Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 9, 2022 | Better Together - God's Dream, Devil's Nightmare

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January 9, 2022 | Better Together - God's Dream, Devil's Nightmare · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: They uh tell me that uh in the NFL or in in any kind of sport, if you really you know, if you really lay an egg, you really lose you can hardly wait to get back on the field for the next game.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I felt when Alex said, Jim, you know, my COVID is slow to recover, and so can you cover for me this Sunday?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I go, yes, because after the absolute catastrophe of last week, you know, I'm just glad to be back on the stage that that Connor let me back on.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh I didn't know I had COVID last Sunday.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to make that my excuse, you know, like when you miss a putt, I always say I have COVID.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: But um But you know, I just thought I had a common cold, which is which is pretty common for the Omicron variant, which is hitting what, over a million people every day in America?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but ten times as infectious, but uh only you know uh not very risky generally.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: So and they say it'll be here and gone by the end of the month, so catch yours now, you know.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it swept through my family in the last week or so.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Melody and I both took people were nice enough to bring over home tests, and I was sure I just had a common cold.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Last Sunday I'd stayed distance from everybody because I didn't want them, you know, to catch my cold.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then on Monday, we both test.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And for the second time in a year, I tested positive and she tested negative and is really mad, you know.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I told her she's not in the club, she's not invited in the treehouse, and um she can't play.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she would just, of course, like to have it so that uh so that in her running of the school she could have you know some excuse.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, um uh none of us in our family have gotten it.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: My two two of the three sons in town and a grand grandchild who can't get baptized this morning as a result uh over at fellowship.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: But um none of us have respiratory problems, and I pray that you won't either.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh though uh if you've had what seemed like a common cold uh in the last week or two, you may have you may have had COVID.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I'm I'm glad to be back.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to even ask how many of you, how many of you were here in first service last week?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: My guess is no one came back.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is over it's the first time, by the way, in history.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: My tech team walked up to me after first service and said, now we usually only record this and put it online one time, but would you like us to try again and do the second service?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was that bad.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Only had a few of my slides that for some reason made it up, but I was trashed.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I'm excited for other reasons about this morning.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is the second out of a series of four in our series Better Together.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm excited because at midnight I came up with a better title called God's Dream Devil's Nightmare.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that which has nothing to do with the sermon, it's just a cool title.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, Janet, don't get excited.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so I'm I'm pumped about this.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to you.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let me start with a quick review of last week, because if you're in first service last week, you have no idea what what I said.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so last week the title was Band of Brothers, Band of Sisters.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I picked one of the great passages in the Bible, the better together passages, comes from the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter four, which basically says we're better together.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in verses nine through twelve says, Two are better than one, even uses our word.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it gives three reasons.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, because when we fall, which we all do, right?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we fall, someone's there to help us up if we're if we're together.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Second reason it gives, because when we're cold, it's better together because when we're so cold, someone can warm us up.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Gave in a personal illustration in our family.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: The verse goes if two lie down together, they can keep warm.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: How can one keep warm alone?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Third reason, because when we're attacked, someone backs us up, though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: A very classic passage, very practical, very simple.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: We told stories, at least second service, uh, about this.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was last week.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna add one.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: One because today.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you won't find this one actually in the Bible because it's the whole Bible.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is just mine, okay?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, here we go.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And here is the one I'm adding today.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's God's dream and the devil's nightmare.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Better together, I'm gonna try to prove to you, I will prove to you today, is God's dream, and as a result, it's the devil's nightmare.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So on this tour through the Bible, I'll start right here.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: What is God's dream?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or that's what people call it today in Hollywood.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I use that word.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, in the Bible and in theology, it's not called God's dream.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's called what?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: God's plan.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: God's sovereign plan.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: What is his plan?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna title it a slightly different than you've ever heard, quite a bit different than you've ever heard before.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Better together with you in Eden forever.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay, it's not catchy, but it tries to be.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It tries to be catchy.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Better together with you in Eden forever.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's God's dream plan.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let me prove it to you.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the hot book I mentioned before: Sweeping Seminary Old Testament Departments across the country.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've taken several small groups through it already called The Unseen Realm, subtitled Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible by Dr.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Michael Heiser.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Every chapter will blow your mind.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just quote a paragraph out of it.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: From the very beginning, God wanted his human family, that's us, to live with him in a perfect world, along with the family he already had in the unseen world, his heavenly host.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: The original task of humanity, Adam and Eve, was to make the entire earth like Eden.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get started.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be eight points here.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Number, and I'm gonna go fast.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, Eden was the first together, better together place.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was God's home on earth, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: He came down, this is where you would find him on earth.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: In this specific little, you know, uh blocked-out area in the east, it said, and he was together, not just with Adam, because it's better together, because it's not good for man to be alone, Genesis 2.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he was there together in the, we think, in the afternoon, in the cool of the afternoon.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's sometimes translated, uh, most difficult phrase to translate in Genesis, but somehow he walked and talked with him, it seems, together every day.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lush garden.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Everything you read about it, it was this beautiful, lush garden, fruit trees and so forth.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It had sacred trees.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, this great tree.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: It also had the tree of life.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: These were significant, wonderful, shall we say, magic, sacred trees.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this was the first better together place.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was marked off from the rest of the earth.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: We know that because Genesis 3.24, after they're kicked out, says after he drove the man out, he placed cherubim, these are very special angels, on the east side of the garden.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a very sacred place, and this is where God met together with us, uh, with Adam and Eve.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but Eden's doors now being closed.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: God didn't give up on his dream.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: He still wanted, this is actually my paraphrase of Mike Kaiser, God still wanted a human family.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to live on his creation, earth, with the people that he had made.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted his unseen family and his human family to live with him and serve him.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted people to multiply and for all the earth to become like Eden.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So what happened after Eden?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Something quite interesting that you probably never thought about.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, after Eden, God met with Abram and others, patriarchs, at specific sites, oftentimes trees, to remind them perhaps of Eden and those great trees in Eden.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, Genesis 12, Adam, or Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, Shechem, to the oak of Morah.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be typical.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: This great oak that Shechem is known for.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time the Lord appeared to him.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he built there an altar to the Lord.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's Genesis 12.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: A number of years later, uh Abram, Abraham now is his name.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's far down south, down in Hebron, uh, 20 miles south of Jerusalem, and he appears to Abram where?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: By the Oaks of Mamre.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can still find the famous Oak of Mamre down there in Hebron, right in the middle of a Palestinian development.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and they say it's a descendant of the original Oaks.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, as he sat by the door of his tent, and Abraham got up and he ran to meet them, and he said, Oh Lord, rest yourself under the tree.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: God apparently likes trees, okay?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Had some in the garden.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: They were very special.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I like trees.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know if you like trees, but you find this continuing on again and again.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 21.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham planted a tamaris tree down farther south in Beersheba and called here on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it continues.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua made a covenant with the people at Shekim back up north, and he took the large stone and set it up under the Terebinth tree that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sanctuary of the Lord, next to a large tree.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I could give you other verses.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just simply pointing out the connection with Eden, that is, trees.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to tell you, I'm fond of trees, and in some of my favorite fantasies, there are trees.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: I happen to like Tolkien, and in his book Silmarillion, as he talks about the founding of the world and and what he calls Valinor, what we would call heaven.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: He talks about two great trees.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Telperion was the uh shed silver light for the whole world, and the golden tree uh uh Larelan.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: This happens to be Telperion, if you ever see that online.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: That happens to be my online name.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Telperion and Larelan, the two great trees of Valinor, that's in Tolkien.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or, for instance, if you've ever read The Lord of the Rings, you know that the greatest tree on earth was a Malorne tree that Galadriel lived in in the land of Lothlore.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I have just weirded some of you out.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just telling you that trees are really cool, right?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: When I grew up in a little house, tiny little house, about uh 1,200 square feet with 12 children, uh, on Halsey Street in Portland, Oregon.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: We had a tree that was sacred to us.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was the great maple tree in the front yard.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is no longer there.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: But um uh but I mean you can see all the branches, and we have loads of pictures of three and four, and then five, and then six, and then seven, and then eight, and then nine and ten of us children up in the branches, you know, of this maple tree, and we would say meet at the maple, and more than even the house, this maple represented the Congdon household, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you know all about that maple tree in the front yard.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Trees are significant to God, and if you have a favorite tree, don't be ashamed of it, right?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh carve your initials in it.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: But so anyway, so the th the second together place.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So he met with them at trees, but then he had a second together place following Eden, and he moved his sight on earth to Mount Sinai, the top of this cosmic mountain, right?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Where God met face to face with Moses, and then he met with the 70 leaders of his people on this mountain, which was which was blocked off from the world, which you couldn't touch on pain of death.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: This was sacred space.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is where God met with his people in his better together place.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then he moved after giving them the law and the instructions for the tabernacle.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: He said he dictated the pattern of the tabernacle from heaven, the heavenly Eden.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: He dictated it, he moved right down there into the tabernacle, right?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was the new garden of Eden.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was God's new home on earth.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: It had a tree in there, the menorah.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's described in tree terms, it has these branches.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: It had cherubim in there, just like Eden.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: It had the same precious stones that we read about in the Garden of Eden, gold and onyx.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: It faced east as well, okay?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the tabernacle is where God came down, and this is where he met with man.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't meet with people all over the world.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: He met in the tabernacle, and that tabernacle was movable.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: But as you know, 400 years later, that tabernacle then was shifted into the temple.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Some believe that the tent itself was actually moved into the temple for a period of time.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now the temple was the New Eden, and it was adorned all over the walls and so forth with flowers and trees and cherubim and fruit.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was on a new mountain, not Mount Zion.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not Mount Sinai.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Mount Sinai had now morphed into Mount Zion.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was God's home on earth, and it was where he hosted his people.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is where God's philosophy and dream and plan of better together now took place on earth.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um so now we move, six, seven, and eight.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Where's God's forever place?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, where is it in the New Testament?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know where it is, right?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because the word became flesh and tabernacled among us, John 1.14.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Came down in the person of Jesus.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: God came down because he wanted to be together with humanity and win them to himself on earth, his creation.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the tabernacle turns into the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Christ stood even in front of the temple and said, You know what, you destroy this temple, and in three days I'll raise it up.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it took the disciples a while to realize that the temple had morphed into Jesus, that Jesus was speaking of himself now, because he was the repository, he was the locus of God's location of where God was on earth, where God would meet with people.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, if you've never trusted Christ, how can you get to God without going through Jesus?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can't, because Jesus is the location forever and ever for where God is.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have to simply, sometime in your life, lay down your deadly doing and your trust in yourself and your confidence and dependence upon who you are, and transfer that over to the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in him as your access point to God.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: I am the way, the truth, and the life, he said.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's God's together place, the better together place, starting in the New Testament.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: But what's amazing is that once you believe in him, Jesus gives us a blessing and he says, you know what?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now you are the temple.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now you are the place where people can meet God.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going back to heaven, but the Holy Spirit's coming inside you, don't you know that you, not you individually, it's not working for us to be alone in the church.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know the church, the problem is that the church began in, how can I say this?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: The church began in Israel as small group fellowships, people living life together, and then it moved to great Greece, and it became an intellectual philosophy.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then it moved to Italy and it became a state religion.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then it moved to Europe and it became a political and religious battlefield between Calvinists and Armenians and Protestants and Catholics and Anglicans and pilgrims.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then it moved to America and became a big business.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And what it really needs to do is move back to Israel and become again a place where people share life together.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: A place of small group fellowships.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And not living individually, not living isolated lives.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: That you plural are God's temple.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: We like to take this individually, which is true.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's in you and I, Romans 8:9, he indwells all of us, but he lives in us as a body, as a group, as we get together.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: We, plural, are the temple of the living God, as God has said.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 3, 2 Corinthians chapter 6.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: But we still have a future better together place.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we're looking forward to.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is the culmination of God's dream.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's the new Garden of Eden.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: It'll have a garden, it'll have trees.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: We read in Revelation chapter 20.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be jewels, the same ones in the Garden of Eden.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be a holy, sacred mountain.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Mount Zion, right?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that initial tree of life, the saplings multiply, it seems like, and they're and they're all along both sides of the river, and they give life, new experiences of life to whoever eats of their fruit.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that will be in the new heavens and new earth.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's coming.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's God's plan.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's God's dream.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a better together plan.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Then I heard a loud voice, the Bible ends, from the throne.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Look, God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is the story of the Bible, right?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: The better together story of the Bible.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's God's dream plan.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Better together with you and Eden forever.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: This story, God's, I'm summarizing in one sentence, God's dream or plan, its opposition by the powers of darkness and its eventual success is the story of the Bible.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you got the whole Bible in 15 minutes.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can go home.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Man, how you can't get better than this.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, but the problem is, so, so that dream of better together is the devil's nightmare.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the devil's dream, here's the devil's plan.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Better separated, isolated, and alone.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: He would rather have you separated, isolated, and alone in hell forever.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Than he would have you together with everyone else in the New Jerusalem and the new heavens and the new earth in heaven.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's his plan.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the question: where's the devil's plan succeeding today?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just throw this out.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because my wife said it and she's a genius.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, I mean, I mean, even this month, we are seeing a return to a lot of the pain and the distancing, the animosity, and the separation and the doubts and the conflicts and the division and so forth in families and schools and so forth.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: She sees as the headmaster of a school, and some schools are closing, and other schools are wanting to close, and and some people are and it's just, it's just right.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think I think the devil gets his foot in here, and somehow, somehow, even in your distancing, you need to cross those barriers because life, Christian life is better together.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only way to live life, and that's God's plan.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: The devil's dream is isolation.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna share with you another one because you know, in my self-quarantining this week, the five-day thing with COVID, I got, you know, book read, and I got an hour and a half.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh interesting, someone just put me onto this, and I got an hour and a half uh documentary on Netflix watched, and that was called The Social Dilemma.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as I watched this, any of you seen this?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I recommend it.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: It'll freak you out a little bit, but but this, among other things, is about isolation, not being together.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: The technology that connects us also controls us, all right?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is all about this is all about Twitter and YouTube and Flickr and Facebook and Google and and and TikTok and so forth.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the, and I'll just I'll just a few quotes from this hour and a half thing, which basically is interviewing a lot of the people who've been either the CEOs or high-up executive officers or the inventors or the engineers of these different programs who are now realizing, you know, that they have created that they are have created ethical problems for two billion people in the world who are who are who are constantly on these things.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: As one said, you can literally isolate yourself now in a bubble thanks to our technology.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: One of them uh gets before he says, Rewind a few years ago I was the president of Pinterest.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was coming home and I couldn't get off my phone once I got home, despite having two young kids who needed my love and attention.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is Tim Kendall, and he's also been pr uh the CEO of another entirely independent one of these social media.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the pantry, he says, typing away in an email, or sometimes looking at Pinterest, and I couldn't, on some of those moments, I couldn't help myself.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is that is that is that you can just pick up your phone nowadays, am I right?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and 20 minutes can pass and you'll and you have no idea.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's just gone, just like that.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or 30, or an hour.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you've never really genuinely had real social interaction with anybody, but you've had a kind of a surface social interaction.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And though this documentary doesn't go there, it hints at the connection between mental health and depression, suicide, and addiction to social media.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's the devil's delight.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's the devil's dream, right?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Zimbard at Stanford, I know of no more potent killer than isolation.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Typical family, if you're not careful, no more destructive influence on physical and mental health than the isolation of you from me and us from them.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: God's idea, God's dream, God's plan, which will eventually come to pass, is better together in the land of Eden on earth.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: The devil's dreamer plan is isolation, separation, and loneliness, aloneness for eternity.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: On this program, uh somebody else who had been uh one of the engineers and uh and expanded Facebook to where he was the head of monetization for Facebook.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: How are we gonna make billions of dollars?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, by far the richest companies in history are the companies that I've just showed you: Facebook, Reddit, so forth.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us, he wrote, are addicted to email, others to Facebook, others to Pinterest, others to Twitter, but we choose them over being together.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Real social interaction.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: We'll pick up the phone in 20 minutes, we'll disappear.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I'm gonna conclude this.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, nice and early.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna let you out early.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um, unless we suddenly have a 30-minute revival here.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so what what can I do this week?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what can you do this week?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I would just say at random, at random, sometimes just walk away from it.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe for you, maybe for you, yeah, you don't even know what social media is.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Turn out the TV.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you have probably have a TV.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: At random, whatever it is, that's keeping you away from genuine social interaction with some of the people in your own home.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm guilty.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my wife's gonna laugh at me this week if I do what I sometimes do, which is I'll call her on my cell phone from the bedroom, even though she's only two rooms away.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, so okay, I probably can't do that this week.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: But at random, walk away from the cell phone, put it down and walk away.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, initiate a real social interaction with someone in your home or someone outside your home, right?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And third, be personal, be interested, be loving, be the church, be Jesus who's inside you, be the place on earth where God meets people.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Be better together.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's my challenge for you.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's my challenge, it's my challenge for me.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's my challenge in the second message of better together, which is God's dream but the devil's nightmare.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Bow your heads with me in prayer.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for this uh reminder of how much you love to be with us, personally present with us, and how much you'd like to be with us as a group this morning as we've gathered, as we are perhaps together with our family watching on computer now.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, keep us from being happy with being alone and isolated simply with our cell phone and thinking that somehow that that's real social interaction or communication.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Help us, Lord, to be realizing every moment that we are something really special.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: That we are uh containers in which God Himself dwells, the Holy Spirit.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: We are out of us flow rivers of living water to other people, but not if we're distanced from them so far that we never even talk to them.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Help us to be Jesus and the church and the sacred space, that location where you meet with people.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Help us to be that this week.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, and all God's people said, Amen.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.