Standing Your Ground - Part 1

Bryan Chapell: You can be in a situation in a Babylon, in a place where the very goal of your enemy is to make you like them. And of course, the reason that we have the book of Daniel in our Bibles is we have a pagan king in a pagan nation that is dealing with a young man and his friends and trying simply to make them like himself. And it comes through such subtle, even gracious means.
Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Brian Chapell. In today's episode, pastor Brian starts the new year with a series from Daniel. We begin the study of this prophetic book with an introduction to Daniel and his friends in chapter one. You can find this lesson and many others when you visit unlimitedgrace.com. And while you're there, look for pastor Brian's book, The Multigenerational Church Crisis. This compelling book asks the question of the church, what could be accomplished in the name of Christ if we could better understand each other? Let's hear now from Dr. Brian Chapell as he shares the lesson Standing Your Ground.
Bryan Chapell: Our nation's changing status with the communist nation of Cuba is resulting in lots of accounts of life under Castro and the dictatorship there, just one after another surfacing at this time. One an older one that's being repeated is the account of Armando Valladares, who was 23 when just as a young office worker, he refused to put a placard on his desk that said, I'm with Fidel. And for that reason, he woke up one day in his parents' home with a machine gun pushing his head down into the pillow, an arrest, a trial. And for the crime of not putting on his desk the sign that said, I'm with Fidel, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Along with many others who did not express adequate loyalty for Fidel, and what resulted was ultimately 22 years of his confinement in prison, which he wrote about in the book Against All Hope. Ultimately, he was released because of international pressure upon Cuba to allow that release, but it was not horrible things having happened. In the first year of his in prison meant with many other young people, executions happened every night in the prison to intimidate and to break the will of those who were there. The things that were endured were so vile and despicable, we cannot even mention them here. But in his book, Armando described some of the things that were going on in his heart. As he describes those 22 years before his release, he says this, for me it meant 8,000 days of hunger. 8,000 days of systematic beatings, of hard labor, of solitary confinement. 8,000 days of proving I was still a human being. 8,000 days of testing my faith, of fighting the hate of my atheist jailers who were trying to instill in me the same hatred with each thrust of their bayonets. I was fighting for 8,000 days so that hate would not flourish in my heart. 8,000 days fighting so that I would not be like them. It's an amazing statement that you can recognize you can be in a situation in a Babylon, in a place where the very goal of your enemy is to make you like them. And of course, the reason that we have the book of Daniel in our Bibles is we have a pagan king and a pagan nation that is dealing with a young man and his friends and trying simply to make them like himself. And it comes through such subtle, how do I say this, even gracious means. Just have a meal. It's nice. It will taste good. It will be pleasant. This won't hurt you. And the very intention is to wreak destruction and havoc and undo the faith of the people who are there. We We sometimes look at the book of Daniel and we forget the purpose of Babylon, the place that he now lives in the exile and captivity of his people and do not recognize the full scope of the Bible's intention to teach us about Babylon. If you were listening closely to a worship director Kevin King's prayer, you recognize he mentioned the Bible's first expression of concern about Babylon, but it was not Babylon at the time. It was the tower of what? Babel. As in an ancient land on the plains of Shinar where Babylon is, people began to build a tower to God. And we can just kind of laugh at primitive people and think how silly that they think that they can build a tower all the way to heaven. Don't Don't you know you need a rocket ship for that? We miss the point. Genesis 11 tells us the true purpose. When they were building that tower, the people of the land of Shinar and the land of Babel said, let us make a name for ourselves. Let us give ourselves glory. Let us subjugate the people around us. Our goal is to be like God in glory. If we can show that we have power and authority, what we will ultimately do is we will declare we are the masters of our own fate. We're in control of our lives. Let's Let's erect something that gives us the ability to have power over others and give all power to ourselves. It is the old old temptation. After all, what what did Satan say to Eve right at the beginning? God does not want you to eat of the forbidden fruit because then you will be like God. You'll be like him. You You You will have equal authority, equal power. You'll You'll just be master of your own fate. And the intent from the very beginning was to deceive about human ability, human power, and human glory. It may sound a long way from us, but the ability to say, you know, what you're really after in life is your own fame and your own glory, I recognize how tempting it is. I can remember and I've told some of you the story before of being in my senior year of college, having been a Christian a long time. But in that environment, senior year kind of planning career and next steps, what would happen? Was it grad school? Was I going to go into a profession? The things that weighed most upon my mind was how much money can I make? And how big a name can I make for myself? Here I was right at the crux of life's decision and the values that I were considering were the old values. What can you do for yourself? How can you be in charge of your life? And in in that moment, it was hard for me actually to think what other values are there because there was a purpose in Babylon in the Bible which was not only to deceive, it is to enslave with the deception. I mean, it's obvious when you get to the book of Daniel, right? Nebuchadnezzar has gone. He's been actually the instrument of the Lord's hand and the judgment upon the rebellious people of God, but his very intention is to enslave the people. But I want you to be carefully looking at what was the way that he was going to do that? If you look in your Bibles, Daniel chapter 1 and verse 2, the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into Nebuchadnezzar's hand with some of the vessels of the house of God, and he brought them to the land of Shinar to the house of his God. What was the first step in Nebuchadnezzar's plan of enslaving the people of God? It was to interrupt their worship, to separate them from their God, at least the worship of him. And right at the same moment that he is going to separate from them from worship, he's going to saturate them in his own ways and thought. Verses 3 and 4, remember? The king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish of good appearance and skillful and all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, and competent to stand in the king's palace. For what purpose? To teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. Nebuchadnezzar's strategy for those of you who are Star Trekkies is the Borg strategy. You will be assimilated. I am going to teach you the language and the literature of my to saturate you with it at the same time I'm separating you from your worship. It's something to think about. How does that happen? Because part of what we're being asked to do in this chapter is not just say it's interesting that Babylon was something way back there somewhere, but to actually recognize our own Babylon. Babylon that we live in when it starts becoming our home is the place where we get separated from our worship and saturated in the world. And it happens in so many ways in this assimilation process where we just kind of taken the food and the learning and the understanding that we don't even know what's going on. Because we're starting school this year for so many different levels of young people, we recognize that one of the way that you saturate in the ways of the world is just with educational immersion. Immersion in secular assumptions. And so you recognize that more and more we are taught wherever you are simply a naturalistic, materialistic worldview. Our total world is explained by time and chance, by science and math. It's just material and mathematics and a little chemistry over time. And the whole notion that there is a transcendent truth because there is a transcendent God who is work above and beyond creation and establishing plans in the spiritual world as well as the created world for his people is just lost. Even the notion that there would be a transcendent truth, not just an existential individual truth, you have your truth, I have my truth. Anything that says there is a transcendent truth is considered not just irrelevant, but ridiculous. And you hear that day in and day out for year after year after year and you just kind of get saturated in it. We not only get saturated by educational immersion, but just by pure values. And here we don't just have to talk about something that's happening in high school. We recognize the peer pressures that come at every stage of life in the workplace. Career and income can trump faith, family, and integrity. Getting ahead somehow begins to take precedence. It's It's just year after year, promotion after promotion, a little more money after a little more money. Getting ahead trumps getting along with God or sometimes even our own families. And it happens so subtly. It happens in such an assimilation process of being a part of the company, being part of the business, being part of the profession, being part of the guild that we don't even recognize it has happened. We can get immersed in pop culture where music and movies teach us the main values are fame and flame out. Just live for what you can while you can. And if you think that doesn't touch you, recognize how all of us in our entertainment culture have forgotten to blush that we can watch modern families so often we don't even see cause to object anymore. That we can so often see things that just become a part of what everyone else is doing that we don't even consider the impact upon our hearts. And what God is calling us to do through these young men in Babylon is simply open your eyes, recognize your Babylon. It's the first step toward faithfulness. Recognize it for what it is. Its intention is to deceive, to enslave, but ultimately to destroy.
Guest (Male): You're listening to Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Brian Chapell.
Guest (Male): It may seem hard for younger Christians to believe, but people over 50 were raised during an era when 90% of Americans identified as Christian. These older believers were once part of a majority group that understood the mission of the church was to take control of our culture, to halt its evils. At the same time, Christians under 50 have lived their entire lives perceiving themselves as a minority that needs to make credible their faith to a secular pluralistic culture. These distinct experiences and perceptions have a profound impact on the priorities different generations have for church ministry. It's no wonder that younger and older believers don't always see eye to eye. In his new book, The Multigenerational Church Crisis, Dr. Brian Chapell asks the question, what could be accomplished in the name of Christ if we could better understand each other? This practical and hopeful book is backed by thorough research revealing how to open the lines of communication, appreciate the experiences that shaped each generation in your church, and unite in one mission to impact your community and the world. You can request your copy of The Multigenerational Church Crisis when you donate online at unlimitedgrace.com or by calling 844-41-Grace. That's 844-414-7223. And now more from Brian Chapell on today's Unlimited Grace.
Bryan Chapell: In the final chapters of the Bible, we get the final mention of Babylon, but it 's the first time we actually get the full biblical title of Babylon. The full biblical title of Babylon occurs in Revelation 17 in verse 5 where it is identified as Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth, which says that Babylon's intention was not merely to deceive or to enslave, but to lure so as to destroy. If love wins, that is very alluring. But what is its ultimate purpose? We think of a nation that has changed so much in its various views, but one of the more articulate spokesmen of the consequences of what it means to abandon the values of scripture and get saturated in the values of the world is Robert Putnam in his book Our Kids, The American Dream in Crisis. He writes what we all know. Premarital sex has lost its stigma as has having children outside of marriage. A man facing his obligation to provide for children he has fathered is passé. And the obligation passed on to single women. Divorce, unmarried childbearing, and cohabitation are widespread despite even the secular measurements of the consequences for families and children. First consequence he cites, persistent poverty. 60 years ago, if you would say if a child is going to be raised in persistent poverty, it's almost always a reflection of either low education or the low income of the family. That now is passé. The greatest indicator of whether or not a child will be raised in poverty is a single parent home. The single greatest indicator of whether a child will be raised in poverty, consequences upon children. Domestic violence increasingly witnessed by the children of our culture. Yet we know that a married woman is a married woman is three and a half times less likely to experience domestic violence than a woman who is either cohabitating, divorced, or simply seeking a dating life with sexual expression. And yet at the same time that we say that, our own government statistics say that a stepfather or boyfriend is seven times more likely to molest or abuse the child of the woman that he is with. The single greatest indicator today of whether or not a child will end up in prison is not race, it is not income, it is not education. Even the presidential administration before us says the single greatest indicator of whether a child will go to prison is the absence of a father in the home. Trumps all other measures. In fact, it says it obliterates all other measures. Not that they are irrelevant, but that is the dominant. So that President Obama himself says one of the greatest problems in our society is daddies not being daddies. Why? Because we live in Babylon. Because it's a nation that doesn't recognize right at this moment that the intention of living apart from God, of removing us from worship and saturating us with the values of a popular pagan culture, of a business world that does not honor integrity, of an educational world that does not see transcendent truth, is it will not just deceive or enslave, it will ultimately destroy. That's what Babylon does. And for those of us who are heads of home, for those of us who recognize those dynamics, when you say if the strategy is not only to saturate with the culture, but to separate from worship, what obligation should be upon us? We recognize so many of us that at the very time that our children at key stages of life there are such pressures upon us to abandon regular worship in our churches. It can be because of sports, it can be because of our recreational culture, it can be because of somebody needing a little extra income or even income for school. And so at very critical times, we are at the very same moment separating them from worship and saturating them in the culture and wondering why there are negative results. The Lord just speaks with great practicality here in the life of Daniel and his friends and reminds us, you have to recognize your Babylon. You don't close your eyes. You stay alert just like you do with an email. Be careful about the attachments. When you're in this world, be careful about the attachments that may be taking you down a path you never intended. Now I'm going to guess in this message I have said things that you would normally expect if you go to the first chapter of Daniel. You expect me and it is actually my obligation to talk about the dangers of the Babylons of our age or any age. But having said that our first step toward faithfulness is to recognize our Babylon and its measures. The next thing that I need to say to you to just be faithful in Babylon is not to waste it. If God has called you to Babylon, do not waste your Babylon. God has a purpose for his people even there. I want to take you to a portion of scripture that you may not have been to before that relates particularly to this account in Daniel of the people of God in Babylon. It's Jeremiah chapter 24. Jeremiah chapter 24 and the Lord has put before Jeremiah an image of a fig basket with good and bad figs with an amazing message there. Jeremiah chapter 24 and verse 4. Jeremiah 24 and verse 4. Then the word of the Lord came to me, says Jeremiah, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. I will set my eyes on them for good. I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down. I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart. But thus says the Lord, like the bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten, so I will treat Zedekiah, the king of Judah, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. Here's an amazing thought. God is even as his hand of discipline upon his people in Babylon saying, now now you need to know something if you are in a Babylon at this moment. The place of God's blessing is not in hiding in Israel. The place of blessing is not fleeing to Egypt. The place of blessing is actually in Babylon where under the discipline, under the oppression, my people begin to live for me because as a consequence of their living for me in this land of oppression and pressure and temptation, as they live for me, they are actually developing a whole heart for the Lord. It's not It's not running into our holy huddles. It's not just fleeing to the desert somewhere. He is saying, I expect you not to waste your Babylon. If that's where you have been called, use it for God's purposes, even if we are in an American Babylon.
Guest (Male): That's pastor Brian Chapell and you've been listening to Unlimited Grace. If you've missed anything that you'd like to hear once again, just visit unlimitedgrace.com. When you visit, you can find today's message and many others from pastor Brian. Also be sure to sign up for pastor Brian's daily devotional sent right to your inbox. Once again, go to unlimitedgrace.com or you can give by calling 844-41-Grace. Please be sure to join us next time as once again we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by his Unlimited Grace. This ministry is brought to you by Unlimited Grace media and continues to be made possible with your generous financial support.