I want us to be a church that Satan knows about.
I want us to be a church that Satan has on his radar.
And let me draw the comparison this way.
The Dodgers, okay?
Satan, Dodgers.
Anyways, the Dodgers are a team that people are talking about
this offseason, aren't they?
Why?
Because they're signing everyone under God's green earth, or on
God's green earth, under the sun.
They're going out and just signing everyone.
They're throwing money at people.
They have spent 445 million dollars this offseason on a handful of players.
Not to mention the money they spent last offseason on Shohei
Otani and everything else.
They are breaking records with the money that they are throwing around and they're
signing everybody and I gotta tell you what, initially my reaction was I hate it.
I hate it!
Because I want some of those players to be other places, but I can't fault them.
If I was a Dodgers fan, by the grace of God I'm not.
But if I was a Dodgers fan I would be sitting in a situation
going, man, this is great.
This is awesome.
What are you complaining about?
They're doing what everybody's supposed to do.
Why?
Because the Dodgers went on the offensive during the free agency season.
Take the Miami Marlins by contrast.
They have a total team payroll.
Now, I just told you, the Dodgers have spent 445 million this offseason.
The Miami Marlins have a total team payroll of 60.
4 million for their entire team.
30 of that may not even be on their opening day roster.
Okay?
Imagine being a Marlins fan.
Now, I want you to think about the rest of the league.
When they're looking at their calendar, when they're planning their
season, and they're looking at the matchups that they've got, they're
going to think differently about a weekend series against the Dodgers
than they're going to think about a weekend series against the Marlins.
They're going to look at a weekend series against the Dodgers and say,
man, we've got to be on our A game.
They are a threat to us.
They're out there doing things, and they're making an impact.
They're making a difference.
We need to pay attention to them.
They need to be on our radar.
Weekend series against the Marlins, they're thinking, man, who can we
give some time off during that series?
Church, I want us This is the only time you're going to ever hear me say this.
I want us to be like the Dodgers.
Not the Marlins.
In other words, I want us to make a difference.
I want Satan to look at his weekly calendar and say, I gotta pay attention
to when Compass Bible Church is active.
I gotta know.
So, when the people of Compass Bible Church are awake and doing life and
engaged in the culture, not just what we're doing right now, yeah, I want them
to be trembling when our church gathers on Sunday morning to worship King Jesus.
I want him to be frightened about it.
But even beyond this meeting time, when we disperse, when we scatter on
mission from this place, man, I want Satan knowing that you guys are a threat
to what he wants to do in this world.
You see, the Bible's clear that Satan is the god of this world.
We could say he's the lord of this culture, if I could put it that way.
He governs, he rules presently under the, uh, the permissive
allowance of the Father.
But the Bible says that Satan is the God of this world.
He's the Lord of this culture.
And so, we have a mission to reach, teach, and train people to follow Jesus.
And if we're going to be successful in that mission, then we need to be a church.
That Satan knows about.
Because we have to be a church that's not running from this world.
We need a church that's not retreating from the culture.
But we need to be a church that's engaging the culture in a way that
we're going to be mission successful.
And that's our goal.
As a church body.
Take your Bibles, open up to 2nd Peter chapter 3.
Open up to 2nd Peter chapter 3.
As we consider what it looks like to be this church.
See, culture is not a neutral thing for us.
We are either going to be on the offensive, or we're
going to be playing defense.
And again, if we're going to be mission successful as a church,
we have to be on the offensive.
Jesus told Peter, he said, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.
And he said this, the gates of hell Will not prevail against it.
The gates of hell.
What do you have a gate for?
Offense or defense?
Defense.
So what is Jesus implying about the church here?
That the church is the offensive member.
We are to go on the offense and shake the gates of hell, and I want us to be
a type of church that's gonna do that.
If we're gonna do that, what's that gonna look like?
2nd Peter chapter 3, let's begin in verse 11.
Peter says, since all these things are thus to be dissolved, What
sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness?
Waiting for and hastening the coming day of God, because of which the heavens will
be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn.
But according to His promise, we are waiting for new heavens
and a new earth in the future.
Righteousness dwells Peter begins since all these things are thus to be
dissolved if you let your eyes glance back up the page just at verse 10 Even
you'll get an understanding of these things Peter's talking about the end.
He's talking about the final judgment and he's talking about this world He's
talking about the heavenly bodies the constellations the planets the stars
Even in verse 10 talks about the earth that the earth is going to be exposed
its language of judgment And Peter's saying, since all of this is going to
take place, all of these things are going to be dissolved, they're going to be
undone, they're going to be destroyed.
The imagery is that of fire and melting, breaking up, destruction.
Peter asks the church, what sort of people ought we to be?
It's Francis Schaeffer's famous question, how should we then live?
What sort of people ought we should be?
How should we then live?
These are the questions that are going to govern the rest of
our time together this morning.
As we consider the world around us and the culture that we find
ourselves in, how do we engage this culture in a way that honors Christ?
What does that look like for us, to make us mission successful?
Probably help by starting to define what culture is.
It's in some ways difficult to define culture adequately.
And that is in part because culture is the water in which we swim.
If you were to talk to a fish, don't do that, because that's weird, but
if you were to talk to a fish, you were to say, hey fish, what's water?
The fish is gonna say, I don't know, what is water?
Because water is all the fish knows.
So in some degree, to some extent, culture is everything.
It is what you are in every single moment of the day.
It's what you take in, it's what you watch, it's some of what you
produce, it's what you contribute to.
But as we think of culture, a lot of times we think of categories like entertainment,
or we think of politics, or we think of our social circles, or we think of work.
We think of art.
These are buckets of culture for us.
And a lot of the culture that we find ourselves in is tainted by the
sinfulness, the brokenness in this world.
And that's just simply the reality.
And we have two choices as the church that I've addressed already.
We can retreat from that and run away and say it's all bad so let's just huddle
up and get rid of everything and just try to hold on until Christ comes back.
Or we can say, how do we engage it effectively in order to be
mission successful as the bride?
So since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what
sort of people ought we to be?
That's the question.
How do we conduct ourselves in this world?
How do we engage in this world?
And the first thing he's going to say is that we need to conduct ourselves
in lives of holiness and godliness.
Those two terms are common words that we hear a lot about in the church.
Holiness, purity, to be set apart, to be consecrated, to be sanctified.
God is holy.
He is the standard of holiness.
We are called to be like Him.
In fact, Peter has even said that in the first letter that he wrote.
So holiness should characterize how we engage with this culture and
then the second thing that needs to characterize how we engage with
this culture is the word godliness.
That we would be like him, like him in his character, like him in
his affections, like him in his thoughts, his words, his actions.
to the extent that we're capable of.
And so as we think about engaging the culture, we're going to look at
three different ways to engage the culture this morning from this passage.
Three different ways to engage the culture this morning from this passage.
The first one we find here in verse 11 is this.
We need to, church, engage carefully.
We need to engage carefully.
If we are going to conduct our lives, conduct ourselves, in lives of holiness
and godliness, then that means we have to be thoughtful, calculated,
intentional, and intentional.
Careful about how we engage with the things that we find in our
lives that make up our lives.
culture.
Peter, I've already referenced it, but in 1 Peter chapter 1, verse
15, Peter writes this, As he who called you is holy, that is God, you
also be holy in all your conduct.
Okay?
And so as we engage the culture, as we engage the world around us.
We have to engage the world around us in a holy, in a consecrated,
in a set apart kind of a way.
That means that you can't engage the culture the same way that your unbelieving
neighbor can engage the culture.
You can't participate in the same things that your unbelieving
co worker participates in.
You are called to be set apart, you are called to be different in the way that
you go about engaging in the culture.
Peter says in 1 Peter 2, 12, he says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable.
Conduct, your way of life, your behavior, alright?
Keep your conduct, the way that you engage with the culture among the
Gentiles, honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers,
they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
See, the way that we engage culture, a lot of times we can fall prey
to the mindset of, it's about us.
It's freedom.
It's my time.
It's my free time.
It's, it's, uh, entertainment.
It's these things.
And, and yet here we find that it's ultimately really
still about the glory of God.
That the way that we conduct ourselves, the way that we engage with the world
around us is, is always, whether you're at church or sharing the gospel or
sitting at home watching something on TV, meant to be for the glory of God.
What about godliness?
How do we understand godliness?
Titus chapter 1, verse 1.
Paul, a servant of God and of the apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake
of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge, here it is, their knowledge of
the truth which accords with godliness.
So, in other words, how do we understand godliness?
We understand godliness through, through our interaction with the
truth, the word of God, John 17, we're going to get there in a few weeks.
Sanctify them in your truth.
Your word is truth.
And so godliness for us as we seek to conduct ourselves in godliness
is governed by the scriptures.
In 2 Peter chapter 1, in the book that we're looking at together
this morning, 2 Peter 1, 3 4.
Peter has said there his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to
life and godliness through the knowledge of him, through the knowledge of Christ.
And so these are the parameters, these are the guidelines that we
are given through which we are to engage with the culture around us.
Godliness and holiness, which is why we must engage carefully.
Let me put it this way.
As you live your life, live your life in such a way that you are aware of the
fact that today matters for tomorrow.
The things that you do today, the way that you engage with the
world and the culture around you today, it has bearing on eternity.
It has bearing on tomorrow.
It has bearing on the day that you stand before Jesus in the bema seat of Christ.
What you do today matters for tomorrow.
Paul says in 1 Timothy chapter 4 verses 7 through 8, 1 Timothy 8,
Paul says this, have nothing to do with irreverent or silly myths.
Rather, train yourself for godliness.
There's our word, godliness.
Train yourself for godliness.
For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value
in every way, as, notice, it holds promise for the present life,
and also for the life to come.
What you do today matters for tomorrow.
Your actions today, the way that you engage, what you
choose to engage in today.
We'll have a bearing on tomorrow, on your future, on eternity.
And so we engage culture carefully because we're making eternal decisions.
We're making decisions on what we're being entertained by, on the things that we're
engaging with, on the things that we're contri that we're producing even, that
will have a bearing on eternity for us.
It's not just about the here and now.
It's not just about the couple hours that you have downtime for.
It's about your eternity as well.
And you may be saying, yeah, but what about Christian liberty?
Don't I have freedom as a Christian?
Aren't I able to make choices for myself and for my family?
And can't I do some things that, you know, are morally neutral that
somebody might have a problem with, but I don't have a problem with it.
Fair.
Except, let me remind us that our, even our freedom, our Christian
liberty is meant to be governed by our concern for godliness and holiness.
Paul says in Galatians 5.
13, he says, For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your
freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.
So let's not be quick to say, well, I can engage in this thing over
here because after all, Christian liberty, I'm free to do this.
Okay, but are you creating through that an opportunity for the flesh?
Today matters for tomorrow.
And so, Christian, we need to consider our engagement with this world carefully.
Anybody know this lady on the screen?
Maybe not.
Marie Kondo?
Ring a bell for anybody?
No.
Kondo.
Okay, some of you are Marie Kondo disciples, the rest of you are like,
I have no idea who that person is.
Could you just grab the image off Google?
I did, but it's apparently her.
She is known for helping people purge, right?
She's known for getting in and organizing and cleaning things up.
And the question that she asks, and this is a little odd, but
whatever, to each their own, I guess.
She wants you to take an item in your house and hold it and ask
the question, Does it spark joy?
So grab your pillow when you go home and hold it and say, does this spark joy?
That should be an easy yes, right?
The pillow sparks joy.
Grab your cutting board.
Does this spark joy?
I don't, I don't, I don't know.
It's a, it's a utensil.
I use it for things, but she wants you to ask, does it spark joy?
And the implication is if it doesn't, then you don't need it.
If it doesn't promote joy in your life, then you got to get rid of it.
And certainly, she would say, if it promotes something other
than joy, the opposite of joy.
If that item causes you frustration, or consternation, or stress, get rid of it.
You don't need it in your life.
Right?
Well, Christian, I want to rephrase that, if I can.
And I want us to think about our engagement with the culture this way.
Does it spark godliness and holiness?
When we think about what we are engaging in, and again, all those
different buckets, entertainment, social circles, art, you know, our, our,
Our, our free time, what we, what we choose to do, uh, books that we read.
I think an important question is does it spark godliness and holiness?
Now it's not that every single thing that you do, every single element of culture
is going to make you a more godly person, but there's certainly a lot in culture
that can make you a less godly person.
And I'd be right there saying with Marie Kondo, if you're holding something
that, or considering something you would say, man, this does not spark
godliness, it sparks ungodliness, that's a clear as day solution.
Get rid of it.
That is not something that we as Christians need to be
engaging with in this culture.
We have to engage carefully, engage thoughtfully.
Uh, parents, I want to ask you, are you thoughtful and careful about
what you are allowing into your home from the culture's perspective?
Pastor Rod just did a whole retreat on this idea.
Did you know, the Wall Street Journal did this study, so this is
not some like closeted Christian group that has plugged their ears
and buried their heads in the sand.
Wall Street Journal did a study on Instagram's algorithm, and it did this.
It is designed, the algorithm is designed to deliver sexually suggestive content
to users as young as 13 years old.
And within 20 minutes of scrolling through reels, they will encounter
something graphic and obscene.
I remember growing up around the time that, uh, the, the internet was
coming on the scene and the idea of having a computer in your bedroom.
And that, that's just a gateway to immorality.
And some of you parents are like, well, I don't have a computer in
my kid's bedroom, but you let them take their phone into the room.
Um, the gateway is there.
In fact, if I can press in on an, on an issue by extension of this, just for
all of us, not just our our families, we certainly need to protect our families.
But y'all pornography use among American adults has risen from 55% in
2020 or 2015 rather to 61% in 2024.
61% of adults are saying, yeah, I use pornography on a regular basis.
In 2018, one study found that 91.5%
of men.
surveyed, ages 18 to 73.
91.
5 percent of men in this 2018 survey, ages 18 to 73, and 60.
2 percent of women in the same category said that they had accessed porn at
least one time in the last month.
91.
5 percent of men.
That's why I'm talking about engaging with our culture carefully here at the outset.
What are we allowing in?
How about just the video games?
That we're spending hours and hours and hours in front of.
And I'm not just talking about GTA whatever that's about to come out.
If it's not video games, let me put it this way.
Whatever our mindless passive intake sessions are, your mindless passive
intake session, whatever that is, if it's scrolling reels, if it's binge
watching a show, if it's watching movies on Netflix, how much of your life is
spent just disengaged and unplugged?
And you're allowing culture to just happen to you.
And you gotta go, I don't think it's affecting me.
That commercial jingle that comes on every once in a while that you heard
and the last time you heard it was 30 years ago and you can remember that
culture, that, that commercial jingle?
Call 267 8433 because the next best thing to do is Dalworth Clean.
Grew up listening to that, it's still there.
Whatever you're singing, Cars for Kids or whatever the jingle is that's
in your mind, you're welcome for all these by the way, free of charge.
You didn't set out to memorize that.
That embedded itself in your mind because you heard it over and
over and over and over again.
See church, when we turn our minds off, we become students to the culture.
And we just have to ask ourselves, what are we becoming students to?
What are we taking in?
It's not that there's not an appropriate time to disengage, to rest.
It's not that there's not an appropriate time to, to look at
a funny reel every now and then.
But we always have to consider the, the, the governing command
here from Peter, conduct yourself with holiness and godliness.
We need to guard against massive, the, the, the mindless passive intake that
is just plaguing our society right now.
Whatever it is.
We need to make sure that the corrupting influences of the world and the culture
have not taken heart, taken root in our own hearts, but then beyond that, even
in our homes, we need to be willing to do the hard work to get rid of it if it has.
Parents, you can take your kid's social media accounts away.
It's allowable.
In fact, there are times you should.
Parents, you can remove the phone.
from your kids.
You can tell them they're not allowed to take it into their bedrooms.
That's your right.
God has given you stewardship over their life.
And if you just want them to like you and you're sending them
away with that loaded weapon,
then you are going to reap horrific consequences as a result.
We need to be on the front lines of guarding our homes.
Again, this is not a retreat mentality.
But this is about understanding the danger that exists.
Why does any of this matter?
Well, because of what he says next.
He says the end is coming.
Jesus is coming back.
These things are going to be dissolved.
And for us as Christians, there's going to be three responses to Christ's return.
Number one, well, for us as Christians, there's two responses of these three.
For the third, it's not a Christian response.
Response number one is, will you be ready?
Some are gonna be ready for his return.
Okay, Matthew chapter 24.
Matthew chapter 24, verses 44 through 46.
The wise and faithful servant that's found doing what his master commanded him to do.
Verse 46.
Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes, man,
I wanna be ready for the return of Christ when he comes back for the bride.
Are you gonna be found ready?
The second thing is, Christian, you might be found ashamed at the return of Christ.
One John 2 28.
1 John 2.
28, Now little children abide in him, so that when he appears we
may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.
Christians, there's a very real danger that we might be doing something that we
would be embarrassed when Christ comes back for his bride to be found doing.
And that has a lot to do with how we engage with this culture.
Third, there are some that aren't believers, that when he comes
back are going to be found sorry.
They're going to be found sorry, and this is Luke chapter 12.
This is the fool who amassed multiple possessions, and he built bigger barns.
And then Jesus says, Fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things
you have prepared, whose will they be?
There are some that are going to give themselves to culture and amass as
much pleasure and satisfaction in the culture as they can possibly get, only
in the end to hear Christ say, fool, what is the profit of man to gain
the world but to forfeit his soul?
And so church, we must be careful in the way that we engage culture.
Part of being a church on the offensive is to be thoughtful and
careful and calculated in this.
Because if we're not, we're going to be sidelined.
We're not going to be effective.
So engage carefully.
Engage carefully.
Second though, verse 12, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God,
because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the
heavenly bodies will melt as they burn.
The second point this morning is this, engage evangelistically.
Engage evangelistically.
This is maybe what you thought you were coming to hear a whole
sermon about this morning, is you thought about engaging the culture.
And this is a big part of it.
And here we see it, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God.
Now, there's two motivations that we find in this text for why We should be
engaging the culture evangelistically.
The first motivation is this, we want to see Jesus.
I hope, Christians, you want to see Jesus.
I hope you want to see him, see Jesus as quickly as you can.
That he holds that place in your heart, that you are longing
for the return of Christ.
If you are longing for the return of Christ, as we should, Christians,
then you have a, a role to play in that and can actually, as the
text says here, hasten his return.
through engaging the culture evangelistically.
The NIV says that we can speed its coming.
That's the idea here, but, but the question may be percolating right
now in your mind, how in the world can I speed up the return of Christ?
How do I have a say in when Christ is going to return?
I thought that's only up to the Father.
It is up to the Father.
But the Father's going to use the church in accomplishing that mission.
Romans 11.
25 says this.
Paul's talking about Israel, but it brings the point home in the
last part of this verse here.
Paul writes in Romans 11.
25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be
unaware of this mystery, brothers.
A partial hardening has come upon Israel.
Until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
Okay?
The fullness of the Gentiles is talking about the church.
And so what Paul is writing here, Romans 11, is he's saying, Israel has
been sidelined for a moment until the fullness of the Gentiles, the fullness
of the church has been brought in.
What does that imply?
That implies that there is a fullness, there's a number, there's
a completion to the bride of Christ.
And so that means this, Christian, you, this week, could be the one to share the
gospel with the last person to be saved.
The last Gentile to be brought in to the church, signaling and
setting off the return of Christ.
This is how you and I can speed the return of Christ.
The more we're sharing the gospel with people, the more people get
saved, the faster Jesus comes back.
It's, it's, the, the, the tragedy of the, the church that we don't
recognize that, that, that, that, That's something that's a tool in our belt.
In fact, one commentator put it this way.
Michael Green said this.
It is Christian listlessness, disobedience, and lovelessness,
which delay the coming day of God.
It's Christian listlessness, disobedience, and lovelessness,
which delay the coming day of God.
The fact that the church has sat on our hands for far too long
as far as witnessing to people, evangelizing, sharing the gospel
with people, that's part of what is delaying the return of Christ.
And so if you want to hasten, if you want to see Jesus more quickly,
engage the culture evangelistically.
The second motivation of why we engage the culture evangelistically, though, is
not just seeing Jesus, but also sparing the loss from the judgment that's coming.
Back in our text, in verse 12, it says, waiting for and
hastening the coming day of God.
The coming day of God.
This parallels the Old Testament concept of the day of Yahweh, the day of the Lord.
And just listen from Isaiah 13, verses 6 through 13.
You can write that passage down, it's too long for me to put up on the screens
here, but Isaiah 13, verses 6 through 13.
Just listen to the description of the coming day of the Lord.
Isaiah writes this, For the day of the Lord is near.
As destruction from the Almighty, it will come.
Therefore all hands will be feeble.
Every human heart will melt.
They will be dismayed.
Pangs and agony will seize them.
They will be in anguish like a woman in labor.
They will look aghast at one another.
Their Faces will be a flame.
Behold, the day of the Lord comes cruel with wrath and fierce anger
to make the land a desolation and destroy its sinners from it for
the stars of the heavens, and their constellations will not give their light.
The sun will be dark.
At its rising and the moon will not shed its light.
I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity.
I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant and lay low the
pompous pride of the ruthless.
I will make people more rare than fine gold and mankind than the gold of Ophir.
Therefore, I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will be shaken out
of its place at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger,
one Peter three 12 waiting for and hastening that day.
Another motivation for us getting out and invasion, engaging, excuse me,
engaging the culture evangelistically is we don't want to spare as many
people as possible from that day.
And you say, but.
Do we have the power to be able to do that?
Inherently in us.
And in short, the answer is no.
Right, and I think we understand that.
We don't have the power to save anyone in here.
If we did, there wouldn't be an unbeliever in our midst.
But on the other hand, simply because you are unable to affect true
repentance in a person's heart, does not mean that you are powerless to do
anything for the lost in your life.
Romans 10.
Paul says,
But then he goes on he says, but how are they going to call on him
in whom they've never heard, right?
And then Paul goes on to say, he says, how are they going to hear about this one?
Unless somebody preaches, tells them about him.
And so what Paul is saying here is that God uses a us, as his servants,
as his mouthpiece, as his vessels, to bring the message of salvation
to the lost in this world, and he is the one that then saves them through
the proclamation of that message.
So can you save anyone?
No, you can't save anyone.
But do you have the message that does?
Yes, you do.
And so we can engage evangelistically under the motivation of wanting to
spare the lost from this judgment, because we have the message that
is capable of seeing that happen.
This is why Jesus told the church, go therefore and make disciples.
Amen.
The, the main verb there is not go, it's make disciples.
That's the imperative of the church.
Now, we don't, like I just said, have the power to actually make anyone a disciple,
but we have the message that does.
And so as we engage the culture evangelistically, we can go out with
that message and see loss come to faith in Christ and see them spared
from that ultimate day of death.
of judgment in Acts chapter 1 verse 8, Paul talked about, or
Jesus rather talked about, being witnesses to the ends of the earth.
And that's our job right now, church, we're there, we're at the ends of
the earth, and we need to be his witnesses, engaging evangelistically.
Two ways to do this.
You can engage evangelistically in this culture actively and passively.
I want to talk about passively first, both are legitimate.
You can engage passively, and here's the question as you
consider engaging passively.
What do your lost neighbors, co workers, family members, see in you,
hear from you, that bears witness to the light that dwells within you?
Put it a different way.
How do your lost people in your life, how do they see that you're different?
How do they see the light in you?
Uh, you and, you can engage the culture evangelistically in this passive sense.
For example, if you're at work or you're around some people in the neighborhood
and they start bringing up and talking about the latest TV MA show that
everybody's been watching on Netflix.
And you're sitting there as a Christian who said, I'm not gonna
watch that because it dishonors God.
And you Are able to say they ask you your thoughts and you go, you
know what actually I haven't seen that show It's it's something
that I have chosen not to watch.
Oh, well, tell me why you why don't you watch it?
Everybody's watching this show Because morally I feel like it crosses some lines
that I'm just I'm as a follower of Jesus.
I'm not comfortable with oh Like what I go to church.
I'm a Christian.
I watch the show.
What, what, what are you talking, like, help me understand this.
And then you get into a conversation about sanctification.
You get into a conversation about godliness and holiness.
That's a, a passive way to engage the culture evangelistically.
Winsomely, right?
Not as in a holier than thou, but in a way that you are loving
and you're communicating, you're speaking truth and love there.
You can also engage the evangelistically in a passive sense
when you just don't use profanity.
that becomes the lingua franca of the workplace, or the
school, or the neighborhood.
Y'all, it's not hard not to swear.
And that's a way for us to stand out.
In fact, you could even take it another step further.
If you're having a conversation with somebody, and they are using the
language, you could say, Hey, would you mind not using that word around me?
It just, it, it, it bothers me, uh, it, uh, it offends my, my jealousy for my God.
And, and I get it, that's hard.
Because you don't want to come across as the guy that, that's unrelatable, you
don't want to come across as the person that's holier than thou, and that's why
we, we do it in such a way that's, that's winsome, but But we still need to do it.
There, there needs to be a difference.
People need to see that we're different than the world around us.
Another way you can engage passively, evangelistically, is by staying faithful
to your spouse in the midst of a world where that's not the common anymore.
When we have an app that's out there that's tagline is,
life is short, have an affair,
that's a low hanging fruit for us as the church to be different
than the world around us.
to engage passively in this, by staying faithful to your spouse.
And if you're in a situation at work where somebody's bragging about their
infidelity, rather than sitting around there and just staying silent, either
walk away or say, you know what, I need to follow up with that guy later and talk
to him about that because that's not okay.
Care about godliness, care about holiness.
So those are passive ways to engage the culture evangelistically.
There's also obviously active ways to engage the culture evangelistically,
and these are equally, if any, If not more so important, because no one's
going to get saved because you're not watching the Netflix show, okay?
People are going to get saved because you're preaching the gospel.
And that's the active part.
So here's the the diagnostic question on that.
Are you engaging the culture evangelistically actively?
When's the last time you shared the gospel with someone?
When's the last time you sat down with somebody that's not a believer and said to
them, hey, can I talk to you about Christ?
You might think, well, Isn't that the job of people with the gift of evangelism?
No, that's the job of the church.
All of us.
If you claim Christ, then you've been commissioned to make disciples.
And the only way to make disciples is to share the gospel.
Listen, that's why we're here, church.
If God didn't want you here to be a light to the lost, He would
have called you home already.
You're not here to fill a seat in church.
You're here to be a witness in the culture around us.
So we need to engage the culture evangelistically.
You engage the culture evangelistically actively when you build those intentional
relationships with your neighbors.
To get to the place of saying, hey, let's have you over for dinner.
I want to talk to you about my relationship with Christ.
Say, well that, that seems like that would make things awkward.
Try it.
It's worth the cost.
If things are a little bit awkward but you have an opportunity to tell somebody
about Jesus, is that not worth it?
What's the alternative?
You keep things copacetic for the rest of the time that you live next
door to them and they move away and then you never have an opportunity
to share the gospel with them.
What's better standing before Jesus at the Bema seat?
Try it.
You engage the culture evangelistically when you tell your kids about Jesus.
Parents, make sure your kids know that they're not okay with God just because
they grew up in a Christian home.
Okay?
There are a lot of people in hell who grew up in Christian homes.
Parents, you need to make sure that your children understand that they
need their own relationship with Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
That's a way to engage the culture actively in evangelism.
Listen, this is the closest to that opening illustration that
I gave about the Dodgers, right?
They're recruiting everybody to come be on their team.
Church, we need to be recruiting everybody to come be on our team.
Yeah, even Shohei and Rokey.
If you have a relationship with those guys, they're Tell them about Jesus.
Invite them to church.
If we're going to be an offensive church in the culture around us, we have to make
a gospel impact in the culture around us.
And so as I think about this next year in front of a church,
I want to see more baptisms.
I want to see more conversions, hear more conversions.
I want to hear about more people that have shared the gospel with co workers.
In fact, if you want to encourage your pastors, shoot us an email.
After you share the gospel with somebody this week, or in the
weeks to come, and say, Hey, would you be praying for this person?
I just had an opportunity to share the gospel with them.
Pastor Ron and I would love to join you in prayer in that regard.
And it would make us so ecstatic to know that our people are out
being a light, being a witness, and engaging the culture evangelistically.
So we engage carefully, we engage evangelistically, and then
finally we engage expectantly.
We engage this culture expectantly.
This is in verse 13.
But according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new
earth in which righteousness dwells.
In that new heavens and new earth that's coming in which righteousness
dwells, we're waiting for that.
And it's not a passive waiting, it's an anticipation, it's an expectant waiting.
Our staff is growing, by the way, we got to hire somebody on as our
kidsmen, uh, administrative assistant.
She's gonna be introduced with her family next week, so you
guys can begin praying for her.
But, uh, with that, came additional bodies in our office.
And we've got Lewis in, serving with our student ministry too.
So, at times in our office, we've got six grown adults, three actual
offices, and about 500 square feet of office space in there.
Okay, so things get tight.
Guess what?
We've got new offices as of March 1st and we're super excited about that.
Cannot wait.
It's bigger too.
We didn't just like move laterally into small offices again.
And we're just, so what are we doing?
We're awaiting expectantly those new offices.
We show up in our current offices and we're like, okay, we're only
here for a little bit more time.
And at the same time though, we gotta be challenged to be
thankful for what we have.
Man, this week it was cold.
It was bitter cold.
I was thankful that we had an office to go and sit down in and meet with people and
study God's Word and where there's heat.
Man, I gotta be thankful for what I have, but I know what's
coming is gonna be better, right?
At least that's what we're trusting, hoping, and praying.
Y'all, we live in insane times right now.
We live in times that there is so much for us in the culture and in the world around
us that, that is really, honestly, if I can just put it this way, really cool.
Right?
I mean, think about your smartphone.
You've probably heard this, but this has more technology than, than the computer
that sent astronauts to the moon.
And I use it to check the weather.
X and, and, and sports course.
We live in a, in a technological time that is unrivaled.
I mean, there are so many things here.
Whatever you think about AI, bad, good, or, or whatever it is, and
I'm on record on our podcast saying I'd put it back in Pandora's box
and shut the lid and send it away.
But still, AI does some pretty amazing things.
Like, it's, it's fascinating when you stop and you look at the world around us.
It's easy for us to sit here and get comfortable here and think to
ourselves, man, this world is so cool.
I love being here.
Space travel, right?
It's probably going to be in our lifetime that it's normal to have
somebody be like, yeah, I went to space.
Like somebody's like, I went to Kentucky.
Right?
I think space is cooler than Kentucky.
I've been to Kentucky.
No offense, Mark.
I know you spent some time there, but I think space is probably
a little bit cooler than that.
But, but we're going to space with people that aren't Neil Armstrong, right?
Just average people.
Elon Musk is like, I'm gonna build a rocket ship, and he did it.
And he's sending people to outer space now.
How about just on demand streaming?
Can we get an amen to the fact that we don't have to watch commercials
anymore, those of us that grew up having to watch commercials?
This is a new age!
All that to say, there's some great things about culture.
This is not a message that the world is all bad and evil and everybody
pull out and retreat as far from it as you can and sell your TVs and sell
your devices and things like that.
No, there's really cool things that are out there.
And, and people know it too.
In fact, there's this guy, Pastor Rod told me about him this week.
His name is Brian Johnson.
And, uh, Brian Johnson is trying to reverse engineer his aging process.
He's trying to get younger and he's doing so by trying to hack his body and
the physiologic, physiological makeup of his body to, to make his organs
not age with with a passing year, so that from beginning of 25 to the end
of 25, that his liver would still be that of whatever his current age is,
that it's not progressing because he's caring for his body that well.
And he's trying to do this in such a way, and this is from his website.
He says, we are at war with death.
He has no idea how true that statement is.
We are at war with death and its causes.
We are building towards an infinite horizon.
We are fighting for the freedom to exist as long as one chooses.
Why?
Because we have things to do tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow
until we no longer want tomorrow.
Y'all, his goal is to live as long as he feasibly possibly can and in the
process leave behind the blueprints for humanity to continue to do that.
It's this understanding that this world has enough for us, and this
world is good, and we want to be here.
And, man, I want to live as long as I possibly can, because who wants to die?
Death is, death is the great enemy.
We are at war with death, and he's right.
Just not the way he thinks.
You see, Johnson, Brian Johnson, he's, he's gonna die.
Eventually, even if he figures it out and he's able to get to,
to Methuselah's age and beyond.
Eventually, God's going to say, okay, those are the days that I have written in
the book of life for you and you're done.
And Brian Johnson's going to die.
And then the question becomes, well, what sort of life, Brian,
were you preparing to live after?
Death.
And so as Christians, we need to engage with this culture expectantly,
knowing that what's coming is better.
We don't want to live forever and ever and ever because we know that what's
coming, when we will really live forever and ever and ever, is so much better.
And you say, can we believe that?
Yeah, we can believe that.
Ecclesiastes chapter 2, King Solomon gets everything he wants.
In fact, it says there, he kept nothing from his, his
possession that his eyes desired.
He got it all.
Wealth, sex, all of it.
Possessions.
He, he got it all.
Amassed it all.
And in the end, what did Solomon say it was?
It's all vanity.
It's like steam from the top of a cup of coffee.
You can grasp it, but there's nothing there.
And so Solomon's saying, you can have all the good things in this world that
you want and amass them all, and it's still not going to be enough for you.
Why?
Because the life to come, which is what we're really made
for, is going to be better.
Revelation 21 and 22, I don't have time to go there this morning.
Spend some time there this week.
Read about the new earth.
Read about what it's going to be like to be with Jesus.
And why that's going to be infinitely better.
Again, y'all, what I'm promoting this morning is not a retreat
mentality from culture.
The offensive church is not a retreating church.
The offensive church is not a holy huddle waiting for Jesus to come back and get us.
The offensive church, rather, is going to engage with the world in a sanctified
sense and enjoy what the world offers us, but not fall prey to the mindset that
this is the greatest thing that there is.
So what does that look like?
Well, that looks like starting to think about the food that you enjoy.
Whatever your favorite meal is, going to Hutchins BBQ and
sitting down with some real BBQ.
And you enjoy that and you go, man, this is the best that I've found
this side of eternity, but they're going to be flavors and tastes that
blow this away in the new new earth.
I can't wait to get there.
That's to engage expectantly.
Friendship, man, your closest friendship that you have this morning is still
a relationship that's tainted by sin.
Eternity, you're going to have relationships, friendships
with people that are.
Free from sin completely.
In fact, that's what he says.
We wait a new heavens a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
That's gonna be awesome.
Your closest relationship should cause you to, to long for that time.
Entertainment, right?
God caused or created our capacity to laugh or to feel amusement or to be
amazed or to be intrigued by something.
Listen, in eternity you are going to be amazed, intrigued.
You're gonna laugh.
You're going to be amused by things in eternity.
And it's going to be brought to that next level that you've
never experienced before.
Your wealth.
Whatever God has given you right now is a reminder of the riches that are to come.
That are going to be way better than anything that you have here.
Your marriage, even.
Well, there's no marriage in heaven.
Fair.
But your marriage and how sweet it is right now should remind you of the union
that the Bride of Christ is going to have with Jesus Himself in eternity.
And how much better that's going to be to be there with Him.
Art.
Maybe you're an art appreciator.
The most beautiful painting, statue, whatever you've beheld here is a
painting, a statue, a work that's still been tainted by and corrupted by sin.
There's going to be beauty on the new earth unrivaled and beyond compare.
Exercise.
Will we exercise on the new earth?
I have no idea.
But, I know this, if we are, we're not going to be hating
it as much as we do here.
So if you're exercising here, you're on the treadmill, you're lifting
weights, whatever, and you're, you're, you're really struggling to
love Adam, because if he didn't do that, if he didn't fail as a leader,
we wouldn't be hating this as much.
Know that there's going to come a day in heaven when we're going
to use our bodies to their full capacity for the glory of God.
Let it stir your affections for that.
And so church, engage expectantly.
Pray with us for the return of Jesus.
Train your minds to think of Jesus as better than anything that this
world or culture has to offer you.
Spend time contemplating the pleasures you experience here and now and how
they are but a foretaste of the better pleasure that's going to come in eternity.
Listen, an offensive church knows the objective, knows what's coming, knows
to look forward to the time when we will be in eternity with Christ, and how
much better and sweeter that will be.
Church, if we are engaging the culture this way, if we become this offensive
church, here's some things that will be true of the church that we are,
not only in 2025, but in future years.
We're going to be a church that stands out as different.
People are going to walk in here and say, What's, what's different about this body?
Well, we're on the offensive.
We're not just here to, to waste time and kill time until Christ comes back.
We're here on mission, and we're gonna be active in that mission.
Also, this is gonna be a church that has a loose grip on temporal things.
We're not going to be a church that's all about the temporal, all about the
material, all about the things that we can hold on to, touch, see, wealth.
Things like that.
We're going to have a right perspective on these things.
We're going to be a church that sees people saved.
If we're engaging the culture evangelistically, we're going to
hear stories of people getting saved.
We're going to have more baptisms every single year because
more people are getting saved.
We're going to be a church that's marked by holiness and godliness.
As such, we're going to be a church that God's going to use,
which means we're also going to be a church that Satan's going to hate.
And finally, we're going to be a church that's going to be
ready for Jesus to come back.
It's a burden that I feel is to make sure that As best as I can, I'm preparing this
church to be ready for Jesus to come back.
Preparing the bride to be ready for the groom.
And to do that, we have to be engaging the culture around us.
God's put us here, He calls us, and has called us to be on mission here.
To do that effectively.
We have to engage carefully, we have to engage evangelistically, and we have to
engage expectantly until he calls us home.
There's no passive approach to culture for us, whether you're on
the offensive or the defensive.
And as Christ told Peter, the job of the church is to be on the offensive.
And he said, the gates of hell are not going to prevail.
Will you stand with me and let's pray.