Seven Threats of Our Time

which is a major thing that we need to understand what’s going on. So in our culture as we have walked away from the larger narrative of God, the story of God, the understanding who He is and who we are and therefore His design for culture and life and all of that and we begin to sink ever more deeply into the notion, that it’s all about me, and if it’s all about me at some point I began to think more highly of myself.

In fact, I begin to think so highly of myself that I begin to think that there’s something divine about myself and in particularly something divine about my heart. And so, how I feel becomes a divine proclamation. And so, that is why as we’ve talked about before, that someone can say, "I’m a woman" and the culture has to bow down to that as if that is a divine proclamation and if you don’t accept that then you are a blasphemer. And, of course, you will be dealt with as a blasphemer in our culture.

But this leads to a desperate search for significance because when you lose sight of who you are in the larger story of God and in particular have no concept in understanding of the significant love of God that extends to His people, [as] demonstrated by Christ in the sacrifice of Christ for us, then we find ourselves in this desperate search to be significant. To find significance in the world around us through people or things, material goods and of all of these things that will make me believe that I am somebody.

So there’s an interesting passage, when Jesus gave us what we call, the Lord’s Prayer, He preceded that by saying, do not be like the scribes and the pharisees who stand on the street corners and with their lofty prayers in order to be seen by others. And [He] said, "truly I say to you they have their reward in full." You know, people go "Ooh and aah" and that’s all they get. And He also mentioned the same [thing] several places when He said, "when you fast", you know - paraphrasing, "don’t go around with the gloomy face like the scribes and the Pharisees." You know, woe is me, look at me, I’m fasting and so forth, to be seen by man. And Matthew 23 said everything they do, speaking of the scribes and the pharisees, the teachers in the law and all of these, everything they do is done for people to see. They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels of their garments long, and why do the do this? Because they’re attempting to gain some significance by the praise of man.

It is the consequence that is driving so much of what we see today. It manifests itself in each of these individual threats that we looked at and it’s the consequence of turning our back upon the larger story. The Divine narrative of who God is and who we are and why we’re here and the institutions that he has given to us and the blueprint for those institutions and you lose sight of the largest story. You [get] caught up in your own little story and it’s all about me. It’s all about my script. And what happens is we lose our true identity and we [lose] the source of absolute truth. And so we begin increasingly [to] think that we are the source of truth or in a cultural aspect, might then becomes right. And so, we become tossed to and fro, [by things that go viral,] we’re without any kind of a root that gives us stability.

Our culture is just like a cork bobbing on the ocean and a viral thing can blow us one way or another, not rooted in the word of God. So headlines and tweets and YouTube videos and entertainment stars, who become the cultural cleric, can sway us one way or the other. So you can’t really predict what’s going to happen in a few months. You know, our culture is just so rootless.

And so, therefore, we lose any transcendent source of significance of who we are. This then dumps us into this frantic and desperate struggle to be somebody significant and that becomes increasingly hard in an increasingly insignificant world where [everything] [be]comes increasingly boring and common. We thrash around to become significant and so I hang on to my sexuality and a culture then feeds that and I find some significance in that.

We also find significance in one of the most perverted things that happens in our culture today, that people who are offended somehow can become significant. Why? Because I’ve been offended. It’s a crazy, crazy world and where it plays havoc [is] in all of our institutions. Because no longer are we noble males and virtuous females who are seeking the true good of others and the good of the culture and so forth, but we’re seeking our own significance. And it becomes a frantic, frantic form of manipulating everybody and controlling everybody. And at some point maybe even dropping out because you can’t control everybody.

And this is what happened, you remember, with Solomon. Solomon tried to find this in all kinds of ways, with knowledge, with pleasure, and possessions. He talked about having slaves to cater to his every whim, then he tried to deny himself nothing. Anything was open for him. He gave himself all kinds of amusement and comfort and gratification and pleasure. And in the end He said it was all meaningless. And, of course, that is exactly what will happen in our culture. And people find themselves at the bottom of that as they pursue this lie of the enemy, the world, the flesh and the enemy, that you can be significant in this world, if you are pretty, if you’re handsome, it you’re rich, if you’re funny, if you have the right form, if you have the right clothes, whatever. And in the end it all becomes dust and sawdust and becomes empty. It could well be that one of the main reasons behind such a high degree of suicides today is because people have been led astray and they can’t find anything in this world that will satisfy them.

And so, we end up as we talked about threat six with a culture that is so filled with addictions. People trying to cover up these lonely feelings and isolated feelings and feelings like Solomon did, it’s all meaningless. It’s all empty. And so we try to salve that, as well as the pathologies of life around us, with all kinds of alcohol and drugs [and activities] and so forth. And then we become dependent. We allow the state, as in Argentina, to make us dependent. And so we lose our desire to be fruitful. We’re suffering in a culture right now. [Where] many people who don’t want to work because they’ve been trained that if they don’t work they still get taken care of. This is malevolent compassion, by the way.

And so the third [thread],

It really brings us back to the first threat, but I think it’s significant for us to talk about and this is

This came for Romans 1, where we were looking at these successive, "giving over [to]" [pronouncements]. As a culture, as a people reject God [and] exchange the truth of God for a lie, God gives them over, first of all, to sexual immorality. Then He gives them over to shameful lusts and then finally gives them over to a depraved mind. We looked at that chronologically in the life of our culture and wondered if, in fact, God was giving us over to a depraved mind, a mind that was no longer capable of thinking logically. A mind [that] was no longer capable of understanding truth and untruth. And that then leads to this blind rush to self-destruction.

So let me read it, almost a terrible ending to Romans 1 after God shows us this progression of giving people over [to], in [this] final "giving people over to"…​ a depraved mind. And so, Romans [1] ends this way [SR: I’ve added verse 31, because these two verses describe so well the depraved mind]:

So even though they know that this leads to death they continue to do them. These are the actions of *the depraved mind. And they encourage others to do the same thing. We see that throughout our culture today. It makes us angry and to some extent it should make us angry. Why? Because people are being led down a death row.

Let’s end by again bringing ourselves back into the proper context of who we are in a culture that almost appears to be self-destructing around us. That we are not to lose hope. We are a people of hope. The Spirit of hope goes within us. We are not to give up. And

And so, that is our admonishment to all of us tonight in the midst of all of this. It’s easy for us to lose hope. It’s easy for us to find ourself complaining all the time. It’s easy to find ourselves, sometimes as if our hearts are melting, our knees are knocking our hands are being wrung together as a result of all [of this]. Do not give up. Do not lose hope.

All of the scripture leads us to this that we might have hope even in a culture that seems crazy. So my encouragement to you, to all of us, is to stand strong in the midst of all of this. I believe there is great hope. That’s why we’re doing the Engagement Project. I believe that is the answer. It’s not my answer. It’s the Lord’s answer. It’s what He designed from the very beginning and that we need to return to that. We need to stay true to God’s word. True to His design. True to His purposes, even though the world is yelling nasty names at us. We need to be Noble Males. We need to be Virtuous Females. And we need to raise up noble males and raise up virtuous females. We need to concentrate on building and nurturing our family with a fierce determination because the attacks of the enemy here are ever present and they are relentless. And sometimes they even seem to be overwhelming, but they are not. So as we’re talking about in the Engagement Project, to lead your family in a common ministry as you minister together as a family in your "Jerusalem." [That is, minister to those who are providentially near you. Those that God has placed near you.]

What a great passage from God’s word for us. That our mission [in a] world of increasingly skeptic people, lost people, lonely people, hostile people, people [with] depraved minds that cannot respond to our logic that we must first of all [begin] to build that relationship with [them]. This means we are going to have to get rid of the notion that "bigger is better" and we have to concentrate on building a relationship with a fewer number of people that we might then have the opportunity to begin to deal with them as we read in Colossians,

And that will be the case if we concentrate on doing what the Lord has asked us to do. To build those relationships with people in the culture around us. And to pray for them diligently that God is going to begin to allow them to come to their senses. He is the one who allows them to escape from the "trap of the devil." He’s the one who will grant them repentance. We need to call on God to do that. So this is actually a time where we might even say that this could be our finest hour. You know, the post-COVID scare. We now live in a culture so radically different, but I can guarantee it is a culture that’s filled with all kinds of fears. Whether we’re afraid of the glaciers melting, we’re afraid of viruses, we’re afraid of so many things And we’re isolated and we increasingly don’t have relationships with anybody, true relationships. We have a lot of likes, we have a lot of follows, but we don’t have true relationships. In fact, I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of our culture doesn’t even know what it’s like to have a true trusting relationship with someone who has no agenda other than to love them. And, of course, that is what God is calling us to do.

Ok, so I thank you for your being with us here tonight.

And we are now extending the invitation to anyone who is subject to it, if you will come while we stand and sing.