud.
Daniel 12:1 - I'm going to wrap up pretty quickly here. "At the (that) time. . ." of the end, it says in verse 1 so this is right around the return of Christ.
Verse 2 - "(And) many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were ashamed? You've done something kind of dumb. I know, I've been there, and your parents look at you and say, "What were you thinking?" There's going to be a reckoning like that at the return of Jesus Christ.
Now, who's going to be ashamed? Let's just think about that for a moment. Is it going to be all the people who were blinded who didn't really know what was going on? They'll probably be a little bit ashamed. How much more for those who knew what was going on, and just couldn't be bothered. "Naw, I'm not interested."
They walked away from the greatest chance in their whole lives in all of human existence. And I suspect, in one way or another, there'll probably be a question asked, "What were you thinking? I had such high hopes for you. I offered all the help you needed, and you walked away from it." We don't want to be among that group. On the other hand, one last passage, Revelation 3:5. I get chills, shivers in my spine when I read this verse, and I so want that to happen. I want to be in this group, not the other one. And remember, there will only be two.
Revelation 3:5 - Christ says, "He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life. . ." Now look at this: ". . . but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels." Imagine that in your mind's eye. The return of Jesus Christ, Christ is there as King of kings and Lord of lords, and it's time to hand out the medals, if you will. It's time to give the prizes, and this says, ". . .before My Father and (before) His angels." We know there are at least two hundred million angels, and how's this going to happen.
Well, God's very organized, I sort of imagine a stadium, perhaps, that's the way I imagine it; you can imagine it however you want, but there are going to be ranks and ranks of these holy angels there, and God, the Father, Himself, on His throne, and Jesus Christ is going to bring you forward, and say, "Father, I'm proud of this one. He made it. She made it. And I want You to hear his name. I want You to hear her name. Can you imagine anything more grandiose than that? And you have the choice to participate in that.
Young people participated in the resistance in Europe, and God wants you to participate in His resistance now. So what are you going to do? It's your choice.
What about that verse by Verlaine at the beginning of the sermon? It was read over the BBC to let the resistance know that the invasion of Europe was starting the next day, and their hearts soared when they heard that message because they knew what it meant. Their deliverance was close.
The deliverance for this world is close as well. And God has given you foreknowledge of what's coming. You know. You've got the facts. He's unplugged you, and you have a choice.
Now statistically, I kind of hate to have to tell you this, but I feel like I need to anyway, statistically there are some in this room that are going to choose foolishly. I don't know which ones they'll be, and there will also be some wonderful triumphs that come out of this room among you young people. What you need to understand is it comes down to your choice, because God's promised you all the help you need to go all the way to the end.
Are you going to collaborate, or are you going to join God's resistance like your parents have before you, and like all of our ancestors in the faith have done. That's what your parents hope. They hope that you will join the ranks, that you'll stand shoulder to shoulder with them as part of God's resistance. And more importantly than what your parents want, it's what your Creator wants for you. A life of effort and struggle, yes, but of fulfillment and joy, now in this life, and glory and honor that you can't even imagine, eternal life in the family of God. Think it over and join the resistance.