Babylon, Paris, Zion: Is Your Citizenship Obvious? - Finny Kuruvilla | KFW 2018

Dear Father, would you just take our dear brother today. Thank you, Father, for Brother Finney. For his commitment to you, his zeal for your truth, his gift to communicate your thoughts to our hearts. And now, would you just take this, dear brother, this offering that he offers to you.

And just put fire upon the offering of the altar, O God, so the incense goes up to heaven and the fragrance fills this place, and the light and truth of your word blesses our hearts. And, Father, may commitments be made here this morning. May this sermon, this Mass meditation, result in changed lives here.

And may, O God, there be a commitment to identify with the everlasting kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ. We pray this today in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Reach, brother. Thanks, Brother Dale.

When I was younger, we would travel all across the country so that my father could speak about missions in India. We would go from Florida to California, urban and rural, all over the country. We were often on the road.

The experiences that we would have when we would walk into the church buildings, though, were often amusing. Keep in mind that my father did his master's degree in India. He was born and raised in India, but he did his master's degree in India, and he taught English back in India.

He's a very intelligent man. When I was in high school studying for my SAT college entrance exam, there's a vocabulary portion to the SATs, and I would, in the car, when he would drive me to school and back, I would ask him, and I would give him the hardest words that I could find out of my study books, and I could never stump him. The most difficult vocabulary words, he seemed to know them.

My younger brother and I were born and raised in Southern California, and we attended public school. We skateboarded, we played basketball, we watched a lot of TV. In many ways, it was a fairly typical American upbringing. There was one time when my dad walked into a church building, and someone approached him holding an orange.

And the person, presumably not sure who exactly my dad was, thinking maybe he was fresh off the boat, held up the orange and yelled out, "Do you know what this is?" My dad had lived in the US for about 20 years, and as I said, was very skilled in English and culture, and my brother and I thought it was quite funny.

Once, many times, actually, people would walk up to my brother and myself, who, as I said, were born and raised in Southern California. And again, it's funny how people yell when they're speaking to someone who they think is a foreigner. "How do you like America?

How do you find our country?" Or sometimes you would get things like this. "Do you eat pizza?" Funny that people think of pizza as an American food. The problem was an interesting one. People couldn't tell my citizenship. They saw the color of my skin, and they wondered. Now, of course, I was born in the US, and so I was and am a US citizen, but they had an expectation from the context of the meeting that I was a foreigner.

You can't always tell when you first meet someone what their citizenship is. There's no sign that we wear. You have to tell by their speech, their dress, the way that they think. I was raised in a fairly patriotic home. I was raised in a home where we talked a lot about being grateful to be in America. And I have to admit that that pride was stoked in me over the years. There are many, many people. There are millions of people who would love to be citizens of America from all over the world. Some people, I was reading an article a couple of years ago, do something called tourism childbirth. I don't know if you've heard about this.

Tourism childbirth is where the woman is expecting, and they time it. They get a tourist visa just right so that they're in the US for a short time for their tourist visa, but then they have the baby while they're here in the US, and any baby that's born in the US is automatically a citizen. So everyone goes back home. They wait till the child is 18 years old, and they put that child on a one-way ticket to the US, and they just show up and they say, "I'm here. You got to take me. I'm a citizen."

People have come up with all kinds of tactics to gain US citizenship, and everybody knows that citizenship is better than a visa or a work permit because it's permanent. It carries rights and privileges. You share in the wealth, the protection, and the laws of the United States.

So after a while, I figured out that I didn't really want to be in these conversations. I thought they were funny, but I was not so interested in them because this was pretty much a weekend occurrence and every weekend occurrence for us. And so I figured out that when a person would approach me and I saw them, they have that look on their face. Sometimes they'd be holding an object or got this wide-eyed look on their face. And what I figured out was with just two or three words, I could convince them that I was a US citizen. I would just say, "What's up?" Or I would say, "How's it going?" Those two or three words would make the person stop, and they say, "Wait a minute.

That's American slang, and you're talking like me. You must not be a foreigner." I cracked the citizenship recognition problem with a slight adjustment of my speech.

The question that I have and that I'm going to unpack this morning is, how do people know that you are a citizen of God's kingdom? How do they know? How long does it take? What's involved in that? Now, you might answer dress, the way I dress, and that's a valid answer, but it's only part of the answer. And in fact, I believe that it's a small part of the answer for how God's citizens are recognized.

There's a marvelous verse in Philippians that says, "For our citizenship is in heaven." That's Philippians 3:20. The Bible tells a captivating story of citizenship about a country far greater than the United States. Indeed, the story of citizenship is woven throughout the whole fabric of the Bible.

It's related to the concept of kingdom.

Kingdoms have citizens, right? Don't all kingdoms have citizens? And all kingdoms have dominions. Dominions is simply a reference to the range or the scope of the rule of a king. That's his dominion. In Genesis 1, Adam and Eve were told by God to exercise dominion over the earth. They were supposed to subdue the earth and to enlarge God's kingdom.

Eden was their home base. That's where God's kingdom was touching the earth. The magnificent royal Adam and Eve, however, made a horrible mistake. Something went terribly wrong. These beautiful image bearers gave their dominion away.

What did they do? They gave their dominion away to an unemployed, homeless angel.

This lying angel's name is, of course, Satan. Imagine a prince giving his rule, his authority, his palace away to some unemployed, homeless person who's part of the enemy side. This is what Adam and Eve did. They were created to subdue the earth, but instead, they were subdued.

Instead of exercising authority and dominion, Adam and Eve came under bondage.

I want to pause for a moment because many people struggle to understand why in the Bible it says the wages of sin is death. That seems way too harsh, especially to our modern ears. They don't understand why way back in Genesis 2, when God said, "You can eat of anything that you want, but don't eat of the street, and if you do, you're going to die. On the day you eat it, you'll surely die." That just seems way too harsh.

Well, in fact, if you understand sin in a two kingdoms framework, it makes perfect sense. The problem is, see, most people, when they think of sin, they think of something like breaking the rules of a board game, like Monopoly.

They think, "What's the big deal? Who cares?" But did you know that for most countries throughout most of history, they have agreed that the penalty for treason is death? It's an almost universal in fact, even in 2018. I didn't research this thoroughly, but many countries, maybe most countries today, certainly in the US, the penalty for treason is death. They will execute you.

Why is it so bad? People recognize you sold your country out. You helped that other side. You gave away something valuable and precious when you committed treason. You deserve to die. That's treason. What Adam and Eve did is they took God's dominion. They took God's authority, and they gave it right to the devil.

They gave it to the enemy. That's treason. I want you all to think about sin in this way. It's not merely breaking the rules of bingo or Monopoly. It's giving God's power and authority to the devil. Now, when Adam and Eve sinned, there was a tight connection between heaven and earth that was ruptured. Humans and the earth were plunged into death, decay, disease, and disaster.

What will join heaven and earth again? Or perhaps better, who will join heaven and earth? We'll come back to that again. Now, I want to get a little bit more specific as to how our citizenship is going to be recognized.

And I'm going to give you five points. I'd like you to write them down. The first point is that our citizenship is to be marked by our boldness. Our citizenship is to be marked by our boldness. When I was preparing this message, I kept thinking. My mind kept going back again and again to the book of Daniel.

Daniel is, of course, a book that is about four young boys who were put into a foreign nation, the nation of Babylon, and we see them go through various tests and trials. And I was thinking about this. Was there any doubt among the Babylonians where Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Michael, and Azariah, or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Was there any doubt as to where their citizenship and allegiance resided? Did they wonder? Did they wonder like, "Hey, this Daniel person or this Shadrach person, I wonder where his loyalty really is?" Of course, there was none because there were four tests in the book. The four tests were eating the king's food, bowing down to the king's idol, interpreting the writing on the wall, and then praying to God after the decree had been made to pray only to the king.

Now, let's think about this for a moment. Let's think about the first trial. The first trial was eating the king's food. These are a group of teenagers. They're all teenagers. They've been forcibly abducted from their home country of Judah or Israel, and they've been brought to Babylon, and they have a conscience problem with the food.

They could have said this, "Hey, you know what? Let's just plant a garden in our backyard, and let's secretly grow some vegetables in that garden, and we're just going to get our food from there. Or let's just be a little sneaky and get some leftover foods or food out of the kitchen, and we're going to make it because, hey, we're under persecution here. This is a heavy time for us." Teenagers just abducted, probably scared for their life. Is that what they did?

They boldly went to their supervisor, and they said, "Hey, we want to put you to a test. We want to put our God to the test. You give us vegetables and water, and we're going to prove to you that our God is able to nourish us."

That's pretty amazing when you think about their alternatives. Let's think about the second test. The second test was bowing down before the idol that Nebuchadnezzar had made. These four young men, they could have said, "You know what? We're going to bow down with our bodies, but not with our hearts."

When everybody's bowing, we're actually going to be standing up in our hearts because, and I've heard this a million times, it's the heart that matters. That's all that matters. It's all about the heart. We can do whatever we want with our outside so long as we're bowing down, not bowing down in our hearts.

But of course, they didn't do that. When everybody was bowing down, they saw these four young men standing up defying the order of the king. And then the speech they make. The speech they make, they say, "You know what, Nebuchadnezzar? Our God is able to deliver us, but even if he doesn't, we don't care. We're not going to bow down to your idols because we're going to be faithful even to death."

The third trial, interpreting the writing on the wall. Nobody could read this writing, right? So picture the scene. There's a bunch of rowdy, drunk, powerful people, and all of a sudden, the writing goes on the wall basically saying, "You've been weighed.

You're wanting. Your days are numbered. Done." Now, if I'm Daniel, I'm reading this thinking like, "Huh. Do I want to break this news to a bunch of rowdy, drunk people who could kill me if this news doesn't please them?"

Many of us probably would have said, "You know what? Let me just think about it for a while. I can see it. Let me just go home and think about it and spend some time to think about exactly how to explain the translation. It's a little bit complicated. I need some time to get out my concordance and my dictionary."

Is that what Daniel did?

Most of us would have stalled, but Daniel was bold. The fourth trial, of course, there's an edict that is given where nobody's allowed to pray to anybody but the king.

And again, think about the situation. Wouldn't it have been the most natural thing in the world to say, "You know what? I'm going to keep praying, but I'm just going to close my window. God can see through the window. No big deal.

I'm not going to pray to Darius, but I'm just going to pray to God, and I'm going to close my window, or I'm going to go to a different room"? I could see Daniel saying, "God put me in this position of authority. I'm a big shot now here in the Persian Empire. So I need to honor God by keeping my position, laying low, keeping a low profile so that I can retain my power." Is that what Daniel did?

He prayed with his windows open still, even though the law had been passed, again, defying the orders of the king. Amazing. Four powerful tests met with remarkable boldness. So how is it with you? We live in a day where people are ashamed to even say grace with non-Christians.

And yet, we ought to be humbled by the example of these four men. They showed boldness, courage, bravery from the time they were teenagers until the time they were in their 80s. So if I asked you right now, "Show me your citizenship by how you have shown me boldness," how do you answer?

How do you answer?

Second point. Our citizenship is expressed through representation and dominion. Our citizenship is expressed through representation and dominion. In the book of Second Corinthians, the Bible calls us ambassadors. It's a wonderful term. It's a nice, easy term to understand.

We all know what ambassadors do. They represent the interests of one nation to another nation. Now, which nation do we represent? We, of course, represent the kingdom of heaven. Consider for a moment the wide, undescribable gap between the kingdom of heaven and the nations of the earth. I'll read to you a quote from Spurgeon. He says it very beautifully. He says, "There can be no comparison between a soaring seraph and a crawling worm. Christian men ought to live that it were idle to speak of a comparison between them and the men of the world.

It should not be a comparison but a contrast. No scale of degrees is possible. The believer should be a direct and manifest contradiction to the unregenerate. We should compel our critics not to confess that moralists are good and Christians a little better.

But while the world is darkness, we should manifestly be light. While the world lieth under the wicked one, we should evidently be of God and overcome the temptations of that wicked one. Wide as the poles asunder are life and death, light and darkness, health and disease, purity and sin, spiritual and carnal, divine and sensual.

We do well to remind ourselves when our days begin that we are ambassadors of a kingdom that simply cannot be compared to the kingdoms of this earth. All nations, every nation on this earth will be destroyed in the last day except for the unshakable kingdom of our God.

I believe that many of our problems come from the fact that we forget this mandate. We forget that we are supposed to represent heaven's interests down on the earth. I want you all to regularly hold this idea in your mind that we are on temporary assignment. We live in heaven.

It's commanded, actually, that we keep our thoughts even in heaven. We live in heaven, but we are stationed on earth to bring heaven down to the earth. Many of our problems come because we have forgotten this mandate. What if an ambassador from the US goes to China, and this ambassador is getting drunk or swearing or caught in sexual immorality or yelling at people? That would be a terrible reflection on us, on the US.

In the same way, when we, as ambassadors of the heavenly kingdom, do not reflect the beatitudes, the values of our king, what does that do to his honor?

When we think about it in this way, when we pray the Lord's Prayer, "Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," doesn't that bring more light to the picture? We are trying to join heaven and earth. That bond that was ruptured when Adam and Eve sinned at the fall, Jesus began to reforge that connection, and we in his path follow.

We are supposed to bring heaven's perspectives and heaven's priorities to all the decisions and all of our situations. Do you do that? When someone cuts you off when you're driving—this happens to me all the time in Boston. Not a good place to drive. When somebody cuts you off when you're driving, do you bring heaven's priorities, heaven's values to that situation?

When you face temptation, how does heaven's priorities change how you act? When you're looking for a spouse, how does heaven's perspective manifest in your decision-making? When a child is disobedient or irritating, how do you bring heaven's perspective down?

In Colossians, it says, "Set your minds on things above, not on things on earth, for you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

There are certain countries—South Korea is one example—where it is a requirement that every single male serve in the army. Every single male has to serve in the army.

Guess what? In God's kingdom, every single male and every single female is required to serve in the army. No one is exempt. There's a couple of countries that are actually even like that today. The modern nation of Israel requires that. Both men and women have to serve in the army.

So why is this? Why is it that every person who is called a citizen of the kingdom is required to serve as a soldier? Well, it is simply because God has put us on that mission, that mission that began in Genesis 1 to take dominion of the earth.

In Genesis 1, the very first chapter of the Bible, God told us to fill the earth with people. In the last chapter of the book of Matthew, Jesus says, "Fill the earth with disciples." Many people miss the connection between Genesis 1 and Matthew 28. You all know Matthew 28, the Great Commission. Jesus begins by saying, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples." Don't read over that first part quickly. The word authority is very closely connected to the word dominion. Jesus then mentions heaven and earth again, another reference to Genesis 1. He's restoring that broken bond between heaven and earth through the Great Commission.

Jesus is going to reign through us as the last Adam. Now, I think this is why—I know this is why—when you go to the book of Acts, it seems like the disciples, the apostles, they are attracted like magnets to the great cities of the Roman Empire.

They look at Ephesus, where one of the wonders of the ancient world was, a huge temple to a pagan god called Diana. And they said, "We want that city. That would be a great city. We want a capital city for our king."

And then Corinth, another great example. Corinth was the capital of Achaia, one of the great trading cities of the day. And Paul's licking his chops, thinking, "I'm going to take that city for Jesus. It's not going to stand. No way."

And then he ineluctably, again and again and again, says, "Rome. Rome is the gem. I want Rome, the capital of this whole empire. I'm going to go there, and I want a flag for Jesus in Rome." Now, I admit, whenever I hear about the great cities of our world today, when I hear about Beijing or Dhaka or Tokyo or Cairo, Buenos Aires, whatever the city may be, my heart swells with desire because I think, "I want you, God, to use us to bring heaven down to those cities. I want to have them conquered." I happen to live in Boston, and I've been fascinated with Boston for many decades because, in many ways, America was born there.

Most of the founding fathers were there, and all the speeches about taxation, representation, and the Boston Tea Party, and all that happened there. The Unitarian religion, which is not a good religion, was born there. The Evangelical religion started there, right at Park Street. The Abolition movement started there. Martin Luther King Jr. went there and studied at Boston University, and the Civil Rights movement was born there. The oldest college in America, the most powerful university in the world, is there.

And I've had a lot of interactions in the last few years with various people in high levels of influence in the state because I've been working on a fairly large project. And in the back of my mind, this has often happened, I'm saying to myself, "I'm coming to claim Boston for my king. So be careful what you say, official. There's somebody behind me who you don't see who I know is working.

Set your sights high to take dominion for the king, whether it's Richmond, Virginia, Dearborn, Michigan, Kampala, Uganda. There are many places where we need to exercise the dominion of our king." I'm very worried when I see pew warmers. I'm very worried because if you're not bursting with desire to exercise this dominion that Jesus told us to, to fill the earth with disciples, I question if you understand the gospel of the kingdom.

God's true churches are expanding. They always have been. Jesus promised the gates of Hades would not prevail against his church. He said the church would start small like a mustard seed and then fill the whole earth. In Acts, wherever Paul went, there was either riot or revival.

How is it with you? Point number three. To gain citizenship, you must be born again. Now, I hate filling out government forms. I can't stand government forms. They're arduous and tedious and complicated. My wife, last year, had to spend two full days filling out forms just for us to get a tourist visa to go visit Uganda.

But for most of us—and by the way, if you try to get naturalized and go through that whole process, it's a long, complicated process that involves green cards and visas and all of these papers, etc.—but did you know that for a baby, gaining citizenship is very easy?

You're just born. You don't have to do anything. I didn't have to do anything to gain citizenship in America. I was just born.

In Romans 6, Paul says that in baptism, we died and were raised again to newness of life. There's a repeated picture—Jesus uses it in John 3 as well—where we are born again. We die to our old allegiances, and we are born again. And when we're born again, guess what citizenship we have? Because we're born into this new kingdom. It's a beautiful picture. Interestingly, the word in Greek for born again, anothen, is the word Jesus uses to play on words. The word anothen in John 3 also means from above. And in fact, it's translated from above even in the King James and New King James.

And so Jesus is saying, "You must be born again to enter the kingdom." He's also saying, "You must be born from above to enter the kingdom." We gain citizenship by virtue of the new birth. Now, of course, the hard part is the dying.

That's the hard part. When we count the cost, are we willing to put Jesus ahead of family, friends, many church members, even ourselves? Or are we ashamed of Jesus? Jesus said in Luke 9, "For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him, the Son of Man, will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory and in his fathers and of the holy angels."

So many people in the churches of today are fake citizens. They're illegally in God's country because they have not been willing to surrender their lives. Point number four. Counterfeit kingdoms rob us of our dominion and strength. Counterfeit kingdoms rob us of our dominion and strength. So Satan is very clever. He's a smart angel. Even though he was kicked out of heaven, he still has a lot of intelligence. He knows exactly when his end will come. It's a verse that I say to myself all the time. It's from Matthew 24 where Jesus says, "The gospel of the kingdom will be preached as a witness"—that means in person—"to all nations, and then the end will come." So notice the gospel of the kingdom.

Jesus could look forward 2,000 years, thousands of years, and anticipate there was another gospel that was not the gospel of the kingdom. But he says, "The gospel of the kingdom will be preached as a witness in person to all nations." The word nations is ethne. In Greek, it's the word from which we get our word, ethnic group. So there's about 20,000, 25,000 ethnic groups today.

So when there is a kingdom church, when there's a kingdom witness in all 20, 25,000 ethnic groups, Jesus said, "The end will come." So Satan knows that. And so he has done, I think, just a brilliant maneuver. The brilliant maneuver that he has done is he's created a theology where heaven is about the next life as opposed to bringing heaven down in this life because he understands that if he could create people who are just sitting around hunkering down, waiting, waiting, waiting for some future heaven, then the gospel of the kingdom isn't going to spread on the earth. It's brilliant.

There are plenty of counterfeit forms of religion out there where you stay on the defense. You just hunker down, and you hold down until you die. That's not the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel of the kingdom is God's nation on the move, expanding, conquering. The early church had it. The Waldensians had it. The early Anabaptists had it.

But many people today, many, many, many people today, when I look at them, I look at them, and I see, "Where's the dominion here? What are you doing? You're a pew warmer." They're sitting back, not taking dominion of the enemy's territory. They live an easy, comfortable life.

That's not the gospel of the kingdom. That's the gospel of Laodicea, the gospel of complacency. So Satan has created these brilliant, shining theologies that are all about deferment and postponing heaven. But he says, "I got to do more." Okay. So he creates these false theologies. But then he says, "You know what? I recognize that dominion is hardwired into all of us.

All of us have a desire to go out and conquer and subdue. All of us do." And so Satan then says, "I need to create a bunch of play pens for people to exercise their dominion in that God gave them so that they don't so that they kind of amuse and they don't dare venture into the real dominion of subduing the earth and taking my territory."

So the whole world—I mean, easy example is the whole world of professional sports and college sports. I used to be deep in that world. It's a big playpen for people to exercise dominion, either playing or vicariously. They say, "I got to get to the struggle. I'm going to beat this team. And yeah, we're going to beat Atlanta. And then we're going to do this." And it isn't interesting that teams are tied to cities. I think there's even there a little counterfeit narrative.

Some people try to take dominion by participating in movies and doing it through their imagination vicariously: action movies, romance movies. Whether you conquer the bad guy or whether you win the girl's heart, there's always some struggle there. We're all suckers for those narratives because Satan has figured out, "Hey, these are great little playpens. You've got this dominion engineered into you. Hey, go, have fun. Yeah, yeah, go play. Enjoy it."

Some people are in the playpen of the kingdom of cars or the kingdom of hunting or the kingdom of video games or the kingdom of parties. There's two particular systems that I'm going to call out this morning. One kingdom or one citizenship is Babylon, and another one is Paris.

Babylon is used throughout the Bible as a symbol of economic power and luxury and toleration. So Babylon's a fascinating place. It's worth studying the history if you have some time. I believe that Babylon has a unique appeal to older people, to the older generation.

So the Babylonians, they're not savages. They're not like the Assyrians that were these bloodthirsty warlords. The Babylonians were refined. They were wealthy. They were great builders. One of the ancient wonders of the world was the hanging gardens of Babylon, right? They loved gardens. They loved nature.

Babylon is about comfort and status quo and prosperity and toleration. And I can just picture them. They would bring all these leaders, all these people, "Hey, yeah, enjoy your life. Whatever gods, follow your gods. We have our gods. You have our gods. Here's some nice food. Here's some beautiful gardens. Walk around, enjoy nature. Here's a nice sight.

Look at how your life will be with us. But don't rock the boat. Don't be too radical. That's Babylon." On the other hand, there's Paris. So Paris is a fascinating city. I've never been to Paris, but I've been to France. I've been to the southern part of France for a science conference. Paris is often called the fashion capital of the world. It's also a place where there's a lot of movies that are produced and filmed. A lot of people want to be near the Eiffel Tower and see all the beautiful attractions there.

Paris is more attractive to young people. When I was in my student days, a lot of people wanted to do study abroad programs and go to Paris. It's like the student dream, like, "Oh, I'm going to go and have a croissant sitting next to the Notre Dame. And it's going to be great. And I'm going to get all the nice French fashion and all the nice French delicacy." There's a certain exotic appeal that it has: fashion and entertainment. Now, I want to say that I, myself, was caught in this bondage for many years.

When I see a lot of you, it reminds me of myself, especially when the young people remind me of myself maybe 20, 25 years ago. I went to public school, as I mentioned. And when I was in public school, there was a certain look that I was going for. There was a certain style that I wanted to achieve.

I wanted to be popular. I wanted to fit in. I wanted people to like me. And I wanted to be, yeah, just stylish. And I wanted to be looked at as a little bit rebellious but not too much, a little bit out of step but not too wild and crazy.

And so I'd wake up in the mornings, and I'd style my hair. I'd get all this mousse and this gel, and I'd have my hair a certain way. And I'd have these certain brands of clothes. And I'd have this certain jacket that I would wear and these certain jeans. And I remember just walking around campus thinking, "Yeah, here I am.

Look how great I am." And I say these things not out of a judgment, genuinely, because this is something that I deeply struggled with for many years but out of sympathy. I see now clear as day that my motivation back then was pride.

That's what the Bible calls it, just plain and simple. It's pride. I wanted people to approve me. I wanted them to admire me. And that desire for admiration is exactly what motivated the Pharisees. I see some of you today, and like I said, it reminds me just like me when I was in high school where there's a look. There's the skinny jeans. There's the fitted shirts. There's the painted nails, the stylish hair, the tiny head coverings. Some people are trying to be preppy. Some people are trying to look rebellious. I get it.

My friends, my dear friends, especially those of you who struggle with this, I simply ask that you kneel before God and say, "If there is any pride in me, show it to me. If I am searching for acceptance or admiration from other people, expose it to my heart." David Foster Wallace is a powerful writer, and he has a great line, not about the subject, but he has a line talking about an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn't even know that he or she is locked up. He says, "That's the worst imprisonment. It's so thorough, and it's so complete. You don't even know you're in it." And that's exactly what pride is. Those years, I had no idea.

I couldn't see it. I couldn't see it. Now, it's clear as day. My plea and call to those of you who wrestle with Paris, who wrestle with fashion, is to search your heart. What are you asking people to do with your clothing? Look at me or to follow the simplicity and humility of our Savior.

Look with me. I'm only going to have us look at one passage. It's this very short, familiar passage. I'm going to wrap up this point, give one more, and then we'll close. Look with me at 1 John 2, verses 15 and 17. This was the passage that was assigned to me in this message, and I've been meditating on it. We're not going to spend too much time on it, but there are some excellent insights in this. 1 John 2, verses 15 to 17 says, "Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world.

And the world is passing away and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever."

Familiar verse, I think, to almost all of us where we are called to not love the world. And it says that if we love the world, we don't love God. That's what it says in verse 15. And it says something very profound in verse 16 that's easy to read over. It says, "For all that is in the world," and I want you to underline the word all, "for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world." And we get this warning in verse 17. The whole system is coming down. It's going to crash down.

We're alive for a couple of minutes on this earth, and all of these false systems are going to come crashing down.

Do not kid yourself. Again, this is something that when you're in the prison, it's hard to see, but do not kid yourself. If you love Hollywood, the love of the Father is not in you. If you love fashion or the world style, you love what is passing away. Hollywood is not going to make you Christlike. They have no interest to make you Christlike.

It wants to tear you away. The earth's fashions are not sanctifying. They're defiling. The American dream of ease, prosperity, a nice big house on a comfortable plot of land will quietly pull you away from Jesus. I travel a few times a year to speak in various plain churches. And when I go and I normally stay in their homes, I see the homes and the businesses and the lifestyles. And, oh, it just tears me up because I ask the question, "Where's the dominion?" I see luxury and an easy life, but then I ask, "Are we aliens and strangers?"

I ask all of you to search your hearts. Have you joined yourself to a worldly city, Babylon, especially those of you who are older, comfortable life, economic prosperity, nice businesses, beautiful gardens, or Paris, style, entertainment, what's exotic, being interesting? Have you been seduced by either?

Have you given your dominion away? Every year in the US, there are a number of examples where people get married purely to try to gain citizenship. Laura and I know a couple that were from Africa that were married in Africa. They came to the US, very kind, sweet couple. And we heard that this couple—they didn't have citizenship here. We heard that this couple, they had concocted a scheme where he was going to marry on paper a girl, a young lady. I think there was a financial arrangement there. They wouldn't be married in any physical sense, but he would be marrying her legally and then try to get citizenship for himself. And then once he's a citizen, try to get citizenship for his wife.

There's 50,000 of these that happen every year where people marry just for citizenship. I was reading about a story of a man who was doing this in Atlanta. And he was in the country illegally, and he desperately wanted citizenship. And so he paid a woman $10,000 for a legal marriage with her. So they got married. They got a marriage license, and he got a green card. But then this lady realized that she had him. And so she started to blackmail him, and she wanted all of his money. Whenever he got mail, it would go to her house because that was where they had to register since he was supposedly married to her. And the whole thing started to unravel.

She milked him for every dollar that she had. Whenever his lawyer would send papers, she would rip them up so that he would never get them. And eventually, the government found the scheme, and he was deported.

These false cities, Babylon, Paris, these false systems, they will deceive you. They will try to offer you a way into citizenship that seems plausible, that you can be married to two people at the same time. You might think, "Hey, I can be married to Jesus, and I can also be married to Babylon. I can be married to Jesus, and I can still have my fashion or my Hollywood or my great lifestyle."

These stories don't end well. They're deceitful, and they end badly. My fifth and final point is that citizens have the right to an audience with a king who is on their side. Citizens have the right to an audience with a king who is on their side.

Most of us know the story of the book of Acts. And there were a couple of episodes where Paul gets himself into hot water. He finds himself imprisoned. And then he pulls out this ticket, so to speak, and he says, "I'm a citizen of the Roman Empire. I appeal to Caesar." And people said, "Whoa, you're a citizen of Rome? Really? Well, if you are, guess what? You do get to go to Caesar." And so the whole voyage begins where he gets to go to Caesar.

Roman citizens had a powerful right to invoke Caesar if they were on trial.

Citizens are granted, in the United States, great rights of appeal and reaching out to authorities above us. Over the last few years, I have been going through a massive ordeal to petition the state of Massachusetts to start a new Christian institution in the state. It's been a multi-year, incredibly difficult process. We finished it in 2016. What I decided to do in this is I decided to hire two lawyers to help me. So it's very intimidating when you're having to file hundreds and hundreds of pages of petition to the state. And so I hired two lawyers. The lawyers' names are Anita and Paul.

And Anita is an expert in nonprofit law, and Paul is an expert in educational law. And so I've started a lot of businesses over the years. I used to work in venture capital, starting biotech companies. And I have learned that as soon as you can, get a good lawyer who knows the laws because they'll pay for themselves many times over, even though they're expensive. Because if you know the right laws, you can use them to your advantage, and you can make a case to the government for things that you didn't even think was possible. But if you get the right person who really knows the law well, they're going to do wonders for you. So I decided to get two lawyers, and they're both expensive, but I hired them both.

There's a bit of an analogy here, even in our thoughts about scripture. If you know the Bible, there's a lot in there that you can use to your advantage. But if you don't know it, there's all kinds of things. There's all kinds of promises. There's all kinds of places that are going to sit idle that can't even help you.

I hope you see where I'm going with this. If you know and use God's word, it can be powerful. There's a verse in Hosea where God says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." There's all these promises and content there, and they can't even use it.

So I have six children, and my oldest is 11, and my youngest is 2. And they're getting clever. And sometimes we will have little discussions where they'll want something. And most of the time, they'll say, "I want something," and I'll just say, "No, you're not going to have it." But there's one thing that works. If they say to me, "But Dad, you said last week this and this and this," that we would get this. And then I look over at Laura, and I think, "Did I say that? Because if I said that, I got to do it." They know that they have me if they can hook me on my word. That's pretty much the only reliable way that my children have to consistently influence me.

And so it is with God. If we go to God and say, "Hey, I want this. I want that," that might not work. But if you can hold up God's word and say, "Hey, you said, you said," that's a very powerful influence where God's going to say, "Hey, you got me. You got me. I got to honor my word. You're right. I got to do that." Now, when I was going through this whole episode with Massachusetts, the way that I used the two attorneys was as follows. I kept Anita as my background coach. So she would tell me all these parts of the law. She'd say, "When you go to the board, say this and that, and you talk to the department, and use this statute and that statute."

And she would send me these emails, and I would print them out. I'd practically memorize these emails because they're high-pressure situations. You got one shot often in these meetings. And I knew that I had to have Anita's words inside of me when I went before the ruling authorities.

The other attorney, his name was Paul. I would bring him to my meeting. So Anita was kind of in the background, just giving me emails, giving me advice, giving me all these cases and laws. Paul, though, I did something different. Paul, I would bring him to the meeting with me. And the reason that I would bring him to these meetings is that he knew the people on the board and in the department. And so I quickly figured out, "Hey, if this guy knows the people that I'm talking to and he's worked with them and they have a good working relationship, I'd be a fool not to bring him along to my meetings." So we'd go to these meetings.