Initials Personally Made Easy

Initials personally

[Music] foreign [Music] welcome to the weekend everybody and before we jump into the message you probably are aware if you're not let me remind you that this is sanctity of life weekend sanctity of life sunday and i know that as soon as i say that that for some of you especially for women who've had an abortion this is a painful weekend and i want you to know that we serve a god who loves and a god who forgives and a god who heals and you are loved by god and i'm glad you're part of the family wood dale church but it also is a reminder i know they would they would want us all to realize that the gift of life is so very precious and really needs to be honored you know we've talked a lot this past year at the number of people who have died because of covet and it is tragic and it is terrible but i want you to realize that it is rather small in comparison to the innocent children whose lives are taken every year in this country and around the world we have a government that is not friendly toward the sanctity of life and so we need to be praying every single day for god to move on our hearts and minds to see and to revere that he is the creator of life and i want to encourage you to do your best to pray for and support those ministries that reach out to bless and help and encourage and heal and give hope to those who have the precious life in their womb and we support ministries at our church here all of our ministries we ask to be involved in some aspect of the sanctity of life and we have a specific ministry that we support that deals very intimately with this in terms of adoption in terms of sonograms in terms of alternatives if you'd like to know more how you could get involved with that just contact us here at the church by email or phone call we'll write we'll route you to the right folks and get you involved all right but let's pray right now father we just want to acknowledge that you are the giver of life that life is precious we thank you father you are so filled with grace that you forgive us when we don't take seriously the preciousness of life i thank you that you forgive lord those who had an abortion and i thank you father you offer alternative and hope and we want to be a church lord that speaks to that hope and that helps folks who need that kind of help in their life so lord guide us we pray for our government we pray lord that there would be a reverence of life a fear of god and a movement lord back towards what is truth and what is right we we pray for you to help us in these things in christ's name amen well listen as we get started i want to tell you about something that is known as a survivor truck now the survivor truck is the brainchild of a security consultant and his name is jim delozier and it is a truck that is meant to help you survive armageddon now let me tell you a little bit about it it has a faraday frame which is especially built to protect the electronics of the truck from you know an emp that might occur it has filters to deal with nuclear biological or chemical threats it is bulletproof it actually has a 360 degree camouflage system which virtually makes it invisible it comes equipped with hazmat suits with night vision it also has water delay desalinization potential it has a wall water filtering system in it it also has an engine that can run on a variety of fuels as well as a generator that can do that as well and i could just keep going and telling you about all the features of this very unique truck in fact it is so unique that a family of four could survive in that truck for up to two years off the grid and it can all be yours for a small price of six hundred thousand dollars there is the truck the survivor truck that will keep you and protect you through armageddon seriously if armageddon happens and when it does happen there is no truck on earth that's going to protect anybody when god finally pours out his wrath and judgment comes the only thing that will ensure protection is a relationship with god through his son jesus christ our lord spoke these words and said truly truly i say to you whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life he does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life i hope you know that truth in your life well welcome back to our series what in the world is going on we've been talking about jesus words on the future and in particular we've been looking at what is called the olivet discourse which just simply means these are the words that jesus spoke to his disciples while they were sitting on the mount of olives and it was in response to some questions that jesus had for them to just kind of review where we have been we began our journey by looking at several passages of scripture because matthew mark and luke each contain elements of the olivet discourse they have different nuances that they give to us so we've looked at matthew 24 1-14 mark 13 1-13 and luke 21 8-19 that is contextually speaking and i'd encourage you to go back and read those chapters completely and and look at the uniqueness of them all and what they're trying to communicate to us now jesus had stunned his disciples if you remember when he informed them that the temple was going to be destroyed jerusalem was going to be flattened and they wanted to know jesus from jesus when these words of his would be fulfilled they wanted to know what the signs would be that the temple is going to be destroyed and what the sign would be of his return and the end of the world now in a demise of the disciples all these things are going to happen pretty much one right after the other but what we've learned as detectives in god's word is that it's not necessarily sequential meaning one right after the other after the other and it's quick and it's done we realize there is a gap of time that exists in particular between the destruction of the temple that we know happen in 70 a.d and the second coming of our lord jesus christ which we are all waiting for and pray that he does come soon and takes us home to be with him jesus tells us that there are some non signs we need to be aware of he says there are events that are going to occur and you've got to be careful that you don't think that when these events occur that i'm returning these are just going to happen throughout time and sometimes they'll be really intense like a woman in labor and other times will be a bit of a lull sometimes they'll be more expressive in one part of the world less so in another and sometimes it'll feel like the whole world is convulsing hence what in the world is going on jesus said they're going to be false messiahs that show up wars and rumors of wars there'll be earthquakes there'll be famines and jesus says there's even going to be persecution throughout all of history until he returns again jesus tells us there's going to be times of tribulation as well leading up to that final tribulation when our lord jesus christ finally returns and he says he says it is important for his followers then and now for you and me to be faithful to him to be faithful to jesus faithful to his word and faithful to his mission jesus said to his followers that during this period of time the gospel would be preached to the whole world and then the end would come and we we saw that it was a double prophecy we saw from the words of paul in colossians and romans that by 70 a.d the gospel had been made known to to the whole world now paul died before then but paul already in his lifetime was seeing the gospel go out to the known world and we know that it foreshadows the time when our lord returns whenever that's going to be the gospel again will be given out to the world as it's known now which is very different than it was in paul's day and indeed missiologists tell us we're only a few few short years away from getting the gospel out to the unreached regions of the world may jesus come soon so let me ask you a question in light of those things are you being faithful to jesus are you being faithful to his word are you being faithful to his mission we moved on then in the olivet discourse we looked at some more passages of scripture we continued on with matthew 24 15-28 and that corresponds to mark 13 4-23 and luke chapter 21 20-24 and in that passage of scripture jesus talks about a prophecy that was given to daniel hundreds of years before jesus came to earth and in that prophecy that was given to daniel daniel was informed that in time there would come a despotic ruler who would desecrate the temple and we know from history that now that was referring to antiochus iv epiphanes who desecrated the temple in 167 bc now let me just say for a moment that last weekend i blew it my mouth got ahead of my mind and i said 167 a.d and some of you were kind enough to remind me of my mistake and i want to thank you for doing that all right i got it right this time 167 bc so why is jesus talking about history when he's supposed to be talking about prophecy it's because what jesus is saying to his followers is this look what happened in 167 bc is a foreshadowing of what is going to happen in the near future that is in 70 a.d when the temple was leveled by the romans and they desecrated the temple by bringing in their roman standards and gentiles standing you know in the holy of holies in the place that was reserved only for the priest and then we said you know in a way that also foreshadows a time in the future when there'll be another great desecration when there'll be an another abomination of desolation so to speak now at this point what i'd like to do is i'd like to create a bit of a timeline for us and i'm i'm kind of hesitant to do this and i guess what i want to say is a timeline in wet cement what i mean by that is this there are some things that we can know with certainty about the future there are other things that we know are going to happen but we're not exactly sure of the timing of how they're going to happen or or maybe even what the sequence will necessarily be so i'm going to kind of lay it out and uh and then we'll we'll put some things over that as well all right and just remember you got to hold it kind of loosely some of these things we know and some of these things we know are going to happen but we're going to find out how they'll take place and exactly what they mean whether literal or symbolic so with that in mind if you want to kind of draw this out with me i encourage you to do that grab a sheet of paper and and kind of draw this out we'll create a line that represents time so i'll draw my line across my screen here like this and we'll start our time with the cross of jesus all right so just draw a cross for the death of our lord jesus christ and then i'm going to kind of create a little bit of a circle here and this is going to represent the tomb because we know that jesus was buried in the tomb i am going to do a small arrow up because we know that jesus was raised from the dead by the power of his father he's resurrected and then i'm going to do a bigger arrow up because we also know that jesus ascended to his father in heaven all right now somewhere out here just make like an a a an asterisk or an x and uh that is going to represent let's say 70 a.d when jesus prophesied the temple will be destroyed and jerusalem will be flattened and then way out here toward the end just draw an arrow down like this and that's going to represent the return of our lord jesus christ and the light continues on into infinity because life isn't over life continues alright so hopefully you kind of have that picture in your mind right now now jesus said now i'm going to use some initials here he says that between his resurrection and ascension and return there's going to be we've talked about this there's going to be false messiahs during this time there's going to be wars and rumors of wars during this time he says that there is also going to be earthquakes during this time he says that there are going to be famines during this time he says that there's going to be persecution during this time he says there's going to be tribulations during this time small t and we believe that at some point out here there's going to be the big t a seven year tribulational period and during all of this time jesus says that the gospel message all right the gospel is to be preached to the whole world then the end will come so kind of get that in mind and i realize that there are a lot of things missing right now on uh this particular draft that i've done for you and and i'll kind of point those out as you look at it for a moment so for instance we also know we'll be touching a little bit on this next week when we are together for part two of the message we know that during this time first john 2 tells us and ii thessalonians chapter 2 tells us there will be antichrists small a there were in jesus day there was the day of the apostles and there are today and then there will be the antichrist as paul calls him the lawless one we also know that during this time according to second timothy chapter three and other passages of scripture human rebellion will be on the increase and i think we sense that in our world today we also know that when jesus returns it's going to be a remarkable return all right matthew 24 talks about that well we'll talk a little bit about this weekend more so next weekend so does revelation chapter 1. it'll be unmistakable listen there is no secret coming of jesus and i know that raises questions about the rapture pastor do you believe in the rapture when do you think it will happen before the tribulation during the tribulation after the tribulation we'll touch a little bit upon on that next weekend as well we know that god's wrath and judgment are going to be poured out according first uh to second thessalonians chapter one we know there's there's going to be rewards eventually god's going to reward those who have been faithful to him and those who served him matthew 25 talks about that first corinthians chapter 3 talks about that we know there's going to be a millennial rule a thousand year rule and you know some people say that's a literal thousand years some people say it's a figure to a thousand years i think it's a literal thousand years we'll touch a little bit on that as well and then we know there's going to be new heavens and new earth revelation 21 can't wait for that day that is awaiting all of us in the future so there's a lot more to talk about we can't talk about everything all right we're looking specifically at jesus words on the future but we'll be referring to some of those things as we move on now let's jump back into our text and what jesus says about the future let me get my my board erased here and uh we'll take a look at that text here we go ready then jesus says and by the way this is an important word all right because it seems to mark a transition where jesus is now going to move away from the events of what we think of as 70 a.d history to us now to the future that is ahead of us where and when i don't know we don't know all right but we know he's talking probably about future things he says then if anyone tells you look here is the messiah or there he is don't believe it for false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive if possible even god's chosen ones let me stop there for a moment all right because when he says if possible he means really it's impossible but it's going to be so intense that you would think that those who are chosen would fall away it's going to be that intense he says they're going to be false prophets false teachers with signs and wonders and listen that that exists in the world today we don't see it so much in our country though i think we're going to see more and more of it but around the world there there's demonism there's there's works of satan there are supernatural things that happened and i was reading some things recently i talked more about it next weekend about artificial intelligence and just the capacity the capacity to fool people with ai and i've been doing a lot of reading about this whole idea of the social imaginary and how if you say things long enough and often enough that aren't true if you create a scenario through the media through drama through movies through music over and over again you can actually brainwash a whole lot of people to believe something that's not true to be true and i think we've experienced that as well in recent times jesus goes on he says see i have warned you about this ahead of time so someone tells you look the messiah is out of the desert don't bother to go and look or look he is hiding here don't believe it for as the lightning flashes in the east and shines to the west so it will be when the son of man comes i'll talk more about that next weekend but the point jesus is making is look particularly in the night sky when lightning flashes you can't miss it when christ comes you can't miss it he says just as the gathering of vultures show there is a carcass nearby don't read way into that the idea is when you've got a bunch of buzzards circling above in the sky you can't hide them you see it's there jesus is making a point when i return you're going to know what the world is going to know when i return so these signs indicate that the end is near that the end is near so these are important words that that jesus is putting out there and when i look at these there are some there are some principles that that are emerging and here's the first principle i think what jesus is saying is beware and on guard mark says in his version beware and on guard against impersonators and false representatives of christ now this is a common theme not just with jesus but with john and with paul as well and with peter you read the book of acts carefully and there's just over and over again this emphasized watch out there are false teachers out there false prophets false messiahs and it can be so easy to be deceived by them jesus says a great delusion toward the end is going to come upon the world and there'll be signs and wonders and people will be so easily and while those who truly know christ will stand fast and faithful many will apostasize look what paul wrote to the thessalonians he said no one is to deceive you no one is to deceive you in any way and you know as i say that i i just want to suggest that this this past year there's been a lot of deception taking place and and a lot of believers who who have bought into things that they're not from the word of god people saying things that maybe we want to hear and want to believe but not necessarily for the word of god and not necessarily true he says for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness the antichrist is revealed the son of destruction now let's talk about this word apostasy the word apostasy means to fall away to fall away in his fine commentary on the future anthony hukuma writes these words listen carefully says the fact that this sign is called a falling away or apostasy implies that this will be a rebellion against the christian faith as it has been heard or professed we may therefore assume that those who fall away will be at least outwardly associated with the people of god the apostasy will occur within the ranks of the visible church those who are true believers will not fall away but many who have made an outward profession of the faith will do so will do so it reminds me of the words of jesus in matthew chapter 7. remember what he said not everyone who calls out to me lord lord will enter the kingdom of heaven only those who actually do the will of my father in heaven will enter on judgment day many will say to me lord lord we prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and perform many miracles in your name but i'll reply i never knew you get away from me you who break god's laws folks we need to pay attention to those words of jesus given the days that we're living in or how about the worst paul was inspired by the holy spirit to speak paul wrote timothy said now the holy spirit tells us clearly that in the last time some will turn away from the true faith they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons or that are demonically inspired now we've been talking about some of these things over the last several weeks let me remind you of some things first of all a couple weekends ago i talked about this phenomenon that seems to be happening in churches where young people are graduating from high school and graduating from church and leaving home and going off to college and not coming back to church and walking away from the faith and as youth specialists have looked into this and what's going on and and researchers have studied it what they've come up with is that a lot of these young people who do this never owned the faith themselves they profess their parents faith they profess the faith of the church they went to all the activities they they went through the motions of it but they never owned that faith themselves we have also talked about a little bit about the decline in in church attendance across the country and and even a decline in people claiming to be christians themselves now what researchers have discovered is what's really taking place is you have a lot of people who live on the periphery of christianity they live on the periphery of church life but we are seeing more and more walk away from the church and deciding i don't really want to be a part of that and and buying into the culture's ideas the culture's philosophy the the spirituality of the culture and then we talked about progressive christianity and the appeal of progressive christianity which which is in essence editing the bible editing out the things we don't like morally the things that we don't like about what god says about hell or judgment sanitizing the bible sort of speaking and kind of reinventing jesus to kind of fit in with the culture and that becomes very appealing to many folks and what's happening is you're finding out who the remnant are we're finding out who are the true believers and who jesus is and what he has said and that's why we're investing a lot into our next gen ministry why we've brought on an expert in next gen ministry and in ken castor who's joined our team dr ken caster and i was going to work with our great staff to create a ministry here from birth to college to where we're equipping you as parents and equipping our students to know what they believe and to be able to to deal with the hard questions that are put in front of them the challenges of their faith and making sure they've internalized that faith in their lives let me ask you a question do you know what you believe do you believe what you know your kids know what they believe do your grandkids know what they believe do they believe what they know that is so important that takes us to a second principle in the passage of scripture that is that the second coming of jesus is not going to be as i said it is not going to be a secret coming we go back to the olivet discourse and we see in matthew 24 29-31 and the other passages in mark and luke a talk a discussion of jesus about these great cosmic events that are going to happen here's what he says it says immediately after the anguish of those days the sun will be darkened the moon will give no light the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens will be shaken and then at last the sign that the son of man is coming will appear in the heavens and there will be deep mourning among all the people of the earth they will see the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory he'll send out his angels with a mighty blasphemy trumpet and they will gather his chosen ones from all over the world for the farthest ends of the earth and heaven you know as i read those words to you i i want to be fair with you and let you know that there are good godly scholars to read these words and and they believe that those words jesus spoke were fulfilled in 70 a.d now i don't agree with them i don't see how they can arrive at that and i've been reading other theologians and experts andreas costenberger uh alexander stewart uh paula mccarran d.a carson and and others who say there's some reference to 70 a.d but these words are really talking about the future how can we know how can we know that these words are about the future when you've got eminent theologians saying no it's about 70 a.d and in order for me to answer that question you've got to come back next weekend because that's when we're going to kind of wrap up this end of jesus teaching on the future and then we're going to move into some other words of jesus in the gospels on uh in in the weeks ahead and what he had to say about the future as well however in the time i have left i want to talk to you as your friend and i want to talk to you as your pastor about what has happened over this past year or couple of years i feel like one of my responsibilities is to shepherd and protect and to also challenge and i'm going to challenge you with some ideas and some thoughts and i want you to know that i'm kind of putting myself on the other side as well i'm challenging myself these are things i've been wrestling with in my own heart as well i want to share with you some things that that i think we need to hear and they might be hard to hear you may disagree with me and let's just agree to disagree if that's the case um i've been uh doing a lot of reading a lot of thinking a lot of praying and i came across some words by dr jim dennison that just really spoke to my heart so i kind of want to share out of some of the things that that he was sharing and give you some thoughts to think about but he brought up the fact that in this past year especially we've really we've really lost our witness as believers to this world you know generally speaking here in our country especially he's talked about the kinds of things that have been said that are not true that we've kind of bought into and and and tarnished our witness to the world some of the behavior that's kind of taken place with christians i think in the beginning there's an intention and desire to be to be uh zealous for god and zealous for morality and zealous for our country and the right things but i think sometimes in that zealousness we get away from remembering who we're supposed to be you know the world might be changing but we can't let it change our behavior we can't let it change our witness especially this past year as we talk about our former president president trump and and the faith leaders that were kind of surrounding him some of the things that have been said one one faith leader and i won't give the name necessarily but but one faith leader was very close to president uh a tele-evangelist you know came out and said that god had given her given her a prophecy and given her a dream that that angels were being dispatched from africa and south america to our country to take on this confederacy of demons that were trying to steal the election and people believed all this and they bought into that began to pray about that another uh self-proclaimed prophet said in october that that the vote in pennsylvania was going to turn everything around and save this country from destruction another mega church pastor just the last couple of weeks came out and prayed down curses on those who would dare to impeach the president and i read specifically the curses that he prayed in his prayer and as i read those things i realized that jesus would never say anything like that about his enemies and then beyond that there's been just some failures amongst christian leaders that's been devastating at least for me as i i've looked up to them one man a mega church pastor a man of great influence uh was just sentenced to six years in prison for defrauding people out of millions of dollars selling junk chinese bonds another leader who passed away this year uh one of us one of the best known christian apologists in the world we found out after his death which is so tragic led a double life for at least a period of his life toward the end and uh just just moral failure there and uh it's just been devastating to read that and see that and when i read those things and i see those things i just realized it's been a really hard year 2020 was a really brutal year for believers and their witness to this world and jim just kind of shared some thoughts and passages that really spoke to my heart that i that i just want to share with you to think about as we think about all the things that have been said and all the things that have been believed and all the things that have been passed around on emails and and that have been texted and that have been preached and have been told listen to the first principle that that that jim comes up with you know it comes out of this idea that you know you gotta measure human words by the word of god you got to measure human words words of pastors and preachers and teachers but and by the way i believe that god works in supernatural ways today i do believe god gives visions and dreams but when god gives that to someone and they share it i don't think we should ever share it as thus saith the lord as though we're speaking scripture now i mean you got to watch and see is this true i've got to measure those words by the word of god look what look what the scripture says all scripture is inspired by god and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives it corrects us we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right god uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work and i think i think what's happened this this past year is sometimes we've actually used human words to measure god's word instead of god's word to measure human words you know there's been a lot of talk about this thing called q anon and i i'm not going to get into that as much as to say the bible the bible rates way above what some anonymous person is putting out there much of it having proven to be untrue and i've got to take my cue from the scripture not from the internet and what god has to say and what his truth is not from progressive christianity or celebrated christians but from what god has to say secondly hold leaders accountable for biblical morality hold leaders accountable for biblical morality look what the scriptures say and you yourselves must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching teach the truth so that your teaching can't be criticized then those who oppose us will be ashamed and have nothing bad to say about us now let's live your life and say and say what is the truth live the truth and say what is the truth so you don't bring shame on the gospel you don't ruin your witness when i read about these men and women who have these failures it does two things to me personally when it causes me to pray much pray much for them and those who are impacted by their lives and the second thing it drives me to my knees because i'm reminded i am human too and if not for the grace of god there go i how important it is to stay accountable how important it is to stay in the word how important it is to humble ourselves every day not just because of my relationship with god but because of my witness to the world and the world is watching us and listening to us and when it sees us act like it it doesn't impress anybody and then they don't believe other things that we say i wonder if in this past year rather than helping the secular world around us and leaders around us become more like christ we've allowed them to make us more like the world in our behavior our words and our actions i know that's a question i've really had to search my own heart about and ask and finally seek growing seek a growing intimate relationship with jesus seek an intimate growing relationship with jesus the scriptures say in the book of john yes i and the vine jesus said you are the branches those who remain in me and i in them will produce much fruit for part from me you can do nothing do you hear that apart from me you can do nothing i read in my quiet time about a week ago he was in john chapter 6 where jesus just says human effort is useless human effort is useless and i feel like we've expended so much human effort folks it's time to get on our knees and stay on our knees and get our knees and stand on our knees for our families for ourselves for our nation for the new administration it's time for us to realize we're not gonna change the world by calling people names by throwing stones by rioting by getting angry by by passing around things that are not true things we want to be true but are not true we're only going to change the world by our love jesus made that clear over and over and over again i'm not so worried that our country is divided i am very concerned that the church of jesus is divided these days and while i can't be responsible for any other church i'm just saying to those of you who are part of wood dale church let's be unified in christ let's be unified in his word let's agree that we can disagree on some things but we are one in christ because listen carefully the world needs us and they need the best from us and the best from us is jesus let's pray father as we take these words and these thoughts to heart and mind these are difficult days lord and we all want the best for our country we all want the best for our family we want the best for ourselves but lord you did not call us to go into this world and make politicians you did not call us to go into this world and make legislation you didn't call us to go into this world and protest you call us to go into this world and preach the gospel preach it with our words and preach it with our lives please lord please bring your church for the sake of this nation back to the cross back to jesus back to his word back to his compassion we ask this in jesus name amen god bless you and you don't want to miss next weekend