The Spirit of the Age

The Germans call it zeitgeist. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Who's a German in there? Who speaks German? Am I close? It means the spirit of the age. That's a loose translation. It's close pronunciation, but the spirit of the age. What is the zeitgeist of the age you and I live in? What does that mean? It's an interesting idea. It's a concept that if you look at any time period, what is the spirit of that time? What is the way people feel and the way they think? When you think about, let's just take the United States. We break even the history of the United States up into different categories, different names, because it tries to capture the spirit of the age, the roaring twenties. Now, if I said the roaring twenties, you would start to think of certain words. Some of you might think of prohibition or gangsters. It was a time of automobiles. In 1910, most people in the United States had never seen an automobile. In 1925, they were all over the place. In 1910, people hadn't seen the airplanes. By 1925, they're flying the mail with airplanes. It is just a technological wonder. They're living in a time like no other time in history. People are flying in the air and people driving by in automobiles. It's the age of flappers. Hopefully you know what a flapper is. Some of you do. Most of you don't.

Flappers were a type of... if the girls would dress a certain way, cut their hair a certain way, and dance a certain way, they were called flappers. Short hair. The Victorian age, women had long hair. All the women had short hair. You have speakeasies. But most of us, most of you don't even know what a speakeasy is. An illegal bar that everybody went to. You have an enormous change in sexual morality. The reason why is that millions of American soldiers had gone to France in World War I. They bid the Paris, and the farm wasn't the same anymore. And so things were changing. Things were changing big time. How bad did it get? They gave women the right to vote. Jazz was a new kind of music that was considered by some people to be the downfall of Western civilization. Jazz was bringing about the total decay of society. But you know, people can listen to jazz as a secret because of a new thing called radio. You think smartphones are exciting. Can you imagine taking a little box and putting it in your house and turning it on? And you could hear music. Or you could hear news that used to take three weeks to show up in your newspaper, and you heard it on the day that it happened. Life got so fast in the 1920s, people thought this may be the end of the world as we know it. And it became very fast, and so it's called the Roaring Twenties. What stops it is what's called the Great Depression, which was a whole other spirit of the age. Things change. What's a new favorite? If you have a favorite, if you have a favorite in front of you, if you write things down, write down a word or phrase. Just something that you think is the, forgive me if I'm pronouncing it wrong, the zeitgeist of today. What would you say? This is one thing. You can't say a whole bunch of things. Write down one thing. This is sort of the zeitgeist of today. This is one element of it.

Now, not at one time, because you're such a ruddy bunch. Somebody raise your hand to tell me what you have written down. Technology. We're in a technological evolution. That's the first thing I come to mind, is social media. Someone in the back. Yeah. Tolerance. Tolerance. Yes. It is a concept that if you would, if you're so now, when people look back at this time, these are the things that they will say. Sure. Selfie. Selfie. Okay. Which means, it's like they say flapper. You know, there's, okay. 90% of the people in this room are like, what's a flapper? I don't understand. Selfie. Yeah. Fearmonger. That's right. We live in an age of fear. Pride. The what? Political correctness. What was yours? Information overload. Okay. Some of these aren't very good. You know, technology is good. Information overload, something else. Political correctness. Yes. Now, you see what I mean. We can all, we can create a whole list. We can, 20 years from now, when they look back at this time, these are the things that they would use to describe the spirit of the age. Because the spirit of the age 20 years from now will be different, no matter what happens. Now, the spirit of the age probably between 800 AD and 1200 AD didn't change much. You see, there's times in history where things didn't change a lot, that there would be massive changes and you would have a different spirit of the age.

You and I live in anticipation of the spirit of an age to come. The spirit of an age to come.

At some point, and it may even be covered this morning, we always go to Acts 2. Let's read a few verses here in Acts 2. This is a fulfillment of New verse Old Testament prophecies that there would be a new covenant, and as part of this new covenant, God's spirit, the very power might of God as we heard in the sermon. It's going to be poured out into people. And when that happens, it automatically creates a new zeitgeist, the new spirit of the age. But the problem is, you and I still live in the spirit of this age. And we're influenced by the spirit of this age. And we struggle with the spirit of this age. And yet, we have been given the power of the spirit of an age to come. And that has to be how we live today. So we look at what it says in verse 1, the day of Pentecost, and come fully. And they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues as a fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. From this point on, the rest of the entire New Testament is about a group of people who were totally and completely out of step with the spirit of the age. And believe me, the first century AD had a real spirit of the age to it. It was the height of the Roman Empire. It was the height of the fact that they mixed all these peoples together. You know, strangely enough, one of the descriptors of the age of the first century, that time of the Roman Empire, the spirit of the zeitgeist of that age would be tolerance, religious tolerance. Not tolerance if you were against the Roman Empire, but religious tolerance was throughout the world. As long as you did create a new religion, which is what they claimed the Christians did, they were very tolerant of religions. As long as you were willing to still worship Caesar, you could believe whatever you wanted. You could worship rocks. They didn't care. And so you have actually a very religious tolerant world at that time. A world of new discoveries. They lived in a world in which there was scientific thought. They thought that they had reached the edge of science. They were creating new sciences and new thoughts, new discoveries, of which much of it is disproved now, but at that time they didn't know that.

If you lived in the first century and you lived in Rome or other places where you had been settled and lived under Roman culture, you would think it was the best time in the world to live. Because you had an economy that was creating trade between far ends of the earth like never ever been experienced. People were having wealth like they'd never had. It was the spirit of the age. These people now found themselves out of, out of culture with that. So what happens is, is that they're living by the spirit of an age yet to come. And the whole test for them and their entire lives and the rest of this first century is whether they would live by the spirit of their age or by the spirit of the age to come. In fact, their salvation depended on that. Now you and I can't live by the spirit of the age to come unless we're given God's spirit. But once we are given God's spirit, we must live by the spirit of the age to come, the kingdom of God. And our salvation depends on it. We can't live by the spirit of this age and the spirit of God, the kingdom of God at the same time. You have to choose one or the other. And so these people received God's spirit. As time goes on, they began to try to figure out how do they function in this world. It was easier to be a Jew and stay in the Jewish context. Okay, I believe in Jesus as the Messiah, and now I'll just go to synagogue like I always did. And many Jews did that at the very beginning. In fact, for the first 20 years, you see where the church basically met in the synagogues until they got kicked out because the spirit of the synagogue wouldn't let them be there either.

And how even the Jews found themselves, the Jewish Christians, how to step with their world. 1 Corinthians 2. Here Paul gives the only real deep description we have of what this does when we receive God's spirit in terms of our minds.

Two weeks ago, at the doctoral class, we covered the spirit of the band and we covered this passage. So we covered it again a little bit. But we don't forget we have a doctoral class that almost announced coming up Tuesday. Our next doctoral class is Tuesday at El Cidero. 1 Corinthians 2.6. Breaking to the middle here, this starts in chapter 1. Paul says, let's face this, in that what you have been given, he's telling the church, the spirit that you have been given is going to seem like foolishness to the intellectual Greeks. They're going to say, you know, you're just silly. And to the Jews, they're going to look at you and say, you know what? You're heretics. You have to understand the spirit of their world, any place they went, they were going to find themselves outside of that. And as this world continues, because we're in an age in which the Zaytites is changing, the spirit of the world is changing. And as it changes, you will have to decide which spirits you're going to be part of, because there's not going to be a choice after a while. I don't say that to be frightening, guys say it to say, wow, what a great opportunity to live by the spirit of the future, the spirit to come, the spirit that will be on earth during the millennium, the spirit to be in God's people, in God's family forever and ever and ever. But to be part of that, you've been chosen to live by it now, right now. But boy, that doesn't fit into the spirit of the world. And the spirit of the world, as we know it, is changing. What this world will be in 10 years is hard to predict, just like what the world was in 1928. You know, during the roaring 20s, the best of times, could you have imagined them believing what it would be in 1938? It wasn't even the same world! They couldn't even imagine that 1938 Naziism would be growing, communism would be growing, and the United States economy would have, the entire world economy would have collapsed. They couldn't even imagine that. Nobody predicted it, nobody thought it was going to come. Well, they did, nobody listened. And it happened. Music changed, art changed, architecture changed. Because every time a new age forms, everything changes.

Let's go here in verse 6. So he's saying to the church, understand, once you receive the spirit, it's going to seem stupid and silly to other people. He says, however we seek wisdom, among those who are mature, you're not the wisdom of this age, or the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. He says, this isn't going to seem, you know, in the spirit of this age, this isn't going to make any sense. But we seek the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory. He said, this is going to be a mystery to other people. It's not a mystery to us. Which none of the rulers of the age knew, for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Then he goes to Isaiah, where he says, eye is not seen, nor ear heard, nor have energy to the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. He says, this will seem absolutely silly because they don't understand we're being prepared for the age to come, so we live by different spirits. And that spirit isn't going to make sense. And the real question is, and what we have to ask ourselves, and I have to ask myself all the time, which spirit am I living by today? Which spirit am I following today? The spirit of the age, or the spirit of the kingdom of God? Now, you may have to live at the spirit of the age. And say, well, let's all go live in a commune someplace where we don't give, we're not given that option. We're not given that option. We're supposed to interact with this world. So we live at the spirit of this age, but we live by the spirit of the age to come. And we're given the power, we're given the spirit of the age to come. But this isn't an easy process. It is a glorious process. It is an amazing thing that God would do that. And it's an incredible act of grace that you and I would be chosen to participate.

But it's not easy. He goes on, he says, But God has revealed them to us through his spirits. For the spirit searches all things, just the deep things of God. Verse 11, For what man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of man, which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except the spirit of God. That's a remarkable statement, because it seems to come out of nowhere. There's not a lot of other scriptures that explains where he's coming from. But we can put some ideas together here. One is, you and I were made in the image of God. You know, when it says we're made in the image of God, and we've only known this in the last 20 years, because it's only been the last 20 years that we've been able to do more and more research and discover this. Your brain, and my brain, is different than anything else. Our brains are different than any animal. We're designed differently. You know, there's a part of your brain that triggers what they call religious experience, and it doesn't exist in any other form of animal. It's not there. You know what you do if you deceive that part of your brain? You become Hindus. You trick it into a religious experience. You can trick your brain into all kinds of things. Other people can, right? You don't believe that. Okay, look at each other's smile. Good. Look at your smile. Look at your smile. Good, do it. Oh, you look at each other's smile. You don't want to tell it, right? You just all got it. All those who did it got a shot of endorphins, those who didn't. Didn't. The rest of us feel happier than you right now. We actually do. We feel happier. Because when you smile at somebody, you give them a shot of endorphins. It's an amazing thing, right? So we all got a little happier, and the rest of you, you know, stick in the buds. You're not as happy as us. Okay, so we're designed, our brain is designed differently, but that doesn't explain all of it. When you look in the Old Testament, all living animals receive what is called the breath of God. It's translated spirit, but it literally means breath. It means life. It doesn't mean God blows into you. It's like CPR where God says, okay, I'm going to give you some oxygen, okay? The breath of God is not oxygen. God imparts into every living thing a life, but the life He gave to us is in His image, just like the brain He gave to us is in His image. And so, we become a living, breathing thing in a fish, as it says it did in Hebrew, but we are different than anything else. And this is what Paul's saying. Paul says, think about it. There's nothing else like us, and we think like human beings because we are designed like human beings. From the very design of our brains, now he didn't understand all that, but he understood, and there's a life in us. There's something given to us that's different. That's different. It takes our brains beyond some place, and we'll explain in a minute where it takes us. It takes us beyond just the function of the brain.

Verse 12, now we have received not the spirit of the world, the spirit of this age, the spirit of the time. We haven't received that. We have to give it up, or are we still carrying it around? All too many times we have two spirits, and we're fighting two spirits all the time. This day is about the spirit that is given to us so that we become part of the spirit of the age to come.

He says, but we have received, filling in just the missing words here, because, well, let's go back so we get the whole sentence. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. We know the truth of God because we receive the truth of God, and we understand it because of God's spirit. You could take a human being with this remarkable human brain and this spirit of man, and they still won't understand the things of God, except for the little bitty pieces, because we're made of the image of God, so we can begin to pick up bits and pieces, but we won't understand all of it. We won't have the intense relationship of God that is possible, so He gives us what? Well, Paul says it's power, love, and sound mind. Whose power is it? You've heard me say this before. Whose power is it? Whose love is it? And whose sound mind is it? It's God's. So that's what you get. That's what I get. That's what we receive. We receive power that is God's. We receive agape that is God's, and we receive sound-mindness that is God's. It begins it to us, and it comes into it. It's a missing thing. It is not possible for any human being to obtain eternal life, even by his self or herself. It's not possible. We're not a complete creation. You were born an incomplete creation, and Satan came along and just infused each of us with his spirit. So what do human beings do? We create new ages with new spirit. The spirit of this age, the spirit of that age, and it all fails. He goes on and he says, These things we also speak not in words which man's wisdom teaches. This is verse 13. By which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. We can compare the spiritual aspects of life and come up with the true spirituality of life, but this will seem silly even to the spiritually-minded people who do not have God's spirit. This will seem ridiculous. It'll seem oppressive. It'll seem abusive. It'll seem...maybe we should put those people in sub-mental institutions. But the natural man, the natural man is just the man with our brain that's designed to be in the image of God, the spirit that's given to us, that is designed in the image of God, that won't take us any place beyond this life by itself. The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, and he himself is rightly judged by no one. Now, this next statement is very important, because it's a quote from the Old Testament, and then he tacks a little clause under the end of this. He says, For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? You and I don't know the mind of God. It's so great. You know what's amazing about the mind of God? It doesn't need a physical brain. That's really amazing. The dead notice the clause, but we have the mind of Christ. When you receive the Holy Spirit, you receive the mind of Christ.

That's what you receive. To live by now, to learn and be prepared and anticipate, what? The age to come when Jesus Christ reigns on this earth. Think about it. If you and I live by the spirit of this age, how in the world would Christ say, Oh yeah, come on, now live by the spirit of my age? He said, I mean, how can we do that? How can we do that? I'm going to live by this age now, and when Christ comes back, I'll say, Well, look, I'm here. I'm going to now live by your age. He says, Oh, I gave you my mind. So you can learn to live by the spirit of the age to come, which he's going to bring with you.

This means that each of us has to give of our heart and our mind and our life and our energy, everything we have to submission to the Holy Spirit. It has to be submission to the Word of God and submission that when He shows that we're wrong, that we change. Now, this is very hard, but our lives have to be lived in submission to the mind of Christ so that we are prepared for the age to come. Let's go to 1 John 4. 1 John 4. I'm going to basically spend the rest of the sermon at 1 John 4. We'll go to a couple other passages, but we'll be here mainly, so you can put a marker here. We'll come back to it. 1 John 4. 2 John 4.

Mr. Ackerman speaks German. Mr. Peter speaks German. You can ask them afterwards about my German accent, which has a... well, my German, which has a Texas accent. 1 John 4.

Verse 1. He says, Belanah, do not believe every spirit. Now, when he's talking here, he's not just talking about demonic spirits. He's talking about the field, the thoughts. Now, some of this is driven by demonic spirits, but he's talking here in a real, bigger context, and he's tying it directly into certain false doctrines that were coming into the Church. He says, Belanah, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits. Test why this is said. Test why this person is saying this. What is their reason? What is their... what are they trying to achieve? What's the emotions behind it? Test the spirits. Something can be so right and be wrong. So, what is the spirit behind something? Test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out of the world. Not only deals with something very specific he was dealing with, if anything strange to us, but at this day and time, they were struggling with. In fact, within the next 50 to 75 years, this would become a dominant belief in what was a lot of what groups that call themselves Christians. He says, By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. Of course, we all know that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. There were certain Gothic ideas that he didn't. You see, how could God become flesh? That would actually be dirtying himself to become flesh. So, since God can't dirty himself, Jesus just appeared to be flesh. And that became a major teaching. You get to 150 AD, because it's amazing how many people believe this who claim to be Christians. It's a huge minority, close to the majority of people, believe some adaptation of this. So, your John's dealing with this now. Well, he really couldn't come in the flesh. He wasn't made of molecules. He just appeared that way for everybody's sake. He says, in verse 3, In every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and now is already in the world. You are of God's little children. You have overcome them, because he who is with you is greater than he who is in the world. They are of the world, therefore they speak as of the world. See, he's talking about the world. He's talking about the age at which they lived in. This was a Greek philosophical idea that would have seemed very understandable to many Greeks. I mean, Zeus appeared all the time, the people in mythology. He wasn't corporal. He didn't take body. He just appeared to look like a person. Right? Paulo appeared all the time. Yeah, of course, you know, this God of the Jews showed up. But he really was. Come on, he's flesh. Yeah, somebody go try to kill Zeus. Of course, he wasn't flesh. You see what I mean? This is part of the age of what they lived in. It's a philosophical idea that comes from paganism.

You know what they would have thought? They had special mystery understanding. That's what they would have thought. Verse 6 says, We are of God. He who knows God hears us. He was God of God, does not hear us. For this we know, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. What are the things when we receive the mind of Christ, and if we are close to Him, if we are close to Him, and we are close to the Father, through God's Spirit we are able to tell what's true and what's not. Now, sometimes it's not apparent right away. You have to take time to figure that out. You have to take time to figure out whether something's right or wrong. And these are the times of my life I think back some of you were around in 1995, right? I spent between six and nine months in tens of studies every day trying to determine what was right and wrong. To see what the Bible really teaches. That asking God for help. You gotta, we have to figure out what's right and wrong, or we have to take time. Because we receive the Spirit that will show us. Now, here's the real difficult part. You and I live in the age and the zeitgeist of this world. The result is you and I are easily adapted. Human beings are adaptable. We adapt to anything. If you lived in the roaring twenties, you would have thought it was normal, except all the old folks are saying, we need to go back to the Victorian age, right?

And the age before has always hated the age that's coming. But then when it catches on, it's so wonderful, right? I grew up, I don't know, the 1960s, I don't know what they call that, the hippie era, I guess. But, you know, I grew up in the 1960s. It was a frightening time. Oh, yeah, it was the time of the Beatles. It was the time of bell-bottoms. I remember that. More of myself. And it was also the time I have early memories of watching. This is supposed to be the 1968. I can remember turning on the television, black and white, four channels, okay, and watching combat in Vietnam on the news. I don't mean actors watching. They weren't allowed out on the news today, watching real combat. What I really remember is in the same newscast, watching tanks rumble through the streets of Newark, with National Guardmen on both sides, and buildings burning. We had a war going on in the United States. And using back to the 1960s, it was frightening. Remember when gonorrhea reached 1 billion cases a year? Now it's over a million cases every year, no one even knows about it. Why? The psychiatrist of the age has been adapted. We adapt that even. It's now considered normal. See, to be out of step with the spirit of the age, something's wrong with you. Understand it. Something's wrong with you. We have two major philosophies happening in this country we need to be aware of. And we're going to talk about these in some sermons coming up. First of all, I tell you, first of all, before we look at the philosophies that get us there, let's look at a description that the Bible gives of the spirit of the age at the end times. Okay? It's interesting. We have a prophecy that tells us this will be the spirit of the age at the end times. Let's go to 2 Timothy 3. 2 Timothy 3. 1 Timothy 3.

First one. Paul says, But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. It's interesting, in some translations, that word perilous is translated very stressful.

Stressful times will come. It's going to be hard to be a human being at this time. And he doesn't say it's hard to be a human being because everybody's living in poverty and everything's bombed out and there's death and destruction everywhere. He doesn't say that. He says, because this is the spirit of the age. This is how people live. And because they live this way, certain things are going to happen. Notice what he says, Her man will be lovers of themselves.

The end of the age will be subjective and emotional, in which people love themselves and are incapable of actually loving others. Or they'll be capable of having sexual relationships. And they'll be capable of feeling certain feelings of love, but they won't be capable of actually giving their lives to other people in love. That's what it's going to become. People will love themselves so much that they actually cannot love others. Lovers of themselves. Lovers of money. Ask the world you and I live in. Lovers of money. Yeah, it's interesting. You hear in the American way, read what people thought the American way was 200 years ago. And what's exactly the love of money? But it is today. It's the love of money. The love of money. And I'm not just picking on America here. I'm saying this is what it says. The world you and I live in, all of Western civilization is going this way. Boasters. Proud. We just thump our chests to tell everybody we're the best. Right? And we're proud. We're just very proud. We look down on other people. Blast-severs.

I'm going to watch a movie. There will be so much use of God's name in vain. If I don't watch it 10 minutes later, I'm using God's name in vain. It just inundates into your head.

Blast-severs. This is the way the world is going to be. This is the zeitgeist of the end times. This is what people are like. Now, here's what happens. We get so distracted by prophecy that we can view in on specific prophecies and miss the spirit of the age and actually be absorbed into the spirit of the age. Remember, someone said, fear-mongering. Who said that? I don't want to do a bearish. But someone said, fear-mongering. Okay? We get sucked into the spirit of the age. They did not even realize it. He says, he's disobedient to parents. That's a pretty strong statement. Hey, kids, this is the spirit of the age. Right? Your parents are stupid. They don't know what they're doing. I don't have to do what they say. Yeah, that's the spirit of the age. And it will ruin your life. He goes on and he says, I'm thankful. No matter what we have, it's not enough. Unholy. Of course, we're unholy. We get to determine what holiness is. I declare this holy. I declare that holy. God doesn't declare what's holy. He says, I'm loving. You know, people don't care about other people. Just unloving. Everybody's in your way. I'm trying to do something in my life. Every time I, you know, someone cuts me off or does something, you know what I think? I make myself think that person's probably got an emergency. Or that person's, no, they may not. But I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Because in doing so, first of all, the anger goes away. But secondly, what if they, you know, they see them a mile down the road park to the side of the street, you know, collapse. I'm going to stop and help them, right? Or instead of drive by and say, well, you deserve that, bud. He goes on and he says, without self-control, we don't need self-control. We can do whatever we want. Don't we live in a society that says, you can't tell me what to do, I can do whatever I want? Brutal! Have you read the story about the two 12-year-old girls who went and beat a girl or stabbed her? I don't know how many times. Almost to death. I guess she didn't die. How many? 19 times. And why? Because it was a video game! Now, I want you to think about this. There's many. Half the people in this room were 12-year-old girls at one time.

It is not that. You know, if a 12-year-old girl hates another 12-year-old girl, she might go pull her hair, right? She might do something bad to her. But it is not normal for a 12-year-old girl, even with corrupt human nature, to go stab another 12-year-old girl 19 times. It's not normal. But that is becoming the spirit of our age. Understand that. It's changing, and to that is becoming the spirit of our age. It's just increasing, increasing, and increasing.

Brutal people. Despisers of good. Despisers of good. You know, we say that homosexuality is a sin. Do not be surprised 10 years from now that people who say that at a public school, they take your children away. They will do it. And I'll tell you why in a minute. Because this is where the spirit of the age is going. Despisers of good. Traitors. Nobody's really, nobody's really loyal to anybody. Headstrong. Just stubborn. Just stubborn. Now, you know, you look at these. These have been sort of human traits throughout history. I mean, it's not like, oh, people never been stubborn before, right? People have never been brutal before. Oh, yeah. You ever read about the Middle Ages? I mean, brutality is part of corrupting human nature. But what he's saying is these things all combine to create a zeitgeist that is unlike anything else. Of course it is. Technology makes this different than the 1300s, right? So yet, then, who committed suicide while people on his chat room encouraged him to do so? That couldn't have ever happened before. See, it's changed. And as it changes, it's turning into something else. The world is turning into something else, a new spirit. And this is the way God had it summarized for us. Hotty. You know, we're just going to be as sexy as we want, and it doesn't. We don't care about, you know, we can be as sexy as we want. We can walk around however we want. We can do whatever we want. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Fun is the determinant of everything in life. That's all it is, is fun. Verse 5 is very interesting. Having a form of godliness but denying its power. This new spirit of the age is going to create a concept of what good is evil and evil is good. To the point where if you're against certain evils, you know, and this isn't due. Yeah, in ancient Sparta, all the men, all the soldiers, were homosexual. Well, they were bisexual. It was normal because you had a woman to produce children, and when you all went off to war, this is how they bonded. That's why they fought so well together. That seems so perverted to us. We're appalled by it. If you were born in Sparta, it would be normal. And somebody who didn't go that route would be a pervert. You have to understand what happens when things get reversed. Any man in Sparta that wasn't that way would be considered perverted and be an outcast in society. You have to understand that once it becomes the spirit of the age, anybody who doesn't conform is weird, perverted, mentally ill. And like I said before, my mother used to work. She was a registered nurse. She had to spend some time in their nursing home. Earned on nursing homes by a mental institution. And some of the people they brought in were homosexual because it was considered a mental illness. And it was classified. If you find medical books from the 1950s, it was considered a mental illness. Now, homosexuals are welcome to come be part of the people who stop practicing homosexuality are welcome to become part of the Church of God. I mean, is there any sin that I could list that some of us can't raise our hands? I can list some sins that if we're honest, every one of us has to raise our hands. So, let's be real careful here. Right? Is anybody here never hated somebody? You see what I mean? Okay, there's sins. So, we're all sinners. But the problem is, you and I can't stay haters and be part of the people of God. Right? We have to overcome the sin. So, we understand that. But at least somebody's got to stand up and say, stop hating, it's against God. Right? Somebody's got to get up and say that. But if you get up and say, well, abortion is wrong, ah, you're mentally ill. You see what happens once it becomes the spirit of the age.

I said a little bit ago, I was going to tell you two reasons how this all comes together, two ways. Here's what we tend to do. In looking at this spirit of the age, we tend to say, okay, we got to find who's causing it. So that we can mark one person. Or, you know, it's like, well, Adolf Hitler started World War II. No, he didn't. Not the innocent. It was ideas that started World War II. Ideas are a whole less, a whole lot more dangerous than persons. Adolf Hitler just had to embody those ideas and convince 70 million people to buy into those ideas. You see what I'm saying? By himself. If nobody else would have joined the Nazi party, who would Adolf Hitler be? Nobody. Yeah, he'd be a ventilist. That's right, because he would end up in a ventilist institution because he was spent so far out of the spirit of his age in Germany. They had to change the spirit of the age for him to do what he did. And there's a whole lot of factors that cause that to happen. It is philosophies that are the dangerous things. It's philosophies that are the dangerous things. Because it's those ideas that different people buy into. You know the two great philosophies. They're so dangerous today. Sexual humanism and new age. Now those two things don't always agree with each other, by the way. But those two philosophies are creating a new spirit of a new age. Now it didn't happen overnight. Sexual humanism, you can trace clear back to some concepts of Emerson and, you know, the Walden Pond. It took a long time for that to really form. It really came on into the 60s. Secondary humanism goes clear back to the early part of the last century. When the educational system began, people began to think, you know, we need to really create a unified educational system. One of the things they wanted to promote was evolution. And they started this process that just changed all kinds of things. Now the two philosophies would always agree, but they can't work together because there are certain things they do agree on. And we'll need to get some servants on this. We're going to have to really understand these two philosophies.

It's not President Obama you have to fear. It's his philosophy you have to fear. Because other people buy into it. And other people believe it. And he was taught that by other people. These are philosophies that grow, that become part of our mindset, that becomes part of our culture, that becomes part of the way we say things. I've been doing some real studies for the last six months or last few months in the New Age. And I hadn't done it for a long time. I gave a sermon at New Age, but it was many years ago. And I realized I use certain terms every day that come from the New Age movement. Now I don't mean it the way they believe it, but it's become part of our thought process, become part of our culture. And these two philosophies are changing our world. And it's these philosophies that you and I have to fight. Well, if we could just get enough people to vote against this guy or vote against this guy. You know, we have all these political parties, and sometimes there is a dying difference between them.

The bottom line is, there's lots of things that we have to fight. We have to deal with. We have to understand that they've already infiltrated into our society. They infiltrated it as Europe decades ago. In fact, some of the ideas Europe is beginning to reject. We're about 20-30 years behind Europe.

So we have, we, our country is really driven by these two philosophies socially. And they produced, they've already produced, a news night case. It's already happened. Well, we're looking at the whole, look at what my wife said to me recently. How could our country fall so fast in this moral principle, this principle of, oh no, no, no, no, no. It took 90 years for this to happen. It took a long time. People had to buy into ideas. People had to talk about it. People had to discuss it. People had to think about it. People had to write books about it. They would not argue it. They would have just changed a nation of 300 million people overnight. And it also evolves. The New Age movement of 100 years ago, on the New Age movement today, are two different things. They're not the same. They keep evolving as new ideas come in and people discuss things. What's interesting about the New Age movement, they're very honest. At least they're very honest. I've gone to numerous New Age sites, big ones, and they say, really, many of our ideas come from blistering religions and Gnosticism and mysticism. And Wikipedia says it, and you know whatever Wikipedia says is true. It's true. They're very honest. They're not starting to hide anything. There's no hidden agenda to the New Age movement. Now, secular humanism does have a hidden agenda. They're a little bit more subtle in what they do because they consider themselves intellectuals, and the rest of us are dumb. So they're not so honest in what they do. But the New Age, it's so simple. But you and I have absorbed parts of the New Age, and we don't even know it. And you and I have absorbed parts of secular humanism, and we don't even know it. And this is the zeitgeist we are entering. What we just read is the spirit of the New Age. It's already started. It's not ever going back to what it was. It isn't. Oh, if we could just get this person off, it's not going back. Well, if it did, it's only going back to revolution and violence, which would change it. See, it's not going back. Because that would change everything again, too. You had a giant civil war in the United States. Who knows what would come out of that? Or a war in Europe. It's not going back. And there's going to be no place to flee from this age. The spirit of this age is going to permeate the world. And there's no place to flee from it. Oh, it will just become do-day's preppers. Build ourselves a little fort in the woods and be sheeted together. Anybody comes up to our house. Well, if you're doing that, it's your lover of yourself. Oh, wait a minute. You're unholy, you're unloving, you're unforgiving, you're, oh, man, you're brutal. You do that. You bought in. To the spirit of the age. You bought right into it.

See, boy, this is tough. We're living in a time of, it all seems to be happening fast. It's just not. It's just picking up speed. And it's going to pick up more speed. And you and I have to live by the spirit of the age to come. Or we will be swallowed up by the spirit of this age. I can't stress that enough. You and I will either live by the spirit of the age to come, or you and I will be swallowed up by the spirit of the age that's forming. And so there's no use trying to analyze all of it, understand where the spirit comes from.

And it's just a long time. And it's a lot of disjointed things that form together. And you end up with a new spirit. The spirit of this age, if you really, it's interesting. I thought about giving a sermon on this, but it's just too much history. But the spirit of this age really started because of World War I. It was the destruction of foundational European structure that started where we are now.

The anniversary of World War I is the beginning. World War I is August of this year. 100th anniversary August of this year. World War I was the beginning of the collapse of what we're experiencing now. Unrelated events that come together. You don't think that? Iraq was not a nation after World War I.

Why? Because it was part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was destroyed during World War I. Iraq became an arbitrary nation carved out by the Western powers. And as time went on, Saddam Hussein's family really liked Adolf Hitler and tried to become Nazis. Now we're fighting, or we have been fighting in Iraq. That didn't come out of a vacuum because the Ottoman Empire fell in 1918. So you have to understand, the spirit of this age has been developing and going back and forth and what it was, it changed and it morphed.

And now we have what it is. And we have this big formed. But you and I don't have to fall into this. You don't have to. I don't live this way. We're not supposed to live this way. We have power and love and a sound of mine. Let's go back here to 1 John.

It said he shot the 1 John. 1 John. We read the first six verses. Now let's think of verse 7. Beloved, they think, why did he suddenly switch into a subject that seems disjointed to test the spirits, look at the spirit of things. And then he gives a specific instance. But you have to look at the spirit more important than the instances because you can't figure out the details. The details are too complicated. But you can judge the spirit.

You can see the spirit of something. And then he seems to change direction, but it's not. It's all part of the same what he's making. John says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. That's agape. This is by direct purpose. He's not saying filio. He wants to say this is the love of God. He wants us to know. He's talking about the way we treat people, the way we interact with God, has to be through the mind of God.

Remember, agape is only through the mind of God. It has to be through the mind of God. If you and I do this ourselves, we will fail. We can't do this ourselves. So he's saying, okay, we have to learn how to act. We have the spirit of truth, not of error. But he said in verse 6, So therefore love one another and love God. When you love God with all your heart and all your might, all your soul, you obey God. You follow God. You seek for God's will.

In loving one another, he's speaking specifically to the church. Why? They wouldn't love our neighbor. Our neighbor may not be in the church. Your neighbor may be a Hindu. Your neighbor may be a, you know, an agnostic. You know, if they need a car, you'd go jump their car because why?

You're loving your neighbor. But when he talks here, he's not using that kind of language. He's using agape. Because he's saying, inside the church, you must build the age to come.

Because you have received the spirit of the age to come. That zeitgeist is supposed to be developed in this mess called a congregation. That is an amazing miracle. How do you take us, and I think it's love one another, that's a miracle.

And he says, okay, let's work on our spirit of the age to come, and who we are, and who you are every day, and the decisions you make.

That we're not being part of the New Age movement. We're not being part of secular humanism, but we are living by the Kingdom of God right now through the Spirit of God right now. He goes on, and he says, Hugh does not love, does not know God, for God is love. So if we don't do this, we don't know God. It's that simple. If we don't live this way with its struggle, if we don't do this 100%, then we don't know God. We know some truth. We know some knowledge. We don't know the person of God. And this love of God was manifest towards us. Now, this is what I really find interesting, is where he takes this next thought. And John here is almost being like Paul, and where he takes this next thought. He says, now, if we have to love each other like God, let's be reminded how God loves us. Well, God has good feelings about us. Yeah, sometimes He does, sometimes He doesn't. Well, what? Okay. Let's go back to ground zero. In this, the love of God was manifest toward us, that God has sent us His only begotten son into the world that we might live through Him. We might live through Him, the mind of Christ, the Spirit of God. Right? All these things are coming together that we know that we must live, He lives in us. The Spirit of God can live in us so Christ can live in us so that we can have the mind of Christ. That's not an option. It is not an option to be a Christian and not have the mind of Christ being developed in us. It's by definition, that's what it means. To be a Christian is to have the mind of Christ being developed in us, so it's not an option. It's either it is happening or we're living by the Spirit of the world. He goes on, He says, and this is love, not that we loved God, verse 10, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. But that sounds like it's just written by Paul. Paul said He died for us while we were yet enemies. He died for us while we were yet against Him. Why? Because He wants us, and He wants us to be part of His age to come, or His, you know, the age of His coming. He wants us to be part of that, so He wants us to learn it now, with all of His trials and His difficulties, because He says, I'm going to give you an age that goes on for eternity.

That's what the Church is all about. That's what Pentecost is all about. Verse 11, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us. He lives in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abided Him and He in us because He has given us His Spirit, because we have been given the Spirit of God. What was poured out on the Church of 31 A.D., what was given to Abraham, Moses, and others during that time of what we call the Old Testament, but finally was given a mass of people, Jews, Gentiles, people from all over the world, called into the people of God to receive His Spirit, to live by the age to come, by the Spirit of the age to come. That's our zeitgeist. And you know what? You will be considered nuts, and it's okay. You know why? Because sooner or later, everybody has to live by that Spirit. Everybody! Because when Christ comes back, it's not an option. Okay, I'll let Afghanistan be however they want. It doesn't work that way. When Christ comes back, it's not an option.

It's what He gives us. What He's going to give them is what He's offered to us. You want the Spirit of this age, you have to receive another Spirit. What Spirit are you from every day? What Spirit do you live by? If you're like me, I try to live by the age to come, but boy, I sort of slide into, you know, I mean, let's now, let's be honest. When Abaca was hurt, yes, yes. When LeBron James lived off the court, I'd like to have a man hurt so people I don't even know win a basketball game. That is the Spirit of this age.

Right? Think about it. What a man to get hurt so people I don't know win a stupid game. They put a ball in a hoop. And I feel better about myself when they do. Right? Jimmy makes two points and it's like, man, I don't get about myself. It's the Spirit of this age. What do you think about it? It's absolutely ridiculous. You talk about foolishness? Isn't that silly?

I like to watch a basketball, but, you know, we have to be honest sometimes. We get caught up in the Spirit of the age and we don't even know we're doing it. I never want somebody to get hurt, but it's like, well, not too bad, anyways.

Just bad enough that he can't jump. You know, that's all I want. See, think about it. We are affected by the Spirit of this age all the time. That's why we're going through this series on holiness. Holiness is describing the Spirit of the age to come and it takes God's Holy Spirit to do it. But don't be discouraged. It's hard. It's difficult. But this age will die. It's going to get more difficult, but this age will die. God didn't call you to fail. Now, we can fail because we can decide this age is better. Some people decide this age is better. They always do. We don't have to fail. All we have to do is decide that the age to come is better. That's all. Decide it's better and then accept it and live by it. That the age is coming of a different time. The age is coming when God's Spirit will be poured out on all mankind. And it will be a totally different zeitgeist. And that is what started in 31 A.D. and continues through you today and will happen in the future.