Title: Split
Place: BLCC
Date: 8/20/17
Text: Daniel 2
CT: We are to live as it all belongs to God.
[Screen 1]
FAS: Good morning. How are you all doing this morning? Everybody back in school and getting back into the routine. I pray everybody is settling in to a great new year.
Had this buddy of mine graduate from college a while back. I ran into him and asked how he was getting along. He said he was doing all right. I said have you got a job yet. He said man I’m not real proud of what I got going on. I’m working at the zoo.
I went to apply at the zoo and they hired me. Trouble is when I showed up, what they had planned for me was a little bit out of the ordinary. You see I was expecting to work in the office or something. But the guy I reported to had something totally different in mind for me.
He told me the chimps had been sick and were not acting right. They wanted me to get in there with them and perk things up.
You know I needed the job.
He gave me a suit to put on. (A chimp suit). I was going to be far enough away from the people that they wouldn’t be able to tell I wasn’t really a chimp. So I tried on the suit. It felt pretty good. I actually kind of enjoyed what I was doing.
I got really good at swinging on the vines and even did some chimp dancing for the kids. The kids love it. They are clapping for me and I am starting to really like his job. This went on for four days.
The fifth day I was really feeling good. I was swinging on the vines. I just kept going higher and higher until I slipped off and fell into the lion’s den.
This was crazy. He realized what he had done. He starts screaming HELP. Help. Somebody come get me out of here. (In full chimp guard).
Then he really freaked out because the lions started running toward him.
He started screaming again. Help somebody get me out of here.
Then the lion said, “Man if you don’t shut up you gonna get both of us fired”
Hope you are having a better job finding a job. Don’t want to see any of you at the zoo. Now you see that was a made up story but….
As Christians we find ourselves in all sorts of jobs or vocations. We spend our time here at church all about God and Jesus, but we spend the rest of our time on whatever. We find ourselves in a split. We struggle with giving enough time to church but feel so pulled toward our job or other activities we deal with outside of church. One way to describe this is a Sacred Secular divide. We often as Christians see our job as Christians is to work enough so we can tithe and give to the church. You know we want to do our part if we are truly followers of Christ. Right. That is why we work so hard?
I believe there is a better way. We need to break this split. There are there things we need to do.
[Screen 2]
1. Engage. We need to engage our community our workplace our school. Engage the culture of your place.
2. Love. Love the people. Love the place. Love the culture you are in.
3. Rehabilitate. Change the environment to better serve God.
These three things are crucial to break this split we feel in our lives.
I heard a story of a young man who became a Christian. He wanted to go into ministry. But his advisors told him he was too up there to be a minister. He needed to go into law. He wanted to serve his Lord though, but he went into law. He did OK until he got into the heart of learning law. He begins to feel he is selling out because he is not as involved with the ministries he had been in before.
After he became a lawyer he became depressed. He said to God I feel I have let you down. He was in the Sacred Secular divide. He believed his church was sacred but his work as a lawyer was secular. [Screen 3]
Let me tell you about a young man from the Bible. Daniel. He is found in Daniel 2.
In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep. So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. When they came in and stood before the king, he said to them, “I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means.”
Then the astrologers answered the king, “May the king live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”
The king replied to the astrologers, “This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble. But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.”
The wise men were about to freak out. There was no way they were going to tell what the King dreamed let alone interpret it.
This angered King Neb and he ordered all the wise men of the country to be executed. He was the king and he could do that.
Now Daniel fell under this order as well. Now interpreting dreams would have been considered an evil thing to do but Daniel and some of his friends prayed to God and asked for help. God gave them the dreams and the interpretation.
So Daniel goes to King Neb and tells him to please not execute every one because he could give him the interpretation from God. You see Daniel knew everything was God’s even the dreams of the king. He gave the interpretations to the king. The king is elated and even asks Daniel to be his top advisor.
Now Daniel didn’t say you are an evil king and that would be a secular job. I want to just preach to my fellow people here. No, Daniel took the job to be in a position to advise from God to the king. Daniel didn’t see a split between the secular and the sacred here. He broke the split and made the job his ministry. He did this because he had what we call a biblical worldview. He sees the world through the lens of the scriptures.
[Screen 4]
Most of us see the world as a split. We see a secular side and a sacred side.
Its like when we were kids we would listen to gospel music on the radio on the way to church but listen to rock and roll on the way home.
Or we would get on our buddies if they cussed at church but not say anything to them, or talk like them, everywhere else.
We treated one place different than other places like the house of the Lord. We were taught to respect the house of the Lord.
Isn’t it true that all the earth is the Lord’s? [Screen 5]
Psalm 24 The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it
God made it all and it is good. Said this several times in Genesis 1.
God made it all. And it is good.
God made it all. And it is good.
God made it all. And it is good.
We tend to put sacred things in one place and secular things in another.
We think Christianity is the truth about salvation and sanctification.
What we forget is that Christianity is the truth about everything.
It’s the truth about politics, marriage, media, science, medicine.
Christianity is the truth about everything.
WE tend to put things in categories. We put some in sacred and some in secular. But isn’t it all God’s. [Screen 6]
There is good, bad and redeemed
Good. All is good. God made all things. God made it and it is GOOD.
1 Timothy 4.4, For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.
Dancing is ……
Movies are…..
Cows are….
All married couples know that sex is good.
We demonize things but all things are basically good.
We call secular bad even when it is not so.
A jingle for Pepsi is secular but not bad.
We try to say everything that is sacred is good, like worshipping cows. That’s not good.
That’s what Daniel was saying about dreams. Dreams are good as long as they are used to glorify God. So Daniel took the dreams and used them for good.
A job you get is good as long as you do it for the glory of God.
The lawyer I just spoke about took his lawyering and used it to glorify God. He stepped in when needed to put things right with God.
He doesn’t have to have the split of this is my secular job and this is my ministry job. His job can be seen as all honorable to God.
[Screen 7]
Bad. The earth fell because humanity fell. The earth didn’t fall. The tree didn’t eat the fruit and say sorry Adam. Adam fell. It is humanity’s fault.
Its not the music that is the problem it is the heart of those making the music.
Movies are not bad it is the heart of man that can make it bad.
Butcher knife. Up evil. Down carving the turkey to feed the homeless.
Your job does not have to be bad. How do you deal with it to make it redeemable?
[screen 8]
Redeemable. Some things cannot be redeemed. Prostitution. Love misdirected.
Some things have to be rejected.
Does what you are doing Glorify or not glorify the Lord. It either does or it does not.
Be fruitful. God told Jacob in Genesis 35.11, “I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number.
Do you think this meant to go out and have a bunch of babies? I guess it did but it means so much more. It means to go out and promote what is good and righteous. It today means to follow Jesus where He leads us. It means to build nations. It means to overcome obstacles. It means to honor God with all that you do. It doesn’t mean you put a cross on whatever you do. It just means to do a great job at whatever you do for God.
We redeem things.
If you really want to do this you have to engage. Engage your community, your culture, you have to love your people even the ones not like you, you have to see yourself as the rehabilitator.
To engage we have to go beyond what we know to where they are. If a young person listening to rap wants to come to Jesus we had better be able to communicate with this person. He may not speak our church language. We have to get into his world. We have to engage him where he is. This can be tough and take some real work to accomplish. But it can be done.
Loving your community is not seeing it for how bad or disgusting it is. It is seeing it for who the people are. They are people loved by God who he wants to bring back to him. Nothing less than this is what we should strive to do. This doesn’t mean putting a Bible on your desk and wearing a t-shirt that says ask me about Jesus. Not saying that is wrong… but will it reach those you are seeking to reach. If that is all you think it takes to be engaged you’re not getting what I’m talking about. I am talking about being helpful, taking a step toward them, really being a friend when needed. It’s about getting to know them and what they enjoy.
We work to have healthy families that love each other. We push biblical views on business, law, medicine, science and economics. We redeem them instead of allowing Satan to take claim to what is not his. We want our world to look like what happens when a redeeming person walks into an area like this and says this is my God’s and he ain’t sharing.
This is what we are to do. We are too often like kids that don’t know how to fight. We either run away at the first act of defiance or we go at it like a little slap happy girl. We need to stand up ready to punch back with the proper word to say, the right thing to do.
Some may ask you what are you doing hanging out with that bunch?
Engaging them. Loving them and trying to see Jesus rehabilitate them.
That’s what our role in our society should be.
Look at Daniel. He could have run from interpreting the dreams but he engaged them, he even loved the people he saved and he then rehabilitated them.
I am the best evidence I know of that Jesus can change anybody. I know a few more of you all out there that have been changed.
Jesus Christ’s blood was spilled for the redemption of humanity.
[Screen 9]
We are his reflection to others. 1 Peter 2,9, But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
You take his glory to a world that is lost to reflect His glory, his love, his compassion. You turn economics, science, medicine, all things into good things that reflect God and honor God.
His blood purchased this world, and it belongs to Him. If there are not Christians involved with every aspect of this culture, this society, there is no representation of God there. There is no visibility that God owns this.
Satan does not own this world.
It belongs to God.
He uses us to be the ambassadors to make His kingdom, His Son and His mission be done.
[Screen 10]
Conclusion: We are to live as if it all belongs to God. It Does.
If you have not come forward and accepted Him, Jesus as your savior now is the time. This is open all the time. Just see me or one of the leaders of the church. That’s what we are here for.
BIBLIOGRPHY:
Moore, Lecrae, Convocation Sermon, 2015.
