Discerning This Time

Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you, Don, for that special music. Very, very nice. Appreciate that. I, too, will say hello to all of you and also any of the people who are watching in on the video webcast. I see a few people here seemingly without their mates or friends and missing faces. I knew that people came back from the winter weekend with a lot of sickness and you get all that many people together in rooms and swimming pools and ball courts and everything else and everybody just not only shares the love but shares the germs. And we brought a few back.

We've had our grandkids this week, two of our grandchildren with us and Debbie had to stay home with the little girl, little three-year-old. She's been coughing and didn't want to share any more of that with anybody else around here so they're at home watching in, at least Debbie would be probably. With the grandkids here through the week, your life just changed and turned upside down and inside out. This week my education was Curious George. I know every I think I watched every Curious George cartoon this week.

I know everything there is to know about that little monkey. I even started walking around the house talking like Curious George for a while. We woke up this morning and decided to take a Sabbath rest from Curious George and so we put on some Beyond Today programs for her to watch and she got to see three monkeys instead of just one.

That's an inside Beyond Today joke that the three of us have that keeps us honest as we present on that program. So anyway we've had fun with our grandkids and looking forward to a little bit of a rest probably before the end of the week anyway. Jesus Christ was talking to His disciples on one occasion and answering some questions.

In Luke chapter 12, if you would please turn there, He made a point that resonates down to us to this time beginning in verse 54, Luke chapter 12. He said to the multitudes in front of Him at a particular time as He was giving some extended teaching, whenever you see a cloud rising out of the West, immediately you say a shower is coming and so it is.

And when you see the south wind blow, you say there will be hot weather and there is. They could look up and by the change in the clouds, the change in the temperatures, the wind, predict what was going to take place. Now we can do that to some degree today but we don't need to because we all have two or three weather apps on our smartphones. They give us instant indications of weather alerts and whatever is going to happen and of course we've got the weather channel and everything else.

But in Christ's Day, weather forecasting wasn't there, they looked up and they were pretty good at what they did. Certainly we can be that way today. But He had a larger point before them. He called them hypocrites in verse 56. You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time? They could see what was around them.

They could tell the weather and predict to a certain level what was going to take place, but He said, you cannot discern what this time is. And He was speaking to us to a generation, and the point that He was making here was that they really couldn't see who He was. They couldn't respond to His message as the Son of God, the Messiah. They could tell the weather, but they couldn't tell that God Himself, in the flesh, was standing in front of them. That was their time. And that was the big event that they needed to watch and understand at that time, and those, at least in front of them, were not able to do it.

But the teaching comes down to us today. Now, we profess through the Scriptures that Christ is the Son of God. For those of us here today, and largely our audience here, that's not the issue necessarily. But Christ's teaching is still a warning to us to discern this time. And for you and I, this time is at the end of 2013, going into 2014, our period in history and time. And what is it that we should discern? Other Scriptures and other occasions, Jesus encouraged His listeners to watch, to understand. And this particular phrase has resonated with me in recent months, as I've looked at it.

I pose the question to you here this afternoon. How is it? How do we discern this time?

December 2013, almost 2014 as we turn the calendar. And though we don't get caught up in the New Year's end-of-the-year celebrations, we have to certainly do note the turning of the calendar year for many different reasons in our own practical aspects of life. And it is a time when certain stock is taken, as the news channels focus on what's happened in the past year. Time Magazine will come out with their person of the year, man of the year, whatever it may be on any particular occasion. People will do retrospectives of the events and the top news stories of the year. And it is a time for summing up. And it is a time for stopping and pausing. I try to always look at a magazine, The Economist magazine, puts out a special supplement that they call the world in 2014, or whatever the year may be. And they make certain predictions and try to forecast certain trends economically, politically, culturally, socially, every year in a special supplement to their weekly news magazine.

And so it's a time for us to look at a few trends and to discern what we should understand about today's world scene and the reaction that it should have upon us as the elect of God. Because Christ's words here in verse 56 still speak to us, for us to discern this time.

And this time is your time and my time in our life.

And as we look at our world, as we look at what is taking place around us, what is it that we should understand and what is it most importantly we should learn spiritually?

I'm going to go through three large trends that are in front of us right now and that we can take note of and learn about. But beyond that, draw some deeper spiritual lessons here in this sermon that we should understand. One of the things here as number one that we watch and we are very much aware of and the legacy and the history of the church of God and is ever more, I think, critical for us to understand in front of us at this time on the world scene is what I have come or to call the decline of the English-speaking peoples. America and Britain and other nations, Canada. We have some of our friends from Canada here today visiting with us in Australia, and New Zealand, the English-speaking peoples. And what is taking place with these nations, and America being the leading power, the leading nation that it is on the world scene today, what is it that we should note? There are many things. One, of course, is the great shifts in power that are taking place on the world scene. There are about a handful of individuals that I read on a regular basis as foreign policy experts, news analysts who seem to have a pretty grounded, basic grasp of what's taking place in the world. One of them is a professor at Bard College in Long Island, a man by the name of Walter Russell Mead. And he wrote something a few weeks ago that caught my eye as he looks at the whole sweep of the world and the nations and what's taking place, and especially America's role in it. He usually has some pretty good insight.

And he wrote these few lines that I'll read to you here a few weeks ago in a piece that he called The End of History. He said, in some time in this past year of 2013, we reached a new stage in world history. A coalition of great powers has long sought to overturn the post-Cold War Asian settlement that the United States and its allies imposed after 1990. 1990 came the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain, the Eastern Bloc nations began to—everything just came down at that particular point in time. America was triumphant in the Cold War that had been raging since the end of World War II. A lot of changes began to take place, and some people thought that they called it the end of history, in that all history kind of come to an end, democracy had triumphed, America would continue on to ever greater glory and power among the nations.

And that was a phrase that was turned. But recent years have brought some people to reconsider that particular idea. And as Mr. Meade mentions here, sometime this past year, we reached a point where things began to change. She said in the second half of 2013, the coalition that has ruled the world began—a different coalition began to gain ground.

And this coalition of basically three nations that he lists—China, Russia, and Iran—have begun to chip away at the status quo of what has been largely for the last 23 years the world that you and I have come to know and understand and be a part of—a global world that has reached quite a stance on the world scene in terms of wealth and power that, frankly, has benefited every one of us in this room here and everyone listening in. We have benefited largely from the world that has been created in this post-Cold War world period from 1990 on. But there are other powers that have begun to chip away at that. They said they have not achieved their objectives. The status of the world is still quo or still as it was. But from this point on, he says, we will have to speak of that situation as contested. And America will increasingly have to respond to a challenge that until recently most chose to ignore. He calls these challengers the central powers—again, China, Russia, and Iran—and he said they hate, they fear one another as much as they loathe the current world order with America at the top of the heap. But they are joined at the hip by the belief that the order favored by the United States and its chief allies is more than an inconvenience.

The big three—Russia, China, and Iran—they all hate, fear, and resent the current state of Asia, their neck of the woods. And they have been working to make certain changes there. And your headlines in mind that to whatever degree we keep up with tells us that story to whatever degree we may be interested in it at any given point in time. And yet it is a reality there.

I call this the current state of the English-speaking peoples. To me, that encompasses everything that we have understood historically and prophetically and biblically about the descendants of Abraham in the modern age, those nations—America being the chief today—that has been the recipients of the blessings that God made to Abraham and the wealth and the power that that has generated. And again, gives us the very, very comfortable life that we have as the inhabitants, citizens of the most wealthy, blessed nation and grouping of peoples that has ever lived on the face of the earth. 2014 will mark the 100th anniversary of an event that continues to have an impact on our world today. It's the beginning of World War I. In August of next year, will be 100 years since the peace of Europe at that point erupted, and the world has never been the same since. World War I was a tremendously wasteful, epic conflagration that to read about just rinsed your heart. I've begun to read a lot about it because I drew an assignment to write an article about it for the good news later this year, and so I've been reading some books about that and going back in a retrospective over that particular war, which ended major empires in Europe and in the Middle East and redrew the Middle East. The conflicts that we see in the Middle East today in Syria, in Jordan, and in Egypt throughout that area, even including Israel, are largely in part as a result of and are created by the events that World War I spawned just in the Middle East. Events in Europe are still impacted by what took place, of course. World War II came on the heels of World War I, and its impact was even larger.

The world that came out of World War II was been a world, as I said earlier, that has been dominated by the English-speaking nations in America, but primarily the architect of a post-war World War II world that in many ways is still with us to this time. When you look back at the way the world was a hundred years ago, there are a lot of parallels. 1913, up into mid-summer of 1914, the world was experiencing a global economy that is called by some the first global world.

People were eating food in England from all parts of the world, just as you and I do today.

I find it amazing that in the middle of December and January, we can go to Kroger and Meyer and get oranges, fresh oranges from somewhere in Latin America, I suppose, or you can be in Europe and you can get orchids from grown in Israel flown in. You can get food from all over the world, and it's fresh. Well, we think that that's just because of our influence today. Well, yet it is, but we're not the first ones. In 1914, people in England were experiencing the same thing to a lesser degree, but it was a global economy. All of that got disrupted in World War I, and it was frankly not until the post-1990 world that the global world that we now live in really came into its own. And so there are many parallels, and a lot of pundits have begun to draw those as they look back at the world then and the world as it is today. It's frightening just to read what those parallels are in the world today that are still with us. We still see another global period. We still see lessons being learned. It's amazing to read how people are still analyzing what led up to World War I and the breadth of opinion as to what caused that event among historians who continue to study it historically to try to understand and learn its various lessons.

But there's a larger question to this, and since I was told I was good at asking questions, let me ask you another question then. Why does this matter? Why does this current state of the English-speaking nations in the world today, why does it really matter?

Sundown will come tonight, and we'll go about our business. We'll go shopping. We'll go, you know, party or to an event. Life goes on, and we go from event to event, and we forget certain things. We get caught up in our life. Why does this matter? It's a question I like to ask, because it helps us to frame it and bring it down to an importance that does make a difference in our life.

The English-speaking peoples and their role in the world and to what degree they continue in a dominant role does matter. The reason is our peoples have been the what I call the running branches of blessing. And I left that phrase, the running branches of blessing, right out of Genesis 49, where Jacob described the descendants of Joseph in the time of the end, like branches that run over a wall and just go everywhere. The English-speaking nations in our time have been running branches of blessing throughout the world. Wherever they have gone, in large part, their legacy has been a good legacy. Their decline and their retreat will have a perilous void created, because power always goes into a vacuum. And whatever power will go there, and we could go into that prophetically, but what we want today will be a different power.

And yet, the power that our peoples do wield today is still strong. As I read and as I watch, I conclude that there is really one reason that the United States continues to stand as it does as the leader and still stands strong. When I use the term decline, it's relative in one sense, but it is not absolute at this point in time, because America is still the strongest nation in the world. Our economy is still the driving engine of the world's global economy. The dollar is still the reserve currency of the world. There's no reason why it should be because of the debt, because of the inabilities that we have governmentally in this country. And people that I read, they shake their heads sometimes. They have different solutions and reasons for what they see in front of them. But I come to a different conclusion. I conclude there's only one reason that America, especially as the leader of these English-speaking peoples and the role that it has, still stands strong and likely will continue for a period of time. But the one reason is this, and that is God's hand continues to support us. I based that on a scripture, many scriptures, but there's one scenario back in the book of Ezekiel, chapters 10 and 11, that paint an interesting picture. It's a vision that the prophet had as he was taken back to Jerusalem. And he was in captivity with some of the Jews. The city had not completely fallen. And Ezekiel was taken in a vision back to the city of Jerusalem. And chapters 10 and 11 describe this particular vision that he had at the temple. And what it is—we're not going to go through all of it, but what it is is a vision of the glory of God leaving the city of Jerusalem and the people once and for all, after a long decline, after a long period of sin that eventually led Judah, the final tribe nation of Israel, to go and be taken into captivity by the Babylonians.

And Ezekiel had this vision where he was standing in the court of the temple, and he saw a carabim descend, and he saw the glory of God come out of the temple, which is probably the most important part of it here in the initial verses in verse 4. He said, The glory of the Lord went up from the carab and paused over the threshold of the temple. This is talking about the presence of God within the temple, what was called the shakana, within the holy of holies, that when you go back to the temple at the time of Solomon's dedication, you find this glory coming into the temple of God, and it is the very presence of God. And in Ezekiel's vision, that presence is now leaving the temple and thereby leaving the people. The hand of God is rising off of the city and the people, and Ezekiel is recording it here as he goes through chapter 10 down into chapter 11.

At the end of chapter 11, verse 22, The carabin lifted its wings with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was high above them. And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city, and stood on the mountain which is on the east side of the city, which would be the Mount of Olives. This vision shows us something that I think is instructive. For a long time, God's hand continued to be upon Israel and then Judah, and then there came a moment when it left, and it was over. And the temple eventually was destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar attacked the city a second time. The entire glory of that first temple was destroyed, and God's presence was no longer among the people. The lesson that I draw from that as I look down into our time today is that God's hand has been upon us as a people, what I call the English-speaking peoples in America, especially. And the story is it is told through history, through prophecy, and through Scripture.

The branches of blessing that Jacob set upon the descendants of Joseph, where he put his name upon those people, those blessings have found their way here and have made all the difference in the modern world. And that's why you and I have the standard of living that we do, and the poorest among us lives like a king compared to others in the world today. And that's why you and I just love our smartphones and our gadgets and our Roku's and our Apple TVs and everything else. Because the technology, the ingenuity that has been residing in this part of the world through these generations and has taken the world to this level, we are the recipients of that. And there is a reason. Prophecy in Scripture is a multi-tool when we really understand it. It shows us what we'll be.

It shows us God is in control of history. And prophecy is also a prod to keep the church all of us leaning into the wind, leaning into the wind, forward thinking, forward moving, not resting on our laurels, not thinking that everything will continue on as it is, understanding the resistance that is there spiritually in this world, and that we must lean into it if we're going to continue to move forward. Not just in survival mode, but advancing. Prophecy is that multi-tool. And it's important that we stay abreast and understand and put it into context and, as I say, answer the question of why it really does matter. And never lose sight of that despite how our influence can work at us and erode our faith and our confidence. There's a second area for us to discern this time and to look at, and that is the continuing cultural and moral decline of our world and our nation, America. Great and powerful recipients of God's blessings, but not always using those in the wisest way and not letting it even take us to greater heights of standards, of righteousness. And all we have to do is just look around. And I could talk the rest of the afternoon just on that subject. But there was something that happened a few days ago that has kind of just stoned all of us, especially me. The controversy that arose over the popular television series Duck Dynasty. There's hardly any of us that don't know what we're talking about today when we bring up the phrase Duck Dynasty. Abe saw sweatshirts at the Winter Family Weekend supporting Duck Dynasty. ABC should have sold some. You missed an opportunity on that, kids. You should have got out ahead of the curve on that one that weekend.

Instead of ABC, you should have put Duck, Duck, Duck, Goose or something on there. And you would have sold enough to take a trip to Hawaii probably in the springtime.

I wrote a blog piece about it, put it on our web a few days ago when it was in the midst of it. Steve Myers did a BT Daily on it. And before I wrote it, I said, well, I'd better read the article. So at least I know what I'm talking about beyond what somebody else says about it. So I went online, read the article, and wrote a piece about it. Got quite a few comments on the web and also just people coming up to me at the weekend. Glad that I wrote on this, as this individual, Phil Robertson, was quoted as making certain statements about the gay culture of America. And that got him into some hot water with A&E, and they've since backed off. And I went out to eat at Cracker Barrel last Sunday. And I didn't see any Duck Dynasty stuff when I was walking out of Cracker Barrel, and they pulled all their stuff. And the next day, they recanted and put it all back in. So I missed my chance to buy any Duck Dynasty stuff at Cracker Barrel last Sunday.

But, you know, what I give, after I read the article, I was like, boy, you know, it's kind of, I thought it was kind of crude, the entire article. And it was just the comments about the gay culture and whatever that got him in hot trouble. And certainly, I would say most of us would agree with what he said, and it represents, at least we would side with that particular stance there. But the remainder of the article, I thought, and the way it was all put, was very, very crude. And so I decided in my mind just to take a step back from it and look at it all. As I was reading and thinking about it, I went ahead and wrote what I did. I could have written more, but I didn't want to ride that horse. It eventually passed as most of these types of situations do. But, you know, I've seen a couple of episodes of Duck Dynasty, and after the second one, I realized, you know what?

I grew up with people like this. They remind me so much of family members. I said, I don't really need to spend too much more time on television with them. So I haven't really watched it religiously.

But take a step back at times. You know, here's the point. We should choose our heroes very, very carefully. Choose your heroes very, very carefully in today's world. There's going to be someone else that will come along that will make a statement, and they'll pop off or make a statement. They'll get a lot of notoriety. One of these days, someone's going to turn their guns on what we write and say in our media efforts. And, you know, whatever the result will be. But some were, you know, it seems like sometimes we're not even on the radar of some of these. There may be a reason for that. Maybe God has not allowed that to happen at this point in time. But we've made some strong statements about those subjects and other subjects as well in our media, as we will continue to do. But because of the big stump that the Duck Dynasty family have, they got caught up in this. But take a step back from them or anyone else that we might align ourselves with as individuals and think, yeah, they're saying it the way it needs to be said.

We should be saying it the same way. Atta boy, Phil. Or whoever it might be, Glenn. Or someone else.

Step back from all of it and be very, very careful the heroes that you choose.

I couldn't really endorse much else out of that article. It's pretty crude. Pretty crude. And it's not the way we would put it and not the way any of us would want to be quoted.

And certainly not in that context. It reminded me of 2 Timothy chapter 3. And I think that we should weigh our heroes and weigh those that we get caught up with in the cultural atmosphere of the world today, the instant celebrity status and a new cycle that spins it all out.

Use this as the pattern. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, I'm going to read this from the New Living Translation. Paul writes, You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be difficult times or perilous times. It's challenging, perilous times. One step, one misstep today, when you reach a certain level of notoriety or celebrity, and it can all be over as we've witnessed. Things can change overnight. There are all kinds of other dangers there. Paul says, There will be difficult times for people who love only themselves and their money.

Use these standards, use this teaching to measure up our heroes and those we might want to support or think or do God's work or God's will or whatever.

Just take a step back from it at times. I think that's the balanced approach we should have.

They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God. There are many different ways that God can be scoffed, disobedient to their parents and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred.

They will be unloving and unforgiving. They will slander others and have no self-control.

There's a wide variety of applications for this teaching.

They will be cruel and hate what is good.

Our message is a good message. And when people scratch the surface of who we are and what we teach and what we do stand for, it's not one that people really do like because it is a very strong message of repentance. And it says, you and you and you and us, we're all sinners.

And we quote God's word. It says, repent and believe and change.

And that needs to be spread across the board. No one is exempt from that.

They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious. You can cloak yourself in a religious garb of born again Christianity to be specific, evangelicalism. You can act religious, but is it religious?

The very people at times that we champion and sometimes becomes our heroes would turn on us in a time on an instant. When the chips were down and everything is on the line, they would not support what you and I believe. You would be called a Jew because of your worship of God on His Sabbath day and keeping the Holy Days. And you would be spit upon.

So don't be fooled by a cloak of righteousness and what He says here. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. That's the Holy Spirit.

And the Bible tells us the exact path and pattern by which a person receives the Holy Spirit. And it begins with repentance and acknowledging that there is a God, a true God, that we've heard about the hearing of the ear but have not really seen. They deny the power that could make them godly. It concludes, stay away from people like that. All I'm saying is, take a step back at times.

Be careful that you don't get caught up in the latest parade in our culture of people, policies, politics, whatever it might be. Use something like this as we weigh and evaluate our culture and the moral state of affairs that just continually bombards us in our senses.

There's a third area that I'd like to talk about here, and that is a lesson that we draw from the all-too-often natural disasters that come and sweep across our land and other nations.

Just recently, the biggest natural disaster was Typhoon Haiyan that went across the Philippines, devastating that section of the Philippines. And before that, it was perhaps a tornado in Oklahoma, at least for us here earlier last spring. It was just over a year ago that Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast, New Jersey, and especially New York City, Manhattan. They said sharks were seen in some of the streets in Manhattan having been washed up. And it shut down the world's biggest, most powerful, most glamorous city, New York City, for a period of time because of a natural disaster that was unavoidable. When those things happen, there are always opportunities to do good.

Through the Red Cross, through our own efforts of our own good works, life nets, and we have raised a lot of money, nearly $100,000, for members in the Philippines. There's always those efforts and opportunities that we engage in to help where we can. We cannot escape. There'll be another one, there'll be another disaster somewhere sometime in the coming months of epic proportions again. We pray not, but we all know how it is because these matters of hurricanes and tornadoes like this, they are actually part of the natural order of things. They're not unnatural in the world. We can forecast, we can evacuate, we can build flood walls, we can make certain precautions, but we can never stop them. And we cannot totally eliminate all of the risk, all of the damage. That can't be done in our world today. And we have to deal with, then, the aftermath. And so it leads us to probably a deeper spiritual lesson as we look at that.

Life throws some pretty big storms at us from time to time.

And if it hasn't, the day's coming when it will. When a storm will enter our happy, busy life and throw us into disarray, a job can disappear overnight. A relationship that has been holding things together can fall apart. The doctor can call and say the test results are not good.

And suddenly we're engulfed in a major storm, personally. They can happen to any of us, you and I. They have happened. And inevitably, it's going to happen. Somewhere in the future of every one of us is an inescapable appointment with an irresistible force. For each one of us, the waters will someday rise, the winds will spin out of control, the roof will come off our house, and the power will not come back on. A little bleak, I understand. But all of us should look at the world and life and understand that.

And as much as we endeavor to avoid it, eat healthy, show up on time, do the best job we can, be a good husband, a good wife, be a good person, be a good Christian, none of us are immune from certain things that will happen. Storms will come. And it's how we react that is going to make all the difference.

And if we are wise, we will prepare in advance. As a pastor for so many years, I have known many, many people who have faced these storms of life. I've sat at the bedsides, I've gone into the hospital rooms, I've taken the phone calls, I've prayed on the phone, I've prayed in their homes. Every minister has.

And so many of these situations, these storms that come on, you deal with them one at a time. You encourage, you teach faith, you pray, you cry, you hold hands, you hug.

So many that I've known through the years have met the storms with a calm faith that was both stunning and humbling to me to watch.

As I'm sure that you have seen and watched as you go through. And when we come to those moments and to those times, we recognize our own helplessness and our insufficiency before such a life event as that is.

And the first step that we can begin to take in preparation for any of that that might come is strangely to admit our weakness in the face of that.

Kind of like the 12-step programs that are so often effective for people dealing with alcoholism or another addiction, where the first step is an acknowledgement of failure and defeat.

And certainly admitting and acknowledging a higher power.

Except we know that that higher power is God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And it's that admission that opens the door to a new kind of strength.

To acknowledge and to accept our own weakness is to ground our lives in a deeper reality and truth that will help us get through whatever storm might come up.

When we open our eyes to the fragility of life, when we learn a lesson from these events that take place around us, and we learn a deeper spiritual lesson, we come to a dependence on God, and we really enter more deeply into life when we do that. We come to terms with the insecurity that life is, and we come to find a more reliable kind of security that is faith.

And it makes even the joys and the occupations of our own lives that much better and calmer, richer as a result. And it even gives us a calm beyond the storm.

Because the same force that sends the storm and allows life to be what it is, that same force, that same God offers us a peace and a security that no storm can destroy.

No storm can destroy. In Psalm 30, verses 4 and 5, it says this, saying praise to the Lord, Psalm 30 and verse 4, saying praise to the Lord, you saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holy name.

Verse 5, for his anger is but for a moment. His favor is for life. God allows what He does allow on a large level as a natural disaster and on an individual level of a sickness and illness, a death of an adult in the prime of their life, someone elderly, or even a newborn.

And all we are left to do is but cry and look to God. And God allows it all.

And we work through it and come to understanding. At the end of verse 5, it says, weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. And that joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. And that joy is something that is deep within, that's not contingent upon the amount of the income, the money in the checking account, or the size of the house, or the age of the car. Joy comes from a deep contentment and satisfaction within created by God's Spirit as one of the fruits of the Spirit.

It's not something that we can work up and advance by our own efforts, but can only ask for and develop as a gift of God as part of the working of the Holy Spirit in our life.

And so, these are just three areas to look at, to learn lessons from, and to think about.

And I'll ask another question. What should this do for us? What type of a person should you be as a result? In 2 Peter 3, there's a verse that tells us in God's Word how to handle prophecy.

The world around us, and a storm that might come upon us in life. In 2 Peter 3, in verse 10, he says, "...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." Peter just goes right for the tail end of the whole story of prophecy and what is going to take place in this world. He kind of sums it all up here, and he calls it the day of the Lord. And then in verse 11, he says, "...therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, all of the prophecies will take place, and these events will occur, since they will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness." That's the point Peter makes, because this will happen. By God's plan and on His timetable, it should make us better people. We should be more righteous. Prophecy and an understanding of discerning the time, this time, looking and understanding the world in which we live, should make us better people with holy conduct and godliness. That's the type of people we should be. And as I said earlier, it should make us lean into the wind. Lean into the wind. I learned something recently about a well-known passage of Scripture back in Matthew 16. In verse 18, we all know it when Peter made his profession of faith that Jesus was the Son of God. Christ said, who do you think I am? He said, you're the Christ, the Son of God. And he said, you're Peter. And I say to you that upon this rock I will build my church. And in verse 18, he makes the statement that the gates of the grave, the gates of hell, will not prevail against it. I will build my church, Matthew 16, 18, and the gates of the grave, the gates of hell and death, will not prevail against it. For years, I thought of that as a kind of a, certainly a promise, and it is a promise, but I looked at it in a defensive way that Satan and his forces would not prevail against the church. But when you really understand what Jesus is saying, that's not a defensive statement. It's an offensive statement.

And in the ancient world, the gate of a city was the weakest point of the city. They were all always walled to keep bad people out and armies out. The gate, the main gate, was the weakest point. And when Christ says the gates of the grave will not prevail against it, He is saying that the church is going to be on the offensive, and it will prevail against the gates of the grave. And certainly, Christ did that through the resurrection, as we're told in many scriptures.

He defeated death through the resurrection. Christ is the head of His church.

That church will prevail against the gates of the grave. It's an offensive statement. It's not a defensive statement. It means that we will prevail, and we should be leaning into the wind.

And the lesson for us individually is to be on the offensive, personally, in our own lives.

What manner of people should we be? People of holy conduct and righteousness. We should be waging an offensive in our own lives. And it should dictate and help us as a church to understand our job, to continue to advance and to go against the weakness of the gate of the grave, knowing that Christ has already prevailed. We will as well. The church will prevail against it.

It's an offensive statement. And when you approach it from that point of view, it is completely different, which is why when we turn to Ephesians 6, and we see the tools of the warfare that Paul talks about in Ephesians 6, it makes it even stronger.

I'd like to leave you with three tools out of this listing that Ephesians 6 gives us that can help us as we turn the calendar page to 2014 and help us through the coming months. And God knows we always need the help at a time like this. It is the darkest part of the year. The days are the shortest, and there's a reason that Satan put his chief holiday at this point in time. And it seems like we do our best to fight against the spirit of the age that comes up, but it is the darkest time, and it challenges all of us, all the more so for us to be reminded of the light of the gospel, the light of Jesus Christ, and the tools that He gives us to wage an offensive battle in the spiritual war that we have. He talks here about the wrestling against principalities and the powers of the darkness, rulers of the darkness of this age in verse 12, which is our fight. And He describes in this whole armor there. There are three tools that are mentioned here that are, however, offensive. In verse 17, He mentions the sword of the spirit. Take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. A sword is an offensive weapon with which, by which, we attack. We attack Satan's attitude, Satan's ways. We attack this world. We attack sin. We attack the sin that so easily besets us. And we use the spirit of God to cut down the enticements and the entrapments of this age that are meant to rip our spiritual lives apart. In 2 Timothy 1, verses 6 and 7, Paul told Timothy to stir up the gift that is within you by the laying on of my hands. For God has not given to us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. That's the power of God's Holy Spirit. That's an offensive mind. To have power over ourselves, and over our lusts, and over our drives, and to submit those to God's Spirit. A spirit of love that allows us to develop the bonds of love and affection within the body of Christ, and to all whom we engage.

And of a sound mind, to not fear. To not fear our life, to not fear this world, to not fear what lies ahead. It's a spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. And he says, stir it up. Stir it up. It's like a sword, and it's meant to be used to overcome, and to endure, and to fight against the gates of hell. That's what it is, and that's why it's important. He gives, as a second tool here in verse 16, he mentions the shield of faith.

He said, take the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. Shield, again, we could think of as a defensive weapon only, and it's more than that. A shield as it was used by a Roman soldier was an offensive tool.

The Roman soldiers would all crouch to come together at times into a formation. They'd make what they call a turtle shell. They'd bring those long rectangular shields down over them, and create an impenetrable barrier against spears and arrows, and then be able to move almost like an ironclad tank into a stronger offensive position. The shields protected them, and the shield quenches the fiery darts of the wicked one. That's an action that it does. We use the shield of faith, and boy, do we need faith in this age today, in a world that is wanting to rip faith right out of our lives. To take away our belief in God, to take away the belief in the Bible as the revealed Word of God, and to begin to discredit it, verse by verse, section by section, passage by passage, to where it is only a literary piece of wisdom and stories and nothing more.

Faith and belief stretches even to a necessary point where all of us really believe who we say we are. Do you believe that you are in the body of Christ? Do you believe you are a Christian? Do you believe that you are among the elect of God? What do we believe about ourselves?

If we really believe every aspect of what God says about us as a holy people, elect the Church of God with Christ as the head, if we really believe that, it would change our lives. If we lived our faith and quenched all of those darts aimed at us, to pierce us, to deflate us, the energy that we have, the confidence in God, confidence in His Word, if we use it in that way, then we could do remarkable things collectively and individually, to live like we believe that we are a holy people.

There's a great need for all of that. And God says to use that shield of faith as an offensive weapon in that way, to keep faith from being ripped from our life. In verse 18, He gives us a third tool.

Sword of the Spirit, the shield of faith. In verse 18, He says then, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. Be watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for the saints. Prayer is always going to be our strongest asset. Stay close to God, to ward off the challenges, the distractions. It's always going to be our strongest asset, and one that we will need to continue to be driven to our knees. And even beyond that, because it seems the intent of what Paul says here is to pray in the Spirit always, with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit. In the Spirit. Not only on our knees, but as a way of life. We are talking with God. We are walking with God. And God's Spirit is moving us to do that at various times and in different ways throughout our day, each day of our life. Talking with God, thinking about God, letting the words of the Scriptures be a part of the words that we consider and we think about. Praying in the Spirit, the sword of the Spirit. You know, there's a reason, a really strong reason from God that I believe we have been led to as a church to focus upon the fruits of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit in recent times. Both of which mutually work and enhance our lives as we receive gifts that God gives and as we demonstrate the fruits of the Spirit that are mentioned as well. All working together to produce good effects within the church. There's a reason that we have been led to focus on the work of the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the church. There is a great need for all of us to understand how God works as the Spirit in us. The Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God the Father. God's Holy Spirit at power working within us as Christ lives His life within us. The living head of this church, the one who has overcome the grave and is our advocate, is our high priest and is there to help and to give us the strength that we need.

All of these three offensive tools are matters for us to take up and to develop and to use every day. But certainly at this time and as we look ahead and as we weigh ourselves in relation to what is taking place in this world and as we come to discern our times. There is a wonderful poem that was written a little more than a hundred years ago that was made famous when the King of England quoted it in one of his addresses in December of 1939.

King George VI, who was the father of the President Queen Elizabeth, in the first months of World War II gave an address to the British Empire, the Commonwealth Empire as it was called then, Commonwealth today. And it's called the Gate of the Year speech.

In the first few lines of it go like this, I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied, go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way. So I went forth, and finding the hand of God trod gladly into the night. And he led me toward the hills and the breaking of day in the lone east.

It's a wonderful poem. The best part of it is in those few lines right there.

Put your hand, finding the hand of God, go into the night. It's a better light for us, and it is the way for us to go forward. God has called us to prevail against the storms and the doubt and the fear that swirl around us in this world and continually work against us. We are to prevail. We are to prevail against the gates of darkness and the gates of the grave.

We are to discern our times. If we can use these tools and others that we can find and work and develop among ourselves, then we can have what we need to deal with today and tomorrow and anything that lies ahead. Through Christ and His life in us, we can have that power over the dark designs of Satan's world, and we can overcome and we can prevail. And so, we can have a power when Jesus said, discern the times.

It's important that we discern those times and understand where we are, who we are, and what we have and the strength and the hand of God to help us live during these times. Discern them and ask for God's help in the coming days ahead.