Fighting for Faith in the Entertainment Age
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Last time we looked at how non-Christians fight for faith.
00:00:08.000 | We Christians also fight for faith. We fight for faith because the world
00:00:12.000 | and the flesh and the devil conspire to spiritually
00:00:16.000 | deaden us. They come at us with sleeping pills, with tranquilizers
00:00:20.000 | of relaxation, with the offer of a life filled by the hypnotic
00:00:24.000 | trance of digital amusements. And what Jesus
00:00:28.000 | wants us to see is that faith and hope and love are the antidotes
00:00:32.000 | to the soporific effects of the world always trying to get you to
00:00:36.000 | go to sleep. So how do we stay awake?
00:00:40.000 | And how do we fight to stay awake in the entertainment
00:00:44.000 | age that we live in? Here's Pastor John preaching in 2005
00:00:48.000 | at an outdoor venue, a conference maybe, I'm not sure of the context,
00:00:52.000 | but you will hear the wind noise at times. Here now is
00:00:56.000 | Pastor John to explain.
00:01:00.000 | Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.
00:01:04.000 | Today is the 80th birthday
00:01:08.000 | of Dan Fuller, which doesn't mean anything
00:01:12.000 | to most of you, but means a great deal to me.
00:01:16.000 | Because Dan Fuller was for me in 1968,
00:01:20.000 | 69, 70, and 71, God's
00:01:24.000 | instrument for turning my world upside down and opening
00:01:28.000 | my eyes to the scriptures and the glory of God. So I got
00:01:32.000 | on the email yesterday and I wrote him a long letter of
00:01:36.000 | appreciation and gratitude, and among the other
00:01:40.000 | things that I said, I said, "Dan, salvation
00:01:44.000 | is closer to you now than it was the day
00:01:48.000 | you believed. And every groan of your 80-year-old
00:01:52.000 | body is groaning closer to Jesus. Every
00:01:56.000 | heartbeat in your fragile old body is a
00:02:00.000 | heartbeat closer to the glory of Jesus Christ."
00:02:04.000 | And I hope he takes heart in his
00:02:08.000 | 80-year-old frame. And I hope you take heart from
00:02:12.000 | your salvation that is the completion of your redemption with a
00:02:16.000 | new body, and no more battle with sin is closer
00:02:20.000 | today than it was yesterday, and every groaning of your aching
00:02:24.000 | body means someone groaned closer to
00:02:28.000 | the glory that is arriving. And then the third thing he says,
00:02:32.000 | verse 11, first half of the verse, "The hour
00:02:36.000 | has come for you to awake from
00:02:40.000 | sleep." And you remember what we
00:02:44.000 | said about that. Most of the world
00:02:48.000 | that is not treasuring Jesus Christ
00:02:52.000 | as its supreme treasure is sleepwalking.
00:02:56.000 | Even though their life is very glitzy,
00:03:00.000 | it's just bombarded every day with
00:03:04.000 | advertisements to say, "Do this and you will live," when in
00:03:08.000 | fact it's the devil wringing his hand saying, "Do this and you will
00:03:12.000 | go sound asleep." Sound
00:03:16.000 | asleep to what that son is really saying today. How many people in
00:03:20.000 | Mount Zio hear the glory of God being declared from the heavens?
00:03:24.000 | Why? Because they spent all night watching television. They've
00:03:28.000 | saturated their lives with an entertainment mentality, and the
00:03:32.000 | spiritual eyes have grown smaller and smaller
00:03:36.000 | and smaller until most people without Christ can't
00:03:40.000 | see anything glorious in spiritual reality.
00:03:44.000 | And Paul says, "The day has come.
00:03:48.000 | This is not a time for sleeping. This is not a time for
00:03:52.000 | sleepwalking. It's not a time for being like skydivers
00:03:56.000 | who, this is like a parable of the world without Christ.
00:04:00.000 | The skydivers are leaping out of their planes and they are
00:04:04.000 | watching the air go at 120 miles an hour
00:04:08.000 | through their fingers and feeling, "This is the apex
00:04:12.000 | of the thrill of life!" But there's
00:04:16.000 | just one problem. They have no parachutes.
00:04:20.000 | And the gravity
00:04:24.000 | that is pulling them inexorably towards what will happen
00:04:28.000 | in about a minute or two is called the wrath of
00:04:32.000 | God. Because Jesus said in John 3:36,
00:04:36.000 | "Those who believe on the sun
00:04:40.000 | have eternal life, and those who do not believe
00:04:44.000 | on the sun will not taste
00:04:48.000 | life, but the wrath of God rests
00:04:52.000 | on them." And they think they're so
00:04:56.000 | alive. One of our great tasks is to
00:05:00.000 | so let the light of the gospel shine that
00:05:04.000 | by the power of the Holy Spirit, eyes will wake up to the
00:05:08.000 | fact, "Day has come! Christ has come! The Son of Righteousness
00:05:12.000 | has risen over Moundsview and over the Twin Cities!"
00:05:16.000 | Wake up to the glory of your Savior
00:05:20.000 | and believe Him and enjoy Him. Don't
00:05:24.000 | be a sleepwalker. Don't be a sleep
00:05:28.000 | skydiver. It's time to wake up. It's time
00:05:32.000 | to get dressed. That's what this text is about today.
00:05:36.000 | Get dressed! Take off your pajamas!
00:05:40.000 | Stop going to work in your pajamas! That's what this
00:05:44.000 | text is about today for us and for
00:05:48.000 | Moundsview. So, we start now at verse 12.
00:05:52.000 | And what we're finding here is that we're being
00:05:56.000 | told what to wear as the light has come and
00:06:00.000 | what to do in this clothing. Verse
00:06:04.000 | 12, "The night is far gone, the day is at hand, so then..."
00:06:08.000 | You see the logic. "Because it is day,
00:06:12.000 | so then cast off the works of darkness."
00:06:16.000 | Pajamas! These are pajamas! "Cast off the works of
00:06:20.000 | pajamas." One way to define sin is pajamas.
00:06:24.000 | You should be embarrassed to go around sinning. I mean, who would go to work
00:06:28.000 | in his pajamas? But people go to work in the works of darkness every day.
00:06:32.000 | It's day! It's day! Wake up!
00:06:36.000 | It's day! The King of Kings has come. So, cast off,
00:06:40.000 | take off the works of darkness and put on...
00:06:44.000 | And then he chooses a word that is surprising. I didn't expect him
00:06:48.000 | to choose this word. It's a word that signals
00:06:52.000 | that the Christian life is not just wakeful,
00:06:56.000 | it's war. You see that word?
00:07:00.000 | "The day is at hand, so then,
00:07:04.000 | take off your pajamas," that is the works of darkness,
00:07:08.000 | "and put on the armor of light." I mean, I would expect him to say
00:07:12.000 | put on a shirt or a cloak or dress well for work
00:07:16.000 | or something. And he says, "Put on the armor of light." So, out of
00:07:20.000 | the blue comes... I mean, we don't just go from pajamas to clothes to armor.
00:07:24.000 | We go straight from pajamas to armor. What does that say
00:07:28.000 | about life? It says life is war. The Christian
00:07:32.000 | life is a battle. Though today, oh my,
00:07:36.000 | the God has been so merciful to give us a foretaste of heaven today, we wonder
00:07:40.000 | how could we even think in terms of life as being war and a battle
00:07:44.000 | and darkness to be overcome. So,
00:07:48.000 | put off the works of darkness and put on the armor
00:07:52.000 | of light. Now, here's my question.
00:07:56.000 | What is the armor of light and what does putting it on mean?
00:08:00.000 | But let's make the question a little broader. Verse 12 and verse 14
00:08:04.000 | both use the word "put on." Notice verse 14.
00:08:08.000 | "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ." So, now you've got
00:08:12.000 | two put-ons. Put on the armor of light when you take off
00:08:16.000 | your pajamas of sin and put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:08:20.000 | So, my question really is, what's the relationship between
00:08:24.000 | putting on the armor of light and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ?
00:08:28.000 | What do those two things mean?
00:08:32.000 | And I think the answer is given in 1 Thessalonians
00:08:36.000 | chapter 5 verses 7 and 8. So,
00:08:40.000 | if you want to go there with me, you can or you can just listen. I read this two weeks
00:08:44.000 | ago because 1 Thessalonians 5, 7 and 8 are
00:08:48.000 | the closest comparison
00:08:52.000 | in all of Paul's writings
00:08:56.000 | to what we have here in chapter 13 verses 12 to 14.
00:09:00.000 | When I read it, you'll hear the relationship. So, listen
00:09:04.000 | carefully. 1 Thessalonians 5, 7
00:09:08.000 | "Those who sleep, sleep at night, and those
00:09:12.000 | who get drunk, get drunk at night. But
00:09:16.000 | since we belong to the day, let us be sober,
00:09:20.000 | having put on" - now there it is - "put on
00:09:24.000 | having put on
00:09:28.000 | the breastplate" - so now we got armor - "put on armor
00:09:32.000 | so we know we're in the same sphere of thought
00:09:36.000 | put on the breastplate of faith and love
00:09:40.000 | and for a helmet the hope of
00:09:44.000 | salvation." So, Paul mentions two pieces of armor
00:09:48.000 | breastplate and helmet. We know there are more from Ephesians 6, but that's all he's
00:09:52.000 | dealing with here. We got a breastplate, cover your heart and your will
00:09:56.000 | and we got a helmet, cover your brain because that's the only two, three things the devil
00:10:00.000 | is interested in. He wants your heart, he wants your
00:10:04.000 | will, he wants your brain, so get yourself covered good here and get yourself
00:10:08.000 | covered good here and he says there are three things that this
00:10:12.000 | armor stands for - faith, love,
00:10:16.000 | hope. Sound familiar? These three are the great ones.
00:10:20.000 | Faith, hope and love. So now I come back to
00:10:24.000 | Romans 13, verse 12 and see if this will help us.
00:10:28.000 | "So then, let us cast off the works of darkness
00:10:32.000 | and put on the armor of light." That is, let us put
00:10:36.000 | on faith and let us put on hope and let
00:10:40.000 | us put on love. In this world of sleepwalking,
00:10:44.000 | the message is coming at you all day
00:10:48.000 | long, every day, from television and from advertising
00:10:52.000 | and from all other kinds of things to say
00:10:56.000 | go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep
00:11:00.000 | with regard to God, with regard to Christ, with regard to the
00:11:04.000 | Bible. And the less you want the Bible, the less you
00:11:08.000 | want Jesus, the less you want God, the more effective you know
00:11:12.000 | the sleeping pills of the world have been in
00:11:16.000 | your life. And what he's saying here now is faith
00:11:20.000 | and hope and love are
00:11:24.000 | the antidotes to the soporific
00:11:28.000 | effects of the world, always trying to get you to go to sleep.
00:11:32.000 | So combat that
00:11:36.000 | sleep-producing effect of the world by putting on faith and
00:11:40.000 | putting on hope and putting on love.
00:11:44.000 | Yes, faith and hope and love are the antidotes to the soporific effects of
00:11:48.000 | the world, always trying to get you to go to sleep.
00:11:52.000 | Powerful. This clip was from an outdoor sermon titled
00:11:56.000 | "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ Part 2," preached on August 28,
00:12:00.000 | 2005. If you have a sermon clip to share, email me. Give me your
00:12:04.000 | name, hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio, and make a
00:12:08.000 | note of what stands out to you. Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it
00:12:12.000 | to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's an email address.
00:12:16.000 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:12:20.000 | Well, are my eternal rewards and my eternal
00:12:24.000 | inheritance the same thing? One seems to imply that we can get more,
00:12:28.000 | our rewards. The other seems to imply a more static thing
00:12:32.000 | that's out of our hands, our inheritance.
00:12:36.000 | So are these rewards and our inheritance different things
00:12:40.000 | or are they the same thing? I'm your host, Tony Rehnke,
00:12:44.000 | and we are rejoined in studio with Pastor John when we return on Friday
00:12:48.000 | for that, and we hope to see you then.
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