Living Well In A Wild World

Good morning everybody, welcome to Twin Lakes Church.

My name's Rene, another one of the pastors here at church.

So have you ever heard of what's known as the spite wall of Nob Hill in San Francisco?

Have you ever heard of that? I had not either until a friend of mine, Suzanne Fisher, sends me an email that I found just riveting.

You've gotta hear this. And then the connection to how it relates to us today.

I love old San Francisco history. And it turns out that in 1876, Railroad Tycoon, Charles Crocker built a mansion right on top of Nob Hill in old San Francisco, nearly an entire city block wide.

I said nearly, not quite, because there was one neighbor, a recent immigrant from Germany named Nicholas Jung, who refused to sell his tiny little lot that was in the middle of this block, completely ruining Charles Crocker's plans for his gigantic mansion.

Well, it turns out that Charles Crocker did not take no for an answer very well. And so Crocker built a 40 foot tall wall around three sides of Jung's house.

This is an actual photo. There is the wall, the spite wall of Nob Hill.

Yeah, isn't that incredible? So you can see the Jung's house right there. They had a tiny little backyard that's down there somewhere.

And so no more sunlight into the Jung's garden, no more ocean breezes, no more views of the bay, all they had views of was this four-story tall wall.

On his part, Jung was like, okay, is that the way you wanna play it? And he refused to sell his house to Charles Crocker.

He dies in 1880, Crocker dies in 1888, and still the spite wall stood for nearly two decades because their kids made sure the feud went on.

One of my friends, Suzanne Fisher, sent me this story as I shared last week in a Daily Devo.

I immediately thought of how we're living in a cultural moment right now where if you disagree with me on basically any issue, I'm gonna put up walls between me and between you.

I'm gonna cut you off. I don't even wanna see you anymore.

In fact, I may even move to Idaho. So I don't have to be around people like you.

But this is kind of the opposite of what people who follow Jesus are called to do.

And it's the exact opposite of what Daniel did. Not living in Babylon by the Bay, but living in the actual Babylon.

So let's grab your message notes that look like this. You can follow along with the outline and there's some study questions for you right there in the middle of those message notes.

"Currention Chaos" is the name of our eight week series and the book of Daniel, an amazing book of the Bible.

And today, what we're gonna do is we're gonna wrap it up with a look back at what we've learned, some of the major themes in this amazing book of the Bible.

If you're new, you chose a great weekend because you're getting all eight weeks of value in 30 minutes, so this is perfect for you.

But first I just wanna celebrate something and acknowledge some people.

I asked you to send me photos. We had Bible study groups, check this out, meeting all over the place, studying this material, of Santa Cruz, Scots Valley, meeting in churches, here in Aptos, homes in Aroma, Salinas, Gilroy, many others, vintage faith church, across three counties there were home groups, and these groups just didn't just meet to study, they also did wonderful acts of kindness, like project pajamas or the hygiene bags for the unhoused or stuff the truck, the Gilroy group collected a trailer full of clothes to distribute to unhoused folks that they could just take as needed.

And to me, all of that is being like Daniel, building bridges and not building walls.

That's what we are called to do here as a church. Can I get some love from the church this morning?

That is our mission. And today, as I said, what we're doing is we're wrapping up our series.

And here is how that whole spite wall thing ties into our study in Daniel.

Let me give you a quick recap, the timeline of the book of Daniel. When he's around 15 years old, the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem, drag him and thousands of others of Jews into captivity in Babylon, where Daniel lives for the rest of his life.

Now, Babylon's mentioned over 300 times in the Bible, and it's never positive, not once. It's kind of an icon of evil.

kind of how society goes bad. Yet somehow in Babylon, Daniel has both integrity and influence, right?

He's able to retain his integrity, yet he's in the mix culturally, completely influencing the Babylonians at their highest level.

He even becomes the chief magi. That's what they called their wise men.

So how does he do it? How do you live as an exile in Babylon?

Now this is a very relevant question for Christians right now.

So, Cherry Maurer sent me this survey this week that the New York Times reported on. Most American Christians right now feel my religious views are at odds with the cultural mainstream, you might expect that, but there's something else going on.

They also feel a deep sense of peril, even victimization and estrangement from the people in their neighborhood and from society.

Now, you could argue with whether or not they should feel this way, but this is how most American Christians say they feel.

This is the reality. So if this is what you feel, what do you do with that?

How do you live in that emotional space?

Do you put walls around your compound? Around your life?

To stay pure from the invading culture? 600 years after Daniel, a disciple of Jesus named Peter writes a letter to some of the very earliest followers of Jesus, it's in our Bibles as 1 Peter.

And it's interesting because he constantly alludes to the Babylonian exile as an example for us of how we should live in our society.

Look at this, he talks about God's elect exiles, your sister church in Babylon, the fiery ordeal you're going through, your enemy prowls like a lion.

So exiles, Babylon, fire, lion, does that sound like a book you've been studying lately?

Peter's telling Christians, look to Daniel and his generation for tips, hacks about living in Babylon, living in a culture where you feel alien and even oppressed.

And in 1 Peter, you see four principles emerge that work so beautifully as a recap of what we've been studying in the book of Daniel.

And these are all things, by the way, that challenge me personally.

I aspire to these things, but I am far from having these things down.

So I'm preaching to myself primarily here, all right? I am going to be challenged by these four points. Are you ready to be challenged yourself today?

Good five people are. Are you ready to be challenged today?

By the word of God. All right. If I am like Daniel, I'm going to live in these four ways.

I'm going to hold convictions with compassion. Say convictions with compassion with me. Convictions with compassion.

Let's take those two words one at a time. First, convictions. You have to have convictions.

Hills you're willing to die on that are counter-cultural like P.T. Barnum famously said, "No one ever made a difference "by being exactly like everybody else. "If you want to make a difference, you gotta be different." So the question is, how am I supposed to be different as a believer in my culture?

That is a loaded question. Now when I was a kid in my church circles, pardon me, I wouldn't say my whole church was like this, but kind of the circles we moved in were a little bit like this.

It was kind of about living inside of the walls of our little subcultural compound. And so we had alternative everything.

We couldn't listen to real rock, so we listened to Christian rock. We were discouraged from reading real comic books so we had Christian comic books.

So in the 70s, this was them, this was us. This was them, and this was us.

That's what it meant to have convictions to be separate, to live in a completely alternate universe.

And honestly, I loved this stuff. Truthfully, I did. I still kind of do, it's nostalgic for me.

But my question is, is this the main thing it means to live with conviction? To just put up the walls and be separate?

Well, it's nuanced, isn't it? If you look in the book of Daniel, what does Daniel do?

Daniel has conviction about not eating the Babylonian diet in chapter one, probably because it wasn't kosher and he was Jewish.

He and his friends have conviction about not worshiping the king's idol. They say we'd rather die.

They're thrown into the furnace. He has conviction about praying to the king. He says, no, they throw him to the lions.

Convictions mean, you know, I've got something in my life I'm willing to die for.

However, Daniel did have a Babylonian job for the Babylonian government, a Babylonian home, a Babylonian name, you wore Babylonian clothes.

In other words, Daniel was not a separatist. Daniel assimilated on a lot of stuff.

He worked for the Babylonian king and then the Persian king. Daniel did not see every little cultural difference as a hill to die on, clearly not.

So where do I draw the line? What does that mean for you and me?

Where do I stick to my convictions? Well, as you can imagine, this is something Christians have thought about for 2,000 years.

In fact, way back in the 400s AD, there was a Roman African theologian known as Augustine. And he also used the same metaphor of Christians as exiles in Babylon.

Christians live in counterculture, and he said, "We exiles should be distinguishable from Babylon in three key areas." And I bet you know his list. Money, sex, and power.

Such a catchy list that for 1600 years, most of us know this saying, we just don't know it was from Auguste, but he's like, "Pardon me, this is how we should be separate." In every way, he said Babylon looks at money from the standpoint of two words, get it.

Money's primary purpose is you. sex and any pleasure, same thing. It's all about me, I write my own rules, get as much pleasure as you can.

Power, same thing. Babylon sees power as something to be gathered and held and leveraged primarily for you.

The believer sees all these things as gifts from God to be used according to his design. These are not bad things, but when you're centered on the Lord, you will let God shape your desire and your stewardship of these three things.

If you're not filling your life up with the Lord, what's gonna happen? You're gonna try to fill up your life with at least one of these things.

And it's going to become what you live for. In other words, what you worship, what you're centered on. And it never satisfies.

You know, you get any of these three things with any degree and you think, if I get that, it's gonna fulfill me.

It'll fulfill the deepest desire of your soul and it doesn't. And what you usually conclude is, I just need more, more money, more sex, more power, that will satisfy me.

But it never will without you acknowledging that God is Lord over all of it and has a purpose for all of it.

And of course that's exactly what Daniel is about. He keeps telling the kings, especially regarding power in the book of Daniel, that they need to acknowledge the Lord as Lord over that.

And here's the thing. Augustine said or Augustine said, "If we Christians live distinctly from Babylon in these three areas." You know, basically what he said was, "We won't need distinctive rock music.

We won't need distinctive comic books. We won't need distinctive Christian haircuts whatever, we will be very distinct.

Even if we're dressed in Babylonian clothes, called by Babylonian names, working Babylonian jobs, because we're gonna have different values about the three big things in our culture.

So there needs to be conviction, and you have to be unashamed about this, but conviction must be expressed with compassion, with grace.

We've seen this too all through Daniel. When Daniel resolves not to eat the king's food, he asks so politely and he offers a solution.

And later, you'll remember, even when a guy is sent to kill him by the king, it says Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and attacked.

And still later, you might remember, when he has to tell the king, you know, God's gonna judge you unless you repent.

Look at how he says it. Oh, I wish the events foreshadowed in this dream what happened to your enemies, my Lord, and not to you.

Like, you know I like you, but please accept my advice. Stop sinning and do what is right.

Break from your wicked past. Be merciful to the poor. Perhaps then you'll continue to prosper.

What you see Daniel doing is what Peter later said to the exiles that he is addressing. He says, "Show proper respect to everyone. Fear God, respect the king.

Fear, in other words, worship, only God, but do respect the king and everybody else too.

And I talk about this verse from Peter all the time, 1 Peter 3, 15 and 16, but in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord, only the Lord is Lord, not the king.

Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the reason, for the hope that you have.

In other words, live in a way that provokes questions. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.

That verse is like the book of Daniel in a sentence, isn't it? I mean, this is like the result of Daniel's personality test.

He reveres only God as Lord, and then when he's challenged, he always responds with gentleness and respect.

Daniel knew it's not just about what you say, it's also about when you say it and how you say it.

I've been reading this great new book called Everyday Revolutionary, from which I got a lot of ideas and quotes from this message.

It's by J.D. Greer, but I love this quote more than anything else.

He says, "It's possible to speak the truth clearly and boldly and still not be a faithful witness of Jesus." Let me just say that again.

It's possible to speak the truth, the biblical truth, clearly, boldly, and still not be a faithful witness of Jesus because of the way in which you're expressing those things is not Christ's life.

In other words, when you express your convictions, do they experience the compassion of Jesus from you?

loved, or do they just feel like the sledgehammer of truth? Do they look at you and see the good shepherd, or do they look at you and just see a great debater?

The theologian Michael Green says there are two historical ways that Christian leaders tend to think of themselves, all through Christian history.

of orthodoxy and missionaries.

And these two groups see the world in different ways. The defender of orthodoxy is always trying to maximize the gap between his authentic Christianity and all deviations from it.

The missionary is always trying to minimize the gap between himself and the people God loves and he's called to reach.

Now, we do need both. There are definitely Orthodox doctrines that define Christianity, but only one of these two identities is our direct calling from Jesus Christ, which one?

Missionary. The Great Commission.

And what happens when we get these things mixed up in terms of what's our primary identity as Christians is the defenders of orthodoxy end up defending all kinds of stuff that's not really orthodoxy.

It's really very secondary. Once you put up a wall, what you end up doing is putting up another wall within the compound and then another wall within that compound and another wall and sooner or later, as my cousin Dieter says, it gets down to, well, it looks like it's just you and me now and I'm not so sure about you, that's what happens when that becomes your identity.

And that's why holding convictions must be done with compassion.

We want to lead with the beauty of Jesus Christ, the love of Jesus Christ.

And as people are one of, as their imaginations are captured by the beauty of Jesus, that's when they are changed.

I have to tell you, I cannot stand. You wanna know what I cannot stand? I cannot stand social media posts that talk about this or that Christian or Christian debater owning the atheists or destroying the woke mob or whatever.

I've been here 32 years now as a pastor at Twin Lakes Church and I've seen literally hundreds of people, praise God, go from literal atheism or immorality or addiction to faith in Jesus Christ and not one did it because I first owned them or destroyed them or wanted to be with them, not one time, not one time.

What happens every time is they feel the love of Jesus and they experience the beauty of a healthy church and they start rethinking their lives and their beliefs.

And hundreds of you in this room know exactly what I'm talking about because that is your story too. And you'll see more people getting back.

It has been so moving for me. I get to teach these baptism classes after every single service this weekend.

The stories I've heard, you guys, it's been amazing.

People who have come from just not even believing in anything, not believing in themselves or God or hope. and now being sold out to Jesus and not one of them was because some debate was won.

It was because they met the living risen Jesus Christ and they experienced his love for them.

Well, I spent most of my time on this first point, but very quickly the next three points are important too.

If I'm gonna be like Daniel, I'm gonna pursue everything with excellence.

Excellence. I love this. reading things about this, about Daniel like this, then Daniel became so distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps by his excellent spirit that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom.

So I love this. The word excellent is an Aramaic word, yatir.

And it means ultra or mega or super. And to get the idea of what this means, you have to look at the other times that it's used in Daniel.

The fire that Nebuchadnezzar creates in the furnace was described as yateer-hot, it's mega-hot.

The idol he builds is described as yateer-spectacular.

The apocalyptic beasts in the visions are described as yateer-scary.

And when I used to read about them in my Christian comics, they gave me yateer-nightmares.

I just have to tell you right now.

One scholar said that what yateer means is what a little kid means when he says something is the bestest or the mostest.

And this is how excellent Daniel worked.

Daniel's excellence at work was the mostest, awesomest of everybody else's.

And that made a huge impression on the people around him and it gained influence.

I love this, John Mark Comer is a well-known Christian writer now who grew up in Santa Cruz incidentally.

And he says, "What grabs the attention of people in Babylon is how regular church members, listen to this, spend their days in cubicles, boardrooms, neighborhoods, and classrooms, not how they spend their time inside churches." Martin Luther King preached a sermon on this very topic.

He said, "Whatever your life's work is, do it well." That's being like Daniel.

If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, Sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music.

Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his street well." I love that.

And again, like Peter says, he could be describing Daniel here, "Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us." Now the word that Peter uses here for good is the Greek word "kallos," which is a beautiful word, literally, many times it is translated "beautiful."

The reason I bring this up is that he's not saying, "Live such good lives," in the Dana the Carvey Church Lady sense of, you know, goody two shoes. What he's saying is live so beautifully that it's remarkable, that it's remarkably attractive.

And I got to tell you, I pray that this would be true of Twin Lakes Church, that people see our good works, that they open their hearts up to God.

And of course, that's one of the reasons, and this is so deep in our DNA, why every November we do our food and fund drive for Second Harvest Food Bank.

You see the big containers for donated food. You can donate monetarily at TLC.org/food.

We're kicking it off today, it goes till November 22nd.

But I have to say, we do this every year, this year is not like a normal year. The usual channels of food assistance have become uncertain and somewhat chaotic.

Nobody knows what's going to happen. Everybody's other bills are also skyrocketing.

Between services, I just, I prayed with a wonderful family, working hard to jobs, three kids and all this chaos is causing so much uncertainty and they were just saying if not for the church we might have lost our house.

This week this Wednesday at our People's Pantry where we have a free food distribution, Robin Spurlock who directs it told me that we had so many people the line never stopped we had more people than even during the height of the pandemic.

Literally this last Wednesday more people than ever requesting food I met this last week with the director of Second Harvest Food Bank, Erica Padilla-Chavez.

She told me there's now so much demand and less funding than they budgeted for, and so they're actually worried that they'll run out of funds for food.

So I say it is time for God's people to step up.

And I know times are tight for everybody. Some of us are in a position where we can give, some of us, like that young family I prayed with are at a position where we need to receive right now.

So if you can give, please give. If you need help, please receive. That is what churches do. That's how churches work. Right?

Those who can share share and those who need to receive receive next year, by God's grace, you'll be in a position where you can give.

But as we each do what we can do, we end up living out this verse and something callous, something beautiful happens.

And by the way, you know you see Daniel's influence all throughout the New Testament, right?

Daniel could have no, I bet there were times Daniel thought, why am I being so good?

I'm just serving some pagan king. What's the point? Daniel could never have known that Magi, he was the chief Magi, remember?

He could never have known that six centuries later, Magi would show up at the birth of Jesus Christ.

Daniel could never have known that the Messiah, Jesus would quote him at his trial.

Daniel could never have known that he was really laying the foundation for so much of the New Testament, but he was.

And you know what? You are too.

You will never know the impact that your spirit of excellence has on people at work, at school, in your neighborhood, but it does, you are setting into motion things that will outlive you.

But think of this, Daniel does it all the right way, but some people still hate him.

And that's number three, you gotta expect setbacks with your successes, expect setbacks with successes.

Daniel and his friends prosper, but there's a lot of tyrants, fires, and lions along the way.

And that's gonna be the same thing with you.

Again, like Peter says, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come upon you.

And he's talking to Christians in the Roman Empire being hunted down by Nero.

Now this next verse might blow your mind.

If you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.

Now look at this, this is the mindblower.

To this you were what? Say it again? One more time, called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps.

Let's say this highlighted line again. To this you were called. It is part of my calling to get setbacks.

When I'm not treated well, when people say unfair things to me, when I'm made fun of, that's not just unfair, that's part of the plan.

What? How could that be part of the plan? Because when I'm treated unfairly, my response is my witness, maybe your most powerful witness.

On the cross, Jesus Christ suffered leaving us an example. He responded, Jesus Christ forgave his enemies on the cross.

Jesus Christ prays for his enemies on the cross. And that's our example.

My gracious response shows that I powerfully trust God.

So several people sent me letters, emails about what they learned. Daniel Becker, who's being baptized next weekend, told me, "René, what I've learned is that when I am faced with overwhelming lions, I should trust God.

The outcome may be that the lions will eat me, or they may not. No matter what, I trust that God loves me and knows best and sees the path forward, amen." In fact, one of the things that can keep people from living like this is feeling like it doesn't matter whether I'm good or bad, the world's going to hell in a handbasket, no matter what I do.

And that's why every single chapter in Daniel contains a recognition of the sovereignty of God. God's in control.

And that means ultimately, though I may not see it, my efforts are never meaningless.

What I do is part of God's plan. And that all ties into the final point, know my identity with certainty.

My identity. Remember what the messenger from heaven told him? Do not be afraid.

You who are highly esteemed in other versions, oh man of high esteem, you're precious to God, greatly beloved.

Another TLCer Ella Johnson wrote me, René, here's the thing I learned from our study in Daniel.

God does not see us the way we see ourselves.

Daniel is called a man of high esteem, more than once.

She writes, "But Daniel was a eunuch according to Isaiah. That meant in his culture in that era, he was unclean, ostracized, could never raise a family forbidden to worship in the assembly, yet God sees Daniel as a man highly esteemed.

She says, "The labels society puts on us, and the ones we stick on ourselves, can become a heavy burden.

But God sees us differently. He sees past the scars and the labels and tells us who we really are." And Peter says the same thing to his exiles.

He says, "You're chosen. You're a royal priesthood, you're a holy nation, you're God's special possession." Yeah, well Nero and his soldiers are hunting us down, but you're chosen and you're a nation goddess forging.

Know your identity with certainty.

Mike Foster says, "This means you are living from safety, not for safety. From security, not for security. From love, not for love. From identity, not for identity.

Do you see the difference? You're not living to make that king or that teacher or boss or whatever happy at all costs because your king already loves you.

By the way, you know what the name Daniel means in Hebrew? I think this is a real key to understanding his courage.

It means God is my judge. God's my judge, not you.

Because he already knew God thought of him this way.

Now, I have a question. Where did Daniel even get the idea to live like this?

I think he was following a specific blueprint.

It's in a chapter in your Bible, but many Christians do not even know it is there because there's a well-known, well-loved verse in the middle of that same chapter that everybody tends to focus on and they completely ignore the rest of the chapter, which is a shame because it tells us our mission in life and our purpose in our communities.

Wouldn't you love to know what that chapter is? The overlooked chapter, the hidden chapter, you could say the lost chapter, you will find out next weekend.

I started by talking about the spiked wall. So whatever happened to that thing? Well, finally in 1904, the young children finally gave up and sold the lot to the Crocker kids.

And the Crocker kids tore the fence down and began work on the long delayed mansion.

That was 1904. '06, the earthquake destroys it all. And it was never rebuilt, and the site where all this drama once happened is now home to Grace Cathedral.

Grace, a fitting end to the spite wall.

And by the way, you know one of the ways the Bible describes what Jesus did. In his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.

Daniel lived with a life of grace and not spite, though he sure would have been understandable for him to live with walls of spite in his heart.

But he lived a life of grace. Why? Because he knew grace.

And when you know grace, the grace of Jesus, that's when you become fountain of this kind of grace to others.

And we're going to remember what Christ did for us in His body on the cross as we prepare our hearts for communion right now.

Would you bow with me? Let's pray.

Lord, thank You for the study in Daniel. Thank You especially for Your grace lavished on Daniel and on us.

And now at Communion, we just want to acknowledge our sin before You and humbly thank You for Your forgiveness through Christ.

And we come to You now in Communion thanking You that in Your own body on the cross You broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.

And you made us one through your sacrifice on the cross.

And so we come to you as sinners pardoned, as unclean people you've cleansed, as blind people that you've given sight, as poor people that you've made rich, as sinners on whom you've had such mercy.

And now receiving your grace, help us to overflow with your grace to those all around us.

as Daniel did, and of course as Jesus did. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.