Overcoming in an Oppositional World by David Wheaton

Well, thank you, Seth, for that nice introduction. Thank you for inviting me up here to St. Croix Falls. This is a beautiful area. I'm an upper Midwest guy, and I love the river and the rolling hills and the calls of the turkeys this time of year.

We're going to go turkey hunting this week. It's great to be here with John and Russell and Jeff. Nice to meet all of you in person, so thanks for coming up to the Minnesota-Wisconsin area. Great to have this conference.

The Mission to Overcome in an Oppositional World

Today we're going to talk about the mission to overcome in an oppositional world, sort of in line with what this conference theme is, to be not conformed. Don't have a story of being kicked out of a denomination and fighting the woke church and so forth, but I pay attention to these kinds of things that are constantly assaulting biblical Christianity.

Looking forward to speaking with you today. Just want to introduce you to my family real quick. My wife Brody is with us, and my son Tommy, as Seth mentioned, it's his 11th birthday.

Today.

That's a big deal, and so great to have him here with us today. Brody and I have been married for, I think we're coming up on 15 years, and we've known each other since we were 8 and 5, so we've known each other nearly our entire lives.

Great blessing to be married to Brody. I also host a program that Seth was mentioning called the Christian Worldview. For those of you in this area, you can hear it outside the area too via podcast, there's stations in other parts of the country, but we'd love to have you tune in sometime.

We actually put a sign-up sheet out there at the book table. If you'd like to sign up for a free weekly email, it kind of gives you the preview and topics for the programs. Seth didn't tell you the program is sponsored by Pfizer, but anyway.

Anyway, we have a couple events coming up this year. I'll show you the pastor man here, like a guy from the Kansas City Chiefs does, Taylor Swift's boyfriend. I don't want to go any further than that.

Anyway, we have a couple events this year, and we'd love to invite you to these, especially the first one. We have a course for young adults, age about 18 to 28, very transitional time of life. If you know someone like that who's trying to find their way, needs to be grounded, we're going to do two days, eight sessions on what we believe are the most important issues that a young adult can deal with.

Believing God and the gospel is the key to understanding your identity and purpose in.

Life.

What's the foundation for a biblical worldview? Understanding what God's doing in the world, his plan and his purpose, creation, fall, redemption, restoration, marriage and parenting, second day is money, time, and vocation, the local church.

So, lots of interesting topics, we'd love to have your young adults come to this. It's at Stonehouse Farm in Jordan, just southwest of the Twin Cities, and we also have our golf event, if you're a golfer at Hazeltine this year, I know John will be there for that.

And finally, I brought a couple books today. The first one was written to help Christian students make it through college with their faith intact. And that was a story of mine that I won't get into today, but when I went off to Stanford as an 18-year-old, I wasn't prepared for what I was going to face on that campus.

I didn't lose my faith, because I don't think I really had a genuine saving faith at that time, but there were lessons learned that I really try to communicate to others. And the second book is My Boy Ben.

This is more of a memoir of a time during when I was a professional tennis player, about how God uses the circumstances of our lives, and in this case, it was a yellow lab that I owned when I was single, and at that time, to really teach me about his grace.

So, we have both of those books here today, if you'd like to get one, and they're both owned by the Overcomer Foundation, which is the non-profit that runs the radio program. Okay, that's enough of the announcements, let's get back to our topic for the day, which is the mission to overcome in an oppositional world.

I'm going to go back one slide here. For those of you, you're probably aware of this, the Super Bowl is the most watched television program. In fact, this year was the most watched program in television history.

There was 123 million viewers to the Super Bowl. It's also the most expensive, obviously, event to advertise on, because so many people are.

Watching.

Anyone know how much it cost to advertise in the Super Bowl this year for a 60-second.

Ad?

$14 million for a 60-second ad. So, you have to ask the question, why are there so many viewers and such a willingness to pay so much to reach these viewers? Well, the answer is sort of obvious, because what's being presented on the field and the wares being offered during the commercial breaks are what organizers of the Super Bowl and the advertisers believe, or actually they know, Americans just love and idolize.

They love the show. I guess we lose our PowerPoint. Come back on, okay, it's a little finicky. We can take it to the back if he said that, if it keeps on glitching. So they know what the American idols are, and that's why they're willing to pay so much to advertise to the Americans who watch the game.

What are these American idols? They're sports. This is America's real religion. I was involved in this religion for a long time, so I'm very well aware of it. Parents will gladly sacrifice going to church on a Sunday morning to take their kids to a soccer practice.

We know that. Fame is another one of America's idols. You notice how the camera went from suite to suite to show the rich and the famous there, particularly to one particular suite of Taylor Swift. Hedonism is another American idol.

The commercials constantly show this partying and drinking alcohol and sensuality of pleasing the flesh. Money, of course. The gambling on the Super Bowl is just a huge, huge money-making enterprise.

I think you could summarize it by saying it's the idol of amusement. If you break that word down, what do you have? A, not muse, think. Not thinkment. That's really what has become so prevalent in our society today.

Watching the Super Bowl, you start to wonder, why doesn't the church actually draw 123 million people per week? After all, you can go to church, at least some churches, where God is worshipped, the Bible is taught, the gospel is presented, people are helped, Christ's death and resurrection are presented.

These are of infinitely more and higher importance and eternal than what the Super Bowl offers. But this is not what Americans tragically love most. They love these American idols. If you look at the Super Bowl, I think you can compare it to American culture in a way.

It's a modern-day version of what a very well-known book in the past, you're all well aware of it, John Bunyan in The Pilgrim's Progress, wrote about in a town called Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair, if you remember that book, is where two believers, Christian and faithful, they had to pass through this town on their way to heaven, or it was called the Celestial City in the book.

In that town, faithful, one of the two Christians, was martyred by its citizens for rejecting the worldview of that city and the wares they were offering. The Apostle John describes the kind of Vanity Fair that we are living in, in our modern American culture.

He says this in 1 John 2, he says,. For all that is in the world, or America, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

The world is passing away, and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God lives.

Forever.

And so the danger is, as we live in this culture, this society, is that we are not immune as Christians from being drawn away and derailed by, quote, all that is in this world. Even after genuine conversion, we live on in our flesh, that part of us that desires the pleasures of the world, rather than what God offers us, peace with Him.

The Apostle Paul also knew all about this pull of the world. Listen to what he wrote in Romans chapter 12. Again, here's the theme of the conference, be not conformed to the world. He says in verse 1,.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Verse 2, here it is,. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

And really, these are the same marching orders for Christians today, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, to not be conformed to our depraved culture, one that calls good evil and evil good, one that lies that boys can become girls and girls can become boys, and one that applauds homosexuals marrying and adopting children, one that lies about abortion that's a woman's right to health care, one where I can have my truth and you can have yours.

So put that all aside and instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so today, as Seth mentioned, we're going to look back at an Old Testament prophet named Daniel, who you're all very well aware of, I'm sure, and how he was not conformed to the ungodly culture that he lived in a full 2600 years ago in Babylon, but instead he was able to thrive and overcome and live his life to the glory of God.

Now to be sure, the book of Daniel is mainly about God's sovereign control over kings and epics of time and prophecy of the coming Messiah, that's the primary thrust of that book. But the book's main character, Daniel, also provides a very vivid model for how we as Christians can live in a world that very much opposes us.

Daniel was thrust into the middle of an incredible, most difficult transition that anyone could possibly imagine at about the age of 15. He had grown up in Jerusalem in an influence noble family, Jewish family.

He had what people call privilege today, but he was about to be taken captive to a foreign land and a foreign culture in Babylon, many, many hundreds of miles away, that he would never return from for the rest of his life.

As the southern kingdom of Judah was basically taken over and removed from Israel as God's judgment for their disobedience, this took place in about 600 BC. Now the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, was one of the most powerful leaders and kings in history.

He ruled that empire and he was known for his amazing construction, like the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the world. But he was also known for his great destruction, that he razed the temple in Jerusalem and deported the Jews back to his land.

And so this true story opens with Daniel being taken captive and journeying a full 1700 miles away from his home, again in his middle teens, in a land to the east of Jerusalem. So if you have a Bible, I'm just going to read about three paragraphs to start this chapter to give you some context for how Daniel overcame and this mission he was on to overcome in an oppositional world, just starting there in Daniel chapter 1.

I'll also put it on the screen here so you can read it as well. It says this in Daniel chapter 1, In the third year of the reign of Jehoakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

The Lord gave Jehoakim king of Judah into his hand along with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, Little G. And he brought the vessels into the treasury of his God.

Verse 3,. Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles. Here's where Daniel comes in. Youths in whom was no defect, who were good looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, and who had the ability for serving in the king's court.

And he ordered him, Ashpenaz, to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. That was the region, the people group in that.

Area.

Verse 5, The king appointed for them a daily ration from the king's choice food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king's personal service.

Now among them from the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them, and to Daniel he assigned the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach, and to Azariah Abednego.

This is a massive, just think about this for a second, the massive culture shock and intense indoctrination taking place here. You remove boys from their parents who are in their teens, you take them to a foreign land, you feed them the best food and wine, you give them the best of that country's, that culture's education, you teach them a new language to speak, you immerse them in a Babylonian culture, you even give them new names that refer to the gods of that society.

All to, Romans 12, to transform them into a completely different worldview and make them servants of the king. As you read this, it sounds very similar to what happens in the little yellow buses that go down the street on weekdays, right?

He takes kids, put them in preschool, put them through post-graduate years, in all manner of God-rejecting humanism, and we know what you get when you do that. Now, that being said, this situation for Daniel, there's incentive here for Daniel, if you think about it too.

This is about as good as it gets for a prisoner, a captive of war. Daniel's not doing hard labor 12 hours a day in the hot sun. In fact, he has the best food, he has a glimpse of future position and authority, he has access to the pleasures at the top end of society, really.

He kind of keeps his head down and does what he's supposed to do. So what is Daniel's response in all of this? What does he do? The next verse is the key to this first chapter of Daniel, and it reveals, it's going to reveal time and time again throughout the book of Daniel, who is at the heart, what is at the heart of this man?

Verse 8. But Daniel, oops, forgot that one. Hold on, sorry about that. I think I missed verse 8. Forgive me, you can read it in your Bible. But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king's choice food or with the wine which he drank.

So he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself. Now, the key verb here is Daniel made up his mind. And what that means is in the New King James, it says, if you have that version, it says purposed in his heart.

In the ESV, it may say resolved. In other words, he made a decision, made a decision inside of himself that he would be not conformed. That's what he decided when he was 15 years old. He would not be conformed.

But the question is why? What made him choose the very narrow path when all of his colleagues were going the other way and going along with it, and instead choose the broad road? Why did he choose to be not conformed?

And that's the first point of our day here today is this. Sorry, PowerPoint problems. Number one, Daniel was on a mission to overcome. He had a mission. He had a purpose. What was Daniel's problem anyway with the food and the drink?

The food and the drink was good food and drink apparently. Well, much of this food in Babylon was not permitted under the dietary laws that Daniel had grown up with, that God had given the Jewish people.

Plus, the Babylonians worshiped false idols, false gods, and dedicated their food to these idols in hopes that the gods would give them extra favor. So to eat the food for Daniel would be seen to him, at least in his conscience, as participating in false religion, which would be a violation to Daniel of the first and second commandments to have no other gods before me and to not make any idols.

That's the reason he didn't want to eat the food and the drink. So Daniel faced a decision. Do the obvious thing. It's always a choice. Do the obvious thing. Eat the food. Don't rock the boat. Or do the not obvious thing.

Refuse the food. Listen to his conscience. Obey God no matter what it cost him, what kind of privilege it cost him, and what would happen to him. Well, Daniel chose to do the not obvious thing, as you all well know about this story.

Here's what happened next. Read three more paragraphs. Now God granted Daniel favor and compassion on the side of the commander of the officials. And the commander of the officials said to Daniel, I am afraid of my lord the king who has appointed your food and your drink.

For why should he see your faces looking more haggard than the youths who are your own age? Then you would make me forfeit my head to the king. This man's worried that if these young boys don't develop that he's going to get in trouble for it and lose his head.

Verse 11. But Daniel said to the overseer, whom the commander of the officials had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, please test your servants for ten days. And let us be given some vegetables to eat and water to drink.

Then let our appearance be observed in your presence and the appearance of the youths who are eating the king's choice food and deal with your servants according to what you see. So Daniel comes up with a alternative plan.

Test us. Verse 14. So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for ten days. At the end of the ten days, their appearance seemed better and they were fatter than all the youths who had been eating the king's choice food.

So the overseer continued to withhold their choice food and the wine they were to drink and kept giving them vegetables. As for these four youths, just four of them made this decision. God gave them knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom.

Daniel even understood all kinds of visions and dreams. Last paragraph. Verse 18. Then at the end of the days, which the king has specified for presenting them, I believe this would be three years. The commander of the officials presented them before Nebuchadnezzar.

The king talked with them and out of them all, out of them all, not one was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. So they entered the king's personal service. As for every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king consulted them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and conjurers who were all in this, in his realm.

These four young youths were not just better off by following God's way, but they were found to be ten times better than anyone in the kingdom. Now you all know what a mission is. A mission is an ongoing pursuit.

It's a quest. It's a life purpose. Every successful organization has a well-defined mission statement. Why? Well, it's meant to remind the organization why they are doing what they're doing and to keep them from getting off track, to get involved in things they shouldn't be getting involved in, to keep us on the straight and the narrow.

So your mission in life is shaped by what you decide is most important to you. So what was most important to Daniel, obviously, was to love, obey, serve, and worship God. That was more important to Daniel than good food and drink, good job security, prosperity, likeability, position, and pleasure.

God was more important than all those other things. So Daniel is this incredibly good model for living in the world, as we all do, but not being of the world. He didn't have to go off to live in some monastic bubble to sort of get away.

He didn't do that at all. He lived right in the belly of the beast in Babylon. He would spend the rest of his life there, serving at the highest levels of government for three different kings, surrounded by beliefs and culture that were diametrically opposed to him.

Yet he navigated and persevered and even thrived in honoring God for the entire time, even to the point of being thrown into a den of lions for refusing to stop praying to God. There's an interesting term in the Bible that describes a person like this, a person who loves and follows God more than anything else.

And the word is overcome, or overcomer. Perhaps you've noticed when you've read Scripture, you've noticed this in Revelation and Christ's letters to the seven churches, that he concludes each letter with the same phrase.

He says, to him who overcomes, seven times. For example, I'll just give one. To the church in Laodicea, the final seventh church, he who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne.

In one sentence, he uses the same word twice, overcome. What does this word mean? Well, it's a Greek word, translation of a Greek word called Nikau, meaning to be victorious, to conquer, to prevail, to triumph.

So in Greek mythology, there was a goddess of victory named after this word. What was this goddess' name? Nike. Nike, just like the sports apparel and shoe company. Exactly right. This is a very significant term in Scripture.

In fact, none other than Jesus uses this term to describe himself. He literally is concluding line to his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion is these things. I have spoken to you so that in me you may have peace.

In the world you have tribulation, but take courage. I have overcome the world. So Jesus just assumes that Christians are going to have many and varied trials in tribulations in this world. But he says, we can overcome the world when we're on the same mission as Jesus and Daniel.

So that's point number one, to be on a mission to overcome. That's how Daniel did it. It brings us to our second point. This mission to overcome is founded on faith in God. That's what the foundation is.

At a fundamental level, Daniel believed eating the food, drinking the drink would defile himself, as it says, because it would dishonor the one God who sets the rules as to what is defiling and what is not defiling.

So in Daniel's calculus, dishonoring the invisible king was of greater importance to Daniel than dishonoring the physical, the visible king, Nebuchadnezzar. Did you get that? In other words, it was more important for Daniel to not offend the invisible king God than it was for him to offend the visible king, Nebuchadnezzar.

That's called faith. Explained so well in the hall of faith chapter in Hebrews chapter 11. Look how the chapter starts out. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Again, it's invisible.

Skipping to verse 6, and without faith it is impossible to please God. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, that he is God, he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. This passage describes Daniel to a T.

He believes in, he has faith in the invisible God and that this God is going to be a rewarder of him who seeks God. The same in the same chapter. It talks about Moses, the same chapter, by faith Moses.

When he had grown up refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Choosing rather, here's the choice he made, again just like Daniel to make a choice, choosing rather to endure ill treatment, not the logical choice, with the people of God rather than enjoying the passing pleasures of sin.

Considering the reproach of Christ, greater riches, an invisible reward there, greater riches than the treasures in Egypt which are very visible for Moses looked to the reward. In short, the idea of an overcomer is that he has faith in God, that there are greater riches in following Christ than any pleasures or treasures on earth.

Now, Daniel couldn't have been this kind of overcomer in Babylon without a faith in God. It wasn't that he just had kind of moral strength inside of himself. No, he had a deep convicting faith that empowered him to want to go the narrow way rather than the broad way.

No one can overcome without having this faith. No one has the innate desire, the strength, the willpower to please God unless one has been born again by God. Very key passage of scripture in 1 John chapter 5, it makes this point about the key of having true saving faith.

John writes, for whatever is born of God overcomes the world. Oh, there's that word again. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

This is to be paid close attention to. The one who overcomes the world believes that Jesus is the Son of God. In other words, the overcomer is a true Christian, one who has been born of God or as Jesus calls it, is born again.

This is the one thing all overcomers like Daniel have in common. They may have different vocations. They may have different life experiences and circumstances, but they all have the exact same faith. They have the same Holy Spirit residing inside of them, empowering them to overcome.

This so-called is the secret sauce, so to speak. The question is, have you been born again? Listen to what Jesus repeats three times to Nicodemus. Remember, Nicodemus was the Pharisee, the religious leader who came to him by night.

Jesus said to him three times, verse 3, John 3, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus doesn't know what to do with that. Jesus says again in verse 5, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus still not getting it. Jesus said again in verse 7, do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again. So what does he mean here? Let me translate this for you. He means you must be born again.

That's what he means. And you're born again by repenting of your sin and putting your trust in who Jesus Christ is and what he did for you on the cross. Not faith in your own works, but Christ's work on your behalf on the cross.

To confess and turn from your sin and place your faith for forgiveness in the sinless life, the substitutionary death and the supernatural resurrection of Christ as satisfying God's justice and wrath over your sin.

That's how you can be born again, be saved, reconciled to God, whatever you want to call it, justified, redeemed, forgiven, given eternal life. This is the key to being an overcomer. Overcoming the world is founded in this point here upon a genuine faith in God, in his gospel.

But then you have to ask, as we get to the third point, what keeps the overcomer going day in and day out to stay on this mission? They have this mission. They're truly born again. But we have a lot of ups and downs in life, a lot of different circumstances, emotional highs and low.

What keeps the overcomer going? And that brings us to point three. The last point is the mission to overcome our oppositional world is is fueled by a love of God. So it's founded by faith in God and it's fueled by a love for God.

So if you have your Bible, we're going to go from Daniel chapter one to Daniel chapter six, where a new king named Darius has risen to power. And lo and behold, Daniel is still around, not as a teenager anymore.

Now he's about 80 years old. He's an elderly man and he's still holding a very high position in government. Just as an aside, how does he navigate all this over these decades without compromising? I mean, it's like working for the federal government or something or some woke institution or corporation or mandating DEI training and hiring, expecting you to fly the rainbow flag at your desk and forcing you to get the vaccine or else.

Daniel is able to get right through this for 70, 60, 70 years. It's really amazing how he's able to be at the top of the government for that long. Well, it's because Daniel's on a mission despite being resented and hated by the unbelievers around him.

And in fact, as we open Daniel chapter six here, we see the scene of those around him. Other people who are in leadership are trying to persuade the king, the new king to sign a law forbidding prayer for 30 days to any God or any man besides the king with the penalty of death of being thrown into a lion's den.

This is specifically what's trying to be made up to rid themselves of the presence of Daniel. That's how much they hated him. So here they are in Daniel chapter six, setting the trap. Starting in verse seven, all, not just some, all the commissioners of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the high officials and the governors have consulted together that the king should establish a statute and enforce an injunction that anyone who makes a position to any God or man besides you, O king, for 30 days shall be cast into the lion's den.

Now, O king, establish the injunction and sign the documents that may not be changed according to the laws of the law of the Medes and the Persians, which may not be revoked. Therefore, King Darius signed the document that is the injunction.

Again, just like in chapter one, there is a test of faith here, a decision to be made, a test of Daniel's mission. Will Daniel be conformed? After all, it's just 30 days without praying, or will he not be conformed and face death?

You know, by this point, what Daniel is going to do. Verse 10. Now, when Daniel knew that the document was signed, he entered his house. Now in his roof chamber, he had a window open, windows open towards Jerusalem.

And he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before his God, as he had been doing previously. There's no apparent hesitation here by Daniel. Okay, he doesn't try to find a quote third way.

Scripture doesn't even say he requested a quote, religious exemption, or to be grandfathered in. I've served here a long time. He just went on praying. He obeyed God rather than men. Again, Daniel's on a mission here to overcome and it's fueled, remember, founded on faith, but now fueled by a love for God that is greater than his own love for maybe his position in life, his well being and his life.

He loves God more than anything else, even his own life. He's thrown into a den of lions. The Lord supernaturally protects him overnight, and the king comes running to the den in the morning, first thing, and says this.

He cried out with a troubled voice. The king spoke and said to Daniel, Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you constantly serve been able to deliver you from the lions? Then Daniel spoke to the king, O king, live forever.

My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouth and they have not harmed me inasmuch as I was found innocent before God and also toward you, O king, I have committed no crime. Now what happens next is something we shouldn't expect from our civil magistrates today, but the king begins to praise God that Daniel obeyed God over the king.

Verse 25, then Darius the king wrote to all the nations all the peoples, nations and men of every language who are all living in the land. May your peace abound. I made a decree that in all the dominion of my kingdom, men are to fear and tremble before the God of Daniel for he is the living God and enduring forever and his kingdom.