Who Inspires You?

Well, a famous entertainer has died. You probably heard it on the news. It shocked the world. Unbelievable that such an icon is dead. This entertainer was very, very talented, idolized, famous, rich. This entertainer was plagued by abuse from early in life. He was a victim, and he also victimized others. This entertainer, though rich at one time, died penniless. The hallmark of this entertainer's life was that the skills and talents that the entertainer had was almost extra-human. Nobody could seem to do what this person did. Odd, huge audiences. People screamed and yelled and did almost anything to somehow touch this person's life. Who was this entertainer? Many, many popular people that have been entertaining this society for a number of years. It's not one story. It's the story of many. In fact, if you take one of the most popular entertainers that you liked or that you knew, all you have to do is Google their name or go to Wikipedia.org and enter their name and look at the tragic life that often began with abuse, continued in abuse, that went through layers of problems and issues and ultimately came through, usually with a re-rise at some point after a cleanup followed by, again, a demise. Seems like it's the ultimate dream of humans to become a famous entertainer. There's even a very popular television show that tries to get common people discovered, and that person's dream, their ambition, is somehow to be recognized and rocketed to stardom, to be in the bright lights, transformed from a busboy into an idol.

Somebody that's worshipped, that's recognized. How would you like to be idolized by humanity? Is that one of your dreams? What would you do for fame and for recognition?

What would you do to have extreme talents, not just the common mundane life that you live now, as some of those things that you know you're gifted in and know you're talented in, but no one else seems to really recognize them?

What would you give to have the masses of humanity flock to you? Today in this sermon, I'd like to talk realistically about talent, and about icons, and about fame.

Somewhere down deep, I think all humans want some of it. People want to be recognized. They want to be beautiful. They want to be attractive. They want to be powerful. They want to be somehow recognized that this life they've lived meant something, and they've made their mark here somehow. Is that what you want? Well, I think so. I think it's part of being human, and there's somebody else who wants you to have that, too. If that's what you want, what would you give in order to get it?

I think you know what I'm talking about in the sense that people who become famous, they become big, they devote an incredible amount of their life and an incredible amount of their efforts to pursuing the dream of notoriety, to pursuing the dream of fame or perhaps fortune. Let's talk about that today, and let's see where this fits with you and me. Would you like to be on American Idol and win the whole year series? Please, even though you might get on like some people do and you're tone deaf and you think you're better than you really are. Music is inspiring. I think you've been inspired by music. There are some songs that come on the radio that you just love to turn up, especially if you're young. If you're older, maybe you like to turn them down. I don't know. But I know the young, when we're young, we love music and we love it full blast. Just like to envelop ourselves in music because it really does inspire. But what is that music saying to you young people who listen to popular music? And I enjoy popular music as well. How often do you listen to what it's saying? How often do you really contemplate the lyrics? I remember as a young man, I didn't. I knew all the lyrics. I could tell you what they were. I wrote them down for my friends because they could never remember them. I knew all the lyrics, all the songs. But somehow, even though when I wrote them down and memorized them, I didn't pay attention to what they said until later in life. And one by one, I've had to go through my music collection and say, you know what? That's got to go. I've even bought back an album or two, thinking, oh, it wasn't that bad. I must have been in some sort of a religious moment or something, only to play them again and say, you know, they were that bad.

Are we listening to that which inspires us? You need to screen some of that stuff.

Why was it composed? We are the purchasers. We're the ones who buy. We're the the public who funds the music industry. And it's not by accident that music is entertaining. It's titillating. It pulls you in. It's exciting. It's developed to do that so that you will pay money to the people who are producing this stuff. So you might ask the question, why is this song being produced? Why is this piece of entertainment? Why is this music produced? Why did the writer write this book? Well, in some cases, it's so that it would fly off the shelves and people would get rich through it. Sometimes music and other genre of entertainment is composed to simply develop a reaction, a response, maybe to titillate the emotions. For instance, gospel music, religious music. Music sung in church often falls into this category. Well-meaning individuals who know how to make an audience move, to bring them to the point of tears, to elevate the emotions to where they say, I'm so happy I had such a wonderful moving time. Most of that revolves around the word I. I was listening to a preacher today who, before the hymn, the old rugged cross was sung, said how much it just focused on Jesus. It was all about Jesus. Now let's stand up and sing this song. There was nothing in it about Jesus. It was all about me. And as the crowd sang, I kept waiting for that all-about-Jesus part. Other things are developed for an individual to get credit, an award, something handed to you on a stage. Wow, that was done so well. Here's your reward.

Why were these things composed? Inspiring artistry of various types is very moving, very compelling, but what is its source?

What's the mind behind it? Where did it come from? What is its motive?

People can feel that a particular show is very outrageously funny, or it's outrageously moving or it's just outrageous. And the emotion is just, wow, but what is it saying? What's it doing? What's the motive behind it? The concept here is that there are scripts, there are scores, there's literature. Some of the lyrics can be very good, some can be very bad, and some of it can be a combination of both. What are we putting into our minds and what is the source of that which is filling our world? Some is intentionally for merchandising. It's just all it is. It's crafted for sales, it's crafted for impact. You probably know a couple of the boy bands of the 80s that were very successful and very popular and they were just garishly calculated by a corporation who sat down with the plan, developed the plan, developed the marketing, developed the methodology, developed the musical scores, and then went and found the people and packaged them with their little outfits and sent them on a tour and the results were exactly as defined. It was a corporate investment. Investors invested in this, the returns were, and so on and so forth. And whenever I heard those particular bands, I always felt being merchandise. This isn't real stuff. These kids didn't develop this stuff. This is just coming out of a factory somewhere.

Some is canned, some of it's emotional fiction. You'll get upset with me that that's okay. I like it when people are upset with me for good causes. Like the poem or the writing of footprints. Okay, you know the one that's so cool, put it on the back of a sunset or a beach scene in footprints, you know. There I went trucking down the beach and I was wondering where God was and something about I looked back and there's two sets of footprints and then where were you, God? I was carrying you. Oh! Is that true? No. Did God ever walk down the beach with you? No. Did He ever pick you? No, but it feels good, doesn't it? It's like a thousand or ten thousand other internet stories that people actually develop for the internet and send around for the purpose of seeing how many people they can get to forward this stuff. You know, and it's all just made up. It's a bunch of little things that glow and jump around on the screen and I guess it makes people feel good, but it's emotional fiction. It's not like the Word of God that is absolute truth.

Some are crafted to change mentalities, like societal constructs, bases of law and order, like the TV sitcoms and films that came out in the last 30-40 years that have actually been crafted. They're not there to give you entertainment. They're there to change your mind. They're there to change your ethics. They're there to get rid of certain fundamental truths and replace it with lawlessness. And they do a wonderful job over time. It just keeps banging and banging and banging and banging and banging and pretty much the whole society is bought into it and there are no more rules. There's no more real love, not godly type of love. It's been replaced with a salacious form of self-indulgence, a hedonism of the worst type, where people prey on other people and the precious young ladies of the world are just abused and taken advantage of repeatedly until they're spit out in their early 30s and wonder what happened. Some are crafted during an alcohol or drug abuse episode in a mind that's influenced by other sources. And this can become very popular and almost worshiped in our culture. The more desperate and despotic an entertainer is, the more they're sort of branded as, well, that's a pure artist. You know, that individual is really something.

We have to be careful because there's a lot of things out there that come across to us in the form of entertainment, music, literature. Not all of it is just pure bad. I don't want to give a false impression, though nothing is pure except the literature that you're holding on your lap. I want to be clear about that. Some of it is just the best that people know how to do. It's refreshing when you come across that. There are artists, young and old, who just are gifted and talented. They just love whatever craft that they have, and they do their best at it. And it's so refreshing. It's so enlightening. Again, it may not just be the purest thing out there, but it certainly is enjoyable. When that happens, people doing their best, some resound with others, and some bomb. Unfortunately, that's just the way it is.

But sometimes things resound with audiences that are unexpected, and it wasn't supposed to be that good. In a way, when entertainment or literature or films or anything, when they're put out, everybody's trying to do their best. And usually it doesn't really respond or resound with people, but sometimes the most odd things do. I'll give you a couple of examples.

Irving Berlin back in 1918, at the end of World War I, penned a little piece of music. He was actually doing comedy music at the time, and he penned this piece of music. It didn't fit with comedy, obviously, so he set it aside. And as World War II was dawning in 1938, he brought it out, did a little more editing on it, and he led a lady who had a radio show sing it one time live. Her name was Kate Smith. Kate got on the radio in 1938 and began to sing God bless America, land that I love, stand beside her and guide her through the night with a light from above. And BAM! That resonated, and nobody was expecting it. There wasn't even any sheet music for it. And instantly the world, at least this part of the world, demanded the sheet music, because that was a time when sheet music and live music being performed was more popular than recorded music. And they were caught flat-footed. A few years later, actually two years later, in 1940, Irving Berlin was right here in Phoenix, sitting by the pool at the Biltmore. And he was working on a song, and it came to him that he had to do something kind of humorous, because there was a famous individual in Los Angeles who was always whining that he missed the cold weather up north where he was from, and he was stuck in LA. And so Irving Berlin sat there, and he wrote out this tune, and it kind of poked at him, and he thought it was funny, but he didn't do anything with it for a while. But later he edited out those funny lyrics. He got Bing Crosby to sing it in one of his albums. Bing thought nothing of it. He remarked to Berlin, who was there at the recording. He says, I don't think we will have any problems with that one, Irving.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas sold a hundred million copies and changed the mindset of most people on the planet to wanting snow on Christmas Day.

You know, it's funny what happens when people are doing their best, what resounds with people, and what doesn't. The concept here is that humans are gifted enough to get through this life, gifted enough to get married, have children, stay alive, support a family, raise a family. Those things require gifts and talents. Sometimes they're used for other things as well. What we should appreciate is the fact that God gives us talents. I get to spend some of my mornings, my wife and I, watching the animals outside, and the animals are not gifted and talented. They just aren't. They come and they eat and they do what they do and they do it well, but they don't have any extra talents. There's nobody out there doing pirouettes. There's no little ground mouse that's learning to fly. They all pretty much do what they do. But then the humans come along to the park next door, and they're a pretty talented group. Not all their talents are used for constructive purposes, however, but God has certainly instilled in humans talents that we should appreciate. However, it seems some humans want to be talented beyond that. Truck drivers don't just want to drive the legal eight hours or 10 hours a day. They want to be superhuman and drive 24 hours a day, day after day. And entertainers, they don't want to just sing and perform like they normally would. They'd like to have extra human abilities to raise them above the average talent that God has put within us. I'll give you an example. Mozart. Amadeus Al... what was his name? Somebody Amadeus Mozart. Wolfgang. Yeah, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At age four, his father began to push him. His father wanted his son to make him rich, and they were from a musical family, so he had talent. But his father began to teach him at age four some minuets. Mozart picked them up faultlessly with the greatest delicacy he could play them back exactly, keeping time. The age of five he was composing in his little head, pushed and pushed by his father, who would sometimes come in at night and wake him up in his drunken state and make him perform for him.

His father would write them down. The thing is that later on, Mozart's masterpieces came to him, and they were composed entirely in his head and written down flawlessly.

His influence on the Western world is said to be profound in art. Here's an article called Inspiration and Creativity by Barry Green. He says, I interviewed one of the founding fathers of New Age music. He talked about the source of musical inspiration residing in a universal spirit. Someone like Mozart has a very fine-tuned antenna for this kind of thing, so he can pick up signals from the consciousness station much better than the rest of us can. But we can tune into that station, too. Can we improve our capacity to hear and respond to the same inspiration that came to Mozart? First, we need to channel. He says, I'm most fascinated with what we can do to make ourselves available to hearing the inspiration, and then we can find many ways to convert this into a creative product. You notice there's nothing here about developing something yourself, but rather trying to have the antennas up and receive it from somewhere else. He says, learning about inspiration and creativity in music appears to have equal applications in all the fine arts—dance, theater, and visual arts. It seemed to be a strong correlation to both receiving inspiration and translating this inspiration to highly creative artistic expression. It starts with the breath and silence. I attended a workshop on musical improvisation led by a Grammy Award-winning cellist. At the workshop, we learned a preparation exercise before we would begin any improvisations. We would take a deep breath, raising our hands above our heads, and let our hands fall slowly to our instrument as we exhaled. After a brief period of silence and at the moment of inspiration, we would begin to play. Silence inspired my fingers to move unconsciously. I was learning to wait for the moment when my fingers would move by themselves. The one teaching said, it is our magic. That's the connection to the infinite. The form comes out of actually sitting quietly, doing nothing, having no purpose, and then taking a breath that will change one's life. We can hear unspoken words and receive guidance which reveals its magic in the most beautiful ways through music, through life. This sounds pretty weird, doesn't it? CBS 60 Minutes did a piece about a young composer studying at Juilliard School, who some say is the greatest composer talent to come along in 200 years. That's interesting. There was another one I mentioned a while ago, about 200 years ago. This person has written five full-length symphonies and he's only 12 years old. He is of the level of the greatest prodigies in history, the likes of Mozart. The boy says music just fills his head and he has to write it down to get it out. Like Mozart, when he hears his music, he hears it all at once. It comes through without revisions. It's just complete.

Hmm.

Did a little research on Albert Einstein. I think you'll find this an interesting correlation to what I've just been reading. Albert Einstein is considered a father of modern physics, highly intelligent man, or not. I'll let you decide. As a boy, Einstein did poorly in school.

Music was an outlet for his emotions. At age five, he began violin lessons. At age 13, he discovered Mozart's sonatas.

His high school friend said the result was an almost mystical connection. When his violin began to sing, the walls of the room seemed to recede. For the first time, Mozart and all his purity appeared before me, bathed in Hellenic beauty, with its pure lines, roguishly playful, mighty sublime. From 1902 to 1909, Einstein did physics research on his off-hours. He was working at a patent company in Switzerland. But he was nourished by music, particularly Mozart. In his struggles with extremely complicated mathematics, in his struggles with extremely complicated mathematics that led to the general theory of relativity, Einstein often turned for inspiration to the beauty of Mozart's music. Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music, recalled his older son. That usually would resolve all of his difficulties. Einstein felt that he, like Mozart, had succeeded in unraveling the complexity of the universe. He said, "...hardly anyone who has truly understood the theory of relativity will be able to escape the charm of this theory." The theory is essentially one view of how the universe ought to be. And, amazingly, the universe turned out to be pretty much as imagined. Its daunting mathematics revealed unexpected phenomena. Einstein's theory of relativity completed the era of classical physics and paved the way for atomic physics. So where did that all take us? It took us to the atomic and hydrogen bonds. It took us to a world in which mankind can now erase itself so many times off the globe, and those erasures are into more and more hands.

Before his death, the Juilliard School Quartet played some pieces in Einstein's home. They offered Einstein a violin to play, and they reported, he seemed to pluck Mozart's melodies out of the air.

In Ezekiel 28, verse 11, I'd like to take a look at a familiar passage with this regard. Ezekiel 28, verse 11, He said, Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, Now, this king of Tyre, that doesn't mean much. But let's look down here in verse 14. Verse 14, you'll find, shows that he is a covering carob that's being spoken of, not just the king of Tyre, as some would have you believe that this is not about a being who would become Satan the devil. But actually, in verse 14, it defines who it is. It's the carob. There are only three carobs mentioned in the Bible, and this is one of them. Thus says the Lord God, continuing on, you were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

Verse 13, you were in Eden, the garden of God. Remember him?

Going on. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. Some have interpreted that statement, the workmanship of your timbrels and pipes, to mean that he was a very musical individual. He was created with the ability to be a master of music. But verse 17 shows us something happened. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty. You wanted something for you. This translated into a self-elevating endeavor. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. You became some sort of a twisted phantom of the opera, as it were, to those who were around him.

And may well be the source behind modern entertainment today as some sort of one who would broadcast and influence those who are actively listening and trying to be extra human in their abilities and seek that through various ways. Not that all are. I'm not saying that. But some definitely go after it with a passion. We might gain some insight from a 1970s tune. Some of you weren't around then, but probably everybody's heard the tune. Songwriter Bruce Johnson was driving on the 405 freeway just east of Beverly Hills, heading up the hill, the long grade going up to Mulholland Drive, and suddenly a song came to him. And he had to get off at the next exit and hurry home and write it down. I'll read you the lyrics to the song.

I've been alive forever, and I wrote the very first song. I put the words and the melodies together. I am music, and I write the songs. My home lies deep within you, and I've got my own place in your soul. Now when I look out through your eyes, I'm young again, even though I'm very old. I write the songs that make the whole world sing. I write the songs of love and special things. I write the songs that make the young girls cry. I write the songs. I write the songs. Oh, my music makes you dance, and it gives you spirit to take a chance. And I wrote some rock and roll so you can move. Music fills your heart. Well, that's a real fine place to start. It's from me to you. It's from you. It's from me. It's a worldwide symphony. I am music, and I write the songs. You know, this individual, Hillel, as the Bible calls him, or Lucifer, as he was later called, he was created. He was given specific talents, and music probably was one that that included. But he turned, and he was cast down, and he's become a great influencer, the Bible tells us, of humans. Humans at every level. Today, Satan is the main influencer of our society. We look in Ephesians chapter 2. We'll start here in verse 2. This is a scripture that I seem to read fairly often, but it's a good one. Ephesians 2 and verse 2.

After talking about sins in which you once walked according to the drift of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. Now, when I was young, Mr. Armstrong picked up on that because we were the radio church of God. We were broadcasting on radio, and it just made a lot of sense that the prince of the power of the air was broadcasting into humans' minds and deceiving them. It's a great analogy for those of us who live in the radio or television age, or the age of broadcast through the air. It's a good concept. It's not, of course, what Paul was talking about here, but nevertheless, it's a good concept. The prince of the power of the air, that's actually a reference. It's believed back to a time when this was written that evil spirits lived in the air. All the evil spirits lived within the airspace of the earth, and this individual was the prince of the power of all those evil beings that lived within that sphere. But nevertheless, we know from God's scripture that Satan is trying to influence and deceive, and he's trying to get people to go his way. Just as this says, according to the course, according to the paths, the ways of this society, and this spirit which now works in the sons of disobedience, it is working. It's encouraging. Among whom we also once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we're by nature children of wrath just as the others. So that is a description, then, of what this being and those associated with him are influencing. As far as religion goes, Jesus himself said that he is the author of religions. He's the author of education. False teaching. Author of entertainment and music. He's behind it. However, he isn't over your religion, and he isn't over your music. You know, we do have good music in the Bible, and we do have pure teaching from the Bible, and we do have a pure and undefiled religion that comes from God the Father. And we do have, from his Spirit-led people, music that is inspiring, and it's really, really good. But what we need to do is to recognize that and seek the right. Let's just go over a page to Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 17. Ephesians 5 and verse 17. Therefore, do not be unwise.

We need to be wise as serpents, harmless as doves in this wicked world. Not unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. The last sermon I gave to you was, What is the Will of God? Have you defined it? Have you boiled it down to a phrase that is right on the tip of your tongue that you can use in any situation that you find yourself in? You need to understand what the will of God is. At the end of verse 18, Be filled with His Spirit, speaking to one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. See, there is some really good music that we need to be making. Giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and submitting to one another in the fear of God. So be led by God's Holy Spirit. Reject this other transmission that's out there. Don't seek to be part of that and self-elevating and antennas up, trying to see if there isn't something that you can sort of sell your soul for, as they say, in order to get yourself some temporary exaltation.

God gives some spiritual gifts to His servants, but that is given so others can serve better. God gives spiritual gifts in order that those people can serve others better, not to be elevated themselves, but so that they can serve better. Let's look in 1 Corinthians 12 verses 4 through 12. 1 Corinthians 12 will begin in verse 4.

There are diversities of gifts but the same Spirit. Paul now is teaching a very pagan church who is being called to the truth, but they brought along all of their Greek, Gentile mythologies and Spiritism, and they're having to overcome and work through this. You know, we all start somewhere. We don't always end up in the same place, but as long as a person grows five or ten times, Jesus said, have you five or ten cities? He doesn't say where you finish, he just says how much you grow. So we shouldn't really take the Corinthian church to task and say, what a bunch of sinners! If we grew up in a sort of a Judeo-Christian background and didn't start with all that baggage, imagine what those people in Corinth were coming out of. We see glimpses of this, but here he's telling them, trying to encourage them, there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. There are diversities of activities, but it's the same God who works all in all. So these things need to come from the true God in order for them to be beneficial. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the prophet of all. See how this works with God? It's a sharing of a blessing. It's an edifying, a building up of everyone. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of languages, to another the interpretation of those languages. But one and the same Spirit works in all of these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills. Now you get the idea there that there's something missing in our church today, wouldn't you? Well, where are all these gifts? Why aren't I running around doing all the healing? Or why aren't I speaking in the tongues? Or whatever. Well, Paul's actually, he's not actually telling the Corinthian church here that what they were doing is good. In fact, what they were doing was coming from a wrong spirit, and they were wrong tongues that were being spoken on a whole bunch of other self-serving things that he gets into them with. But what he's telling them here is it needs to come from God, first of all. It needs to come from God. If you notice up in verse 1 of chapter 12, he says, Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant. The fact was, they were ignorant. They were very ignorant. He's beginning to gently teach them that what they were doing was wrong. If you go down to verse 2, you find that they were from a pagan background. You know that you were Gentiles carried away to these dumb idols, however you were led. So he shows there their false background. Let's go down to verse 26 and see how they're using whatever they thought these gifts were for a different purpose. Verse 26.

Excuse me just a second.

In verse 25, there should be no schism in the body. Schism in the margin here says, division. And that's what they had. All that was going on there was causing division.

In my notes, something here is not working out right. Well, I won't just stay here. But anyway, there was a clamoring for recognition that was going on within the church because some were getting up and saying that trying to do this and trying to do that. And as things went forward, all they were doing was clamoring for selfishness. And there were false tongues and false inspirations that were not coming from God whatsoever. So Paul, in fact, you know what? That's in the 14th chapter. Excuse me. If we go over to the 14th chapter in verse 26. Let's make a note. 1426. How is it then, brethren, whenever you come together, each of you has a song. Each has a teaching. Each has a tongue. Each has a revelation, has an interpretation. But you want to do them all at the same time. You see, they're clamoring. They're all trying, oh, let me do it, let me do it, let me do it. I want to be recognized. You see, it was all for self-recognition. And if we look in verse 22 now. Therefore tongues are for a sign, the true tongue, speaking in language, are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to unbelievers. Speaking in tongue was never for believers. They did that on the Feast of Pentecost to the Jews who were in town for the feast. It was a sign to them that the true church had started. Whenever there was speaking in tongues, it was done for the unbelievers. Here are people babbling in the congregation, trying to exalt themselves that they are somehow speaking in tongues, and he's having to chide them. He says tongues are for a sign, but not to those who believe, but to unbelievers. Prophesying or teaching is not for unbelievers, but for those who believe. Therefore, verse 23, if the whole church comes together in one place and all speak with tongues, and they come in those who are uninformed or unbelievers, will they not say that you are out of your mind?

See, there was a problem here in what they were doing. What they were doing, as Paul says, those who speak in tongues do it to edify themselves. They do it to put themselves on kind of a stage, as it were. Let's go to Acts 8 and verse 9 and take a look at what some call the father of modern Christianity, Simon the magician, Simon the sorcerer, Simon Magus.

There's a lot written about this individual, but he's heavily discounted because oftentimes he becomes the Simon that was assumed to be the first Peter of the Christian religion, instead of Simon who was called Peter with Christ. You can see here in verse 9 of Acts chapter 8, but there was a certain man called Simon who had previously practiced sorcery in the city.

He was wanting to be extra human. He was wanting to be more talented than the average human could be, and therefore he was going for sorcery. He was going for black magic. And notice what happened. And he astonished the people of Samaria. He was your pop star of the day. He was your legend. He was your icon. He claimed that he was someone great. See, it's about him, about me. I'm a great person to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest, saying, this man has the great power of God.

Verse 11, and they heeded him because he had astonished them with his sorceries for a long time. Now we drop down to verse 18 and pick up the story of where Paul and John came and were baptizing and laid hands on people, and they received the Holy Spirit. And when Simon the magician saw that through the laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, saying, this will help my little career. I like to buy into this, but this little trick in my bag, saying, verse 19, give me this power. Make me powerful. Make me somebody more than what I am so that anyone whom I lay hands on may receive the Holy Spirit.

But Peter said to him, really say to him one thing, your money perish with you because you thought the gift of God could be purchased with money. And Simon, verse 24, answered and said, oh, pray to the Lord for me that none of these things which you have spoken may come upon me. In other words, don't take my money away. Jesus also warned of false ministers, false teachers. They're attracted to position, they're attracted to power, they're attracted to fame. It's part of human nature to want something to be recognized more than you are, to have something more than you normally would.

By the time the end of the New Testament begins to close, we find that the church had just been pummeled by self-seeking leaders and teachers, just as Jesus said there always would be. And in your lifetime in mind, there have been. And there are even worse ones are coming in the future, as Christ prophesied in Jude, verse 11. Woe to them! I'm just talking about leaders, so-called leaders, individuals who've come to so-called serve in the church.

For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily for themselves in the air of Balaam for prophet, and have perished in the rebellion of Korah. Korah and other individuals there in the Old Testament church wanted more power and more position and more recognition. Verse 12, these are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves.

So let's stop and ask the question again. Do you want recognition? Do you want fame? Do you want to be an icon? Do you want to have extra human talents and abilities? Is this something that you seek? Do you find your way, even in the church or within your family or within your job or whatever, seeking to to get your head up and somehow maybe get on a plaque or get some fame or get some recognition or to rise up through the ranks, to be discovered, as it were?

Well, you can see where this leads. And we all need to fight our human nature, don't we?

God once established Hillel, Lucifer, and now God has established you in a very similar way, just as he came before the throne of God, you and I come before God's holy mountain. We come before his throne in prayer.

Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, it says in Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 19, just come right in, right where old Lucifer used to come. You are considered righteous, perfect, perfect in the sense that you are completing that for which you are created, that intent that God has for you, just as he was said. As long as you're repentant, trying to be godly, God wants you to succeed, which means to overcome.

Unlike Satan, he wants us to succeed and be successful. We need to think about these things as we see them in our world around us, as we have these opportunities to be influenced, to be encouraged, or to influence and encourage others. In conclusion, I'd like to give a sermon of this summary by just reading a passage in the Bible. 1 Peter chapter 5 verses 1 through 11 really summarizes the whole thing. 1 Peter chapter 5 will begin in verse 1.

2 The elders who are among you I exhort.

Leaders in the church. What does he say? Verse 2. Shepherd the flock. Serve. Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion, but willingly, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly, not as being lords over those entrusted to you, but by being examples to the flock. There's no recognition here. There's no rising up.

Verse 5. Likewise, you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. It's a submission. It's a serving. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed in humility, for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Therefore, humble yourselves unto the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. I said at the beginning of the sermon that somebody wants you to be exalted. Somebody wants to raise you to a higher level. There's actually two somebodies. Just like one took Jesus and said, hey, stand here on the edge of the temple and I'll make you over all the kingdoms of the world. And God the Father said to Jesus Christ, hey, you do my will and I'll make you over all the kingdoms of the world. There's two people pulling for you. But humble yourselves unto the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. Casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. Be sober. Be vigilant because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Resist him! Break off the antennas. Don't try to be influenced. Don't be inspired. Don't be awed. Sigh and cry for a lot of the stuff that's going on. Look in here and be inspired and awed. In the Bible, be steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you've suffered for a while, perfect, established, strengthen, and settle you. Where does the glory go? Verse 11, To him be the glory. Where does the power go? To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.