When You Don't Fit In - Far From Home - Pastor Trey Hildebrant

(dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) - First Orlando, welcome into our series today on the Book of Daniel. (audience applauding) I wanna say welcome to all of our campuses across central Florida, Horizon West, Deberry, O'Koey, our brothers at the Marian Correctional Institute, again here at John Young. Can we welcome everybody into church today? (audience applauding) We are starting a brand new seven week series on the Book of Daniel, and we're calling it Far From Home, because we are Far From Home. We're Far From Home spiritually, and it impacts our daily lives, and impacts how we live in this culture, and we are gonna be covering a lot,

so I hope that you'll be following along in your sermon notes. Today is a Sunday all about set up. We're gonna do a lot of back story today to give us up to Daniel chapter one, verse one, but before we get started, I just wanna remind you that Daniel is not just a biblical figure. He was a real man. Daniel actually lived in history, and he lived as a follower of God among people who didn't follow God. Now, if you grew up around church, you remember Daniel and the story of Daniel and the lion's den. You remember the story of his friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. You see, Daniel is an enduring story. It's thousands of years old, but it's filled with truth that gives us guidance for how to live for God in a world that doesn't. Now, we can admit that the world is complex. We experience fear and confusion, perhaps, as we look to the future and we try to navigate life. Now, follower of Jesus or not, we can admit that there is worry. It's concerns for how do we live today and prepare for tomorrow?

There are concerns about the economy, global relations, politics, our collective morals and values as a culture. There's anger and dissension where it feels like we're always watching the news kind of waiting on the next shoe to drop where there's gonna be another bombshell report that's gonna affect everything from gas prices to the price of a hamburger. There's the rise of AI and artificial intelligence and this swirl of technology that just leaves us with questions and worry about the future. So we live in a complex and confusing time and we do have tons of questions and there are no easy answers. Like, what's my role in today's constantly shifting culture? Can I even live boldly for Jesus in my career in the 21st century? How do I respond when someone says that my Christian views are unloving? How do I help my kids engage the culture without losing them to it? How can I engage the culture without compromising my faith? These are important questions and I just think Daniel, Daniel's life, Daniel's testimony, the book of Daniel gives us a blueprint for how to handle many of these questions. But at the heart of this, and we have to know this as we start these seven weeks together at the heart of Daniel's message

is the good news of the kingdom of God. That Daniel was rooted in a spiritual kingdom while living in an earthly one. That there are nations and empires, thrones and governments and they will rise and fall but the kingdom of God endures. The kingdoms of this earth today have a life span but in Jesus we are citizens of a kingdom that will never fail and this is our hope and this is our anchor in confusing times. In this series, we are going to compare these kingdoms. We're going to compare the kingdom of this world. refer to as Jerusalem and here's our goal, are you ready? That we are going to learn how to stand firm but to love well. We're going to stand firm, how to stand firm in our faith, firm on the truth, but we're going to love well how to live for God while surrounded by people and systems and ideas that aren't of Him. How to love people without compromising Jesus' centered values. It's living with grace and truth. It's grace in that all are welcome and by the way, in parentheses, all means all. That all are welcome into the kingdom of God by the love and the work of Jesus Christ. But it's truth, hold on, it's grace but it's truth in believing that there is absolutely a right and godly way to live. See we'll hit some honest topics, maybe even some sensitive topics. My promise to you is to be an equal opportunity offender that no matter where you fall on the political spectrum or the world view spectrum, it's my intent to step on all of our toes a little bit because the word of God does that for us. And let me be clear, like this sermon series is a little bit different than other series. We're going to build week by week on the story from the life of Daniel, which means if you miss a Sunday, you're going to want to catch that Sunday either online or my encouragement

is to make it a point to be here over the next seven weeks because these sermons are going to build. My hope is that you wouldn't take just one sermon and draw conclusions or make assumptions about my views on anything. It's going to build together. Now we are such a personal church here even though we're a big church and if you get frustrated at any point and you want to let somebody know, you can email me directly at [email protected] and I promise, I'll do my best to respond. All right, so like I said, today is the setup. Today's a lot of back story, so go with me as we build the back story of what leads up to Daniel. We'll survey the Old Testament, we'll look at some different scriptures in the Old Testament and then next week we're actually going to go verse by verse through Daniel chapter one. Here's how I want you to think about this sermon. You walk into a big mall that you've never been in. By the way, that's how we felt the first time we went into the mall of millennia. I'm like, what is this place? You walk into the mall and you find a mall map and it says you are here. That's what I'm trying to give us in this sermon, help you kind of get oriented as to what's happening leading up to Daniel so that we know where we are in history, in the history of Israel, in the history of God's story of redeeming mankind so that we can move forward together. Let me start here. Daniel is written starting in about 605 B.C. when Babylon conquers Jerusalem and begins to exile Israelites, Hebrew men and women to Babylon, Daniel writes 605 B.C. to about 537 B.C. This is Daniel's life in Babylon and Daniel writes a personal account. This is like an autobiography of his story and his friends living in exile in Babylon as followers of God among a people who don't follow God. This is the story of them having to learn what it's like to live after leaving their

culture, their customs, their family, their homes, culminating in the pressure to leave their God. At the time, Babylon was the largest city in the world. It was the capital of the neo-Babylonian empire and there was a king leading it named Nebuchadnezzar. By the way, in these 70 or so years, Daniel serves under three different foreign kings and God uses him to impact all three. John Biblically is modern day Iraq to get oriented on the map. It was the primary center at the time for idolatrous worship. It was dominated by massive temples. In fact, archaeology has defended that Babylon was just an architectural masterpiece and these temples that were set up to be clear to pagan deities, to false gods. To be pagan is simply means to worship an idol or a false god. So here's where we are in this. And though we're talking about a historical exile, we still feel the weight of exile today. As followers of God, as Christians in a world that doesn't worship Him. So let's define exile. Exile, for us, and for Daniel, was living in a place we don't choose, that we didn't choose. Exile is far from home. And we are far from home until we are with the Lord. Now, this doesn't mean that there's not joy in this life. This is not doomsday. This isn't just meant to be sad that we're never at home. We don't feel right until we're with the Lord. But it is to say this, that if our hearts belong to Jesus, there is something that's not gonna be right until we are with Him in glory.

So we need to define Babylon to matter for us today. If we're still in exile. Because now we need to see Babylon as more than a geographical location. So here's what Babylon is. Babylon is any way of thinking and living that is against God. In the New Testament, Babylon is a reference, especially in Revelation, to allegiance to any kingdom other than God's kingdom. Here's the reality. You throw a dart on a map. Anywhere it hits, it hits Babylon. 'Cause Babylon doesn't have borders. The whole world is influenced and riddled by sin and Satan. The Apostle John sums up this tension in first John chapter five, verse 19. The scripture says, "We know that we are from God." If you've said yes to Jesus, you know what it feels like to have your heart with God to be part of the family of God, but here's the tension. We know that we are from God and the whole world. This is where we live lies in the power of the evil one. It's recognizing that Satan is real, that there is sin that is influencing the people. It's influencing culture and this is where we live, which is why it often feels far from home. We're watching the values and the ways of this world play out around us.

We are exiles and Babylon while our hearts are in Jerusalem. Now, and this isn't meant to be an indictment on any one culture or nation. It's just the reality that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. But the kingdom of God doesn't have borders either. Because we bring the kingdom of God everywhere we go, because Jesus is in us. We take kingdom, Jesus, wherever we go. We are pushing against the influence of Babylon simply because we have said yes to Jesus. And you see, we should define Jerusalem like this as well. We should give it more than a location on the map. Jerusalem then represents allegiance to the kingdom of God and how we think and live. Now, for our purposes, Jerusalem and Babylon are spiritual realities, but to be clear, they have concrete expressions in real life. There are systems and social structures and policies and people that are rooted in Babylon. But there are people and values rooted in Jerusalem. And we see this tug of war between Jerusalem and Babylon play out all around us. We see it in government, we see it in entertainment, we see it in what culture condones and rebukes. We see it in everyday life, Jerusalem and Babylon, this tug of war. Now, an ask that I have of us is to not hijack the metaphor of Jerusalem and Babylon to use it the way you want to use it. Here's what I mean.

Jerusalem is not the good old days. Now, I know you may feel like something is different. And by the way, things are different. But Jerusalem is not what once was. It's not, well, back in my day when we were in Jerusalem, we've never been in Jerusalem. So it's not the good old days, even though it feels like you've lost something. But then also, don't use Babylon as a slur against people you don't like. I don't need to hear anybody say, well, my neighbor, the Babylonian, don't do that. Don't, that's not the journey that we're on together. Remember, we're gonna stand firm and love well. So here's the history of Israel's exile. We're getting to Daniel mainly next week, for how to live for the one true God against a current that is moving away from him. So how do we live in a culture? We didn't choose without losing devotion to God. Three lessons to learn from Israel's exile. First, Israel's drift from God can be traced throughout history as deceitful ungodly ideas, disordered their identity as followers of the one true God, which led to idolatry. That's how the enemy uses Babylon to pull people away from God then, and it's how the enemy is using Babylon to pull people from God away from God now. It starts with deceitful ideas. Deceitful ideas, it's when a lie out there gets in here, and we are swimming in deceitful ideas, and when we let a lie out there do something in here. It disorders our identity. This is when we begin to see ourselves in a distorted way, which always leads to seeing God in a distorted way. Deceitful idea disorders our identity, which leads to destructive idolatry. In idolatry, anytime that we elevate something or someone over God, what we have to recognize, it isn't a harmless thing. It begins to disrupt something, it breaks something, it is destructive. Backing up a few hundred years before Daniel, there's a pivotal moment in first Samuel. Israel had been established as a theocracy at the beginning of Israel's time in the promised land

around 1400 BC when Joshua after Moses helped settle the Israelite people in the promised land in Canaan around 1400 BC. The nation of Israel is set up as a theocracy, which simply means that God is their king. In the early history of Israel, they didn't submit to an earthly king, they lived as a nation recognizing God as king led by judges. There's an entire book on this, judges in day to day life, but they trade that for something else. First Samuel chapter 8, verse 4 and 5 shares that with us. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Rama and said to him, "Behold, you are old." Don't start a combo like that. Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Listen, now a point for us a king to judge us like all the nations. See Israel is surrounded by nations that don't worship the one true God and they begin to peer over at what they have and that's what they begin to desire. Israel moves from a theocracy with God as their king to wanting their own earthly king. The deceitful idea is that they would prosper outside of God's leadership, which led to the installment of the Israelite monarchy in the year 10, 21 or so. And though this doesn't always go bad, these 400 years, these 400 years, there are some good kings. You've got King David, you've got Hezekiah. What this represents is a ball starts to roll downhill because of a deceitful idea. Here's the lesson, loyalty to God alone, loyalty to God alone. You see Babylon and Jerusalem represent two loyalties, two ways of living, two different devotions. And let me be clear, we want to think that there are multiple loyalties, that there's a God camp, there's over here an anti-God camp, and there might be some neutral camps. There is only two. Either you are for God or you are not for God. Either you are with Him or you are against Him. There are only two loyalties in the name of Jesus, as we baby over there. We love you and we see you. So here's the question that we have to wrestle. Is are we going to have loyalty to the one true God or to another God? to draw our loyalty away from God. You feel it, don't you? We're seeing these other things trying to pull our relationship away from God. But here's what our loyalty in God is actually rooted in today. It's rooted in a relationship with God that refuses to abandon him because it's not us who had to be loyal. Otherwise, when we were disloyal to God, he was the one who pursued us and brought us

back into relationship with him. So that doesn't mean that we don't have work to do, that there's effort involved to stay loyal to the one true God and how we live, because there are Babylonian influences swirling all around us to pay attention. And don't miss, by the way, who Israel was comparing themselves to. We already said it, like all the nations. Israel gets lost in comparing themselves with those who don't know God. Hear this, it is a dangerous place to begin finding ourselves comparing to those who don't know God. The drift away from God often starts with a jealous look at the world. You kind of begin to peer over and think, ooh, look at what they have over there. They get to do a lot of stuff and not feel bad about it. Babylon looks kind of fun. Babylon looks a little easier, Babylon's a little more, go with the flow. Don't be fooled. Babylon always over promises and under delivers. It'll say, no big deal, just a little whisper of doubt. You can have God and have that too, you begin comparing yourself. You can have God as your king and your own earthly king. And what happens is the slippery slope, you continue to move away from God. See, Israel doubted God as enough, which directly impacted even the length of time they were in exile. So second chronicles, jumping over to second chronicles, which is a historical Old Testament book, it connects some dots for second chronicles, chapter 36, verse 20 to 21. Israel has doubted God as enough and here's how we see it come together. King Nebuchadnezzar, he, that's King Nebuchadnezzar, took into exile in Babylon, those who had escaped from the sword and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed its Sabbath, pay attention, I'm going to unpack that. So they're going to exile in Babylon until the land has enjoyed its Sabbath, what's that

all about? All the days that it laid desolate, it kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years. So Israel's exile is 70 years, here's what's happening. For 490 years, Israel ignored God's command, that's the big issue, by the way. They ignored God's command to Sabbath their fields every seventh year, Leviticus 25 gives us that command. God's command was to rest the land, don't plant, don't harvest for a year, so that every seven years he could demonstrate to his kids, that's their identity, his trustworthiness and his power as provider, that's what God wanted to do. Therefore, their exile would be 70 years because they ignored that command for 490 years, one year for every seventh year that they ignored God. Israel had the unique identity as God's children and God just wanted to demonstrate that. He wanted to show them how he would come through, but because they began to distrust God, they took control for themselves and stepped out of that identity. Here's the lesson, trust in God alone, do we have loyalty to God alone, our allegiance to God alone, and do we trust him? Do we trust his ways in his word? By not resting the land every seven years, it was an overt way of saying to God, we'll do it our own way. Now, we may hear that and read that and think, well, that seems like that wasn't a big deal, right? At this point, 490 years from this point, somewhere in here, they stopped sabbathin their land, and for them it probably felt really small. God, we're still going to the temple, we're still making sacrifices in your name. about not harvesting crops every seventh year? Watch. What that reveals to us, it is a reminder that what God wants from His people is less claiming Him and more living for Him. People can claim God.

You can say, I trust Him, I follow Him, but what is revealed in how you live? Do we truly trust God? More than anything else, that He will come through when we're struggling. Do we trust His guidance in relationships? Do we trust Him when we're misunderstood? Do we trust Him when we don't understand Him? Do we trust God alone? See, God gave Israel repeated warnings again and again that if they left their identity as His children, in these warnings, He's telling Israel, there will be consequences for distrust and disloyalty to God, and the warning is clear. All in the Old Testament, leave God, lose your land. Leave God, lose your land. The prophet Jeremiah powerfully describes what was happening in their hearts when they decided to leave God. Jeremiah chapter two, verse 11 through 13. Has a nation changed its gods? Even though they are no gods, but my people have changed their glory for what does not profit, be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. If my people, for my people, have committed two evils, what are the two evils? They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and shoot out that has dug out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

You see, God's people had committed a double evil. They had abandoned God, the fountain of living water, and had dug for themselves, this is spiritual metaphor, and had dug for themselves, holds in the ground that are broken and can only hold dirty water at best. They're thirsty people, spiritually thirsty people, trading the flowing fountain for dirty water collected and broken vessels, and this is still what people are doing today. That we tried the purity of the power and the presence of God for the whole and the ground of false gods. The lesson, satisfaction in God alone. Loyalty to God alone, trust in God alone, but what's underneath it was they began to look for satisfaction outside of God. Now notice God's heart here, it's not just that he wasn't receiving their worship, but they were hurting themselves. Do you ever notice that about God? It's not just him pointing his finger at you, it's he knows how he created you, he knows what leads to joy, he knows what leads to satisfaction. He loves us enough to put up boundaries to warn us that if we try to fill the God-sized need in our hearts with money, pleasure, power, comfort, sex, accomplishments, anti-God ideologies, false beliefs. Not only does that insult God, it breaks us.

See the source of satisfaction apart from God, any source of satisfaction apart from God just makes us thirstier. The living water that God offers to our thirsty souls is better than the dirty water the world could ever offer. There is a spiritual conflict, hear me. There is a spiritual conflict happening all around us and in us, will we choose to worship God or something else? Ideas, identity and for Israel, it all boiled down to idolatry and they replace God. Again, idolatry is when anything or anyone gets our devotion instead of God. So I wanna talk about idolatry in our context. What does idolatry look like to us? And I think there are three categories for idolatry that we all have to be aware of. The first category is that there is no God. There is no God, there is no supernatural. What comes from this is secularism, atheism, humanism, which by the way, they say there is no God, but the only thing they've done is replace God with themselves. This is an idol. There is no in between, no God. And this permeates our culture, doesn't it? There is no God. But here's what we need to be careful of here, that we could replace God, and this is subtle. This is replacing Him with anything that you begin to love, your affections,

things that you begin to put over Him. That is where money and comfort and convenience and winning in life and accomplishment, things that are not necessarily bad, but they become destructive when they take the place of God in our hearts. Do you wanna know if you have an idol? Here's a way to sift it. Anything you can't stop thinking about or can't live without isn't idol. Replace God. The third category, false gods. And this is a bigger deal today than I think we often talk about. False gods represent false religions. There are false religions that are actually ploys of Satan and the evil one to try to confuse culture to leave the one true God for another God. This is Islam. This is Buddhism, Hinduism. This is distortions of the true gospel, like Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness, which take a nugget of truth and twist it until it is false. This is new age spiritualities. This is tarot cards and psychics. It is anything seeking supernatural power outside of the one true God. (audience applauding)

And it is doing something destructive in the souls of people. Loyalty drifts, trust and satisfaction, God alone abandoned and it leads to worshiping false gods. For Israel, that was the slippery slope they walked into exile. You look at this timeline. One thing I want you to notice is Israel didn't wake up one day worshiping the one true God and then the next day begin worshiping false gods. It didn't happen in a day. Several years ago, a great friend of mine in ministry. In fact, in a lot of ways, he was like a pastor hero of mine. I worked with him and he was the type of guy he had had a military background before he had come to faith in Jesus. And I loved the way he thought. He was such a smart man. He was firm. He was sharp with his words. He was one of those guys that I would let him watch my sermons and he would just pick it apart and beat it up the pieces and I'd be like, yes, thank you for all of those critical things you just said. Like, I loved this guy. But he made a decision that blew up his life. It blew up his marriage and ended his marriage. It blew up his ministry, no longer in ministry.

And I know that it wounded the heart of God. I'll call him Bob, no offense to any Bobs in the room. There was a group of us that were close to him and for a couple of weeks, we just couldn't wrap our minds around how Bob made these decisions. The way we'd often say it, maybe you've heard Christians use this phrase before or maybe others, we would ask the question, how did Bob fall? How did Bob fall? He was strong. He was sharp. He was smart. He was a leader. How did Bob fall? We were in a meeting one day and a former mentor of mine, he knew that a few of us were just struggling with this. How did Bob fall? And he turns to us and I'll never forget it. He says, Bob did not fall. Bob walked slowly downhill. And that has messed with how I think about what Babylon is trying to do to people. It's not about waking up one day, you're this person in that person, no. Where are we making compromises where we're walking slowly downhill? See, Israel walked away from God

and the consequences were catastrophic. Don't miss this, Israel chose Babylon. Israel chose Babylon. Not directly, but God had set up his law. He had set up his values. He had said, worship my name alone and Israel turned to false gods. It's easy to read the story and think, well, God just got mad and sent them to Babylon. No, they got what they lived for. It's like God said to them, you can live like pagans, but pagans live in pagan lands. They don't live in the promised land. Listen, church, if we want what Babylon wants, God the offer comes from. But the only way to get the blessings that God offers is to surrender to the God from whom all the blessings flow. So we surrender to God, which finally brings us to Daniel. Daniel chapter 1 verse 1. See Daniel opens with the description of the conflict that we've been talking about. The conflict between Jerusalem and Babylon and it still describes what's happening today. Daniel chapter 1 verse 1. In the third year of the reign of Jehoekim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it. Besiege just means under attack. There is a battle for the hearts of people and the culture we live in. This conflict can be traced from the Garden of Eden when Satan seduced Adam and Eve into the first sin to Israel to the present. By 586 BC even the temple of God in Jerusalem had been destroyed and the holy items inside taken to Babylon and the holy items of God placed in pagan temples, the holy things of God scattered in ungodly places. Let me ask an honest question. What are God's people to do when it looks like God has lost? That's our cliffhanger for the week. As we move through Daniel's life to answer that question, maybe you feel that today. Maybe you think God has been lost in the United States.

What will the future look like? And that's what we're going to teach over the next few weeks. How to stay rooted in Jerusalem to reach Babylon, how to stand firm, but to love well. But today I want to give you good news. What are God's people to do when it looks like God has lost? God hasn't lost. God wins. Daniel chapter 7, or Daniel chapter 7 through chapter 12 gives us a glimpse into this glorious future. Jesus died to pay for the sin that led to exile and he rose again to settle exile forever to make sure that our home could be with him in eternity. He has conquered forever and he holds us today. So we live with this hope church. Though Babylon, listen, though Babylon seems to have influence today, that influence has a timeline. There's an end date. We may be far from home today, but we won't be far from home for long. There is a true king who is coming again to sit on an eternal throne. God wins. And we see this picture in Revelation 21 at the end of the story, at the end of the Bible, this picture, this prophetic picture of what is coming for those who are in Christ. And I want us just to close our eyes. And hear the promise of God for the future. This is our hope. This is our anchor. Revelation 21 verse 1, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth that passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride. That's you, adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be their God." Let's pray. So Father, we hold on to that hope today. Though we live in Babylon and we wonder what's going to happen and we have concerns about the future, what's actually true is that you win and you've already won in the person, the work, the death and the resurrection of Jesus. So we don't have to wonder. You win. So today Lord, we leave with that hope. We got work to do to figure out how to live here while we're still here, but our eternity has been secured if we are in Christ and that is why we have hope. That's our anchor in confusing times. [BLANK_AUDIO] in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen, amen, amen. (congregation applauding) Here's what I wanna do.

If you would like prayer for anything, I'm inviting some of our pastors, our deacons, some of our deacons' wives to come up here. Every Sunday you don't have to leave. If God's doing work in your heart, you don't have to leave, you can come receive prayer. Maybe you wanna talk about faith in Jesus for the first time, baptism. We had a salvation and a desire for baptism at the last service. If you wanna talk with somebody about that, come down front, allow for us to pray for you. If you just wanna take a next step here at our church, you're ready to be in. Text next, the word next, the 407-77. Hey, next week we're gonna be all in together, continuing to learn how to live for God in a world that doesn't. I hope you'll be back. I love you guys so much. See you then.