How to Win the Culture War | Dr. Ed Young

[Music] we are in a cultural war you might ask what is culture culture is everything that's in you and in me and everything that's around you and around me it is our environment it is the air we breathe it's the people we associate with it's our family it's a multiplicity of world views this is the atmosphere this is the environment in which we live it is our culture and we are in a cultural war right this moment worldwide but especially in the united states of america in 1970s i read a book by alvin tuffler entitled future shock he was responding to the radical changes that took place in the 1960s so therefore in the 70s toddler's thesis was that the culture is changing so rapidly that human beings can't keep up it was moving he would say at the speed of sound if that were true in the 1970s what's happening to our culture today it's moving at the speed of light man things are changing so rapidly who in the world can keep up there's a word yesterday we used in our vocabulary and now if you use that word you're canceled so we live in a rapidly moving culture now some would say our culture is drifting it's just drifting no our culture is not drifting ladies and gentlemen our culture is being driven it's being driven by what forces silicon valley hollywood las vegas wall street washington it is being driven by our educational world it is being driven by our entertainment world it's being driven by our corporate world it's being driven by our digital world these are many things that are driving us in our culture to move into a brand new culture and what is the basic premise behind all of this you know you read a news article and that's fine but that may not be the primary article the truth of that article may be what's called a shadow article a shadow reality behind that article behind that event there's a shadow of it what is happening in our culture what is the ultimate goal of our culture the basic thrusts of the culture war we're in is simply to eliminate god from every aspect of life keep god inside the stained glass and the steel but by all means don't let him get out that is the shadow agenda which really is the primary thesis of those who are humanists and secularists and those who would take god out of the united states of america if you don't see that take the blinders off this is the basic background the shadow of the cultural war in which we're in now if we're serious about this war it's not going to be satisfied totally through elections we are going to have to get in the battle those who are genuine followers of jesus christ the cultural christians they've already run away they'll not be coming back you just book it so what are we to do if we're serious in the war that we have what are we to do what is our role what do we do i think we have to do individually and therefore collectively we're going to have to first of all speak love and then the second thing we want to do we're going to have to teach truth and the third thing we're going to have to live pure speak love the verse that everybody almost can quote everybody can quote jesus wept but also most of us can quote john 3 16. let's see what it says briefly for god so loved the culture the world god so loved the culture that he gave his only son that divinity visited the world the incarnation that whosoever anybody anywhere any background any understand whosoever believes in him they'll not perish they will live forever and forever and forever that's what that teaches and that is what this world needs first and foremost we are going to have to speak love god is love we've got to speak that love so how do we introduce people to him who helps you and me make sense out of life and that's the lord jesus christ how do we do that first of all we have to understand that the leading symptom of our spiritual sickness is death that's the first symptom that we're spiritually ill it's death jesus came into the world to conquer death and he's the only person who ever conquered death now therefore what's the cause of death the cause of death is sin what is sin it's violating the principles of god that's built in all of creation and is taught in the book sin is the cause of death sin separates us sin is the great separator sin separates our soul from god let me remind you for the 523rd time of what your soul is your soul and my soul is everything that's not flesh everything that is not of this body about you and about me that's your soul and that's my soul it's everything that's not flesh your heart your emotions your will who you are your personality and that soul is made in the image of god as this body is and that soul is made and will live forever sin separates your soul and my soul from god death separates your body and my body from our soul you follow me so jesus came into the world to deal with two problems that are very closely related the problem of sin and the problem of death how did he deal with sin he lived a perfect life and then that cosmic transaction he took upon himself all of your sin and all of my sin and all of my shame and all of my garbage he took that upon himself and when he became sin jesus who was perfect became sin what happened the father turned away from him divinity turned away from divinity can you think about that because jesus took all of our stuff on him and the father turned away and jesus said my god my god why have you turned away why have you sowed me out why have you forsaken me what a big price what a big price but it's on that cross the sin problem was taken care of it was taken care of for you and for me also what about the problem of death we know the story we know easter jesus dead three days three nights the father resurrected him and now that perfect soul that he had was united with a resurrection body a body that is made for eternity and for heaven and so now the sin problem that we have and the death problem that we have is taken care of by jesus christ what a fabulous fabulous word we are to relate a word of love a word of new life and we call it being born again we call it the process of propitiation if you want a theological word it means that we have on our heaven suit and our earthly suit it is a fabulous thing the twin problems of sin and death were satisfied by jesus christ on the cross and with the resurrection and that covers all of us now now this is speaking love now how do we apprehend that the bible says believe on the lord jesus christ and you shall be saved what does it mean to believe exactly what i've said exactly what the bible teaches we believe and what triggers that belief that is our faith when we're aware of our sin we confess our sin we repent we turn away from our sin and then faith we receive him into our life we unzip our heart and our life and we put jesus in and he comes in with his spirit and in your life in my life there is a garden there in which we grow up to be men and women who walk with the lord jesus christ in this broken culture man that's a message that's how we speak love it's a fabulous thing and that's the first thing we need to do in this broken world we have to learn how to speak that language of the love of god for all humanity that's the first step what's the next thing we do not only speak love we have to teach truth how do you teach truth first of all we'd better try to embody truth in our own life jesus says i'm the way he says i am truth so we already are embodying him how do we teach that truth what's our problem why are we not teaching truth in our culture it's because of sloth sloth boy that surprises me i thought sloth was being lazy now one thing you can say about us in america there are not many people that are lazy boy we are going we are blowing we are doing sloth there are seven deadly classic sins and one of them is sloth and the classic definition of sloth is the loss of an appetite for god you got that and we're slothful with our own busyness boy let's go let's get up because we know there's that god shaped vacuum in our heart you can put anything in that god-shaped vacuum of this world and it'll never satisfy you can't satisfy that vacuum with anything else so we put a little little thin shear over that god-shaped vacuum and we don't get too close to it because we're busy because we're filled up with recreation and fun or whatever it is we read we study we go we watch we move we travel see we're trying to fill up this slothfulness in our heart because we're not living and we're not teaching truth pascal said there are three kinds of people in the world he said there are those who seek and find he said they're reasonable and happy people he said those who seek and do not find they are reasonable but they're still unhappy and he said those who do not seek and do not find that's the slothful group they're not hot they're not cold they're just apathetic he says they're unreasonable and they're unhappy but pascal says the second group will become the first group one day because jesus says if you seek you'll find now it's interesting that a lot of people think they're seeking god but they're not finding god you know the problem usually is we seek him with some fine print we're trying to make a deal with god how about that i've got i've worked out this thing i hear people say oh i've worked out my own deal with god how foolish and stupid can you get dealing with the almighty well god i listen we seek when we open up when we're transparent when we're truthful when we can be seen through that's what a true seeker does and those who seek like that they always find and they're reasonable they always get to be happy because we discover when we seek and when we find god we discover all the time he'd been really seeking you and seeking me seeking you and seeking me we are to teach truth truth especially we'd better learn how to do it in our families in our families our sons and our daughters we'd better learn how to teach truth there in a seattle newspaper in the last couple of weeks an english professor who teaches at northwestern university i think is in evanston illinois wrote an op-ed article and this professor said i'm a humanist i'm a secularist basically he was saying i'm godless but he says we see it all the time up here he said parents will take their children and they'll unpack their children get them in their dorms and they'll hug and they'll cry and they'll get in their vehicle and they'll drive off and then this is what he said then those kids are mine he said then we've got them in the article four years and what happens in that four years a breakdown of any understanding of god of conservatism of morality as they are invaded with all kind of wild pluralistic ideologies and so many times our children come back after we paid 40 50 000 a year for their education they come back empty and godless he said then they're mine we had better teach truth speak love teach truth the third thing we need to do we have to live pure oh that's a good one anybody here want to see god would you like to really see god see him in the flesh see him literally how do you do it i have in my hands something called a life straw has anybody ever seen one of these before lift your hand a life straw two or three people okay more than that i've never seen one a life straw is an amazing thing every year between five and six million people on this earth die because they have drunk water that was not pure contaminated water all kinds of kind of between five and six million die you two and a half to three million children die every year from drinking contaminated water this little thing right here you could put it in contaminated water whatever it is and you can suck through it and this purifies that water until it's safe to drink isn't that an amazing little thing amazing little thing now in the culture in which we live that is so polluted disease-filled wouldn't it be wonderful if you and i somehow could purify our lives and drink water like jesus offered to the woman at the well that's pure where you wouldn't have to be thirsty again would it be wonderful if we could do that how do we do that i'll tell you how you do it you wake up in the morning with the lord jesus christ you go to bed at night with the lord jesus christ the little chorus said in the morning i see his face in the evening is for my trace in the darkness oh his voice i know i see jesus everywhere i go blessed the pure in heart for they shall see god that's the kind of life we need to live now i got to this point in my preparation and i said you know anybody who speaks love hmm teaches truth and lives pure man that's the kind of person we want our sons and daughters to marry that's the kind of person we want to work for that's the kind of person we'd like to work for that's the kind of person we think would make a tremendous difference in our culture we're going to seek out people we want to be with people we want to have friends with people who in the world could find anything wrong with somebody who genuinely man speaks love and teaches truth and lives a pure clean moral life boy wouldn't that be something boy that would really change everything the whole culture would applaud us wrong wrong that kind of life is swimming counter stream of the culture in which we find ourselves because america is not just post-christian america now is anti-christian if you ever pick that up welcome back from mars you say well how do you know that did jesus speak love hmm did jesus teach truth did jesus live pure what in the world happened to him huh you see on that passover experience the sanhedrin the supreme court of israel and by the way israel by far was the most godly nation on the earth in the days of jesus period no nation was more godly they knew about sin they had the sacrificial system they knew about the miraculous leadership in their life they knew they were called by god they were the most godly people on earth and they lived in their theocracy by the principles of the old testament interpreted with the missionaries et cetera that's how they lived that's how the supreme court the sanhedrin operated but did you know jesus who lived the kind of life we're talking about the supreme court somehow i guess it was post-modernism way back there in the first century found him guilty right you know the bible a little bit found him against three court reinterpreted the law well on top of that the president would be pilate who rep the commander-in-chief representative rome pilate found no problem with him he said this is an innocent man but pilate had pressure from rome and pressure from the jewish leadership and pilate said well you know i hand him over pressure what about the people well on sunday when jesus came in riding on the donkey on palm sunday man they waved palm branches they said hosanna hosanna blessed is he that comes in the name of the lord this may be the messiah hosanna that was on sunday to show how divided the people were in israel on thursday they said crucify him crucify sunday hosanna thursday crucified the division we see of the people represented they by our own house and senate divided not a perfect parallel but i think we see it i think we see it speak love hmm teach truth live pure and ladies and gentlemen blood sweat and tears will begin to battle in our cultural warfare and guess what jesus told us ever ever so clearly john chapter 15 jesus is speaking listen to this jesus says if the world the culture hates you you know that it hated me before it hated you if you were of the culture the culture would love its own yet because you are not of the culture countercultural lifestyle but i chose you out of the culture therefore the culture hates you remember the word that i said to you a servant is not greater than his master if they the culture of the world persecuted me said jesus they will also persecute you want to sign up for the battle we're in [Music] get ready [Music] blood sweat tears to be persecuted [Music] you

Channel: The Winning Walk

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Keywords: Dr. Ed Young, Ed Young, Radio, Broadcast, The Winning Walk, ed young ministries, ed young sermons, Television, winningwalk.org, SBCHouston, TBN, bible, Transformation, Gifts, Discover

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Length: 26min 27sec (1587 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020