Fix Your Eyes on Jesus, Part 1 | How to Survive a Crazy Election

Hebrews 1:1-4

As Christians, we are the salt of the earth, which means that we serve our communities well, we serve our state well, our nation well by taking our Christian world view out of the church and into the world, to the ballot box, voting as Christians, in conversations, and influencing our neighbors, our coworkers, friends, family, influencing them all toward good and godly ends.

Jeremiah told this to his nation when they were under God’s judgment, Jeremiah 29:7, he said, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare, you will find your welfare.” We, too, need to seek the welfare of our nation, our state, our county, our city by praying, praying specifically, by working, by voting, by encouraging, by influencing. But folks, the writing is on the wall. The message is the same one that was delivered to King Belshazzar’s court. “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and UPHARSIN. […] MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL – you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.”

Here in the beautiful state of colorful Colorado, a majority voted in favor of saving grey wolves. And sadly, an even larger majority voted not to save human babies. Colorado is a safe space for wolves and dangerous place for the most helpless, most vulnerable of our citizens. A rapacious wolf is preferred over a baby. Can God bless our state? Can God bless our nation when such wickedness prevails?

When the majority of the state and the nation, the population votes to protect the right of its citizens to kill children in the womb. Child sacrifice rites of Molech worship are starting to look tame in comparison to this. As we no longer use technology to save human life, but to take it from the weak and the vulnerable. All of this killing is in pursuit of the lie of modern sexual liberation. Throwing off sexual restraint has always been a feature of false religion. No different now.

Sexual perversion ritualized in ancient pagan idolatry is today a protected form of individual self-expression. It’s protected, as we read in Psalm 94, it’s protected by law. The sin staining our nation, all of that is registered as guilt before God. God does not miss one soul-destroying guilt. All of it is revealed in the outward evidence of shame upon shame upon shame.

To cover over that persistent gnawing sense of shame and guilt, drug use has risen to epidemic levels. It’s rising so high that it’s impossible to deal with it all, so they decriminalize, it’s what Senator Patrick Moynihan, the late Senator from New York, called, “defining deviancy down.” When transgression becomes so thorough and so widespread, it overwhelms the court system and overwhelms the jails and overwhelms any sense of being able to pull things back. So they have to define deviancy down. Let the convicts out.

Dulling the conscience with chemicals, it does nothing to deal with the underlying sin and the destruction of lives. Families and children continues unabated as covetous hearts devour more and more, but are never ever satisfied. The right to keep pursuing sexual immorality, the right to inebriate one’s mind with drugs and alcohol, these are some of the last rights of individual liberty our citizens seem willing to protect.

Lost amid the noise about the presidency, four more states legalized marijuana for recreational use. CNN’s business section Friday was almost gleeful in its report. It says, quote, “Plenty of uncertainty remains with the 2020 Election, but one thing is clear, recreational cannabis had a big night at the ballot box.”  That makes 15 states that use marijuana for recreation, thirty-seven of fifty states that use it for medication. Oregon has gone completely mental, decriminalizing the possession of hard drugs for personal use; drugs like cocaine, heroin, oxycodone, methamphetamines. You might want to take that off your vacation plans, going to Oregon. So sad.

All of this has stymied law enforcement as it tries in vain to manage this loss of public sanity. The citizens that they’ve sworn to serve and protect have just gone stark crazy. Greeley Chief of Police, Mark Jones, posted on Facebook Friday, trying to help the public understand what’s behind the recent rise in violent incidents in Greeley, and he wrote this, quote, “The wearing of masks due to COVID, the wearing of masks has emboldened law breakers as they have less fear of identification during and after their crimes. COVID, along with, politic, America’s political unrest, has placed a tremendous amount of stress on everyone. People simply lose their mind over a simple contact with the police. There’s been an increase in the use of alcohol and drugs since COVID began, as people try to cope with their newfound problems. The substance, abutes, abuse contributes to individual’s lack of self-control and their inability to control anger and other emotions.” Chief Jones went on to describe the struggle, to police the consequences, of today’s leftist politics and policies. He says this, quote, “There is and continues to be a push from the state,” from the state, “not to incarcerate people for drug convictions. A number of other crimes that drug users are involved in leads to more serious, violent, and nonviolent crimes. As a society we have emboldened the criminal with all the defunding the police talk, reduction in sentences, not revoking parolees, and decriminalizing or greatly reducing the levels of many crimes. All this plays a powerful role in criminal behavior and what seems to be an increased boldness and aggression toward police and victims of crimes.” End quote.

When people are willing to forfeit the right of free speech, interviews on college campuses all over the county are showing that, that young people are very willing to give up free speech, if free speech means something that might make people feel uncomfortable. Well, let’s censor it. They have no idea what they’re saying.

If they’re willing to forfeit the right of free assembly, then they are willing to put up with criminality and transgressive behavior, whether it means more lockdowns, which is the destruction of small business, the erasure of the middle class. Whether it’s wearing masks in perpetuity, an increase in drug addiction, rioting in the streets, they will vote for whoever lets them sin with impunity. Just keep the sex, drugs and entertainment flowing freely. Don’t shut off my connection to the Internet. 

A crowd of protesters marched in Denver with a sign that said, quote, “Death to fascism and the liberalism that enables it.” And as they walked, they chanted a slogan to clarify their message, “No borders, no walls, no USA at all.” That used to be called treason. Today, calls to end the Unites States are not only accepted, but they are applauded. And you might think to yourself, rightly, aren’t the liberal ideas that helped to build the United States what helps to give these people, even these people the freedom to march in the first place? So why do they seem so willing, especially young, among the younger generations, why are they so willing to defund it, deconstruct it, burn it all down and throw it all away?

 People have chosen to believe the lie that, godless socialism, removes the burden of personal responsibility. The collective pays the bills, while the lazy man loafs around doing the bare minimum to get by then enjoys numbing his mind with distraction and deviancy. They seem to think socialism gives us the most bang for the buck: free education, free healthcare, job security, guaranteed wage. Of course you understand, free, means you pay for it. But that’s a cost they’re willing to pay.

I wrote to a geo-political expert friend of mind asking for his take on the deconstruction of American and the push to replace the current order with socialism. He lives in Europe, he’s seeing an absolute elation in Europe of what’s going on here as this country moves towards globalism. This is what he said when I wrote to him. He said, “The current world order, based on nationalism, capitalism, democracy, and individual freedom, was established by the United States after the end of the second World War.

“The American world order, effectively based on the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, has created unbelievable wealth, enabled unparalleled technological progress, and lifted hundreds of millions of people around the world out of poverty.  Capitalism, however, must be moderated by the restraints of a Christian worldview for it to work. The West’s wholesale abandonment of the Judeo-Christian moral system, the Ten Commandments, has resulted in extreme corruption and decadence, that is the moral decay of a society due to material wealth.” End quote.

My friend’s views are well-substantiated and broadly supported by many other conservative thinkers. And really, what we’re seeing in our decline in the nation is the decline that all empires go through. They have a period of taking over, then building, then growing, then advancing, and then ruling, and dominating, and spreading out, and influencing, but then all the wealth that comes in, because of all that, it allows intellectualists to sit in universities, drinking their wine and coming up with theories to deconstruct what they have inherited.  And so moral decay takes over in a nation and the nation starts to decline, and we’ve been on the decline for quite some time now. Eventually, empires fall from within.

I’m currently reading Rod Dreher’s book called, Live Not By Lies, subtitled, A Manual for Christian Dissidents. That’s what we are in this world, Christian dissidents. We, we do not agree with what’s going on in the world, and it’s actually going to become quite cool and trendy to be where we are. We’re going to be standing up against the, the cultural mainstream. So, we’re on the right side of history, right? But he wrote this in the chapter, How to See Totalitarianism Coming. Rod Dreher outlines a number of signs of pre-totalitarian culture, which happens to describe our culture right now.

 I’m just going to give you a few of these signs, not all of them. But he points out, firstly, the loneliness and social atomization of the younger generations. “Loneliness, social atomization, isolation of people, separated, pulled apart, the grandparents and the parents of Generation Z and the Millennials, they abandoned their families in pursuit of material wealth and comfort. The Socialism is attractive to this younger generation, who long for closeness, long to be a part of something because their families have completely destructed. So it’s attractive as if,” writes Dreher, “they aspire to a politics that can replace the community that they wish they had.”

Dreher points, also, to the loss of faith in hierarchies and institutions. That’s what we’re hearing everywhere, right?  Systemic evil in all of our institutions. It’s been the project of post-modernism, which has sown destructive seeds of what James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose refer to as cynical theories. Cynical theories, this is activist scholarship that is happening at the college and university level and has been for decades is now infiltrated all of our school systems. Cynical theories, post-colonial theory, social justice, critical theory, intersectionality, feminist theories, this is activist scholarship in the colleges and universities that has bred and groomed several generations of political leftist activists.

Dreher continues his outline of pre-totalitarian tendencies. He speaks about the desire to transgress and destroy is a mark of a pre-totalitarian culture. We’ve seen all that in our major, in many of our American cities. He points out, also, the use of propaganda and the willingness to believe useful lies; several examples of this, we heard throughout the past years. They are useful, but false narratives about Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd; can’t even speak the truth about those things without being pilloried, de-platformed, and censored. That’s what a number of people have found as they’ve tried to speak to these issues and draw out the truth about the deaths of these people. Which any death is tragic, but let’s talk about the truth behind these things.

Media fixation on destroying President Trump, Russian collusion, impeachment charges, character assassination of Supreme Court, Supreme Court nominees; true or false, it doesn’t even matter, jourmal, journalism has been serving the left. Nikole Hannah-Jones was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project, have you heard of this? 1619 Project, that America’s founding date is actually not 1776, but 1619 when the first slaves hit the shores of America, and it’s been slavery that has marked this nation’s history.

It’s basically sins, trying to show the prevalence, the universality of the sin of racism. It’s a debunked thesis, actually, publicly, embarrassingly debunked, but the useful lie means that she gets to keep the prize. Rod Dreher cites a Zach Goldberg study, which showed that, “Over,” quote, “over a nine-year period, the rate of news stories using progressive jargon associated with leftwing critical theory and social justice concepts, shot into the stratosphere. That framed news and events according to what was, until very recently, a radical ideology confined to leftwing intellectual elites.” What that is saying, basically, what you need to understand is that America has been, for decades, groomed to accept what we’re seeing today.

That’s probably enough, at this point, to give you a sense of what has happened to our country. Well, where’s it all heading? I’m no prophet, but many cultural observers, especially those who study totalitarian regimes of the recent past, it looks like we’re heading into a period of totalitarian governance. By totalitarian governance, we’re not talking here, about a hard totalitarianism like the former Soviet Union. What’s coming is referred to as a soft totalitarianism. That’s a, that’s a euphemism, it’s pretty misleading, but it’s probably true; more like a modern hybrid of communism-capitalism that we see practiced in China. And it may appear benign on the surface, but it’s actually malignant and quite aggressive.

This is happening in China. The Chinese Communist Party has improved that old hardline totalitarianism by applying technology to it. Totalitarianism on steroids. They’ve implemented a social credit system, where daily activities of citizens are tracked, recorded, and analyzed through the grid of, Chine the kine, Chinese Communist Party ideals. So what you sell, what you buy, what you say and to whom you say it, whom you associate with, your social credit score goes up or down based on its agreement or disagreement with the party. It’s updated in real time.

Artificial intelligence uses, uses intelligent algorithms to predict your behavior. You can be guilty of thought crime. But you won’t be arrested and thrown into jail, that’s costly. Your social credit score will go down, which limits your options, limits your buying options, your selling options, your business options and encourages party adherence by a higher social credit score. Download some of Xi Jinping’s state addresses, social credit score goes up, attend a political rally for the communist party, social credit score goes up.

As the devil said to Jesus, “All these I will give you if you just fall down and worship me.” That’s the future, folks. That’s where we’re heading, not just because the younger generations are voting in this direction and captivated by leftist thinking and eager to burn down national interests and replace them with global interests. It is the future because the Bible says so: Ezekiel, the Thessalonian Epistles, Revelation.  The future is happening right now, and it is exciting to be living in these days. 

This globalist impulse is being given a hard push by wealthy supranational, like above nations, elites, technocrats. Look up men, names like George Soros, Klaus Schwab, these unelected influencers have a lot of money, more money than they can spend in a thousand lifetimes. They have power because of the money. They have influence. They control the means. They’ve taken over the means of cultural production a long time ago, the Hollywood, the media, entertainment, news. There is no going back to what once was. So what do gazillionaires want that they don’t already own? What do gazillionaires want that they don’t already have? The world and the power to create. These wealthy elites are building a new Tower of Babel. They’re trying to reproduce Babylon in a metaphorical way of speaking. They’re recreating the world in their own image.

And I just want to tell you, folks, we are not afraid or dismayed about these developments. God has told us all along in Scripture that this is coming. This Book is two thousand years old, when John put down his pen. It’s no surprise. We just have the privilege of getting a front seat to what’s happening, to being there, to being the Church of Jesus Christ. God’s Word predicts this exact state of affairs. And whether it’s now or years from now, we don’t know, but this, all this leads to Anti-Christ’s reign. He wants to perch himself atop a one-world government with himself being worshiped as god and the false prophets serving his purposes. This state of affairs is a prelude to something even greater, even more radially destructive and devastating to the world order; more devastating than the Anti-Christ and Beast religion, this state of affairs leads to a radically different world order, which is called The Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one then, I want to focus on now.

Turn in your Bibles, if you will, to the first chapter of Hebrews. This is where we’re going to spend the remaining time we have, in this magnificent chapter about the superiority of Jesus Christ. This is the prescription for all Christians who are now living in this time. Here it is, fix your eyes on Jesus. That’s the bottom line. Fix your eyes on Jesus. He’s written eleven chapters expositing the superiority of Christ in the New Covenant, when the writer to the Hebrews applied those truths to his readers in this way. He said, “Let us lay aside,” in chapter 12, “Let us also lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Let’s follow him. Let’s look to him. The writer tells us why we should fix our eyes on Jesus in the very next verse, it said, “So that you may not grow weary and fainthearted.” Any of you feeling weary? Any of you feeling fainthearted? Fix your eyes on Jesus. We’re to consider how Jesus endured hostility from sinners against himself and know that we, too, will endure hostility from sinners against ourselves, but you’ve got to know that is all a part of the plan