Be Different

Welcome to Summit Church at our different locations around the Triangle and those of you who are joining us at home.

In the context there of your home, I want to say welcome to all of you. I can see everybody is back in their normal post Easter attire this weekend, which is good. What a phenomenal weekend last weekend was. Amen. Many of you, many of you were back in church in person for the first time in nearly a year, and it really seemed like God showed up as well.

Listen to this. We have that right at 8,000 people attend in person services last weekend, which is the first in a long time. I mean, we've, you know, since Covid has hit just to be able to get that many people to get together again. There were 96 people total that professed faith, first time faith in Jesus and another 86 who made a public declaration of the faith through baptism just last weekend. And by faith more this weekend.

Let's be honest, some people are shy about coming forward or sending in the text. So let's just say an even 100 lives that were changed for eternity. I feel confident in that. And I know, I know.

Listen, I get it. It's not about the numbers, but I have said it before, and I will say it again. Every single number represents a story, and every story represents a person that is made in the image of God. So are we gonna celebrate numbers, right?

Well, I was gonna say in honor of the retired UNC coach Roy Williams, you're dagum right we will celebrate those numbers. We represent people. Our campus teams are working feverishly to follow up with all the people who raised a hand who made a decision or texted that they were ready to begin a relationship with Jesus. In fact, I heard from our summit online director, Kelsey Baker, that she had four people, four people who indicated I'm not ready to go all in yet, but I am willing to start the conversation.

And she is already set up times to meet with them and chat with them. One of the great things that came out of lockdown was this be able to take our online platform and engage with a lot of people. A lot of people who just aren't comfortable being in church, and it's allowed us to reach a whole new segment of people. A lot of people last weekend indicated interest in this class that we're starting, Exploring Christianity, which is gonna unpack a lot of Christian basics. It is for those of you who are either new to Christianity or just wanting to learn more about some of the big questions. By the way, if you want to participate in that class, I don't think they've begun it at most campuses yet. You can text the word ready, just the word ready to 33939.

And we will get you the information and you can participate if you want. Well, summit one more time, one more time. Can we just give thanks to God for his faithfulness to us in this season? Amen. Amen.

All right. Well, if you will get your Bibles out and you will open them to the book of Daniel, the book of Daniel. It is about halfway through your Old Testament. If you do not know where Daniel is, open your Bible to the table of contents and find Daniel. There's no shame in that.

If the person next to you makes fun of you for doing that, just raise your hand and an usher will come and escort them out of the church. We will throw them out. Okay, you find the book of Daniel. We are beginning a new series today called Shining in Babylon. It is a study of the entire book of Daniel, all 12 chapters. And I wanted to explain for a minute where the title Shining in Babylon comes from. It is from a verse in the very last chapter, a verse that has been one of my favorite verses in the Old Testament.

Since high school. And that is Daniel 12 three, which says this, those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens and those who lead many to righteousness. They will shine like the stars forever and ever. The book of Daniel is about how to be a faithful witness in a dark and hostile environment. You see, unlike other books in the Bible, this book is not written from inside Israel.

In fact, let me show you. Look at verse one in chapter one. Go back to chapter one if you're not there yet. Chapter one, verse one. In the third year of the reign of King Jehoakim of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it. The Lord handed King Jehoakim of Judah over to him along with treasures from the house of God. Nebuchadnezzar carried them to the land of Shinar. That's a key little detail.

I'll come back to it in a minute. To the house of his God. And he put the vessels in the treasury of his God. King Jehoakim, who was Judah's 19th king after King David, continued to lead Israel in a downward spiral of unbelief, compromise, and disobedience. God had warned Israel, starting all the way back in Deuteronomy, he'd warned Israel that if they continued to walk this path, that he would send them into exile.

And so in 605 B.C., he kept his promise. And might I say, before we go any farther, that I believe that God has a warning for some of you in this. We are three minutes into this message and God is right now speaking to some of you through his word. He is saying to you, you think you can continue on in your sin?

You think I'm bluffing? I kept my word to Israel, I'll keep it with you. For decades now, I have seen God destroy many a believer who just kept putting God off.

Who would not listen. Do not be deceived, the apostle Paul says. God will not be mocked.

Do not mistake God's patience for his apathy. He is not kidding. God is not kidding. And he is telling some of you right now, today, you need to wake up and get serious.

Because I am not kidding. Look at verse three. He ordered Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the Israelites from the royal family and from the nobility. Young men without any physical defect, good looking, suitable for instruction in all wisdom, knowledgeable, perceptive and capable of serving in the king's palace.

The best of the best, of course. He was to teach them the Chaldean language and literature. They were to become schooled in the ways of Babylon. Now, let's talk for a minute about Babylon. Because there is some deeply important symbolism.

That is at work here. Babylon here refers to a specific kingdom in the sixth century B.C. whose king was Nebuchadnezzar, a kingdom that was located in what is modern day Iraq. But in the Bible, listen, Babylon also represents a spiritual power that is at work in every secular kingdom, in every age, on every continent. That's a name for Rome. Even though Rome was miles away from the ancient city of Babylon and had no political or ethnic connection to Babylon whatsoever. In the book of Revelation, Babylon becomes the apostle John's name for the whole world system that is in opposition to Jesus. Did you notice, verse two, the detail I pointed out, where it said the city of Babylon was.

Did you see that? To the land of Shinar. That's Daniel 1, 2. Shinar is the place in which in Genesis 11, 2, where all mankind gathered together in order to build a gigantic tower and make a name for themselves. And do you remember the name of that tower? The Tower of Babel. Babel, Babylon. Ah, I see what you did there, God.

Nicely played. The point is, in the Bible, Babylon is the term for the spiritual kingdom at work in secular world powers since the Tower of Babel. It is the kingdom built in opposition to God.

Independent of God. The kingdom where man is in charge and man is at the center. Satan has always used secular government, secular media, secular business, secular economics to make war against the people of the gospel.

He is the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of this world. And so he's over the kingdom of Babylon and there's only two kingdoms. Kingdom of Jesus and kingdom of Babylon, you belong to one or the other.

Now, here's the thing. Most of you, like Daniel, are called to serve in Babylon. There are a few of us called to serve in the church. But the majority of you are called to serve out in Babylon. Six out of seven days of the week, you're at work in Babylon. The Book of Daniel is a manual for how to survive and to thrive and to shine in Babylon. The Book of Daniel is written in a very interesting, albeit confusing way. It's all gonna be about the events of Daniel's life in Babylon.

There's a lot of famous stories in there you'll recognize. Daniel and the lions then. Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego and the fiery furnace and many others. Chapters eight through 12 are Daniel's prophecy about the restoration of Israel, the coming of the Messiah and the end of the world.

Now get this. Chapter one is written in Hebrew because it starts in the land of Israel. Chapters two through seven are written in Aramaic, the language of Babylon, because all the events take place in Babylon. Then chapters eight through 12, which are the prophecies about the future, they revert back to Hebrew again because we're back to prophecy about the end of time. The question of the Book of Daniel is this. You know how to be faithful to God in the Hebrew chapters.

Can you do it in Aramaic? You may know what faithful Christian service looks like on your home turf, but do you know what it looks like in Babylon? Here's the question of Daniel. What does God look like in the secular realm, in secular powers, controlled by secular powers that are at war with the gospel? That's the question of Daniel.

Let's get back to the story. Daniel 1. Daniel was one of four young men.

Good looking, smart, healthy, athletic. The best of the best conscripted into Nebuchadnezzar service. But don't think of this like an episode of the bachelor Hebrew edition. They would have been made eunuchs also, which means that their capacity to have kids was quite literally crushed.

Plato said that people enrolled in these training programs were usually 14 to 17 years old, so we can assume that all this happened to Daniel when he was about 15. Nebuchadnezzar then has their names changed. They had good Hebrew names, which pointed to the glory of God. Nebuchadnezzar changed their names to speak praise to his gods.

The name Daniel means God is my judge. That gets changed to Belteshazzar, which means Baal protects the king. Hananiah, that's his friend. That means God is gracious in Hebrew. That gets changed to Shadrach, which means under the command of Aku, the moon god. Mishael, that means there is none like God. That gets changed to Meshach, there is none like Aku, the moon god. Azariah, God has helped me. Gets changed to Abednego, the servant of Nebo.

The Babylonian god of wisdom. Pause for a minute with me to think about what happened to the world of these 15 year olds. Now keep in mind, these are real people. If you've got teenage sons, just like one of your boys, these high school age boys watch as their homeland is invaded, their families are killed, their temple is desecrated, their futures as husbands and fathers destroyed, and their names are changed to give praise to a foreign deity ever since they were born. Every time somebody calls their name. Some of you feel like you've been put into a difficult environment in which to be a Christian.

I dare say that Daniel and his friends got you beat. So again, what does faithfulness in this kind of environment look like? They have included a lot of things that were forbidden by the Torah, the Jewish law, for Israelites to eat. So this is their first test of faith.

Are they gonna conform to the scriptures or are they gonna cave to the culture of Babylon? So Daniel asked that he and his friends, that they be allowed to eat from a different menu. That is a pretty annoying request from a prisoner because nobody in charge of feeding a group likes it when different people demand different things. Amen? There's nothing that burns up my wife Veronica more than when one of our kids demands a different meal than what she's prepared for the family. Verse nine, but now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel.

But the official told Daniel, no, I'm afraid of Nebuchadnezzar. He's assigned your food and drink. He picked it himself. He chose the menu.

Why should he see you looking, looking worse than the other young men who are your age? The king would then have my head because of you. Daniel then said to him, please test your servant for 10 days. Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Now please, please, please do not be short-sighted and think that Daniel just gave you some kind of secret, superior, Jesus blessed keto diet.

Some of you are like, oh I knew it, I knew it. Vegetables and water and I bet that meant only whole grains and non-GMO stuff. That is not the point here. Alright, these were evidently the only things they could eat that weren't ritually defiled. You are free to follow this Daniel diet if you want, but that is not the point of this chapter.

And so help me, if you use this chapter to find some kind of biblical mandate for essential oils, our relationship is over, okay? Daniel said, Daniel said, let us eat vegetables and water, verse 13, then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food and then treat your servants in accordance with what you see. So he agreed to this and tested them for 10 days, a test. At the end of the 10 days, they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men. The young men who ate the royal food, in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. God blessed them, God blessed them. There is a principle being taught here and that is when you commit to doing things God's way, God often glorifies himself by honoring and exalting you.

Now, be very careful, this is not a magic formula. Sometimes, as you're gonna see in the book of Daniel, you do the right thing and you suffer for it. But I'm telling you, a consistent biblical testimony is that those who honor God, God in turn honors.

And here's the first principle of Daniel that I want you to master. You cannot make a difference unless you're different. You cannot make a difference in Babylon unless you're different.

If you want to make a difference, you have to be different. You have to be weird. There's no excuse for Christian weirdness. We all know Christians who are just strange, right? Some of us are strange, amen? You tell complete strangers things like, I'm gonna bathe you in prayer.

And it just weirds people out, don't do that. Or you think the greatest witness you can have is through aggressive bumper stickers. I mean, think of it, when you see somebody on the highway and you're coming up on their car and their whole back of their car is plastered with bumper stickers, you know it's one of two kinds of people. Is it a car left liberal or it's an evangelical Christian? And our bumper stickers say things like, in case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.

As if that's supposed to make everybody around us feel safe. Or do you follow Jesus this closely? I saw that one the other day. And now, in our day, the internet has come along and given birth to a whole new level of Christian weirdness with phrases like, God answers ne-mail or tweet others how you want to be tweeted. And some of you just thought right now, you're like, that's pretty good. I'm gonna put that on Facebook today. See, you are part of the problem. Right there.

Okay, don't do that. By the way, some of you have met some weird Christians and that totally turned you off. I'll just tell you, again, after being a pastor for a couple decades, what I've learned, these people would have been weird whether or not they are Christians. And they're just using Christianity to express their weirdness, but it has nothing to do with Jesus, okay?

All right, so we're talking about being different here, not weird. Different meaning distinct from Babylon in some very crucial ways. For these Hebrew teenagers, the first application of that principle was faithfulness to God and what they ate and drank. There they decided they would be guided by the Bible, not Babylon. Now, you and I are no longer under Torah law, so we should ask, what does that look like for us today? How do we, in 21st century America, how do we keep from defiling ourselves with the royal food and wine in our Babylon? Well, as always, I have three points, right?

If it works for the Trinity, it works for pastors, so three points. Number one, number one, we show that we're different. We show that we're different by living according to different values, particularly in relation to what I call the big three.

The big three, St. Augustine said that followers of Jesus are most distinguishable from the world, not by how they dress, not by what they eat, not even by how they talk. That's the point of acquisition. Get all you can, keep all you can. Maybe give away a little to show that you're a good person and maintain favor with the community, but money is lifeblood. It's the key to the good life for the believer. For the believer, because God is their trust and their treasure, well, they got a whole different approach toward money. Yes, we live off of money, but we also recognize that money is something entrusted to us for the advancement of God's kingdom.

That's us in money. We're not just thinking about how to advance our standard of living. We're also asking how we should be increasing and advancing our standard of giving. Here's a question for you. Is money for you primarily something that you acquire and enjoy, give a little bit away on the side, or is your money a tool primarily to bless, empower, and prosper the kingdom of God, of which you enjoy a little bit on the side?

That's how we say it around the Summit Church. Which one of these statements is true of you? Do you give sufficiently and live extravagantly, or do you live sufficiently and give extravagantly? I would say most of you, if you consider yourself Christians, you give. You're like, my giving is sufficient. I'm hitting that benchmark for Christians at 10%.

I got it out there. I'm giving sufficiently, but when we look at your lifestyle, you live pretty extravagantly. That's the approach of Babylon. The approach of the Bible is not wrong for you.

Not wrong for you to be rich, not wrong for you to make tons of money, but you will find when you look at you, you live sufficiently and you give extravagantly. So that's your first of the big three. Second of the big three, sex. Babylon approaches sex from the standpoint of, it's all about me.

If it feels good, can't be wrong. A Christian sees sex as a gift of God to be used for God's purposes and according to his design, which is within a covenant-based lifelong marriage between a man and a woman. Christians, that they stood in stark contrast to the Roman citizens around them because they were, I quote, promiscuous, which means dispersing freely. They were promiscuous with their money, even while they were guarded or stingy with their beds. Other Romans, by contrast, were guarded with their money, they were stingy with their money, and they were promiscuous with their beds. And so they were exactly opposite. Christians seemed totally backwards by Babylonian standards.

They were strange. Because they wouldn't gorge on the royal food and wine when it came to sex. Power, that's the third of the big three. For Babylon, whatever power you got, you press it to your advantage. That's what you do with power. If it's your looks, you should use that.

If it's your money, you should use that. If it's your talent, if it's your majority culture status, your minority status, use that. Whatever power you have is to be held onto and pressed for as much advantage as you can get out of it. They see the position of power and privilege exactly the opposite. They see their power and privilege like Jesus saw his. Something not used to serve self, but used to serve and lift up others. So the follower of Jesus is always asking, how can I use this position of power or privilege to lift up those people around me? Again, Christians are most distinct from Babylon in relation to these three things. So what about you? Forget how many Bible verses you know, forget your church attendance. What's your relationship to these three things like? Is it more characterized by Babylon or the Bible?

If your life is shaped by the Bible, you are going to be stranger and gonna be more offensive to those around you than Daniel was in Babylon. I've heard it described like this. Imagine you're watching a big marching band on a football field. You know in a marching band, if you've ever been in one or watched one, everybody in that band, it may be several hundred people big, but everybody has their eyes trained on one person, the conductor. It's the end beat with his or her baton.

But say you got one guy out there and you got your binoculars from the stands and you notice this one guy has in his AirPods. And he's not looking at the conductor, he's listening to Drake or Lil Wayne on a radio station. So he's marching to that beat. How's he gonna look? Strange, chaotic, out of control.

Now is he actually out of control? I mean, well, it only seems strange because he's dialed into music from another place. Because what are you dialed into? Whose baton are you looking at?

What beat are you listening to? If you're marching according to heaven's values, it's gonna be strange. And there's some really practical places this will show up.

So give me just a second, let me press this one step farther here. For you college students and young professionals, if you're living by the principles of Babylon, then you're gonna approach your career like everybody else in college and say which career is gonna make me feel the most fulfilled and which one's gonna get me the most money? If you're shaped by the Bible, you will not ask that first.

The first thing you'll ask is what career can best serve the Great Commission? That's why we always say to our students around here, the question is no longer if you are called, the question is simply where and how. Because the call to Jesus to leverage your life for the Great Commission, that's not a special mystical moment that God gave to a few of us. And the rest of us were supposed to pursue our careers like Babylon does and tithe a little bit.

No, we're all supposed to take our what we have and say God, how can this be used for your kingdom? We say you gotta get a job somewhere. Why not get a job in a place where God is doing something strategic?

And so we challenge all of our students and young professionals to take the first two years after they graduate. And why not pursue that career in a place where you can be a part of what God is doing around the world? So that's why we had 1400 members of our church uproot and move.

And move is a part of one of these church planting teams because they're thinking like the Bible, not Babylon. Go to if you're interested in it. We want to help you with that. Let me go to the other end of the spectrum. It's how you approach your career, fundamentally different from the people around you. For those of you approaching retirement, if you're shaped by the Bible, then you're not gonna be thinking like everybody else does when it comes to retirement. Finally, got enough money, I can just get up and do what I want all day long with no obligations.

That's pure Babylon right there. Instead, if you're saved by the Bible, you will say, how can I use this chapter where I've got arguably the most to contribute, I'm the wisest I've ever been, and the least financial need, I'm retired. And how can I use that freedom and that wisdom to invest in his kingdom? Some of you who are retired need to think about what you have to offer right now. God did not give you this 15, 20 years, however long it lasts, so you can basically hang out on vacation until you go to heaven. He gave you that to serve in the Great Commission.

You're not thinking about it. It's the trajectory of your life right now for all of you. The trajectory of your life, is it going towards suffering or is it going away from suffering? The people of Babylon use their power and money to take them away from suffering.

That's the whole point, right? Power and money. It keeps me isolated from suffering. For the follower of Jesus, it's the exact opposite. The trajectory of your life moves towards suffering, and the more power and money you have, the more you're freed up to bless others and the more you have capacity to do it.

Financially, if I'm in a place to retire early, that means I'm freed up to serve in a new capacity. We never really retire because there are always people who need Jesus. Listen, the American and the Babylonian dream and the gospel mission are gonna take you to two entirely different places.

You gotta ask which one you're following. Those values are gonna show up in how you manage your Christian business or your business, excuse me, if you're a Christian business owner. I know of one Christian business owner who's committed to invest 10% of all of his profits back into the kingdom of God, and listen, that's not a requirement, nor is that a formula that God guarantees will make you successful. I'm just saying you gotta prayerfully discern what God is calling you to do. I know of one business owner who's committed to do 90% of the profits into the kingdom of God. The point is you start living by a different set of values. For those of you who are not business owners, these values are gonna show up in how you manage your personal budget. He makes the same amount of money as you do.

Follow me here, okay? One thing that is true of human nature is you know who is about the same income level as you, and you were always comparing yourself to how they live. Well, how do they afford that, hmm? They must be house poor. Well, clearly they spend all their money on clothes.

That must be a big deal to them. Listen, the Bible teaches us at least three things that distinguish us and how we treat money from how the world does. Number one tells us not to go into debt.

They say the average Raleigh citizen lives about 5% above his or her means, and is somewhere in the neighborhood of $15,000 in credit card debt. If you're following the Bible, that's not what you're gonna pursue. Number two, it tells you to save. Proverbs says the wise man saves, so out of every check, you're gonna put a little aside. Number three, it tells you to be generous, and 10% is generally the starting point for that. That means if you're following biblical values with your money, you're gonna be at least three steps behind everybody else, being generous, that puts you three steps behind everybody else who makes the same amount of money as you, and that is noticeable in lifestyle.

Question is, do you look different in these areas, or are you just a Christianized version of Babylon? Number two, number two, we show that we're different by refusing to compromise our integrity. In the word of Jesus, convictions are not something that could ever be set aside, because everything we do, everything we do is done first and foremost, not for the bottom line, it's done as an offering to Jesus. Pastor Brian here told me about a hotel owner at his previous church that chose, for example, not to offer pornography at his hotel, even though it is widely known that it is one of the most lucrative things that a hotel owner can do.

For a year, even for a small hotel. Right? And he said, I can't do it because it's hard to see that money being offered as a sacrifice to Jesus. Or maybe you've heard the story of Eric Little, I've certainly shared it with you. His is the story that was featured in the movie Chariots of Fire. Eric Little was an incredible runner who was also a very committed believer, and he was recruited for the 1928 Olympic team in Great Britain. When he got to Paris that year for the Olympics, he was told that his heat, the 100 meter qualifying heat, to get into the finals was gonna be held on a Sunday. His convictions were that you shouldn't work or run on a Sunday. And so he says, that's the Lord's day, and it's dishonoring to God.

He thought for me to do that. Well, the British team appealed to the Olympic committee to change the day to the heat, but the Olympic committee would not budge. Then they pled with Eric Little to change, and he wouldn't budge, and it became this big scandal. The British papers just skewered him, by the way. He became a worldwide laughingstock for a couple of years. His team eventually just switched him to the 400 meter race, but if you've ever run track, you know that's a totally different race.

You train for that in completely different ways. But against all odds, Eric won. After he won, he said, here's the reason I believe I won, and that is that those who honor God, he will honor. Again, this is not a promise, and it's not a magic formula.

Sometimes you do the right thing and you suffer. It's a compromise as the vehicle through which he shows off his power and glorifies his name. So that's number two. Number three. Number three, we show that we're different by conforming to scripture, not culture.

Go ahead and tell you this right now. The way of Jesus is countercultural in every society, though often in different ways. Following Jesus was counterculture in the 1950s.

In some ways than it is today, but just as offensive back then as it is in 21st century. We always say around here, the Bible is an equal opportunity offender. If it hasn't ticked you off yet, it's because you're just not paying attention. In some cultures, it's the scripture's teaching on the sanctity of marriage that offends the culture. In others, it's the scripture's emphasis on grace and generosity and giving away power. It's made in the image of God that offends because that threatens to overturn the whole system.

Other cultures, it's God's authority over his creation that offends them, like the fact that God says he made male and female differently, and we can't overturn the system or reassign our gender because it feels right to us. Tell you, one of the great tragedies of the church in the West is how often and how consistently we have conformed to Babylon. One of the most common characteristics of slavery in the world, written by an African-American scholar, and one of the things he points out is that slavery was present in almost every culture in history.

You go back to any culture, any time there is a culture with power. One of the common characteristics of sinful fallen men is that they use whatever power they have to exploit those who are less powerful. And one of the primary expressions of that has been slavery. It was true of Asian cultures. It's true in African cultures.

It's true in European cultures. Numerically, in fact, he shows that the largest slave trade took place in Arab cultures. The terrible European slave trade that trafficked 11 million Africans, right?

Twice that many were bought and sold on the Arabian Peninsula during the same time period. But the real tragedy, this African-American scholar says, is that Western cultures, while they were doing this, espoused a gospel that undermined the very nature of slavery. That they willfully blinded their eyes to in order to participate in slavery, right? Because our gospel taught that first, all people were made alike in the image of God. Number two, it taught that Jesus died for all people equally alike. And number three, that it was the responsibility of the strong to lift up the weak, not oppress them like Jesus did for us. And yet, and yet, we find the church in the West not only complicit in slavery, we find it as a defender and a proponent of it in several places.

What happened? They conformed to the world. They did not, they weren't different. They just conformed to the culture around them, and that has left a legacy of damage, both to our society and to the church that we still have not fully recovered from. Now, I know it's easy to get real high and mighty right here and say, well, we learned our lesson there.

We're not gonna do that again. But don't you see the church doing it again in other areas? For example, as Babylon shifts its view on sexuality and gender, many in the church seem to go right along with it. Look at any, I didn't, you can do this research yourself.

It's easy to find. Look at the attitudes, especially among younger Christians in churches like ours. Watch them shifting right now on things like same-sex marriage.

It changes right along with the culture. I got a friend who teaches a religion class in a public high school. He's not a Christian. But he said, he said, one thing I've noticed is that, he said, it used to be about, he says, no more than 10, 15 years ago, when I'd ask a question about something like same-sex marriage, he says, it was usually split about half. Half the class would say they didn't think it was right.

The other half thought it was. And he said that line was usually the kids who were involved in church and those who weren't. He said, about five years ago, I noticed it shifting to where it was about two-thirds, one-third. He said, now?

Now. He said, it's not that kids go to church less. They're still going to church, he said, but, he says, in my classes, when I ask that question, he says, it is the rare one or two, sometimes none at all, who will say that they believe that that is not according to the will of God. What's happening?

Just shifting toward Babylon. Listen, do not congratulate yourself because you get the slavery question right or because you're so bold about the wrongness of discrimination. Nobody really debates that anymore. Now, listen, I'm not saying that we've achieved a racially just society or that there's not more work to be done.

There is. I'm just saying that very few overtly embrace racism anymore. The question is what we're going to do with those things our culture today demands that we conform to. The royal foods that it requires us to eat. There's a famous line attributed to the reformer Martin Luther.

Listen to this. The courage of the soldier is tested in how well, not in how well he stands where the battle is the hottest. Not in how brave he postures himself where the battle has passed. That's where you see a lot of Christians do all their virtue signaling. On things that aren't really even argued about anymore.

Right. It was like, oh, look how right society in here. You want to show your courage. You take the place where CNN is not on your side. You take the place where it's really unpopular. That's where the courage of the soul.

That's where Daniel shows up. He says the whole culture is going this way. But this is what God says.

And if Christians had done that in 1860, we'd be in a different place today. It's a celebration from all kinds of heartache. By the way, next week, I'm gonna have with me a friend. Her name is Rebecca McLaughlin. She's written one of the best books on difficult questions that come to Christianity.

It's an amazing book. I get to interview her. She actually went to Cambridge. She had same sex attraction and all that stuff. And she talks about how she came to Christ.

It's going to be amazing. But she's an example of somebody who said I'm in Babylon, but I'm not going where Babylon's going. Question is what are you going to do when abstaining from the king's table actually cost you? Some of you not conforming to Babylon in these things might cost you your job.

For Daniel, not conforming to Babylon threatened to cost him his life. And please, please don't think that these are just right or left issues I'm talking about. As if I'm trying to push you from one political leaning to the other. I'm telling you, listen, being shaped by scripture is going to put you out of fashion with both the political left and the political right in our country. I'm not saying that both these platforms are morally equivalent.

I'm not saying there's no wiser choice between them. Neither the political right or the political left for us fully captures the essence of the kingdom of God because both are political parties of Babylon. I don't belong to the donkey. I don't belong to the elephant.

I belong to the lamb. That's a totally different animal, right? There are many things associated with the political left that we have to profoundly reject. How they treat unborn human life like a commodity to be discarded at will for the sake of convenience. The Christian understandings of morality and gender and call out oppression.

How they leave no room for disagreement on these matters and threaten to cancel you if you object. But there are also things associated with the political right that we have to reject. Some on the right go beyond a healthy patriotism and appreciation for American freedoms. And they go to an unhealthy embrace of Christian nationalism where we're urged to place our hope for the future in American exceptionalism and military might. Some on the right speak as if our only responsibility is to protect our own rights and pursue our own interests and we don't have any responsibility for the less privileged around us. A follower of Jesus is gonna look different from all things Babylon.

Alright, so let's return to this main idea, okay, because I gotta land this plane quickly. Alright, you won't make a difference unless you're different. You're not gonna make a difference unless you're different. In the New Testament, Jesus compared it to being salt. Salt preserves the food that it's in and brings out the beauties of flavor in the food, right? Jesus is the truer and better than being salt. That's a good thing for you to write down. But if the salt loses its saltiness, Jesus says, it's worthless.

Just to be thrown out, it's just white powder. Same thing is true of the Christian that conforms to the world, he says. Because they neither help preserve the culture nor are they able to demonstrate the distinctive beauty of Christ in the culture. As such, they're useless to God.

They're also useless to the world and just ought to be thrown out and you'll find both God spewing them out of the mouth and the world saying I got no need of you. If you study the history of Christianity, one of the great ironies is a lot of what they call mainstream churches, the big denominations in the 1940s, 1950s, right? As our culture began to shape, began to change its opinion on orthodox Christian teaching and Christian morality, these mainstream churches changed right along with them. And they justified it with things like, well, if we don't change our out-of-date, old-fashioned views on these issues, we're gonna become so offensive to our culture, we'll lose our influence. And yet, those churches and denominations that did that, well, they've been the ones that shrunk the fastest.

Today, their numbers are incredibly small and they've become altogether irrelevant. If you want to make a difference, you've got to be different. The best example of this is Jesus. Jesus' ministry was a paradox because there was never anybody who so exalted God's standards of righteousness. He was a jot or tittle of God's moral code. And yet, at the same time, there was never anybody who so effectively gathered the outcasts and the non-religious to his side, be they the prostitutes or the tax collectors. They all wanted to be around him.

Why? Because his life pointed to an entirely different kingdom, a heavenly kingdom of purity and wholeness and grace. Watching his life was like watching somebody dance to a different beat, a heavenly beat. That's what really Daniel is all about. The point of Daniel is not that Daniel or his friends could ever be righteous enough to win Babylon back to God.

The point is not that you can be righteous enough to win your society back to God. It's not about daring to be a Daniel. Daniel's life is itself a prophecy about a savior who would come, a savior who would perfectly display the kingdom of God. And that savior would not defile himself with any of Babylon's delicacies, though it cost him his very life. And like Daniel, Jesus wasn't just threatened with death for doing the right thing.

He actually suffered it. And then in the ultimate act of courage, he displayed the kingdom of God again by offering grace and salvation to those who killed him. And God did not simply make him look better and healthier after 10 days of righteousness.

God raised him from the dead after three days of corruption. And now, and now because he's done that and demonstrated the victory for us, we can follow his pattern. And as we do, we can demonstrate the beauty of God just like he did. Again, God has called most of you to be in Babylon. And the good news is now he wants to use you like Daniel and like Jesus. He puts you here to make a difference, and you're going to do that by being different.

Here's the question. Are you willing to be different in order to make that difference? Because some of us put aside all the Christian jargon in our lives more like Babylon than they do the Bible. I want you to bow your heads with me to the scripture, to the gospel, and to watch what God does with that in your family and in the community around you.

Why don't you bow your heads with me if you would. There's a point at which, in every service, we trust the real preacher to show up, and that's not me. That's the Holy Spirit, and he has this way of beginning to unearth things. He's beckoning some of you right now. For some of you, it's a specific area he wants you to surrender. For others of you, he's just telling you, get serious. Are you actually a follower of Jesus, or are you playing games? I'm going to leave you here just in a moment at all campuses or in your home. It's just there. Quiet for a couple moments, listening to the Holy Spirit, and then our worship teams. You're going to come, and they're going to lead us.