Hope of Nations - Where Will This Lead?, Part 1

In the midst of the chaotic world that we're living in, I've talked to pastors and parents and grandparents, and what I see on their face is one word, panic, panic. Life is changing. I'm fearful for the future. What do I do?

How do I prepare? Well, if you want the answer to that, stay with me. That's today on Living on the Edge. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, which is a daily discipleship program motivating Christians to live like Christians.

I'm Dave Druey. We're in the middle of our new series called Hope of Nations, taught by a sharp young pastor named John Dickerson. In these uncertain times, Chip and Living on the Edge have made a commitment to occasionally turn to new teachers like John for a fresh biblical perspective on the challenges facing believers. So if you've missed any part of this series, go back and visit, either at livingontheedge.org under the broadcasts tab or via the Chip Ingram app. In this program, John explains how we can find peace and hope in the midst of troubling circumstances, a concept we all need to hear.

So let's listen now to his message, Where Will This Lead? Let's start by just talking about our normal real lives. I don't know if any of you have a recurring dream that's kind of like a nightmare where you show up and you're unprepared. So for my wife, Mel, because she used to be in theater, it's being on stage for a play and not knowing her lines. For me, I used to have this dream.

Thankfully, I don't have it anymore. But when I first became a pastor and had left journalism, I had this recurring nightmare where I, all of a sudden, I woke up late on Sunday, I rush and I get to the church and everyone's looking at me and I look down and I've got nothing. No Bible, no, and I don't know what to say, which if you know me is funny. The thought of me not having anything to say is not very realistic. But in my dream, it always felt really real. Do you know the feeling I'm talking about? Can you relate to that feeling of that kind of panic or that sense of I don't have what I need? Maybe you've shown up to a birthday party at some point in your life and you got there and you realize I don't have a gift.

Or maybe you've shown up at the airport and realized I don't have my ID. It's this feeling of you're in a situation and all of a sudden you realize I don't have what I need. Well, today we're talking about that feeling, not just in our dreams or birthday parties, but when that feeling meets us in really more serious situations. And the question we're asking is this, how can I know my needs will be met when the future is uncertain? How can I know my needs will be met when the future is uncertain? How can you know when you look out into the future and you wonder financially you get that feeling of I don't have enough? Or you look at where your kids are headed or you get a report from the doctor and physically you realize I don't have what I need for the future. And that feeling of kind of panic and lack of provision crashes down on you.

For some of you, maybe it's some of these things we've been talking about in this series of you look at the changing of world religions around the world or changes that are happening within the culture that we call home and you think I don't know how will I be able to live in that kind of world and be strong. Well, the feeling that we're talking about is a feeling that God knows we have and He's very compassionate toward us when we do have it. Not only is He compassionate, but it's actually a feeling He spoke directly about in His Word and He gives us a solution to this very common human dilemma or problem. And I want to give you Jesus' answer to this question. It's found in Matthew chapter 6 verse 11. And this is actually in the middle of a little prayer where Jesus is saying here's how you pray every day. Jesus says this little phrase. He says that every day you can go to God and you can say God, today give me my daily bread. That is what I need for today. It's really interesting in this short prayer.

Jesus uses the idea that God is our Father and we can approach Him like a good dad. You know, when I woke up this morning, there were two children in bed between my wife and me. Two. And I have times I'm kind of a private individual where I think what are these people doing in my bed? But because they're my kids, they have all the confidence in the world.

They know that I love them. And they know that if they're, you know, having a bad dream or whatever, that I, you know, I want to meet their needs. And the idea is that every day you can go to God as a Father knowing He wants to meet your needs. He wants to keep you safe. He wants to help you. And so this word give is almost like a command, but it's like a command from a child to a parent knowing you're in charge, but I know you want to meet my needs.

And you can live life knowing that you have a father who wants to meet your needs. And what's interesting is Jesus says, give us today our daily bread. Now, you know, maybe you've heard of Wonder Bread or Wheat Bread or Rye Bread. What in the world is daily bread? Well, daily bread, Jesus' audience would have known exactly what this term meant.

And I'll explain it to you here. But the idea is that daily bread is having enough for today. So it's going to God and saying, God, here's what I need today. It's not saying here's what I need tomorrow or 30 years from now.

That's where we tend to panic, right? What's going to happen tomorrow? Well, it's going to happen five years from now, 10 years from now, 30 years from now, or sometimes we dredge up things from the past. But Jesus says, go to the Father every day and just say, Dad, Father, here's what I need today. And then have the faith to trust that he's already in tomorrow, providing for you again tomorrow. Now, Jesus' initial audience, they would have known that this term daily bread came from a true story about their ancestors, the Jewish people. When Israel was enslaved in Egypt, God sent them a prophet leader, Moses, who led them out of their slavery. But their journey out of slavery and to a rich land that God called the promised land led through a desert. And for 40 years they had to travel through a desert.

Could you imagine 40 years? And as they, as God's people start moving through this desert, real people, real families, no porta potties and no food, and they start to get hungry and they start to complain. And so God speaks to Moses and he says, I'm going to start to provide food for the people. I'm going to actually rain down this kind of supernatural bread that's going to come from the heavens.

It's called manna. But here's the thing, Moses, tell the people every day it'll be there when you wake up and only take enough for today. Only take enough for today. If you, if you get a whole wheelbarrow and take a bunch back to your tent, it will spoil overnight.

Only take enough for today. And here's the thing. God was giving them a faith exercise because what God was teaching them was you don't have to stockpile for tomorrow because I'm already in tomorrow providing for you again. So instead of putting your faith in your stockpile, put your faith in your father who's in tomorrow. So when Jesus says every day, say, father, dad, give me my daily bread.

This is what he means. God, give me enough for today because I know that tomorrow you're already in tomorrow and you'll give me enough again. The idea Jesus makes and using daily bread is this idea that just like the Israelites journeyed for 40 years through the desert, we who've placed our faith in Christ, we are also journeying through an uncomfortable world that is not our home as we make our way to the promised land. So you could put it this way, the world, this world that we live in right now equals a desert. Now, not always. You know, there are beautiful moments. There are sunsets and sunrises and wedding days and anniversaries. There are beautiful moments, but we know from scripture this world's broken by sin and it's not our ultimate home. And so we're journeying through this world to a promised land, which we sometimes call heaven or Jesus called it the kingdom of God. It's a place where we will have glorified bodies that never get sick or never get acne or anything else. A place where there will be no crime, a place where there will be no injustice, there will be no murder or war or divorce.

All of the consequences of sin that exist in the desert in this world will be gone when we get to the promised land of heaven. And what Jesus is teaching through the Lord's prayer is these two very simple ideas. One, God will provide what I need today. And you can know this when you have that feeling that I described in my dream of showing up and not having enough. Or maybe you're feeling it in real life in a really big way around your finances or around your health or around the future. God will give you what you need today. And secondly, God is taking you.

It's a journey through a desert, but he's taking you somewhere far better. Does this make sense? Does this make sense? This is important for us because what we're talking about today as we continue in hope of nations is the ways that this world we're in may change.

And some of those ways may be uncomfortable for us in the future. We can't predict the future, but God has allowed us to be born at a time where we know more about world events than Christians did in the time of the Bible. A lot of these Christians, they didn't even know what the Atlantic ocean was or the Pacific ocean. They didn't know what people on the other side of the world believed. Today we can look and we can see there's 7 billion people in the world.

Here's what they all believe. Here's where things are headed in the realm of ideas. So as we consider that, here's the most important thing for us to know. Earth's tragedies are temporary.

Christ's victory is eternal. Jesus said, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world. In life, we will have some tragedies, whether it's an oncologist telling us we have cancer or whether it's another financial recession like we saw in 2008. We don't know what the troubles will be, but we know there, there will be some, some dry, hard days in the desert as we make our way to the promised land. And so our hope is twofold. One, we know God will always sustain us.

He'll give us what we need today. But secondly, we know this world's not our home. Christ's victory ensures that we will spend eternity in a good kingdom, a rich kingdom, a garden of Eden type setting where all of our needs are met.

So those are my two things that I hope you know today that I want you to leave here with, is to know that in this world you will be sustained and that Christ is taking you to a better world. Now in this series, we've been talking about those times in world history when the world shakes. Times like September 11th when the terrorists flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon and thousands of Americans died. Times like the day that JFK was assassinated and the world shook. Times like the financial recession of 2008 when the world shook. What we're seeing is that as these trends play out that we're looking at, they look almost academic because I've got them on charts and they're graphs and they're kind of nerdy, but they're real belief systems that real people around the world hold to and act out and, and eventually they'll bump into our little lives. Eventually the kind of cocoon of insulated suburban American life where we're really pretty insulated from a lot of the trouble that other people out in the world feel. Eventually as the world keeps changing, our little bubble might get burst in some ways.

Here's some ways that I've seen changes around the world affect normal people like us. I knew a family in Prescott, Arizona when I served as a pastor there. They had a daughter named Kayla Mueller. Kayla went over to Syria as a follower of Christ to do humanitarian work and she was in Syria and she got kidnapped by the Islamic State. They ended up holding Kayla for ransom. They ended up killing her eventually.

Something her family never thought, how could that happen to, to a suburban American? What will the world out there? Things are happening.

Things are, are changing. I have friends who were vacationing in Nice, France on the day when a terrorist in France got into a moving truck and drove into a crowd and mowed over about a hundred people and 80 some of them died. They were just like you. They were on vacation and there they were and all of a sudden there is the world shaking around them. You might remember the time in Dallas, Texas when a sniper set out against the police department and in one day killed a number of police officers. One of those police officers was a guy who worked on the security team as a volunteer at a church almost just like our church in Dallas, Texas. People like us.

People who are afraid to, to drive in certain areas because of the color of their skin and it's just a reality that they face in the world they live in today. What do we do when the world shakes? Well, if we understand that God will give us our daily bread and he's taking us somewhere better, we can feel the emotion of it and the injustice of it without being overwhelmed by it. We can acknowledge the pain of it, but we can have a faith that is unshaken within it. You see, Jesus said in this world you will have trouble and so when these things happen, it doesn't shake our faith. It actually affirms our faith that our greatest hope is for Christ to return and that this is the, the really mature, if you will, Christian hope is knowing, not just praying that my circumstances will get better.

That's a, that's a good place to start, but the, the, the, the really muscular Christian faith is this belief that Christ is going to return and he's going to set everything right. As you read through the New Testament from the gospels all the way to the end, this is the recurring theme. Christ will return. He will set things right. And sometimes because we have been born into a time when we're the wealthiest, most comfortable, most free Christians in all of history, we can accidentally place our hope in just our circumstances always being good.

Well, the big idea of this series is very simply this. Christ is going to return. He's going to make everything better.

Christ will return and make everything better. I want to tell you a story about my daughter, Evie. Evie, many of you know, we adopted and she lived about the first three years of her life at an orphanage and in the orphanage they did not brush her teeth or take care of her teeth at all. And so we've been taking Evie to the dentist and he said there's about eight teeth that they need to do major, major work on.

And so Evie doesn't like them poking around in there. And so the doctor suggested that we actually need to have Evie have an anesthesiologist take her to a hospital and have them, you know, put her, put her to sleep for a surgery and then she'll wake up and the surgery will be done. So Mel and I have been thinking through how do we explain this to a four year old? How do we explain pretty much the doctor's going to give you some medicine, you'll fall asleep, you're going to wake up and have eight new teeth and then your mouth will be a little sore and you'll get a bunch of ice cream.

That's pretty, that's pretty much the kid version of it, right? Now as grownups, we know there's a lot more to it. There are needles, there are other, you know, devices and tools that we don't even want to think about that, that will lead to a better place.

It'll go through a hard time and it'll get better in the end. And really with a childlike faith, all she needs to know is the doctors will give me medicine that makes me fall asleep, I'll wake up and be a little sore and then I get ice cream. And here's the thing about the Christian faith, in this series we're looking at world events and things that may happen. Really all you need to know is Jesus is going to return, keep believing in him, everything will be okay and eventually you're going to wake up in a place where there's unlimited ice cream, okay? That's, that's really all you need to know, okay?

That's all you need to know. So, but bear with me because here's one of my heart for you as a shepherd. I want you to have a childlike faith, but I also want to be part of a movement where we have a growing faith and where, where we can grow and, and scripture uses this metaphor of that you start with the milk of God's word, just like a newborn, you know, can't eat steak because they don't have teeth yet. Um, but then as you grow in your faith, eventually you're, you're more and more able to read God's word for yourself. And eventually scripture talks about the meat of God's word, the thicker things of God's word and, and you kind of have to slowly grow in those. And here's my heart for you. My desire for you is that the next time some world calamity happens that we're a church that is not shaken by that, but a church that says, oh yeah, I remember when John was freaking me out with all that stuff and he said, place your faith in Christ, be prepared and you can have an unshaken faith when the world shakes around you. In other words, all we need to know is the basics, but it doesn't hurt to know a little more.

It's actually a good and healthy thing to grow a little more. So I want to answer this question today. Where will this lead? So far in this series, we've looked at what's happening in the world.

Why is it happening? And today we're asking and answering the question, where will all of these things lead? We've, we've seen, you know, the rise of Western civilization as it pursued truth and then the rejection of truth. We've seen globally that the economies are going to shift and within the United States beliefs are changing dramatically.

Where will these things lead? And what I'm going to do is just very quickly give you my opinion, not God's word, but my opinion as a researcher. Again, believing that God allowed us to be born at a time where we have this data and information. I'll get through my opinion really fast because then we'll get to a much more important opinion. What does God say? God actually speaks directly about where all these things will lead. So let me give you my opinion really quickly.

I'm just going to mention three things that are not on your outline. The first is that I believe we'll continue to see social division within the United States. You see it on social media, you see it in downtown cities, you see it in the occasional riots. There's, there's a major social, uh, division that's happening in the United States. And when you look at the data, it breaks down largely along generational lines and also a little bit geographically. Most of the people who live on the coasts believe significantly different than people who live in the heartland or the Midwest.

Most of the people who live in really urban areas believe a little differently than people who live in rural areas. And most of the people who are older than 45 view the world very differently than people who are younger than 45. The change is so dramatic among younger Americans, my age, millennials and younger. And we're going to start to see these things that have been discussions around Thanksgiving dinner tables. We're going to start to see them reshape who gets elected into office and what the laws are and what the policies are. I'm not necessarily saying it's good or bad, but I'm saying that we will see, we will continue to see in my assessment as a researcher, dramatic social change.

Um, I don't want to use the word revolution per se, but there's going to be a major, major shift within the United States. So we'll continue to see that most likely it's not just going to go away. Again, we know no matter what happens, we're okay. We've got our daily bread. We know where we're going.

Okay. Uh, but let me tell you two other things in just summary of all the research I've done, uh, is the reshuffling of the global order. We could call this the post world war two order. In other words, after world war two, because the United States and England, the UK won, they set up essentially a new world order and all, all the manufacturing and industry, all the industrial powerhouses around the world had been destroyed in the war except for the US and the UK. So they owned manufacturing, they own the economies and they took these two defeated nations under their arms and said, we will rehabilitate you. And, and for really most of our lifetimes, these four nations, Germany, Japan, the US and the UK have more or less led a world order that lived out, not, not necessarily a theologically Christian view of the world, but a lot of Christian principles in society because the US and the UK in the 1940s when world war two ended, we're both 90% or more Christians, the individuals within the societies. So as this started to reshape literally the planet, when countries like Sudan or Saudi Arabia would say, we want to sell you our oil, the Western world could say, well, then you have to outlaw slavery. And so much of the world changed.

There's a lot of societal global norms because of this that we take for granted. This is according to accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers. So bear, bear with me. If you're an accountant that excites you for the rest of us, we will just get through this. Okay.

But here's the thing. According, according to their projections of how economies are changing right now at today's rate of change, you project that out 30 years. So by the time my kids are my age, China will have overtaken the US to be the number one economy. India will have overtaken the US to be the number two economy.

The US will be in third place and then Indonesia will be in fourth place. Now if we talked about ideologies, bear with me. An ideology is a lens, a set of ideas through which you see reality. And when a whole group of people or a nation adopts an ideology, they marched together in the same direction. And each of these other three other than the US of the top four emerging economies have what I call a rigid or muscular ideology. China's communist, India's Hindu, Indonesia's Muslim. In all of those nations today, there are Christians who are jailed because of their faith.

In all of those nations right now, this year, there are Christian churches that have been burned down or torn down by bulldozers and cranes because Christianity, these are not nations that are friendly to Christianity. Well, here's the thing. The world we live in, all we've ever known is this world where the dollar is the leading currency, where we have stability because we're the number one player economically and as a military force in the world that's going to change. We don't know what the implications are going to be per se, but we know that that's a major reshuffling. Eventually that'll affect some of our jobs.

Eventually that may affect our economy. Eventually we don't know exactly how that'll affect us, but if we can understand where things are going and say, okay, right now my faith is in Christ. He'll provide for me my daily bread and he's going to lead me through to a promised land. You've been listening to the first part of John Dickerson's message, Where Will This Lead from his series Hope of Nations.

Chip will join us here in studio with some additional thoughts and his application in just a minute. John's subtitle for these messages is Standing Strong in a Post-Truth, Post-Christian World. Sadly, we're living in a time when God is being disregarded, right and wrong are considered subjective, and followers of Jesus are persecuted.

But it didn't used to be this way. So what happened? How did we get here?

And what can be done, if anything, to right the ship? Through this series, John will reflect on the impact of the Christian faith throughout history and where the society and America in particular is headed. He'll also highlight opportunities we could take advantage of to engage the culture around us. For complete information for Hope of Nations, just go to livingontheedge.org.

App listeners tap special offers. Chip, the message we just heard from your friend John shed light on some pretty alarming anti-Christian trends. You know, oftentimes when that pressure builds, the church responds with hostility and anger.

But there are options. Take a moment and talk about other ways Christians could respond to a changing world. Well, Dave, I think it's true that very concerned people with the best of intentions, I believe, as they see literally our country changing, our world changing, values changing, laws changing, media changing.

I think there's a normal and human reaction and response. And I think anger that drives us to do good is not a bad thing. Anger can really motivate us. But I think as you look at the life of Jesus and the teaching, especially of the Apostle Paul toward the end of Romans 12, I think what John is teaching us in this series is it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. We have an opportunity to live faithful lives, to not respond in kind, to give good for evil, to begin with grace, to try and build a bridge and understand where people are coming from. Fighting a fire with gasoline does nothing more than create a bigger fire. Our agenda is not that we get what we want or that even America can become what it was.

That would certainly be a nice byproduct. Our agenda is the kingdom of God, that in the midst of what's happening in our world, that what Jesus has called us to do, to love Him with all of our heart, our mind, our soul and strength, and for us to love our neighbor as ourself would be a reality. And John's book, The Hope of Nations, gives us a manifesto, a track to follow, a game plan that we can live in such a way with truth and grace balanced to bring about change and to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that's the goal. I cannot encourage people enough to get this book, to read it, to listen to the series, download the notes. Let us help you be Christians who live like Christians at a time when it gets more challenging, it seems, every single day.

Thanks, Chip. Well, to get your hands on this insightful book from John Dickerson called Hope of Nations, visit LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003. This is a well-researched commentary on the challenging times we're living in. John looks at the decay of society's immorality and how Christians are called to engage this lost world. Again, to order your copy of Hope of Nations by John Dickerson, just go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003.

Well, now let's get to Chip's application. If you're like me and you heard the last few paragraphs of John's teaching today with his just factual, logical projections that I know he hopes and I hope don't happen, it could just send chills down your spine about what the world will look like 20, 30 years from now if the Lord doesn't return. I remember reading John's first book and I thought, wow, all these statistics. He was saying things about where the church would be headed and what could happen and the erosion of truth and finances and culture. I remember thinking, you know, I think this guy's probably got a couple of good thoughts, but I think he's exaggerating a bit.

As I sit here today, the things that John wrote then, not that he's prophetic, not in the sense of God speaking something to him, he's prophetic and he actually has done the research, looks at the trends and says, basically, if you just play this out for 10, 20, 30 years, this is where we'll be. Historically, there are two responses when we hear information that is deeply disturbing. One denial, put your head in the sand and say, oh, that's terrible. That'll never happen.

And you hope it doesn't. The other is a sober self-assessment to say, what do I need to do to prepare me and the people I love for a world that's going that direction? And that is exactly what Jesus did. And we're much more like the first century right now as Christians than the last century. And Jesus' words that you don't have to be afraid, Jesus' words that I am with you always, Jesus' words about the Holy Spirit being with us, Jesus' words about abiding in him and we can ask what we wish, Jesus' words about you'll have tribulation but be of good cheer, I've overcome the world. Now is the time to prepare, to walk with God, to live truth, know truth, love truth, pass that truth on, and then to love our world, not attack those who think differently, to do what Jesus did, Father forgive them, they know not what they do, to enter into relationship, to extend hospitality to people who think differently.

They need to see the love of God and the grace of God before they ever hear the truth of God. That's our mission. That's our passion.

Let's do it together. As we wrap up, I want to say thanks to those who make this program possible through your generous financial support. Your gifts help us create programs, purchase airtime, and develop additional resources to help Christians live like Christians. Now if you've been blessed by the Ministry of Living on the Edge, would you consider sending a gift today? You can call us at 888-333-6003, tap the donate button, or donate online at LivingOnTheEdge.org. Your support is greatly appreciated. Well be sure to join us next time as our guest teacher, John Dickerson, continues his series, Hope of Nations. Until then, this is Dave Drewy saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.