SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.
SPEAKER_00: Visit us online at the lookout.church.
SPEAKER_00: See, it's so good to have you here.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, if if you're uh if you're newer to the church, if if maybe this is your first Sunday here at The Lookout, my name is Luke.
SPEAKER_00: So thrilled that you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you came to Fallfest on Friday night.
SPEAKER_00: Who is it?
SPEAKER_00: Fallfest on Friday night?
SPEAKER_00: It's a great time, a fantastic time.
SPEAKER_00: We had probably 250 to 300 people in the building through the whole night.
SPEAKER_00: So many people from the community.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to say, uh, as far as you know the lookout church family goes, it just it takes an entire army to make these kinds of things happen.
SPEAKER_00: I want to say huge shout out to Carly Robertson and my wife, Megan Humbrecht, first of all.
SPEAKER_00: Um they were the they were the ringleaders, but if but we had, gosh, we had dozens and upon dozens of volunteers.
SPEAKER_00: Even if you weren't here for Fallfest, so many people came during the week because you shared the heart of wanting to uh make it make it happen and host a place.
SPEAKER_00: And so huge shout out to all of our volunteers.
SPEAKER_00: Give it up for all the volunteers.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to remind us this is the kind of thing we get to do.
SPEAKER_00: I know not all of us have families with young kids, but we get to host these kinds of environments.
SPEAKER_00: It's how we open the doors to this building.
SPEAKER_00: This building is not just for us, it is for all of those God wants to reach, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so throughout the year, we have these events and it requires all of us to lean in together.
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for being a part, for joining forces, and it was an incredible night.
SPEAKER_00: We had we had friends, uh, I talked to people after Fall Fest.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them said, Man, I just felt so much peace here with you guys tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And if if you're willing, I'd love to come and be a part on a Sunday morning sometime.
SPEAKER_00: And we said, Yes, come and be a part.
SPEAKER_00: I had conversations like that all night with people who are like, we love what you're doing, and we love to connect with the church.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we want to do.
SPEAKER_00: So praise God for all the connections, and let's just keep being a hospitable, welcoming church.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right, if you have your Bible, open up to Matthew chapter 28.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: We are going to jump into the scriptures today.
SPEAKER_00: And uh if you've ever read the Bible and thought, wow, this thing is is weird, um, that's because it is weird.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's actually probably weirder than you think it is.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but also you are weirder than you think you are.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the premise of this whole series.
SPEAKER_00: Um some of us believe that we're just nothing more than sacks of flesh and bone and just cells with just randomly firing thoughts and neurons and all this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: You are much more than that, and we live in a world that is much more than that.
SPEAKER_00: And part of the story that we need to enter into is a story that's way bigger than we thought it was.
SPEAKER_00: It's way more mysterious, it's way more enchanted than we thought it was.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's the story of God and the story of what is seen and what is unseen.
SPEAKER_00: I want to start with Matthew chapter 28, a very well-known passage, and we're going to reverse engineer the sermon today.
SPEAKER_00: So, Matthew 28, if you don't have your Bible, it'll be on the screen behind me.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says this.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me.
SPEAKER_00: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you to the very end of the age.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Let's say it together.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So this is where we're starting today.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a very familiar passage in church worlds.
SPEAKER_00: You probably, if you've been to church before, you've probably heard this one.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of some of Jesus' famous last words, so to speak, um, at least on earth.
SPEAKER_00: And he was commissioning his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: We know this passage is the great commission, but you know, some of us read a passage like this and think like, okay, this is like, you know, this is his last pitch, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is his last kind of recruitment strategy.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of Jesus marketing messages, disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, take whatever you've learned and go out.
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be a referral bonus if you get people to come in to the church, and it's gonna be awesome.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna work out well for you.
SPEAKER_00: But it's so much more than that.
SPEAKER_00: The depth here is so much more profound than what meets the eye.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus, he starts off this passage talking about authority.
SPEAKER_00: He says, All authority has been given to me, authority in heaven and on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's just flag that word authority.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Therefore, go and make disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Basically invite others to come be a part of what I'm doing on earth.
SPEAKER_00: And the way I want you to do that is by baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been baptized, probably a lot of you have been baptized before.
SPEAKER_00: And it's more than just a simple initiation process, you know, you fill out your commitment card.
SPEAKER_00: I'm officially a part of the church.
SPEAKER_00: It's much more than, do you know that when you enter into the waters of baptism, when you go underneath, it's it's representative of your old life being buried and all of your former allegiances, all of your former uh uh motivations and desires, everything that marked your life before is now buried with Christ, and you come up and you're all of your allegiances are now dead, except your allegiance to the Father and the Son and the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you're baptized, it's it's so much more than just getting wet and going underwater and everybody cheering.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's sending a message that your allegiance has shifted from the false gods of this world to the one true king of all.
SPEAKER_00: That is what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: And your life is now marked by no other name than the name.
SPEAKER_00: You're baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Who here has been baptized into a new allegiance of the Father and the Son and the Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you did that, you sent a ripple effect in unseen places that I am set apart for more than myself and more than what this world has to offer me.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a renunciation of what the world has to offer, and it's a new allegiance to the King of Kings.
SPEAKER_00: So the Great Commission is not just merely a call to mission, and it's announcement.
SPEAKER_00: It's an announcement of a new world order.
SPEAKER_00: It's a call to participate in the cosmic plan to reclaim and redeem the world from unseen powers and forces of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to church, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: You thought you were coming to talk about how to be a good person today.
SPEAKER_00: And we are, but we're doing it from the back side, all right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls us and he announces something has shifted.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to come be a part of this new day, this new world that I'm making.
SPEAKER_00: So we're in this series we launched last week called The Unseen Realm.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, if you were here last week, you got kind of like a baseline foundation.
SPEAKER_00: And if not, that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about some weird things today, too.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about some of the strange parts of the Bible, some of the parts we don't know what to do with.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking at what the Bible has to say, not just about what's seen, but what is unseen.
SPEAKER_00: And we're living in a time, the reason that's important is because we're living in a time where we're told that this is all there is.
SPEAKER_00: What you see is all there is, right?
SPEAKER_00: And yet there's much more going on in your life than you think there is.
SPEAKER_00: There's much more going on in this world than you think there is, and there always has been.
SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, as a culture, we do have this innate curiosity towards the supernatural, but most do not live as if the supernatural has actually any bearing on our lives.
SPEAKER_00: It's just kind of an interesting peripheral thing to the real show that's happening right in front of us, and that's we have to just re-enter the story of God and the biblical worldview to see that there is much more going on than we think.
SPEAKER_00: One of my earliest memories of just of realizing that there's more here than what meets the eye.
SPEAKER_00: When I was a kid growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, my brother and I one evening, my parents had a bunch of people over for a worship night, and they were in their basement just rocking out hippie style in the basement, just singing songs kind of like we were singing here.
SPEAKER_00: My brother and I are like, all right, let's go have some fun.
SPEAKER_00: And so we were out in the driveway, we're doing what adolescent boys do.
SPEAKER_00: We found a can of aerosol and a book of matches.
SPEAKER_00: And we just we discovered the wonderful technology of a self-made flamethrower.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're out in the we're out in the driveway looking for insects and things to burn.
SPEAKER_00: Now, meanwhile, uh we're we're out there for a little while, and then my dad comes out the side door of our house and he comes out and he's like, Boys, get in the house.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we thought it was just kind of the natural instinct of a father who realized their boys are up to no good.
SPEAKER_00: And it kind of was.
SPEAKER_00: But we came in the house and a little bit later he told us that when they were downstairs worshiping, he just had a sense, go check on the boys.
SPEAKER_00: He just had he just he just heard a voice that said, Go check on your sons.
SPEAKER_00: So he went and checked on us, and when he came and opened the door, he he he somehow had a vision or saw in the spirit this massive fig dark figure hovering above us, about ready to lay it, like to just crush us with a hammer.
SPEAKER_00: And he saw that like a 30-foot figure just out behind us.
SPEAKER_00: You can call it a demon, you can call it whatever you want to call it, a force of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And he said it it freaked him out, and he called us in and he reminded us like, listen, what you're doing here, it's not just you.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember in that moment realizing that we thought that we were playing with aerosol, with making flame flowers, and in that moment I realized that we're not the only ones at play here, that this massive thing, that we're we're we're not alone, that there are actually invisible forces working with us towards our destruction.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to know that there are actually invisible forces on this this world working towards your destruction.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus, as we'll come to find out in a little bit, has undermined the forces of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: But you need you need to know that there are forces of darkness that are working night and day towards our destruction.
SPEAKER_00: It was one of my first memories of this this feeling of, oh, what I do is not just always me doing it, that I can be influenced by more than myself, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and and so, of course, in that moment I was thinking, God, I will never, I will never try to burn insects again, right?
SPEAKER_00: I promise to you.
SPEAKER_00: But I I started to realize, oh, there's more at work in my life than I think.
SPEAKER_00: And as I got older, that question started to change to, oh, I think there's more at work in the world than I think.
SPEAKER_00: And it started to give way to the questions as I started growing up of why is the world so broken?
SPEAKER_00: Why are things so dark?
SPEAKER_00: What what is at work in our lives and in our nations and in our governments and in the systems of the world?
SPEAKER_00: And I realize even from a young age that it's more than meets the eye.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you've had that question, maybe that's why you're here today.
SPEAKER_00: You you look at your life and you're thinking, oh my gosh, there's something that it feels like it's more than just me at work.
SPEAKER_00: That maybe you come in here to this place this morning and and you're recognizing some brokenness, or maybe some darkness in your own heart, or darkness in the world around you.
SPEAKER_00: And and the answers that other people have given you for why that is, it's just it's not quite getting to the core.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, it's because it's much deeper, much more profound than you think it is.
SPEAKER_00: See, in a secular society, we've completely dismissed spiritual realities, and yet our lives crave for supernatural answers.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why so many people are still seeking out supernatural answers in every particular way.
SPEAKER_00: And when we think about trying to assign reasons to the brokenness of the world, there's so many things that we can point to.
SPEAKER_00: We try to point to all the isms of our day.
SPEAKER_00: We're kind of we're we're living in a time where we're hyper-focused on all of the isms.
SPEAKER_00: So if you think of something that's broken, it's because of an ism, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's because of racism and nationalism and sexism and all the isms.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the that's the reason.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's broken.
SPEAKER_00: It's the isms, as if that answered any questions about what got to the core of what it is.
SPEAKER_00: And it's and we realize after you go down this train a little while, from a biblical worldview, it's not just cultural issues that we just need more awareness and education.
SPEAKER_00: We have a deeply spiritual problem that requires heaven solutions.
SPEAKER_00: Are you guys with me this morning?
SPEAKER_00: An author of this book, The Death of Satan, it's basically how a book of about how America has lost its sense of evil.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote in his book, Andrew Del Banco, he wrote this.
SPEAKER_00: You can read this on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: He said, A gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources for coping with it.
SPEAKER_00: We have jettisoned in the West the idea of cosmic evil or transcendent evil or supernatural evil.
SPEAKER_00: We don't believe in it.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we don't even use the word evil because it implies moral absolutes and value judgments.
SPEAKER_00: So we use medical terms.
SPEAKER_00: We talk about dysfunction, we talk about pathology, we don't use moral terminology.
SPEAKER_00: But as the 20th century has gone on, it's gotten harder and harder to say that Holocaust and ethnic cleansing and serial killing is just bad psychological and sociological adjustment.
SPEAKER_00: And you guys probably know you read a passage like that, and you're like, yeah, that's this is kind of the world we live in.
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to find all of the other reasons for the problems we face.
SPEAKER_00: But the scripture, when we open the scripture, it invites us into a much larger and much more deeper story.
SPEAKER_00: And so to understand, though, going back to the Great Commission, to understand what Jesus is talking about of all authority has now been given to me in heaven and on earth, I'm gonna send you out now.
SPEAKER_00: To even understand the profound nature of that, we have to kind of reverse engineer, we have to go back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're gonna do for the next just kind of movement of the sermon here.
SPEAKER_00: I want to take you back and see the book of Genesis, and we're gonna look at three different rebellions that got us into the mess that we're in right now.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: We are in a mess.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is at work undoing that mess.
SPEAKER_00: And he starts with us and he moves out from us and all those who call on his name.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Are you guys with me this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Can we do this?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So most of us, when we think of the story of the, you know, the Christian message, the Christian story, most of us are very familiar with the first uh the first tragedy, which we call the fall.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna talk about that first.
SPEAKER_00: But there's actually three rebellions that we read about in the first 11 chapters of the Bible that all have the different components and actually all have affected the condition of the world even as it goes today.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna start though in Genesis chapter 3, chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you guys know when you open the Bible, you open up to chapter 1, we start with Adam and Eve and a garden.
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, Eden, this the garden of Eden, it's not just a paradise, this wonderland, it is that, but it's also a place where heaven meets earth, where heaven and earth overlapped.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sacred mountain, a temple garden.
SPEAKER_00: And um, and it's a place where God was in fellowship with his people.
SPEAKER_00: And some of this is, by the way, just a little bit of review.
SPEAKER_00: We're just diving deeper into where we're at last week, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So I mentioned these three things last week.
SPEAKER_00: We're going a little deeper today.
SPEAKER_00: So we start in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: It was a place of blessing and a place of overflow, and it was a place where God commissioned Adam and Eve and said, I want you to out of union with me and communion with me and relationship, full relationship with God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: That He He gave us a unique commissioning.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't give any other spiritual being this commissioning.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You are to go into all of the world, you are to have dominion over the the earth and to bless it, to extend blessing to every corner of the earth, to cultivate the land, to multiply, to bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And that was a unique thing he gave to Adam and Eve, but they weren't the only ones in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you guys know we meet very quickly in Genesis chapter 3 a serpent in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: We'll just read this passage together, Genesis chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord had made.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of the tree in the garden?
SPEAKER_00: And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.
SPEAKER_00: But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
SPEAKER_00: So it's one of the first kind of strange passages when you get to the origin story of the scriptures, we immediately have to do something with the talking snake.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Now it's it's when when you when you open this, what's really fascinating, again, we're living in this thin place between heaven and earth and Eden.
SPEAKER_00: But what's fascinating is like we talked about last week, around the throne of God are creatures and beings of all kinds.
SPEAKER_00: And the scripture refers to them as the Elohim.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us refer to God as Elohim, the God of all gods, and he is the Elohim of Elohims.
SPEAKER_00: He is the most high God.
SPEAKER_00: So we're not talking about polytheism or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: It's just saying he created a whole council, he created an entire cast of characters around him that have influence and actually bearing on the state of the world.
SPEAKER_00: The scripture that we open the service with today, Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, he saw some of this.
SPEAKER_00: When he looked into heaven, Isaiah chapter 6, it says, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and the train of the road filled the temple, and above him stood the seraphim.
SPEAKER_00: Now, seraphim are a type of angelic being, and they're very bizarre and they're very weird.
SPEAKER_00: What's really fascinating though was that the word for serpent in Genesis is this word seraph, and it has to do with uh almost the same image of seraphim.
SPEAKER_00: So there's beings around the throne that actually look like that the form is like a snake.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually called a seraph.
SPEAKER_00: So we read later that we we know now that the serpent in Genesis is much like what the Bible will eventually call the Satan or the adversary, the one who was against, he's the accuser.
SPEAKER_00: In Genesis, we know him as the serpent, but Satan was at one point in the council of God with God in heaven, and he believed himself to he grafts for more.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to be more than the Most High God.
SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, he was cursed, he had to leave heaven and come to earth.
SPEAKER_00: We know that in the garden, even the word serpent uses this word seraph, it's almost like a fallen seraphim in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: So that's just a little kind of geeky Bible thing, just to kind of connect some passages.
SPEAKER_00: And we we read here that there's a serpent who was this divine rebel, and his goal at this point was because he could not become more than what he was.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to influence the condition of man, of Adam and Eve, and he wanted to work to destroy what God loves.
SPEAKER_00: And he did this through asking a simple question.
SPEAKER_00: It was really interesting in the garden, in this Genesis chapter 3, where we read about sin coming into the picture in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Satan and the serpent, he did not come to Eve and say, Hey, here's a good idea.
SPEAKER_00: Worship Satan, you know?
SPEAKER_00: He didn't he didn't just come out and say, I want you to do evil.
SPEAKER_00: Evil would be a really good idea.
SPEAKER_00: All right, there's nothing explicit about what he said, how it would be counter to what she wanted.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he just asked a question, Do you want to be like God?
SPEAKER_00: Did God say, You shall not eat any of the of the tree in the garden?
SPEAKER_00: And so he starts with a simple question, which is what the enemy does.
SPEAKER_00: He he starts to appeal to our deepest desires.
SPEAKER_00: And in this fact, this passage, do you want to be like God's?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Do you want to be like the Elohim?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe do you want to be like the gods, like like those who surround God's throne?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that sin starts not with just choosing bad things over good things?
SPEAKER_00: Sin starts with our desire to grasp for more than what we've been given.
SPEAKER_00: There's something inside of us that longs to be to live in the fullness of who we are.
SPEAKER_00: But the enemy knows that within that there's also a desire sometimes to be more than what we are.
SPEAKER_00: And what was so grievous about this moment when Eve responds to the serpent in the garden is that while we were created to be in fellowship with God and to bless the world in a moment that we were convinced, here's where the grievous moment happened in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: In this particular moment, we were convinced that God was holding something back from us, and in order to get more, we had To do things our way.
SPEAKER_00: We were convinced in a single moment that God didn't actually want the very best from us, and if things are going to happen, I'm gonna have to take matters into my own hands.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to grasp for more.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And in this moment, in this grasping for more, for the fruit that God said, do not eat of that fruit.
SPEAKER_00: In this moment, peace was fractured, shalom was fractured.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we call the fall in the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And sin at this point now became a condition that would follow us to this very day, that the human race would be born into.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you know what that feels like.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've heard that voice too.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to be happy, you're gonna have to do it for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to make more.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do it God's way.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to find another way to live the life that you deserve.
SPEAKER_00: You ever felt that before?
SPEAKER_00: All of us have.
SPEAKER_00: We all do.
SPEAKER_00: We're tempted to go outside of the bounds of what God has made us to be and how to live, and to do it in our way, to be the masters of our own destiny.
SPEAKER_00: Satan does not try to get us to worship, he tries us to get us to worship ourselves and to be the master of our own selves.
SPEAKER_00: So this in Genesis 3 was the entrance of this kind of fracture, just a broken mirror inside of us.
SPEAKER_00: The image of God is still there, but it's broken fracture, almost like looking into a broken mirror.
SPEAKER_00: But that wasn't the only rebellion in scripture.
SPEAKER_00: There is a second rebellion, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the second rebellion, Genesis 6, and this is the one that that gets a lot of attention because it's the most bizarre, okay?
SPEAKER_00: This is Genesis 6, starting at verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: I'll read this for you.
SPEAKER_00: When man began to multiply in the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be 120 years.
SPEAKER_00: The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came in the daughters of man, and they were born to them, uh these were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
SPEAKER_00: So verse five says this The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was evil, was only evil continually, and the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot here, a lot to lot going on here.
SPEAKER_00: And so somehow, Genesis 6, this idea of the sons of man, that's again, it's this word Elohim, the sons of God saw the daughters of the earth and decided that they wanted to go outside the bounds of what God had given them and to have dominion over the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Um and so they rebelled against God, they came and they took human wives and they produced, they reproduced with them.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is where we get this word Nephilim, where giants in the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: So if you ever read the story of David and Goliath, um, a lot is spoken of how Goliath came from this line, and there were giants roaming the land.
SPEAKER_00: Again, you can go down your YouTube uh wormholes on your own time and uh and find out a lot more about that, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm this is probably the only time I will ever speak of the Nephilim uh while while we're here at the lookout.
SPEAKER_00: I've never preached on this ever before, and it's not actually part of my plan to make this the main point.
SPEAKER_00: What I want to show you here, though, the reason why we have to look at a passage like this, because it shows us again, somehow these divine beings said, we want more than what we have, and they came to earth to integrate, to enmesh themselves into the affairs of humans.
SPEAKER_00: And some of that was of their own desire for power and control to have more than what they had.
SPEAKER_00: And in doing so, it corrupted man, and it said from this passage, God looked down on the affairs of man, saw the evil that was happening, and it grieved his heart.
SPEAKER_00: Things had gotten so off track, these rebellions happening all around him had gotten so after that it had grieved his heart, the corruption that was on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's let's ask a question really quick.
SPEAKER_00: Why does God allow humans and even divine beings to rebel against him?
SPEAKER_00: Like if he is the God of all gods and he can get his way, why would he ever let rebellion happen in the first place?
SPEAKER_00: And and and and really the best answer for that is to understand the nature of love.
SPEAKER_00: Love requires agency, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So that's why every day when my wife and I get out of bed, she doesn't hold a gun to my head for me to love her.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't say, you're going to love me today or else.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Now sometimes I feel that way, or maybe sometimes she wants to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: But that would be compelling.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's a really good way to get compliance.
SPEAKER_00: It's a terrible way to have a relationship where love actually exists.
SPEAKER_00: Love requires agency, love requires freedom if it's going to be true love.
SPEAKER_00: And so, out of the overflow of the heart of God, he created beings around him, he created humans, and he said, I'm going to give you, I'm going to invite you into a relationship, but you have the ability to say no.
SPEAKER_00: It's called free will.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the only way to know that we are loved by God is because he gives us the opportunity to not love him.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: This is kind of the texture, this is the context for why this would even happen in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we read a passage like this of how the sons of God came to the earth, that it's not just talking about ancient weirdness, it's talking about unseen influences behind much of the chaos in our world.
SPEAKER_00: What looks like merely human evil is often has spiritual roots.
SPEAKER_00: And so the world was corrupt.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that in this story, hang with me just for a bit longer, and then I'm going to talk about the really good news about all this.
SPEAKER_00: After this, God was so grieved, he said, we got to wipe the slate clean.
SPEAKER_00: And so we we read that at this point he decides to bring a worldwide flood and said, This is so corrupt what happened, that we got to start over.
SPEAKER_00: He chooses a family, Noah and his family, he preserves them on an ark.
SPEAKER_00: And so for 40 days and 40 nights, they, you know, they they uh they're in this boat.
SPEAKER_00: And once the rain subsides, they come out of the boat.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the first things they do is they plant a garden.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's almost a restoration of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a it's a chance to start over.
SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, maybe now, maybe they will choose me.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they will live for me.
SPEAKER_00: But we see that very quickly after Noah comes out of the boat and his family comes out of the boat, the sin of Adam is still inside of them.
SPEAKER_00: There's still a grasping for more, there's still something that wasn't quite healed in their condition, and they come out, and then the affairs of man start to progress towards evil and wickedness again.
SPEAKER_00: And so we get to a third rebellion in Genesis chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a chapter that talks about a tower that's being built.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 11, starting in verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Then they came and said, Come, let us build for ourselves a city, a tower with its top and the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord came down to the city in the tower which the children of man had built, and the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
SPEAKER_00: Come, let us go down there and confuse their language, so they may not know, understand one another's speech.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of the earth, and they left off they they left off building the city.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So, a couple things that are important to understand about this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Is God so insecure that he can't stand it when we build tall buildings?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if so, New York City is screwed, all right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, is this really about skyscrapers?
SPEAKER_00: Is this about man's ingenuity and engineering feats to build something impressive?
SPEAKER_00: That's not what's going on here.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: What's going on here is what they're building is somewhat of a temple.
SPEAKER_00: The ancient word is a ziggurat, and it's meant to be a place of divine union.
SPEAKER_00: And and and the people at this point think, let's go build something in our own strength in our own way.
SPEAKER_00: And what'd they say?
SPEAKER_00: To make a name for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: So there's something a part of them.
SPEAKER_00: They will they want to build something so great that they would get the glory, they would make a name for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why this particular passage, again, was contrary to the ways of God, because his original plan was a temple garden, which the blessing was not to be hoarded and to be concentrated into one place, but to extend to all of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And here you have people saying, hey, let's do something great, that all the nations gather into one place.
SPEAKER_00: That's not God's plan and never has been God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: His plan is always that when he unleashes blessing, it's to spread to the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So in that way, Tower of Babel is kind of this anti-Eden.
SPEAKER_00: It's opposite of what God had planned for Eden.
SPEAKER_00: It was rebellious in that way, it was selfish.
SPEAKER_00: It was about self-glorification, it was about accumulation.
SPEAKER_00: How do we get everything concentrated into one particular area?
SPEAKER_00: We are still prone to that today in our lives, are we not?
SPEAKER_00: How often are we prone to like, how do we accumulate?
SPEAKER_00: How do we guard, even as churches, how do we, how do we just do our little thing here?
SPEAKER_00: That's not God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: God's plan is to unleash the people of God for the blessing of the entire earth.
SPEAKER_00: But what happens here is it's it's it's so it's it's it's contrary to his thoughts and his ways, but we get in the nuances here the picture that it wasn't just humans at work here, it was a divine uh in it was a divine rebellion influencing the affairs of man.
SPEAKER_00: How do we know that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we go to Deuteronomy chapter 32.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy chapter 32 says this.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the days of old, considering, consider the years of many generations, ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the sons of God.
SPEAKER_00: So what's going on here is as all the n like he dispersed from the Tower of Babel into the nations of the earth, and every nation was dispersed according to the sons of God who were at work there.
SPEAKER_00: But at the same token, shortly after this, God says, All right, I'm gonna design the sons of God to rule over these nations, and they can they can do their unjust, wicked things, but I am going to pluck out for myself a people of my own possession.
SPEAKER_00: And he calls Abraham to live as one who was set apart for him, and God preserves for himself a people, a portion.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what it says in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob, his allotted heritage.
SPEAKER_00: So you guys kind of see the picture here.
SPEAKER_00: The nations disperse then, and authority is now given to all these false gods over all the nations.
SPEAKER_00: But God chooses a remnant for himself that will live unto his name, and through this line is going to come one that will reverse the rebellion that has corrupted mankind.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
unknown: Woo.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's a lot.
SPEAKER_00: I thank you for that woo.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like, all right, take a deep breath.
SPEAKER_00: Take a deep breath.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we think about what's moving on the face of the earth, it's much more than what meets than what meets the eye.
SPEAKER_00: So the question that we're left with from here on out is how is God going to redeem the whole world and gather the nations back to himself?
SPEAKER_00: How is he going to restore and renew?
SPEAKER_00: How is he going to reverse these things that have so infiltrated the hearts of human beings?
SPEAKER_00: And so when we come into the gospels and we meet Jesus, Jesus comes as one living in the fullness of a sinless life in the fullness of the Father's will.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus comes, and one of the first things we read about Jesus, he gets baptized in Matthew chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: We read or Matthew chapter 3, and going into Matthew chapter 4, Jesus is baptized before he starts his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this beautiful picture of him in the Jordan River.
SPEAKER_00: And he's baptized by John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: He goes under the water and comes out, and the Holy Spirit comes like a dove and rests upon him.
SPEAKER_00: And the Father's voice is heard by all.
SPEAKER_00: So this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.
SPEAKER_00: In a single moment, again, it was this cosmic declaration that his allegiance is not to the powers of this world, his allegiance is to his father.
SPEAKER_00: But immediately from this place, the scripture says that he's driven out to the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: And Satan leads him out to the wilderness because he has to be confronted by all the same powers that humanity has always been confronted by.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's three temptations that he goes through in the desert.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to read one of them, Matthew chapter 4, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and all their glory.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to them, All of these I will give to you if you fall down and worship me.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus goes out to the wilderness, and there he's confronting the four, he's confronting the one who is at the heart of the corruption of mankind, the one who is who is essentially does have authority over the nations of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Because that was given to him even by God, this authority of all the nations of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows in his heart that his mission was to restore back to the Father all of the nations of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And so here he's getting he's getting a deal.
SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, if you come and worship me, I will give you what you know that you're made for.
SPEAKER_00: I will give you, I'm going to give you a shortcut to the promises of God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you a shortcut to be who you were made to be.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the point where Jesus has to weigh the tension that has always faced humankind.
SPEAKER_00: Am I going to try to take something on my own terms to get what I know that I'm made for?
SPEAKER_00: Or am I going to wait for the perfect will of the Father to deliver it to me in his time?
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus says back to Satan upon this deal, because Jesus knows he's not, Satan's offering him something that he knows that he wants and that he's made for.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus says back to Satan, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God and only him shall you serve.
SPEAKER_00: You shall worship the Lord your God and only him shall you serve.
SPEAKER_00: So in the heart of Jesus, he knows what's being offered to him, will spare him from death.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what's being offered to him, will get it's the fastest way to get the nations of the earth and to accumulate them, but it was going to require him to forsake the one true God, Yahweh, his father.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, I'm not gonna do it because I know what I'm made for, and I'm not stooping to your level to take something that I know my fathers are gonna give to me anyways.
SPEAKER_00: And so from this place, Jesus, in one scenario out in the wilderness, he forsakes what Adam lost in Eden through self-trust, Jesus says, I'm going to trust in the Father.
SPEAKER_00: The rebellion of the sons of God that would come to earth and corrupt because they wanted power and dominion.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, No, I want obedience.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to live as an obedient one, not one grasping for power and dominion.
SPEAKER_00: And then through the Tower of Babel, the control of the nations, Jesus says, No, I'm going to walk in humility, trusting the timing of my Father.
SPEAKER_00: And in doing so, He's gonna my faith through my faithfulness, obedience, and He's gonna deliver me what I know He made me for.
SPEAKER_00: So where Adam grasped, Jesus trusted, where the sons of God corrupted, Jesus remained holy, where Babel climbed up, where Jesus humbled himself, downward, so much downward that he allowed himself to be crucified on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: He went to death in Hades, which was the realm of Satan himself.
SPEAKER_00: And by going to death in Hades, it gave him firsthand face-to-face confrontation with Satan.
SPEAKER_00: As he was crucified on the cross, he went to death in Hades.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm gonna take the keys back that you stole.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take these keys back to the nations, and now I have power over life and death.
SPEAKER_00: And then he punched his way out of the grave, came back, and now all authority through what he did through going to the grave and coming back through the victorious power and trusting in the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Now he has power and all authority in heaven and on earth, and death and life and all things created, seen and unseen, they've all been delivered to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: He did what nobody else could do.
SPEAKER_00: He did what we couldn't do, and he did, he lives faithfully where all of the other, these divine beings rebelled against God, and they are still rebelling against God.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, I'm gonna go live faithfully, and guess what I'm gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna get all authority back, and then I'm gonna invite my people back into the game plan.
SPEAKER_00: Where we lost the plot, we lost the game plan.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I am gonna give the keys because the keys are mine.
SPEAKER_00: Now I get to commission my people to go live faithfully to the one true God, and in doing so, undo the works of darkness on the entire planet.
SPEAKER_00: So let me read it again to you, Matthew 28, 18.
SPEAKER_00: He says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
SPEAKER_00: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you to the very end of the age.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, somebody get excited here.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus came to do what we could not do.
SPEAKER_00: I love this painting from 1868, French artist Gustavo Dore.
SPEAKER_00: He tried to capture this phone, this picture of the triumph of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The triumph that the painting's actually titled The Triumph of Christianity over paganism.
SPEAKER_00: And it shows Jesus surrounding by a host of heaven, lifted high, the one who is crucified, now was glorified.
SPEAKER_00: And let's zoom in on that photo.
SPEAKER_00: And him surrounded by legions of angels who are now fighting with him on his behalf, the host of heaven, pushing back the powers of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And I here's what I want us to take away this morning.
SPEAKER_00: The reason why we go through all this and we go through all the biblical passages to see this big picture is because I think a lot of us we've lost the profound nature of our identity in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: When God sends us out as his disciples to go make disciples, he's not just saying, hey, go get go live a little better lives than everybody else around you.
SPEAKER_00: And try to impress people with your morality and your virtues.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: What he's saying is, I want you to get back to what I created in Eden.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna restore that.
SPEAKER_00: And together we're gonna get back on track to extend the blessing of God into the world by undoing the works of darkness, the powers of this world, and the demonic entities that have infested this world no longer have the final say because now I have all authority and I'm giving it to you, and in my name you will push back everything that does not belong on the face of this earth.
SPEAKER_00: And he's given that to us.
SPEAKER_00: It's a cosmic reordering and a cosmic recommissioning.
SPEAKER_00: Our spiritual warfare, listen, here's the other thing, and we'll get to this in future weeks.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get to how we get into living lives that actually rattle the enemy and rattle the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: But our spiritual warfare is not about fighting the enemy or fighting demons, it's about living in allegiance to the will of our good Father.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus confronted the enemy in the wilderness, he did not come at the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: What did he do?
SPEAKER_00: He quoted scripture and says, I know what I'm made for, and I will not worship anybody else but my Father.
SPEAKER_00: Father in heaven, him only will I serve.
SPEAKER_00: So if you want to live a life that undoes the work of darkness, all you have to do is in a simple act of saying, I will live my life in obedience to his way, not harassed in my own way.
SPEAKER_00: I will live to his way.
SPEAKER_00: And in doing so, you are sending a cosmic message that nothing else has a hold of me.
SPEAKER_00: I am my father's son.
SPEAKER_00: I am my father's daughter.
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have lived and you've you've you've maybe experienced a darkness in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you experience like the feeling of bondage.
SPEAKER_00: You can't do like you feel stuck, you feel weighed down.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, in the power of Jesus, if you call out to the name of Jesus and live and just trust in what he's done for you, he wants to give you his power to break every lie, break every chain, break every addiction, every form of bondage that holds you back from the full identity of what it means to be a son and daughter of God.
SPEAKER_00: That is true for you too.
SPEAKER_00: There's too many Christians we live less than the identity that Jesus actually paid for.
SPEAKER_00: We live less than what he rose for.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, Church, when are you going to wake up?
SPEAKER_00: Wake up to what I made you for.
SPEAKER_00: You're not here to live nice little Christian lives, you're here to undo the works of darkness and the entire planet.
SPEAKER_00: And you do that one day at a time, and it doesn't have to look crazy.
SPEAKER_00: You know how you do it?
SPEAKER_00: You serve in children's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: When you start genetic, and I'm not kidding you.
SPEAKER_00: Every time you make a decision to lay down your life for those around you, you're sending a message to the works of darkness of I am not living for myself, I'm living for the one who loved me.
SPEAKER_00: When you serve your neighbor, when you love, when you exude joy and peace of the Holy Spirit, when you go out and you live with joy and you live as a child of God, you live like you're a person that people actually want to be around.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: You are actually sending a message to the entire universe that there is a new God, there's a new king, and he reigns over all, and all of you guys get to be a part of what he's doing because it's the only path to freedom and life and liberation.
SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, guys, get on your feet.
SPEAKER_00: Get on your feet in this place.
SPEAKER_00: This is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We were made for more.
SPEAKER_00: You were made for more.
SPEAKER_00: I was made for more.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, when we live this way, when we even worship, when we turn our attention to God, we're not focused on the enemy and what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: That was the old day.
SPEAKER_00: We are focused on what God and what he's doing, and as we do that, it changes atmospheres, it changes cities, it changes you and I.
SPEAKER_00: Demons have to flee.
SPEAKER_00: The enemy has to flee because he does not have dominion of those who call on the name of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So let's practice this together.
SPEAKER_00: I want to sing the song.
SPEAKER_00: It says the reign of darkness has now ended, the kingdom of lies.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of light.
SPEAKER_00: Let's sing this song together.
SPEAKER_00: We have one king! His name is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, some of you here today, you you should not leave until you experience freedom in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, I want to invite you.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have some of our prayer team, ministry team.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be on the sides of the room.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, if you're here today and you just feel you've been having nightmares, you've been having anxiety, you've been experiencing deep depression that just goes beyond the neuroscience, and you know it does.
SPEAKER_00: You're experiencing things in your body, maybe it's sickness or ailments, you're experiencing things in your family that just feel dark and it feels like a hook, it feels like bondage.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, do not leave this place without partnering somebody in prayer in the name of Jesus to see light, to see freedom and liberation in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be on the sides of the room.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, some of you here today, maybe you've never put your faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You you want to know that kind of life, the one who has the keys of death in his hands, the life and death in his hands.
SPEAKER_00: And you want you want to know what it what it's like to live with eternity with Jesus in his new world order.
SPEAKER_00: This is the life of blessing, this is the life of liberty.
SPEAKER_00: You can go to anybody with the badge on, and they would love to talk to you about uh freedom in Jesus' name, salvation in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: It's for everybody.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be good enough.
SPEAKER_00: God knows I am not good enough.
SPEAKER_00: You just have to be willing to say, God, I need you, and I'm willing to invite you into my life.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Let's sing this one more time as we go.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just sing this chorus together, and we're gonna lift up a shout of praise to the one who reigns above it all.
SPEAKER_00: Let's sing this again.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, we declare our allegiance to you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that you're worthy.
SPEAKER_00: And as we leave this place, God, we're not leaving as orphans, we're not leaving even as just nice little Christians, God.
SPEAKER_00: We're leaving as those commissioned by you to go into all of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And so we thank you, Father, for your identity over us.
SPEAKER_00: And as we leave, we go rejoicing in who you are and what you've done.
SPEAKER_00: We love you today.
SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, listen, as you leave, if you're a guest here, we'd love to get to know you.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see a sign in the back that says connect with us.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll go meet you in the back.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to get to know you.
SPEAKER_00: Go grab a blessing bag on your way out, fill that up, and let's bless some or some some kids and women in Mexico this Christmas season.
SPEAKER_00: All right, guys, love you.
SPEAKER_00: Have an awesome afternoon.