Beware of Spiritual Amnesia, Part 1

Once Christ become just a way, not the way, moral relativism will follow. And if the book of Judges is going to be teaching us anything, it was going to be teaching us that we must contend for every soul, that we must fight for every one of our children and their children's children.

We must stand firm regardless of the cost, that we must lovingly but firmly hold on to our inheritance. Thank you for joining pastor and Bible teacher Dr. Michael Youssef for Leading the Way. He's beginning a series called Beware of Spiritual Amnesia, challenging you to lean into the truth of Christ in 2024.

Do remember that you can get in touch with Leading the Way by calling us 866-626-4356 or at ltw.org. Join with Dr. Youssef and the Open Door Campaign to expand the reach of the gospel through Leading the Way. In the Old Testament book of Judges, Practical Words for Life Today, here now is Dr. Michael Youssef. I don't think I'm exaggerating if I tell you that this series of messages that I'm beginning today is the most important and practical series of messages that I've ever preached.

I want to tell you why. Today as I look at our world, as I look at our culture, as I look at the church in general, I see it to be a mirror image of what had happened during the period of the book of Judges. Before our own eyes, we are seeing how this generation is running away from biblical foundation. Culturally, we're no longer looking to answers in the Word of God. Educationally, we no longer take the Bible seriously.

Historically, we are reinterpreting history so that the great heroes of yesteryears, now they are villains. Churches that had believed and proclaimed the very soul, the very heart, the very essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ, namely that Jesus and Jesus alone saves. Now, statistic after statistic tell us that 60% of so-called Christians believe that Jesus is not the only way. And the prediction is if this trend continues, the number will go to 90% of those who name the name of Christ will no longer believe the very heart of the Christian faith, the very soul of the Christian faith. And that is why you and I must be intentional in reversing this trend. We must begin by repenting of our own sins and our apathy and our indifference. We must begin by interceding for the next generation. We must lovingly reach out to the next generation. We must diligently instruct the next generation. We must spiritually nurture the next generation. And that is why the book of Judges is a serious warning for every one of us. This is a serious warning for us as a culture and as a society. This is a serious warning for what could happen if we do not diligently intercede for the next generation, if we don't intentionally, if we don't devotedly and deliberately equip the next generation with the truth.

The result is going to be what Paul warned us about in Romans chapter 1, that God will give them over to the full repercussion of their sins. Now, beloved, please listen to me. When God's absolutes give way to relativism, when God's truth is exchanged for false tolerance, soon we will slide from disillusionment to despair, to ultimate disintegration. This particular period in the life of Israel and the history of Israel during the book of Judges, the Judges generation grew up not knowing or believing in the God of Joshua.

And I'm going to tell you why in a minute. But here's what you must understand about that period. Because when you read it and you think this was a whole departure from God, no, no, no, it was not. In fact, Israel never ceased to be religious. Israel never ceased to be doing charitable work. Israel never ceased from going through the motion of religion. Israel never ceased the religious activities.

Israel never ceased from going to church. Ah, but they just squeezed the truth of who God is to the margins of life. Oh, they did not deny Yahweh. They did not deny God. And they did not deny Him place in society.

They just denied Him the central place. They just liked the Canaanites a little bit too much. Ah, the Canaanites, aren't they nice people?

I mean, surely. So instead of eliminating them, as God told them to, they cozied up to them. They went on vacation with them. Instead of claiming them, they incorporated some of their religious practices into theirs. In other words, the people of God have become Canaanized. Can you see it in the church? I want to tell you something of our most importance.

Please listen carefully. The seeds of Israel's declining began with a spiritual compromise. Can you see it in the churches?

Can you see it in our lives? Oh, well, these Canaanites, they're so nice. They're nice people, who wouldn't want to intermarry with them? Oh, these Canaanites, they just have their own religious views. And who wouldn't be open-minded to their practices and what they do? Who wouldn't be understanding? Who would ever commit the sin of intolerance? These Canaanites, oh, they are lovable.

My goodness. They just have their own sexual preferences. So let's ordain them and make them bishops in the church. Well, how else would we prove to the world that we are tolerant people?

How else would we prove to the world that we are not bigoted at all? And beloved, once the moral lines become blurred, Christ is dethroned. And once Christ becomes just a way, not the way, moral relativism will follow.

Once Christianity is just another religion, the seeds of destruction have already been set in. And if the book of Judges is going to be teaching us anything, it would be going to be teaching us that we must never give an inch, that we must never concede one of our children, that we must not settle for partial victories, that we must not give up our birthright, that we must not surrender our children, that we must not think that their departure from the truth is inevitable, that we must contend for every soul, that we must fight for every one of our children and their children's children. We must stand firm regardless of the cost, that we must lovingly but firmly hold on to our inheritance.

Amen belongs here. For the Bible tells us that the children are heritage of the Lord. They're not ours, they're His.

And it's our stewardship to see to it that we train them in the battle. You know the most amazing thing about the devil is? He's not very creative. He really is not. I mean, he doesn't come up with new ideas or this and that. I mean, he really is not. If you study the Bible, if you watch the history and if you study history, if you deal with the rascal, as I do, he's not creative.

He has only one trick up his sleeve, and he uses it over and over and over and over again. Oh, to be sure, he dresses it up differently for every generation, so they think it's a new idea, but it's not. I want you to hear me right, please. Just as the devil succeeded in deceiving the judge's generation by convincing them that you can have Yahweh and you have the fertility gods as well, he is deceiving this generation that they can have Jesus and evolution as well.

Please listen to me. Once you accept evolution as a fact, it will not take very long before Jesus, the creator, and the sustainer of the universe be lost in the shuffle. Why do you think these secular forces are becoming more and more militant about it? The devil is fighting for the souls of our children, and that is why we must teach them the art of spiritual battle. We must allow them to watch us how we do spiritual battle in spiritual warfare. Don't just give them good education and a whole lot of money and pat on the back. Equip them with the authority of the word of God. Prepare them for the battle. Don't just settle for them to succeed in business and succeed in the world. Teach them how to battle the enemy of God. Cry to God on their behalf.

Be a role model so they can watch you and know how to stand in the battle. But there's something else that the book of Judges teaches us here, and it's the most encouraging part of the book. It teaches us the incredible, relentless grace of God. The incredibly relentless grace of God.

Over and over and over, He delivers them again and again and again and again. And that is the greatest encouragement that we're going to see from the book of Judges. The faithfulness of God. And it will be an encouragement to all of us who are and continue to cry to the Lord and call on Him as the God of grace. Because He is not only the God of grace, He is the God who does not give up. He is the God who never lets us down.

He is the God who never lets us go. In fact, the book of Judges picks up historically where the book of Joshua left off. Joshua left the people of Israel, the people of God. He left them with a real vision of who God is.

He left them with a vision of future possibilities. And if you want to read more about Joshua, you can get my book, You Want Me To Do What? And that will tell you all about Joshua and his vision and how he left legacy to the people of God. And here's what Joshua said to them. He said, if you obey the Lord your God, He's going to fight your battles for you.

What does that mean? It means that each subsequent generation must learn from the previous generation without becoming dependent on the past. That each generation must experience the Lord themselves. Sadly, the previous generation did not teach the baby boomer generation the art of spiritual warfare. And the baby boomer generation wanted to give their children what they never had. Consequently, the new generation developing a spiritual amnesia. I'm not here for the blame game or who's fault or who's not fault.

But beloved, we can start today. Because when spiritual amnesia sets in, trust me when I tell you, compromise will must surely follow. Talk about generational gap, this is it.

Listen to me, before I blame anybody, I always look in the mirror. Because beloved, I want to tell you, not that my generation let down the next generation, but those of us who are standing in these pulpits have let down the next generation. We have ceased to proclaim, thus says the Lord. We want to make people feel good so they can come back. We don't want to hurt their feelings. We don't want to tell them to repent.

We don't want to call sins sin. And consequently, the next generation do not know what a sin is. Moms and dads, let me talk to you.

As a dad and as a granddad. We are the ones who must pass a living testimony of the grace of God to our children. It is the parents' primary responsibility to train their children in battle. To train them in the spiritual warfare. When Joshua's generation failed to train their children in the battle, the next generation lost the battle. Lost the battle. And you probably thought that relativism and post-modernism and political correctness and tolerance, that they all knew concepts.

They're not. They're as old as the book of Judges. Listen to Judges chapter 2, beginning at verse 11. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers who had brought them out of Egypt.

They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. Verse 16. Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hands of those who plundered them. You'll see that again and again.

Now the term judge, by the way, just incidentally, is not like the nicely black-robed person who sits behind a bench. The really literal word in the Hebrew means deliverer. They were deliverers. They were delivering God's people from the mess they got themselves in. In each case, you will see how it is a repeated scenario.

And it's repeated with precision. God's people compromised their faith. The Lord's anger kindled, so He gave them up to their oppressors or plunderers. They cried to the Lord for help.

God raises a deliverer to rescue them and bring them peace and prosperity again. Beloved, here's the problem. Please don't miss what I'm going to tell you, okay? Here's the problem. With each subsequent generation, there was a downward spiral, and that downward spiral gets deeper with each subsequent generation. With each subsequent generation, the descent into immorality gets lower and lower and lower. Today, so many so-called progressives are not progressives at all. They are progressing in a downward spiral. And so many folks going to churches today are deep into this stuff, and they don't know it.

That's what breaks your heart. They are into Canaanite worship. Oh, but they call it something else.

You say, how come? Well, the one thing about Canaanite worship, you must understand, it was earthy. It was earthy. They were about saving the earth. They were about worshiping Mother Earth.

It was all about the economic prosperity that comes from being greeny. It's a Canaanite worship. Well, today they call it Gaia, Mother Earth, called Gaia, but really in the Old Testament it was called Ashtaroth. It's the same person. Actually, it's the same devil. Back then, it was an agrarian society, and when the economic, the entire economics of the nation depended on agriculture, keeping Ashtaroth happy was very important.

Otherwise, it's not going to give you a nice crop. And God's people fell for it. Listen, read Al Gore's book. You'll understand. He calls her Mother Gaia. And he says right now, Mother Gaia is unhappy. I wonder how he heard her voice.

Through the humming of the private jet that he's traveling the world with, you know. He said she's unhappy. Too many people and too many cows. And she wants more greenery. And so, we killed babies and saved trees.

In an evangelical church in England, not long ago, a woman was leading the prayer. And in the prayer of Confession, she said our confession should be that we have sinned against the earth and we need forgiveness. Listen, I'm not saying that we did not cause pollution. I'm not saying that at all.

Don't misunderstand me. But turning it into a religion is taking us exactly where the Israelites went during the time of the judges. You say, how can it become a religion?

Listen to me. It becomes a religion when kids are reviewing the earth more than holy God. It becomes a religion when we reveal creation more than the creator.

And millions of our kids today are being indoctrinated into this, the importance of Mother Earth, but not Father God. I have been a conservationist before it was fashionable. Ask my family. I drive them nuts. I save everything. I don't waste a thing.

I don't believe in wasting. That is different. That is very different. We are stewards. We need to be good stewards of everything that God places in our hands. But this is very different from this slow marginalizing of God.

This slow squeezing God out into the peripheries of life. This is different from this slow indoctrination of children that they can save the earth without the power of God and His grace. This will push the next generation further into being plundered by modern day Philistines. And only those who have spiritual eyes can figure out the consequences.

And that is why we need to be crying to God for the next generation. In Judges chapter 2 verse 20, you can feel the heart of God that He was so grieved over what His people did in marginalizing Him and squeezing Him out of the center of life. That He comes in in His verse and doesn't call them My people. He says, this nation. That He closed the apple of His eyes.

That this nation He was so disgusted. God's greatest battle is not with the pagans. He can take care of them.

He can click His finger and take care of them. But God's greatest battle is with His children. God's greatest battle today is with those who name the name of Christ but their lives are far away from Him. Those who name the name of Christ but they turn His grace into license. Those who name the name of Christ but redefine marriage. Those who name the name of Christ but live in fornication and adultery and pornography and the rest of it. Those who name the name of Christ and mix Him up with all the misfits of other religions. Those who name the name of Christ but then they want to redefine morality. Those who name the name of Christ.

But no one can tell them apart from those who don't believe in Christ. But the good news of the book of Judges is that if we cry to God, He will extend grace yet again. Not just to us but to the next generation. A passionate challenge to reach the next generation. Thank you for listening to Dr. Michael Youssef on Leading the Way Audio. One way that Dr. Youssef in Leading the Way is responding to your desire to be better equipped to speak into life and culture biblically is through a weekly podcast. It's called Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef. In this top rated podcast popular around the world, Dr. Jonathan Youssef, the youngest son of Dr. Michael Youssef and the director of ministries in his local church tackles current topics in life and culture. Topics like sexuality, mental health, today's church and more. Possessing gold is not the same as embracing the prosperity gospel, rather the danger we face is not so much the gold we have, but the gold that has us.

I'm more worried about evangelicals distorting the gospel than I am about who wins this next election. We cannot save our child. We cannot change our child. We cannot make them do really much of anything, but God can work in ways that we can't understand. I knew that Christianity was not an option because I was gay, so I can't pursue that.

So what am I going to do? I was very, very. Sometimes though, we have to remember that what we want is not what is best for us. Strength of the evidence that points so powerfully toward the truth of Christianity, it would have taken more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a Christian. Right. So that's when I put my faith in Christ and my life like hers began to change. Only the one that stamped with the blood of Jesus Christ. On what basis do I have confidence I'm going to heaven? The blood of Jesus Christ.

Period. My ticket stamped with that blood. As you pray for specific requests, always check them against scripture. You could be sure God's desire for you will never go against his word. Learn more about Candid and how you can come alongside leading the way in reaching our world and our culture when you visit ltw.org. Or you can always call us and speak with a ministry representative.

Call now 866-626-4356. Well, that's just about it for today. Thank you for being with us. And remember that you're invited back next time right here when Dr. Michael Yousef continues his series called Beware of Spiritual Amnesia. Pointed warnings about the spiritual battles raging in today's world. That's right here on Leading the Way. This program is brought to you by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Yousef. Connect further with audio and video content at ltw.org or through your favorite social media platform, including YouTube, Facebook, and more.