July 5, 2025 • 29 mins
Christian ; Follower of GOD Servant of CHRIST
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Decorated Combat VeteranCorporate; U.S. Marine Corps Urban Warfare Instrictor;
S.R.T. Commander Active Shooter Response Team
Law Enforcement Los Angeles Police (L.A.P.D.) Police Officer / Fugitive Recovery
F.B.I. Instructor N.R.A Instructor
Competition Shooter; Multi Time State Rifle Pistol Champion
Hunting; Life Long Hunter Proffessional Hunter and Guide
Private Security Contractor; Several Agencies, Current.
GOD Provides / JESUS Saves
Patreon
https://bit.ly/3jcLDuZ
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to simple man sermons, the preachings of
a simple man called by God to share the good
news of Jesus Christ. Today is going to be talking
about two false religions that have crept up in America
and more broadly in the Western world. Now, practicers, practitioners,
(00:29):
if they even know that they espouse these things, may
not even call it a religion. They may call it
a way of life. They might call it an ideology
or a philosophy, or living your best life, or whatever
they want. However they want to paint and cover over
(00:53):
these false religions, but they are just that, they are
false religions. The first one, sadly so prevalent in our
culture and society today, is hedonism, the worship of pleasure
from Marion Webster for more thorough definition. And what I
(01:18):
gave hedonism is the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is
the soul or chief good in life or a way
of life based on this principle, this idea that if
it makes you feel good, that it is good. That
if you just give in to pleasure, if you just
(01:42):
pleasure yourself and devote yourself to a life of pleasure,
you'll have a good life, that your life will be good,
that the sole purpose of one's life is pleasure. Hedonism.
(02:02):
I don't think that I need to convince you that
this is everywhere, even by people who maybe don't even
know what hedonism or can't define hedonism, but they put
pleasure on a pedestal. They spend so much of their
life devoted to pleasure, devoted to giving in to lusts
(02:27):
and passions and desires, whose point of life is to
fulfill any whim, no matter the long term ramifications, for
short term pleasure. This is rampant in our culture today. Now,
I want to keep this episode family friendly, and if
(02:51):
you're old enough to know what I'm talking about, then
you'll know with me discreetly talking about it without being
so overt. But think of how much of the Internet
is devoted to the fulfillment of physical pleasure, and tell
me that hedonism is not rampant in our culture and
(03:13):
society today. Think about what people will do to themselves
and others for the sake of pleasure. Now, you don't
have to go very far, open your eyes very wide.
If you're willing to see the obvious problem with this philosophy.
(03:36):
It's not true. Look at anybody that spends their life
devoted to physical pleasure. They don't become more free. They
become slaves to that thing to which they obey, whether
it be a drug addiction or alcohol, or the gratification
(03:57):
of certain physical desires. They become a slave to that.
They become enslaved by that, they become an addict, They
become depraved. They become less, not more free and happy.
So I didn't grow up a Christian. One of the
major turning points in my life was when I realized
(04:21):
that short term pleasure does not equal long term joy
and peace and happiness. That is the obvious flaw and
problem with hedonism, but that won't stop Satan from trying
to distract you from what really is true and giving
up a beautiful eternity and a good life for temporary,
(04:44):
fleeting physical pleasure. The other one we are plagued by
today is idolatry. And there are many forms of idolatry,
but one that plagues us in our affluent Western culture
(05:04):
and society today is the worship of money. To think
that money and obtaining money is what's going to give
your life purpose. The main focus of one's life. The
pinnacle of one's existence is the amount of money by
which they obtain. Many things can become an idol, but
(05:28):
I'd say an obvious one in Western culture and society,
what sadly in America, at least I can speak from experience,
has sadly to many become what they would call a
post Christian culture idolatry. You might think of as the
(05:51):
worship of trinkets or things like that, but it can
be anything that supplants to proper place that one worships
rather than God. And I'd say the obvious one in
Western culture and in America today is money, so much
so that people will measure so much so that many
people today will gauge how good or worthy a person
(06:13):
is based on the amount of zeros in their bank account,
or based on the amount of money that they have,
or the kind of car that they drive, or the
sneakers or shoes that they wear, as if somehow that
has any bearing on the quality of a man. They
will make the entire pursuit of their life about money.
(06:34):
Money is the driving motivating factor. And I would submit
to many the thing that they worship, whether they wouldn't,
whether they even know that or not, whether they would
admit that to themselves or not. For many, I think
the motivating factor in their life, their prime directive is
to get money, to get more money, And I would
(06:56):
say that is a and I would say that is
a very privilege and false religion. In America today, two
places I thought demonstrate this very well. One is human trafficking.
Do you know why human trafficking is such a big problem?
(07:17):
And if you don't think it is, go look up
stats on human trafficking, the amount of people that are
human trafficking, the amount of crime in human trafficking. Do
you know why that's a big problem. Look at these
two false religions and how it ties in. Why are
young women, to a larger extent, but also young men
(07:40):
human trafficked hedonism because men are willing to do it.
Men are willing to give into their base urges, even
if it causes somebody else very real physical pain, psychological pain,
(08:00):
literal imprisonment. They're willing to do that to another human
being to fulfill their pleasure, to fulfill their own gratification
at the cost of another human being. That is why
it is a thing. Because men are willing to do that.
You see the problem with hedonism. It does not lead
(08:21):
to freedom and peace, enjoy in a good life. It
leads to depravity and slavery, not just for the one
being enslaved, but for the one giving into their temptation.
It is bad all around. A tree is known by
its fruit, Jesus says, you will know them by their fruit.
The fruit of hedonism. One of the bad fruits of
(08:42):
hedonism is human trafficking. Why is it a thing? Because
men are willing to do that to another human being
to fulfill their own fleshly gratification for a fleeting pleasure.
They're willing to enslave and do physical psychological damage to
(09:02):
another human being. That's the fruit of hedonism. And don't
just think if you've never done it in person, that
you're free from it or you're not contributing to it.
Many of the things that men look at online come
from human trafficking in one way or another. Hedonism. The
(09:24):
other big reason that human trafficking is the thing ties
into the other false religion we aforementioned, the worship of money.
Men are willing to traffic these young women and sometimes
young men. They are willing to traffic these young children
for money. Because they're willing to literally destroy another person's
(09:45):
life for the sake of money. Does that not demonstrate
very clearly that they hold money as an idol, that
they worship money, that they're may goal in life is money,
even if it causes the destruction of another human life.
(10:08):
Hedonism and the worship idolatry of money are very clearly
seen in human trafficking. It's a very not the only,
but a very clear illustration. Another one universities, the bigger,
(10:32):
the more clearly seen if we look at places like
Harvard and Yale. Now, Harvard and Yale used to be
very devoted Christian organizations, devoted to the pursuit of Christian truth,
(10:53):
which is the only actual truth, Christian truth. Harvard and
Yale founded by I devout Christians for the pursuit of
Christian truth, the only true pursuit, the only pure pursuit
of knowledge truth. Now, what are the two main reasons
(11:15):
I submit to you be honest about this. What are
the two big reasons people go to Harvard and Yale.
People go to universities, largely young people today, to pursue
their pleasures. Do many people look forward to going to
college today because they really care about the pursuit of
Christian truth or truth at all, or do they go
(11:38):
to fulfill their own pleasure. Also, do many people go
to Harvard and Yale for the pursuit of truth or
for the ability that gives them to make more money
in their future. I don't even think I have to
defend that. Just think about that, honestly, saying, no good
(12:04):
happens there. But I'm saying you can see very clearly
in these big organizations like Harvard and Yale that their
main pursuit went from pursuing God. They were found that
as Christian shining lights in a dark wilderness for the
pursuit of Christianity to now centers of hedonism and obtaining money.
(12:30):
These are just a canary in the coal mine for
the culture for society. And there are clearer demonstrations of
hedonism and the idolatry of money, and likely we could
talk until your eyes glazed over about examples of this,
but I think those two very clearly and succinctly demonstrate
(12:52):
these problems, these false religions dominating our culture and society today.
Here's the thing, this is not new. You know, if
people today think like they've discovered some new thing, like
we used to be a Christian nation, but we've progressed
(13:14):
past that. This is garbage philosophy. By the way. We
haven't progressed, we've regressed back into sin. After people hacked
their way in the wilderness and risk so much to
form a Christian nation. We haven't progressed past that, we've
regressed from it. We've turned from the light back into
darkness and sin. This is nothing new if you look
(13:39):
at the entire Bible. But if you know loosely even
your stories of Genesis and Exodus, when God goes to
Moses to lead a people that he chooses to be
a nation, right of this group as separate from another nation.
(14:04):
When he takes them out of Egypt, he lays down
the Ten Commandments. How do the ten Commandments start? And
remember this is nothing new. I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out
of the house of bondage. You shall have no other
(14:29):
gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a
carved image any likeness of anything that is in the
heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
that is in the waters under the earth. You shall
not bow down to them nor serve them. For I
the Lord your God, to a jealous god, this is
nothing new. When we see Moses come down from the mountain,
(14:52):
what are the people doing. They are worshiping a golden calf.
And you might look look at that and think, oh,
how foolish and silly they were to worship a golden calf.
But are not so many men today worshiping the gold.
They don't even bother to fashion it into a calf.
They just worship the gold. They don't even bother with
(15:14):
the gold, which you might argue historically is real tangible wealth.
They worship something approximating gold zeros in a bank account
that literally have no value, but they've decided that's what
they're gonna worship in life, the representation of gold. You
(15:37):
might laugh at them or say how ignorant they were
for worshiping a golden calf. When men today literally worship
intangible zeros in a bank account because they think it
gives their life value and meaning, it is nothing new.
It is idolatry. If you look at hedonism, this is
(16:01):
not a new idea. If you look at pagan garbage,
religions of the past. They were wroth with hedonism. They
were drenched in hedonism. Look at ancient Greek and Roman culture.
For all the good things that it gave us, one
of the things they had wrong was hedonism pleasure. They
(16:23):
would kill each other in arenas for entertainment, reality TV. Anybody,
This is nothing new. Hedonism is nothing new. It's been
tried and failed so many times. So this new culture,
this new generation, it's nothing new. Hedonism that pursuit a
(16:44):
physical pleasure, all kinds of physical debauchery. This thing of
celebrity chefs, the fulfilling of that physical desire, which is
not wrong in and of itself, but if you put
it up on a pedestal and worship it, it is.
Celebrity chefs are nothing. They knew from what I understand,
they were around the ancient Rome, ancient Baghdad, things like that.
(17:04):
It's nothing new hedonism. It's not some new thing people discovered, like, oh,
what if we just did whatever we wanted and fulfilled
every physical pleasure that we had. Right, that's not a
new idea. It was abandoned because it failed. If you
look a little bit into history. One of the reasons
that the Puritans got to leaving the world that they
(17:30):
were in and crossing an ocean and hacking their way
in a wilderness to form a Christian light in a
dark world. If you look at the Church of England
and you look at a certain king literally making his
own church so he could marry other women to fulfill
(17:51):
those things, is that not hedonism? Is that not one
of the things that the Puritans were trying to escape
from when they founded these these universities in America like
Yale and Harvard. It's not new. If you look at
what Martin Luther railed against in his ninety five Theses
(18:14):
and the Reformation. If you study that but a little,
you will see one of the things that they were
trying to get away from. This is nothing new to show, clearly,
it's nothing new. Let's look at the words of Christ.
Let us look at the Gospel of Mark. Now, as
(18:35):
they were going out on the road, one came running,
knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what shall
I do that I may inherit eternal life? So Jesus
said to him, why do you call me good? No
one is good but one that is God. You know
the commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do
not steal, do not bear false witness, do not be fraud.
(18:59):
Honor your father and your mother. And he answered and
said to him, teacher, all these things I have kept
from my youth. Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him
and said to him, one thing you lack, go your way,
Sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and
(19:19):
you will have treasure in heaven. And come take up
the cross and follow me. But he was sad at
this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
We see here very clearly a man that chooses not
(19:41):
to follow Jesus for the sake of his money. He's
not doing what Jesus says for the sake of his money. Again,
this is nothing new. Do one another even more vivid
illustration if you have but the vaguest idea of the
(20:01):
Gospels and of Christ. Judas Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty
pieces of silver. He even tries to give the silver
back out of remorse. He knows that Jesus is innocent,
but he turned Jesus in. Jesus was crucified. Judas turned
(20:22):
him in for thirty pieces of silver, the love of
money over truth and what's right is nothing new. If
you look at Satan in the garden. If we look
at the serpent and eve in the garden. So when
(20:46):
the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the
tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its
fruit and ate. She gave in to that desire and
pleasure rather than listening to God. Again, these are nothing new.
(21:10):
You know why they're nothing new, because Satan is not new,
just like we see here the serpent in the garden,
and he's with he even with the judas is Scariot.
It's nothing new. That's one of the things that Satan does.
He deceives, He takes the good things that God gives
any twist to them. He wants you to worship things
(21:32):
other than God. If he can get you to worship
something and then other than God, that is pleasing to Satan.
That's why this is nothing new. It's not like some
new thing we discovered. It's not that we've progressed past Christianity.
We've regressed from it. Jesus Christ died to set us
(21:54):
free from this bondage and we've entangled ourselves into the
yoke of it again by listening to the deceiver, the
evil one Hacitan, giving into our lusts, giving into our idolatry,
rather than doing what God says. It's nothing new, because
(22:16):
that's what Satan does. Wants to pull your focus away
from the good to beautiful, the actual truth, and have
you pursuing something else, anything else, rather than truth. We
see when ponscious Pilot has Jesus in front of him,
literally truth made flesh. Jesus says, I am the Way,
(22:37):
the Truth, and the Life. He is literally the truth,
the embodiment literally of the truth. And Pilot literally has
in front of him truth, and he says, what is truth?
This is nothing new. If you give up actual truth
(23:00):
for a poor substitute, for pleasure, for comfort, for money,
you are not discovering some new thing. You are not
freeing yourself. You are metaphorically chaining yourself to something. You
(23:23):
are becoming a slave to something. The Bible says you
are a slave to the one you obey, whether of
sin leading to death. From Romans six, you are slaves
to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to
sin which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads
(23:46):
to righteousness. You are shackling yourself to a heavy, heavy burden,
the burden of sin. You can be set free. You
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. There
(24:09):
are many false religions, there are many idolatries, there are
many ways to go astray broad is the way that
leads to destruction, and many go by it. The good
news is, there's only one thing you need to focus on.
There's only one thing you need to pursue. There is
(24:31):
only one truth. Jesus is the way, the truth, and
the life. Are you pursuing? God? Is God the number
one goal of your life, the number one measure of
(24:52):
your life, Your relationship with God, the pursuit of God.
Satan would have you and worry and anxiety about all
these other things. He says, to focus on Him, his kingdom.
(25:12):
There's only one right way. From the Gospel of Matthew.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where
moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal,
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither
moth nor rust destroyed, and where thieves do not break
in and steal, For where your treasure is there, your
(25:36):
heart will be. Also. The lamp of the body is
the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole
body will be full of light. But if your eye
is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in you is darkness,
how great is that darkness. No one can serve to masters,
(26:01):
for either he will hate the one and love the other,
or else he will be loyal to the one and
despise the other. You can not serve God and Mammon. Therefore,
I say to you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat, or what you will drink, or
about your body. What you will put on. Is not
life more than food, in the body more than clothing.
(26:23):
Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow,
nor reap, nor gather in barns. Yet your heavenly Father
feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Which of you, by worrying, can have one cubit to
his stature. So why do you worry about clothing? Consider
the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither
toil nor spin. Yet I say to you that even Solomon,
(26:46):
in all his glory, was not a raid like one
of these. Now, if God so close the grass of
the field, which today is and tomorrow was thrown into
the oven, how much more will he clothe you, oh
you of little faith. And therefore do not worry saying
what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or
what shall we wear? For after all these things, the
(27:08):
gentile seek for your heavenly Father knows that you need
all these things. But seek first the Kingdom of God
and his righteousness, and all these things will be added
unto you. Repeating, but seek first the Kingdom of God
(27:34):
and his righteousness, and all these things will be added
unto you. Don't get distracted. You might remember the story
of the of Martha and Mary. And Martha is trying
to focus on all these other things, serving dinner, what's
for dinner, the house, the all the other all the
other things, and Mary is focused on Jesus. And Martha
(27:56):
comes to Jesus wanting him to back her up. This
is a paraphrase, of course, and she says, I'm doing
all this stuff, shouldn't you tell Mary to help me?
And Jesus doesn't. He rebukes Martha and says, Mary's focused
on the one thing that's really important me. She's focused
on me. And this is a paraphrase, right, But Jesus
(28:17):
he's the one that fed the five thousand, He's the
one that makes lame walk and opens the eyes of
the blind. Don't you think he can take care of
a dinner party? And it's easy to be harsh on
Martha here, but if we're honest, don't we all have
a little bit of Martha in us. We're worried and
distracted about so many things, when the one thing that
(28:39):
sometimes is right in front of us we don't see
because we're so distracted. Tangentially, similarly like ponscious Pilot who
has truth literally right in front of him, and he says,
what is truth? The good news is there's only one
thing we need to focus. Let the world's screw around
(29:03):
after all these things lost and in the dark. I
once was blind, but now I see. Let us open
our eyes and see the beauty and the light and
the truth that is Jesus Christ. Is that the guiding force,
(29:24):
the guiding thing, the main pursuit of your life? Is
it God? Is it Christ? It should be with that.
Thanks for listening and have a blessed day.
Hello, and welcome to simple man sermons, the preachings of
a simple man called by God to share the good
news of Jesus Christ. Today is going to be talking
about two false religions that have crept up in America
and more broadly in the Western world. Now, practicers, practitioners,
(00:29):
if they even know that they espouse these things, may
not even call it a religion. They may call it
a way of life. They might call it an ideology
or a philosophy, or living your best life, or whatever
they want. However they want to paint and cover over
(00:53):
these false religions, but they are just that, they are
false religions. The first one, sadly so prevalent in our
culture and society today, is hedonism, the worship of pleasure
from Marion Webster for more thorough definition. And what I
(01:18):
gave hedonism is the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is
the soul or chief good in life or a way
of life based on this principle, this idea that if
it makes you feel good, that it is good. That
if you just give in to pleasure, if you just
(01:42):
pleasure yourself and devote yourself to a life of pleasure,
you'll have a good life, that your life will be good,
that the sole purpose of one's life is pleasure. Hedonism.
(02:02):
I don't think that I need to convince you that
this is everywhere, even by people who maybe don't even
know what hedonism or can't define hedonism, but they put
pleasure on a pedestal. They spend so much of their
life devoted to pleasure, devoted to giving in to lusts
(02:27):
and passions and desires, whose point of life is to
fulfill any whim, no matter the long term ramifications, for
short term pleasure. This is rampant in our culture today. Now,
I want to keep this episode family friendly, and if
(02:51):
you're old enough to know what I'm talking about, then
you'll know with me discreetly talking about it without being
so overt. But think of how much of the Internet
is devoted to the fulfillment of physical pleasure, and tell
me that hedonism is not rampant in our culture and
(03:13):
society today. Think about what people will do to themselves
and others for the sake of pleasure. Now, you don't
have to go very far, open your eyes very wide.
If you're willing to see the obvious problem with this philosophy.
(03:36):
It's not true. Look at anybody that spends their life
devoted to physical pleasure. They don't become more free. They
become slaves to that thing to which they obey, whether
it be a drug addiction or alcohol, or the gratification
(03:57):
of certain physical desires. They become a slave to that.
They become enslaved by that, they become an addict, They
become depraved. They become less, not more free and happy.
So I didn't grow up a Christian. One of the
major turning points in my life was when I realized
(04:21):
that short term pleasure does not equal long term joy
and peace and happiness. That is the obvious flaw and
problem with hedonism, but that won't stop Satan from trying
to distract you from what really is true and giving
up a beautiful eternity and a good life for temporary,
(04:44):
fleeting physical pleasure. The other one we are plagued by
today is idolatry. And there are many forms of idolatry,
but one that plagues us in our affluent Western culture
(05:04):
and society today is the worship of money. To think
that money and obtaining money is what's going to give
your life purpose. The main focus of one's life. The
pinnacle of one's existence is the amount of money by
which they obtain. Many things can become an idol, but
(05:28):
I'd say an obvious one in Western culture and society,
what sadly in America, at least I can speak from experience,
has sadly to many become what they would call a
post Christian culture idolatry. You might think of as the
(05:51):
worship of trinkets or things like that, but it can
be anything that supplants to proper place that one worships
rather than God. And I'd say the obvious one in
Western culture and in America today is money, so much
so that people will measure so much so that many
people today will gauge how good or worthy a person
(06:13):
is based on the amount of zeros in their bank account,
or based on the amount of money that they have,
or the kind of car that they drive, or the
sneakers or shoes that they wear, as if somehow that
has any bearing on the quality of a man. They
will make the entire pursuit of their life about money.
(06:34):
Money is the driving motivating factor. And I would submit
to many the thing that they worship, whether they wouldn't,
whether they even know that or not, whether they would
admit that to themselves or not. For many, I think
the motivating factor in their life, their prime directive is
to get money, to get more money, And I would
(06:56):
say that is a and I would say that is
a very privilege and false religion. In America today, two
places I thought demonstrate this very well. One is human trafficking.
Do you know why human trafficking is such a big problem?
(07:17):
And if you don't think it is, go look up
stats on human trafficking, the amount of people that are
human trafficking, the amount of crime in human trafficking. Do
you know why that's a big problem. Look at these
two false religions and how it ties in. Why are
young women, to a larger extent, but also young men
(07:40):
human trafficked hedonism because men are willing to do it.
Men are willing to give into their base urges, even
if it causes somebody else very real physical pain, psychological pain,
(08:00):
literal imprisonment. They're willing to do that to another human
being to fulfill their pleasure, to fulfill their own gratification
at the cost of another human being. That is why
it is a thing. Because men are willing to do that.
You see the problem with hedonism. It does not lead
(08:21):
to freedom and peace, enjoy in a good life. It
leads to depravity and slavery, not just for the one
being enslaved, but for the one giving into their temptation.
It is bad all around. A tree is known by
its fruit, Jesus says, you will know them by their fruit.
The fruit of hedonism. One of the bad fruits of
(08:42):
hedonism is human trafficking. Why is it a thing? Because
men are willing to do that to another human being
to fulfill their own fleshly gratification for a fleeting pleasure.
They're willing to enslave and do physical psychological damage to
(09:02):
another human being. That's the fruit of hedonism. And don't
just think if you've never done it in person, that
you're free from it or you're not contributing to it.
Many of the things that men look at online come
from human trafficking in one way or another. Hedonism. The
(09:24):
other big reason that human trafficking is the thing ties
into the other false religion we aforementioned, the worship of money.
Men are willing to traffic these young women and sometimes
young men. They are willing to traffic these young children
for money. Because they're willing to literally destroy another person's
(09:45):
life for the sake of money. Does that not demonstrate
very clearly that they hold money as an idol, that
they worship money, that they're may goal in life is money,
even if it causes the destruction of another human life.
(10:08):
Hedonism and the worship idolatry of money are very clearly
seen in human trafficking. It's a very not the only,
but a very clear illustration. Another one universities, the bigger,
(10:32):
the more clearly seen if we look at places like
Harvard and Yale. Now, Harvard and Yale used to be
very devoted Christian organizations, devoted to the pursuit of Christian truth,
(10:53):
which is the only actual truth, Christian truth. Harvard and
Yale founded by I devout Christians for the pursuit of
Christian truth, the only true pursuit, the only pure pursuit
of knowledge truth. Now, what are the two main reasons
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I submit to you be honest about this. What are
the two big reasons people go to Harvard and Yale.
People go to universities, largely young people today, to pursue
their pleasures. Do many people look forward to going to
college today because they really care about the pursuit of
Christian truth or truth at all, or do they go
(11:38):
to fulfill their own pleasure. Also, do many people go
to Harvard and Yale for the pursuit of truth or
for the ability that gives them to make more money
in their future. I don't even think I have to
defend that. Just think about that, honestly, saying, no good
(12:04):
happens there. But I'm saying you can see very clearly
in these big organizations like Harvard and Yale that their
main pursuit went from pursuing God. They were found that
as Christian shining lights in a dark wilderness for the
pursuit of Christianity to now centers of hedonism and obtaining money.
(12:30):
These are just a canary in the coal mine for
the culture for society. And there are clearer demonstrations of
hedonism and the idolatry of money, and likely we could
talk until your eyes glazed over about examples of this,
but I think those two very clearly and succinctly demonstrate
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these problems, these false religions dominating our culture and society today.
Here's the thing, this is not new. You know, if
people today think like they've discovered some new thing, like
we used to be a Christian nation, but we've progressed
(13:14):
past that. This is garbage philosophy. By the way. We
haven't progressed, we've regressed back into sin. After people hacked
their way in the wilderness and risk so much to
form a Christian nation. We haven't progressed past that, we've
regressed from it. We've turned from the light back into
darkness and sin. This is nothing new if you look
(13:39):
at the entire Bible. But if you know loosely even
your stories of Genesis and Exodus, when God goes to
Moses to lead a people that he chooses to be
a nation, right of this group as separate from another nation.
(14:04):
When he takes them out of Egypt, he lays down
the Ten Commandments. How do the ten Commandments start? And
remember this is nothing new. I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out
of the house of bondage. You shall have no other
(14:29):
gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a
carved image any likeness of anything that is in the
heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
that is in the waters under the earth. You shall
not bow down to them nor serve them. For I
the Lord your God, to a jealous god, this is
nothing new. When we see Moses come down from the mountain,
(14:52):
what are the people doing. They are worshiping a golden calf.
And you might look look at that and think, oh,
how foolish and silly they were to worship a golden calf.
But are not so many men today worshiping the gold.
They don't even bother to fashion it into a calf.
They just worship the gold. They don't even bother with
(15:14):
the gold, which you might argue historically is real tangible wealth.
They worship something approximating gold zeros in a bank account
that literally have no value, but they've decided that's what
they're gonna worship in life, the representation of gold. You
(15:37):
might laugh at them or say how ignorant they were
for worshiping a golden calf. When men today literally worship
intangible zeros in a bank account because they think it
gives their life value and meaning, it is nothing new.
It is idolatry. If you look at hedonism, this is
(16:01):
not a new idea. If you look at pagan garbage,
religions of the past. They were wroth with hedonism. They
were drenched in hedonism. Look at ancient Greek and Roman culture.
For all the good things that it gave us, one
of the things they had wrong was hedonism pleasure. They
(16:23):
would kill each other in arenas for entertainment, reality TV. Anybody,
This is nothing new. Hedonism is nothing new. It's been
tried and failed so many times. So this new culture,
this new generation, it's nothing new. Hedonism that pursuit a
(16:44):
physical pleasure, all kinds of physical debauchery. This thing of
celebrity chefs, the fulfilling of that physical desire, which is
not wrong in and of itself, but if you put
it up on a pedestal and worship it, it is.
Celebrity chefs are nothing. They knew from what I understand,
they were around the ancient Rome, ancient Baghdad, things like that.
(17:04):
It's nothing new hedonism. It's not some new thing people discovered, like, oh,
what if we just did whatever we wanted and fulfilled
every physical pleasure that we had. Right, that's not a
new idea. It was abandoned because it failed. If you
look a little bit into history. One of the reasons
that the Puritans got to leaving the world that they
(17:30):
were in and crossing an ocean and hacking their way
in a wilderness to form a Christian light in a
dark world. If you look at the Church of England
and you look at a certain king literally making his
own church so he could marry other women to fulfill
(17:51):
those things, is that not hedonism? Is that not one
of the things that the Puritans were trying to escape
from when they founded these these universities in America like
Yale and Harvard. It's not new. If you look at
what Martin Luther railed against in his ninety five Theses
(18:14):
and the Reformation. If you study that but a little,
you will see one of the things that they were
trying to get away from. This is nothing new to show, clearly,
it's nothing new. Let's look at the words of Christ.
Let us look at the Gospel of Mark. Now, as
(18:35):
they were going out on the road, one came running,
knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what shall
I do that I may inherit eternal life? So Jesus
said to him, why do you call me good? No
one is good but one that is God. You know
the commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do
not steal, do not bear false witness, do not be fraud.
(18:59):
Honor your father and your mother. And he answered and
said to him, teacher, all these things I have kept
from my youth. Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him
and said to him, one thing you lack, go your way,
Sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and
(19:19):
you will have treasure in heaven. And come take up
the cross and follow me. But he was sad at
this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
We see here very clearly a man that chooses not
(19:41):
to follow Jesus for the sake of his money. He's
not doing what Jesus says for the sake of his money. Again,
this is nothing new. Do one another even more vivid
illustration if you have but the vaguest idea of the
(20:01):
Gospels and of Christ. Judas Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty
pieces of silver. He even tries to give the silver
back out of remorse. He knows that Jesus is innocent,
but he turned Jesus in. Jesus was crucified. Judas turned
(20:22):
him in for thirty pieces of silver, the love of
money over truth and what's right is nothing new. If
you look at Satan in the garden. If we look
at the serpent and eve in the garden. So when
(20:46):
the woman saw that the tree was good for food,
and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the
tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its
fruit and ate. She gave in to that desire and
pleasure rather than listening to God. Again, these are nothing new.
(21:10):
You know why they're nothing new, because Satan is not new,
just like we see here the serpent in the garden,
and he's with he even with the judas is Scariot.
It's nothing new. That's one of the things that Satan does.
He deceives, He takes the good things that God gives
any twist to them. He wants you to worship things
(21:32):
other than God. If he can get you to worship
something and then other than God, that is pleasing to Satan.
That's why this is nothing new. It's not like some
new thing we discovered. It's not that we've progressed past Christianity.
We've regressed from it. Jesus Christ died to set us
(21:54):
free from this bondage and we've entangled ourselves into the
yoke of it again by listening to the deceiver, the
evil one Hacitan, giving into our lusts, giving into our idolatry,
rather than doing what God says. It's nothing new, because
(22:16):
that's what Satan does. Wants to pull your focus away
from the good to beautiful, the actual truth, and have
you pursuing something else, anything else, rather than truth. We
see when ponscious Pilot has Jesus in front of him,
literally truth made flesh. Jesus says, I am the Way,
(22:37):
the Truth, and the Life. He is literally the truth,
the embodiment literally of the truth. And Pilot literally has
in front of him truth, and he says, what is truth?
This is nothing new. If you give up actual truth
(23:00):
for a poor substitute, for pleasure, for comfort, for money,
you are not discovering some new thing. You are not
freeing yourself. You are metaphorically chaining yourself to something. You
(23:23):
are becoming a slave to something. The Bible says you
are a slave to the one you obey, whether of
sin leading to death. From Romans six, you are slaves
to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to
sin which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads
(23:46):
to righteousness. You are shackling yourself to a heavy, heavy burden,
the burden of sin. You can be set free. You
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. There
(24:09):
are many false religions, there are many idolatries, there are
many ways to go astray broad is the way that
leads to destruction, and many go by it. The good
news is, there's only one thing you need to focus on.
There's only one thing you need to pursue. There is
(24:31):
only one truth. Jesus is the way, the truth, and
the life. Are you pursuing? God? Is God the number
one goal of your life, the number one measure of
(24:52):
your life, Your relationship with God, the pursuit of God.
Satan would have you and worry and anxiety about all
these other things. He says, to focus on Him, his kingdom.
(25:12):
There's only one right way. From the Gospel of Matthew.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where
moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal,
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither
moth nor rust destroyed, and where thieves do not break
in and steal, For where your treasure is there, your
(25:36):
heart will be. Also. The lamp of the body is
the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole
body will be full of light. But if your eye
is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in you is darkness,
how great is that darkness. No one can serve to masters,
(26:01):
for either he will hate the one and love the other,
or else he will be loyal to the one and
despise the other. You can not serve God and Mammon. Therefore,
I say to you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat, or what you will drink, or
about your body. What you will put on. Is not
life more than food, in the body more than clothing.
(26:23):
Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow,
nor reap, nor gather in barns. Yet your heavenly Father
feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Which of you, by worrying, can have one cubit to
his stature. So why do you worry about clothing? Consider
the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither
toil nor spin. Yet I say to you that even Solomon,
(26:46):
in all his glory, was not a raid like one
of these. Now, if God so close the grass of
the field, which today is and tomorrow was thrown into
the oven, how much more will he clothe you, oh
you of little faith. And therefore do not worry saying
what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or
what shall we wear? For after all these things, the
(27:08):
gentile seek for your heavenly Father knows that you need
all these things. But seek first the Kingdom of God
and his righteousness, and all these things will be added
unto you. Repeating, but seek first the Kingdom of God
(27:34):
and his righteousness, and all these things will be added
unto you. Don't get distracted. You might remember the story
of the of Martha and Mary. And Martha is trying
to focus on all these other things, serving dinner, what's
for dinner, the house, the all the other all the
other things, and Mary is focused on Jesus. And Martha
(27:56):
comes to Jesus wanting him to back her up. This
is a paraphrase, of course, and she says, I'm doing
all this stuff, shouldn't you tell Mary to help me?
And Jesus doesn't. He rebukes Martha and says, Mary's focused
on the one thing that's really important me. She's focused
on me. And this is a paraphrase, right, But Jesus
(28:17):
he's the one that fed the five thousand, He's the
one that makes lame walk and opens the eyes of
the blind. Don't you think he can take care of
a dinner party? And it's easy to be harsh on
Martha here, but if we're honest, don't we all have
a little bit of Martha in us. We're worried and
distracted about so many things, when the one thing that
(28:39):
sometimes is right in front of us we don't see
because we're so distracted. Tangentially, similarly like ponscious Pilot who
has truth literally right in front of him, and he says,
what is truth? The good news is there's only one
thing we need to focus. Let the world's screw around
(29:03):
after all these things lost and in the dark. I
once was blind, but now I see. Let us open
our eyes and see the beauty and the light and
the truth that is Jesus Christ. Is that the guiding force,
(29:24):
the guiding thing, the main pursuit of your life? Is
it God? Is it Christ? It should be with that.
Thanks for listening and have a blessed day.
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