Wrong beliefs can ruin your life
Getting Reality Wrong – will destroy your life
We are all preached to by secular culture every single day
“These beliefs have not so much been argued as assumed. They are not enforced: rather imbibed. We do not receive them as intellectual propaganda to be obey, Instead these beliefs are communicated to us at an almost subconscious level through the high priests of advertising and techno prophets of Silicon Valley” (Mark Sayers)
Getting reality wrong
The World consists of values that are antithetical to God
1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
The World is driven by the Evil One
1 John 5:19 We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one.
The World hates us
1 John 3:13 So don’t be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.
The world’s secular culture is spiritually driven
Daniel
We are strangers here
Phil. 3:20 But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives
1 Peter 2:11 Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls.
Daniel 1:8 But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.
Daniel = No this is wrong
This culture’s primary social ethic is tolerance of everyone’s self-defined quest for individual freedom and self- expression
Daniel shows us 2 kinds of Tolerance/ Acceptance
- I will tolerate things I disagree with/ I will accept people as loved by God
Romans 15:7 Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
- To be tolerant is to agree all are true/ I must accept what others believe
Accepting all views as true: leaves people lost
John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus is the only Way, the only Truth, the only Life
Jesus is the only way to God
Jesus is the only truth of right and wrong
Jesus is the only life worth living
Matt. 5:20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Getting Reality Wrong – will destroy your life
Accepting all views as true: leaves people lost
Jesus is the only Way, the only Truth, the only Life