In this sermon, the speaker shares a powerful story of a woman trapped under rubble, desperate for help. Despite being surrounded by pain and suffering, she hears a faint noise and reaches out for help. Eventually, someone sees her hand and rescues her, and in that moment, she knows she is saved. The speaker then relates this story to the experience of feeling engulfed by the pain and madness of the world, and the bondage of addiction. They emphasize that sin will always master us unless we turn to Jesus, who has never lost a battle and is the victorious Lord.

Turn with me to Matthew, the sixth chapter. What I want to do is look at one little statement that is so powerful and so simple. It's in the Lord's Prayer in the sixth chapter and the tenth verse. I'll just read this in the King James Version. It'll be up on the overhead in the NIV. But it says, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. What I want to look at this evening is what does it mean for the kingdom of God to be done in my life on earth as it is done in heaven. And this is a very profound thought, very simple, very basic, but yet what it points to is absolutely radical if we would understand what it means. If we would apply this truth to our life, how many people every week across this world pray this prayer and have no idea what they just said, no idea of the words that they prayed, some pat little idea that they present and they say it again and again and again, ritualistically, that has no meaning, no value, no power, cannot change their life because they don't even comprehend anything that it means. But yet when we get to the wonder and the simplicity of what this means, I think we could understand how life-changing was the prayer that Jesus was offering us to pray. And I don't believe that we're to be sitting down praying the Lord's prayer verbatim. It's all right if you do, but I don't think that was the purpose that it was given to us. It was given to us to be an outline of prayer. And this is one of the means, one of the outlines, one of the aspects of his prayer that we are going to look at this evening. We have to understand that the kingdom of God, first of all, is based upon Christ, not based upon the world, it's not based upon the systems of this world, the philosophies of this world, even the churches of this world. It's not based upon that. The kingdom of God is based upon Christ, through Christ is and upon his teaching that he presented us in the word. And so when we begin to look at this, we have to understand that what he's presenting to us in this simple thought is an idea of what it means to be normal. He's giving us an idea of normal Christianity. He's giving us a thought that we can present to God, crying out for him to change us, that we might become normal according to his concept of what it means to be normal. But before I can get into this verse and begin to bring out some aspects of what it means for his will to be done in my life here on earth as it is done in heaven, I want to go in a direction that may seem strange and that may not make sense, but I believe it will make a lot of sense in a little bit after I've gone through this and laid this foundational thought. What I wanna do is I wanna take a few minutes and I wanna make a contrast. I wanna make a contrast between God and the devil. And I wanna lay out some truths between the difference between who God is and who the devil is. Because until I think we get a good understanding of this and can lay this out, we will not understand how radical a statement Jesus was making here to say, let your will be done in my life on earth as it is in heaven. And so let's begin with just some basic things. I'm gonna be real simple here, but I'm gonna try and make these things as understandable as we can be. The first thing, when we look at God, we have to understand that he is the eternal creator. He is timeless. And I'm not gonna tell you I understand what that is. You know, I have a master's degree in theology, but that doesn't mean I know anything. And I don't think the greatest theologians that this planet has ever known can understand these attributes of God I'm gonna be touching on. We can bring them out in philosophical terms and theological terms. We can present them to the best of our ability, but yet we do not comprehend what timelessness is. A God that is not subject to beginning and end. He had no beginning, he had no end. He's always been. We don't comprehend such a magnificent God that is timeless. And so that means he is not subject to time because he had no beginning. Jesus was God incarnate in flesh and blood. He is part of the eternal Godhead, the Trinity. He has always been, always will be. He took upon himself for a season time. The aspect to be clothed in flesh and blood. He became only for a season for 33 years roughly to be subjected to what we understand as time. But God is apart from time. He looks at everything that goes on in this world in a timeless manner. He sees my beginning and my end, and he sees it all at once. He sees everything in between. He knows everything of my heart, everything of my mind, everything of my life. None of it is a mystery. He's not waiting for it to unfold. He already knew it would unfold before it ever began. He's eternal. He's the creator. Everything that exists exists because he spoke it into existence. Nothing came about by time and chance. Nothing happened through evolution. Evolution is a lie. I'm not gonna take the time to try and get into its belief system because it's a religious belief system is what it comes down to be. He is the eternal creator. Let's take a moment and look at the devil in relation to this. Satan is a created being. He had a beginning just like you and me. A beginning. He had a starting point. He is not eternal. He's not like God. And the thing I wanna present and present again and again in this that the devil is not like God. Not anywhere near, forgive me for my voice, not anywhere near, not anything close. There is no ability for us to even describe the infinite distance between God and the devil. I think one thing that has happened so often that even as Christians, we somehow make the difference between the two that not that big. We exalt who this devil is. We think that he's so powerful and I don't wanna diminish the reality that he does have supernatural power that he is more powerful than us because he's an angel though he's fallen. But what I think has happened is we've exalted the situation of who he is. Here's this created being. And he is like me and you that had a beginning. And he's like me and you that has no end. We have to understand that. Every one of us in this room, whether you're a believer or not, you are an eternal being now, not in the sense of God. We have no beginning and no end. You are in the sense of all humanity and all the angelic hosts, you have a beginning and you will now live forever. It's just a matter of where you're gonna live. We know the eternal state of Satan and I'm not gonna get into the concept of, because I don't think we understand that really either. But God created angels very different than us. When they fell, there was no redemption for them. Don't ask me why, I don't understand. I'm not even gonna pretend to. I thank God that he offered redemption to us through our fall. But he has a beginning and he'll have no end. Let's look at God now. God is omnipotent. What does it mean for him to be omnipotent? It means that he's super bound with the power to do anything he wants to do. When he spoke, he spoke a word and everything came into existence. He didn't crack a sweat. It wasn't hard, it wasn't difficult for him. If he wanted to make creation a billion times bigger, it would have just been a different word. It wouldn't have been any harder for him. What he made, he made because he chose to make it. And when you look at the beginning of Genesis and you have that Hebrew word that says that it was good, what good means in the Hebrew, that word is tov, T-O-V, and it means that he did exactly what he wanted to do. He was totally pleased with what he created, satisfied completely with his creation. If he wanted otherwise, he would make it otherwise. One day he will speak and create a new heaven, new earth, and it'll be a different word. He's omnipotent, super abound with the power to do anything, super abound with the power to save, super abound with the power to heal, to set captives free, super abound with the power to do anything that he desires and that keeps with his character. There is no limit to him, no limit to his abilities, no limit to his power. What about the devil? He's like you and I in the sense that he's a limited being. How often have we went in our own ways, thought the devil almost an omnipotent being. The devil is not like Eastern mysticism would put it as a yin and the yang, as their brothers, or as Mormonism would put it. Mormonism brings out the idea that Jesus and Lucifer were brothers. It's not like that. Jesus is the eternal creator God that took upon flesh and blood. Satan is a created being, he's limited in power. I do not diminish the reality of that power because we cannot stand against that power by ourselves but through Christ, we are as victorious as Christ is. And so here's this being that is limited power. He can only do so much and not just that, God has put parameters around him just like the oceans. He flooded the earth once and then after the flood, he went and says that it would never destroy the world again that he put parameters that the ocean would not pass the boundaries of the sea. And in essence, the Lord has done the same identical thing, put boundaries, says, you can go no further than what I've allowed you to do in this situation. God is omnipresent. You know what that means? That he's everywhere at one place. Do we understand that? No, we have no concept of what it means for God to be omnipresent, but he's everywhere. You know what that means for him to be everywhere? It means he knows everything about me. I mean, he's been everywhere in my life in essence, not just outside of me, but inside of me, in my heart, my mind, my very being, he knows everything about me. He is omnipresent, but the devil's not like God. The devil can only be in one place at one time. How many times have we thought or imagined that the devil was doing all this stuff? Well, I'm not gonna tell you we understand how that works. A lot of people have their opinions and their own concepts of it. The scripture does not get good into it, does not bring it out. But what I believe is an archangel that fell, that he is like a general over his hordes of hell, that he has an army under him, and as a result, he can only be in one place at one time, and he is not the one tempting us. There is devils and demons and so on out there doing his work. He is a limited being, and his minions are limited beings as well. We do great damage to our own faith when we go and exalt the ability of the devil. Not just that, how often do we blame the devil for what's going on in our life, and he's sitting there, and his little demons are sitting back, they're laughing at it all, when they know they didn't do anything, that we're the ones that are our biggest enemy, that we're the ones who cause ourselves the most problems. How many times have we went to blame the problems in our life on the devil? The devil's been after me today, and what it's really been is your own flesh rising up. Deal with the flesh, and you're not gonna be blaming the devil as much. You become a threat to the devil, then maybe you can be saying, the devil's after me. I don't think he has to be too much after us right now, because we're not being that much of a threat. When we become a threat, then we can understand that he'll come. But we better understand that the devil is limited, and that he's not all-knowing. Do you know he does not know your heart? God is omniscient. God is the only being that is omniscient. No other being is omniscient. No angel, no demon is omniscient. Only God, only God knows absolutely everything that there is to know, knows everything about me, because guess what? He's omnipresent. So he knows everything about me, because he's everywhere, and his knowledge is infinite. There's no end to it. He knows my beginning and my end. He knows everything about me. But what about the devil? He's limited in knowledge. I believe that he's like you and I, that he learns, that he grows in knowledge, just like you and I will forever and ever and ever. God created us to be inquisitive individuals, to be inquisitive beings, to seek out knowledge. The problem is in our sinfulness, we sought out bad knowledge, wrong knowledge. In heaven, we'll have right knowledge, and we'll pursue right knowledge, and we'll grow in that knowledge forever. And I believe that Satan does the same identical thing. He's had thousands of years now to look at mankind, and to understand them, and to be able to do things according to the understanding of how man reacts. But he does not know our hearts. Only God. Only God knows that. Only God can read our hearts. I believe the devil can read, and his minions, I believe that they can read body language real well. If they sit on your shoulder and tempt you with some lust, and you start paying attention to it, and that's obvious on your face and on your actions, well, guess what? He's gonna continue at it. He's able to understand it from that dimension. Only God knows my heart. Only God knows my mind. God is good and kind. His kingdom is a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy. Every single thing that God has done has been good. Now, we have a hard time with that, because you know what? We don't understand what goodness is. How do we define goodness, especially in America? How do we define goodness? We define the idea of God's goodness if he makes me happy and prosperous. That's how we define it. God has a whole different definition of goodness that I don't even think we can begin to understand, but his definition of goodness is so much that he would go and he'd take every possession from us to save us and to leave us in our possessions and go to hell. His concept of goodness and being good to us is he'll be so good that he'll take everything from us and put us on skid row if it needs to be, and want, and need, and destitution, and pain, and sorrow, and agony, that we might finally begin to look up. The concept of God's goodness is so infinite, it's so beyond us that we have such a small view of it. How often have we blamed God for pain in our life? I'm not gonna say there isn't time that he allows it to be inflicted. I will say there's other times that in his goodness, he takes our pain that has been self-inflicted or inflicted by others, and he turns that for our good if we will allow it. He is good. He is good. He is absolutely good. He's not good just because it feels good. He's good when things are going bad, and it's hard, and it's difficult, because we don't understand his hand in our life, and see the extent of that hand in our life. We think that he's not good, but he is good. If you are in a place in your life right now that life is very difficult and very painful, God may be better to you than you even understand in what he's trying to accomplish in your life if you would but let him. If you're not a Christian, God is good to you, better to you than you could ever imagine to bring you to this place right now this night that you might hear a message about Jesus and be given an opportunity to repent. His goodness is beyond what you could ever imagine. Every act, every deed, every word is good. But what about the devil? He is evil and cruel. His kingdom is a kingdom of pain, suffering, and death. Do we understand that the devil hates us and his minions hate us with a passion, hates us with this burning, raging passion, and you want to know why they hate us? Because they hate God and their hatred at God because they can't hurt God, they know that. So you know what they want to do? They want to hurt the closest thing to his heart and so he's out after us. You know what the devil just rejoices in? He rejoices in taking people that were created in the image of God and to twist them to become in his own image, in the image of hell. He loves that because then he laughs at God in essence and say, look at what I've done, I drag another one to hell. His kingdom is a kingdom of cruelty, pain, and suffering. That's all he wants to do. Every person in this room, you better understand that the devil's hatred for you and the hordes of hell, their hatred for you is a hatred that wants to destroy you. That's all it is. They want to destroy you. When he comes knocking on your door and he comes offering you drugs or he comes offering you sex or he starts offering you money or different things, you better understand that when he comes with that smile, he's out to destroy you. C.S. Lewis and his Space Trilogy, which is three books that he wrote, that's novels, that's a science fiction. They're brilliant. There's tremendous theology in it and philosophy in it. It's just some wonderful things. In the second book, it's called Perilandra. And in the second book on Perilandra, what it is, is man is being recreated in essence on the planet Venus. I'm not gonna go through the whole story, but this man from Earth takes a spaceship that's demon-possessed and comes to Venus to corrupt this new people and for the devil to expand his kingdom. And so here's this man, demon-possessed, and you have this world that has never known blood, never known pain, never known sorrow, and the devil just walks along. And as he walks along, he takes everything, plant and animal, and twists it and rips it to shreds, leaving just this trail of blood. And then he comes up to the Eve of that world, filled with blood, the stench of death all over. But Eve doesn't know what death is. She's never seen blood before. And filled with this blood and all the guts of the animals and everything else, he goes and he rage on his face and just stands up and smiles. And then begins his arguments to deceive her. Do we understand that is exactly what he does today? That he is out to twist us, to distort us, to pervert us, to tear our lives to pieces, to make a mess of us, than to make us a puppet in his hand that he might use us to inflict the pain and the sorrow and the madness upon others? His kingdom is a kingdom that is evil, it is cruel, that's all it is, that's all it can be. It has no ability to be anything else. No matter how much he smiles at you, no matter what sweet things he speaks to you, his kingdom is a kingdom of pain and suffering and agony because that's all he can give. Kingdom of God is based on a relationship of intimacy. We're adopted, absolutely phenomenal. People who are at war with God, hustle to him. And because we bow our knee to him and we ask for forgiveness, he doesn't make us slaves. You know what, he does something even more phenomenal. He makes us sons and daughters. And so it's a kingdom of relationship with God. And it's to be a kingdom that's based upon the passion he has for us and the passion that we are to have for him. It is to be a kingdom that is a passionate kingdom, a passionate kingdom after him because he's a passionate king after his people. But what is the relationship of the devil to his people? It is a relationship of bondage. It is slavery. It is bondage through fear and pride and self and wickedness. Every single one that is not Christ, every single person that's not Christ is a slave to the devil. It can be no other way. A person will either serve God or serve the devil. There's no middle ground. There's no neutral. There's no agnostic that says, I'm not gonna pick either side. It's impossible. Either you are on God's side and you are truly saved and truly his child or you are on the other side. There's no middle ground, no possibility of a middle ground, not even an option of it. And so if you're not a Christian, you better understand right now who your Lord and master is. And you better understand that his desire for you is nothing but death and destruction and pain and sorrow. That is the sole thing he has for you. That's the sole ambition of his life to make you a plaything while on earth and then take you down to hell and make you an eternal plaything then. That's all his kingdom is. It's a kingdom of bondage. Paul told us in the sixth chapter of Romans that whoever we yield ourselves to, we become the slave to obey. And if we yield ourselves to sin, we become a slave to the devil and his wickedness. If we yield ourselves to Christ, we become a slave to righteousness. Now the kingdom of God. And God himself is the author of truth. Do you know that there's not been one word that has ever come out of his lips or come through his spirit that's been a lie? And I want to challenge you with this. If there's words that we say that are supposedly from God and they've never been true, we better understand they never came from God. God does not lie. God does not make mistakes. God does not change his mind. He's not fickled and so on. He is the absolute author of truth and absolute truth comes alone through him. And everything he says is absolute truth. He gave us a book of absolute truth. That we might base our lives upon. And no matter what society says, there is absolute truth. And there is a God that's established absolute truth. He has not changed. God has the same view about homosexuality today that he did 2000 years ago. It has not changed. God is not moody or fickle. He is not subject to circumstantial ethics. God is a God that is consistent and holy and the same yesterday and today and forever. What about the devil? Let me give a illustration here. I have this glass of water and let's say I just take one drop out of the toilet and put it in here. Would you drink it then? You know that one drop turns the whole thing into sewage. Defiles the whole thing. Do you understand you take the truth and you put a drop in it, you've turned it into entire lie. You've turned it into entire lie. That's what it is. Go to the garden and see the temptation that came to Adam and to Eve. And you find truth that he says, but he mingles it with lie. And so all that's left in what he says is death. That's the same thing with every cult on this planet. There's a little bit of truth in it. Enough truth to try and get people grabbed up in it, but enough lie to damn them to hell. Everything he says is a lie. Everything he does is presenting a lie for one purpose, because he hates God, he hates you, and he's out to destroy your life. He lies so that he can damn you to hell. He'll come to you and whisper sweet nothings in your ear and say, sleep with me and I'll give you something. Sleep with me, I'll make you happy. Smoke what I got and take this thing or whatever. I will satisfy you. He gives these things to us, opportunities, so he says for happiness, for purpose. And he says, take this, it will be good. Everybody else is doing it. And he lies to us because he hates us because he wants to enslave us. Because he ultimately wants to damn us to hell. What about the government of God? You know, the government of God is a government of voluntary submission. There's not one being in heaven, whether angel or redeemed saint, that's there by force. They're all there by choice. Every single one, they want to be there. It is their heart's desire. It is their ambition to worship and enjoy God. They knew they were created for that. Now they've been redeemed and they're in heaven as a result, rejoicing in the magnificence and beauty and splendor of this God. It's all submission. Not one person will go to heaven that doesn't want to be there. And so anybody who goes to heaven must want to go to heaven. They must want to live a life that proves that they want to go to heaven. Don't tell me you truly want to go to heaven when you live like the devil. Don't tell me that. How many times I've heard such lies at funerals, when funerals are done and they say so-and-so was such a good person and now they're with God and their life was just madness. They were at war with God. They were hostile to God and they didn't go to heaven, but we like lying at funerals. What about the government of hell? You see, the government of hell is a government of anarchy. Government of anarchy. You know what anarchy is? It is anarchy. When you have anarchy in a country, it's where people go to the government and says, you will not rule over me. That's the government that Satan has established. It is a government of anarchy against God. Every dimension of the kingdom of hell, everything about every demon and the devil himself and all those who follow him is a kingdom of anarchy that says, I will not bow my knee to you. And that is the ultimate sin that damns a soul to hell. You can be a nice grandpa that never chewed or smoked in your life, or you can be some kid in LA that's gangbanging, and they can be in the same identical place that says, you'll not rule over my life. That is the damnable sin. From that sin of anarchy flows every other sin that men live out. His is a kingdom of anarchy. But you know what happens when those begin to submit to the kingdom of hell? Do you know what happens? They become slaves. I want you to understand something. And every young person in this room, I want you to understand it. You give yourself over to sin, you become the slave of it. It no longer is giving you freedom, the freedom that the lie has come to you, that it offers you. It has now enslaved you under the lust, under the pride, under the passions of the flesh, under the things that will destroy you. If you don't believe that, there's enough people in this room, and I can testify to my own self of being in the drug culture and being strung out on drugs. Talk to individuals that have been strung out, and you'll find out what it is to become the slave to the very thing that you thought eventually was going to give you happiness. And that's just one dimension. Talk to the people that's been addicted to pornography and sexual sin, and you'll understand what it is, that it's not something that's any more fun. It's done for an animal drive because it has you enslaved to it, and there is no more joy in it. It's what you do because you think that's what you have to have, and it is bondage beyond what you've ever imagined. You give yourself to it, and you will find yourself the slave to it. You will never be the master of sin. You can never master it. It will absolutely master you every single time without fail. Without fail, it will master you. Here's the last point, and then I'm going to move on to this verse. Jesus never lost a battle yet. He is the absolute victorious Lord. I don't understand this. This is just beyond my ability to comprehend why Lucifer and all the minions that followed him would ever think that they could beat God. That doesn't make sense to me. They understood very quickly when they rebelled against God that there is no ability for them to win. And they were hurled out of heaven. And so what happens? And Jesus comes to this planet to become the sacrifice for our sins. Satan thought that if he crucified Christ, if he killed the Son of God, that he would have possession of this planet. And in the very foolishness and blindness of that being, the very thing that he did was his own defeat. Do we understand that when Jesus died and he went to hell, look, I think this is how so many times we think that it goes on, that there was this big battle that went on in hell, this raging battle that went on there, and finally Jesus won. That's not how it went at all. Do you know when Jesus put his foot in hell, all the demons in hell were trembling with fear, cowering in any corner that they could, getting as far from it as possible. And there's the devil himself, the big cheese supposedly, cowering in absolute fear and trembling before this magnificent victorious God as Jesus walked up to him. No battle, no war, no nothing, absolute victory, and took the keys of death and hell from him. Do we understand that when Satan arrays himself with a mass of humanity to fight against God in Armageddon, do we understand that there's no competition? We speak the word battle because that's what we understand of a warfare, but there's no competition. And here again in the blindness and foolishness of his very thinking, he thinks somehow he can this time win. And here's the Savior that is undefeated, will never lose. And you know what happens if we follow in his train, if we follow him, we will walk in the victory that he owns by right and by nature. You want to know why we're defeated people? Because we don't walk and follow him as what we should. And so when we stray and we live at a distance, that victory that he has for us, we do not see it and experience it because we're not near enough to him to walk in the victory that he has. And we get outside of that protection and we start suffering under the foolishness and madness of our rebellion. And so the devil is an absolutely defeated being. And everyone who follows him will be absolutely defeated. Anybody in this room that's not a Christian and you are right now defeated, you're defeated in your sin, you'll be defeated in your sin until your dying day and then you'll stand before God and there will be no victory in your life because you chose a life of anarchy against God rather than a life of devotion to him. Now, after I've laid this foundation, let's turn to our verse in Matthew 6.10. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. You see, when we pray that prayer, what we're saying is God, I want your will in my life here on earth as what is taking place in heaven. I wanna establish something here that is so important. Anybody who wants to be a true Christian, who wants to truly walk with Christ, does not, will not live by Satan's standards or by the world's standards. If we begin to comprehend the reality that the devil hates me with a passion, with a burning, raging passion and all he wants to do is destroy my life, why would I go and sleep with him? Why would I go and sit down with him in front of a television and watch filth with my eyes and say, come on, devil, let's entertain me for a little bit. Come on, oh, we'll have a good time. It's my night of relaxation. I don't need to be in church tonight. I'll just watch a little television because I need to veg out. You know, I'll just, you know, no big deal. I'll just do these things. It won't hurt me. You know, it's not that big a deal. If we understand who the devil is, what his kingdom's all about, why would I want to be a part of it? Why would I want one finger of his upon my life? Why would I want any influence of him upon me? Why would I want to compromise with the very things that are out to destroy my life? Why would I want to take the beauty of this Christian life and ruin it and taint it with the love of the world and the pursuit of sinful ways? Why would I do that? Why would I compromise? Why would I hold the hand of the devil and think that I could hold hands God, God's hands when I'm told in scripture that we cannot sit at the table of the devil and table of God at the same time? It's an impossibility. The moment I start holding the hand of the devil and say, let's have a good time, let's just fellowship a little bit, is the moment God starts to let go of my hand and let me live in my pursuit of anarchy then. You know what's going on with so many young people? Our culture is lying to us. They're telling you that if you want to be happy, start sleeping around. If you want to be happy, start getting high, start drinking, live a rebellious life. You don't need to listen to your parents. You don't need to act in it. That's just old, that's a bunch of old garbage. You don't need to, just do what you want to, pursue your own happiness. And as he tells you these things, in the very lie he's speaking to you, there's nothing but bondage and death. And if you pursue it because of pressure of friends, then you are allowing friends to define whether or not you will go to heaven or hell. You are allowing friends whether or not you are going to be enslaved to the devil or become a child of God. This one author made this very interesting point. He says, how do you appease an enemy who will not be appeased by anything less than your death? But how in the world do we go and make a truce with the devil that he'll tell us, oh, sure, we'll be friends. I won't hurt you anymore. We'll just get along real good, sure. And you make that truce and the whole time, man, he's slapping the chains on you. He's binding you, he's grabbing hold of you. How do you appease an enemy who wants only to destroy you and take you to hell? How do you try and make a friendship and compromise with the hater of your soul? How do you think that you can be the individual to begin to flirt with sin and to begin to flirt with individuals and start walking out of the will of God and start walking in a place of rebellion, but you think that you're not gonna be the one to be burned by that sin? For me to go to God and say, let your will be done in my life as it is in heaven is the very concept of saying, God, I want to be governed by everything that governs heaven. I do not want to be governed by what governs hell. Why would any of us that call ourselves Christians want to be governed the least bit by hell? Why? But yet the compromise in the church is unbelievable. The opening of doors, the amount of people that have pornography problems and young people that have pornography problems just as much, you have access to the internet and access to pornography more than any other generation has ever had. And there are a tremendous amount of young people that have been in it. Why would you want to partake of that which is gonna destroy your very soul? That is more addictive. Pornography is more addictive than crack cocaine. It will destroy you, it will pervert you, it will pervert your marriage in the future and be the downfall of a tremendous amount of your life. Why would you want the devil to have a claw in your very life? Until we understand the reality of what this is, we play games with sin. We think it's not that big a deal. We think it's not that big a problem to act like the world and talk like the world and dress like the world. Why would I want the world to define how I live? Why would I want the world that is controlled by the prince of the power of the air, the devil? Why would I want to be controlled by its fashions? Why would I want to be controlled by its passions? By the things that it says is important? Why would I want to be ruled by a very kingdom that is hostile to God? Do you understand what I'm saying here? This is more serious than we understand. We play games with this stuff, not understanding what lies within it and its very motive and its very nature and what it's out to do to us. James 4.4 tells us, rebukes us, saying, you adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Who is the book of James written to? To the church. He was not writing that to the world. He was warning the church that we are a people prone to begin to be adulterous, to have wandering hearts and start going after the world and the love of the world and the fashion of the world and the design of the world and the lust of the world and the pride of the world. And we pursue those things as if that is going to satisfy us, as if that will meet our needs. But Philippians, Paul tells us in Philippians, gives us a whole different thing in the third chapter in the 20th verse. He says, but our citizenship is in heaven contrary to what this world is. My citizenship is in heaven. I am to be defined by heaven, not by hell. I'm to be defined by who he is, not by the world and not by the system of the world and the philosophies of this world. And you know what's so crazy about this? We become Christians. You know, when we were in the world, we were bold and arrogant in our sin. We come to Christ and then we're afraid and we cower before a world as if we're believing a lie and they've got the truth. Isn't that wild? Isn't that strange? Young people, you understand what I'm saying? If you're a Christian, you go to school. How many times are you cowering before your friends, afraid to be a Christian? You've got the truth. You're living the truth, but yet you're cowering before the lies of the world and before the devil as if you did something wrong, as if you are in error and they're right. What madness, we've turned it all upside down rather than understanding that God has given us this privilege to be sons and daughters. And as being sons and daughters, he's called us to live as sons and daughters. Ephesians 5, 8 says, "'For you were once darkness, "'but now you are light in the Lord. "'Live as children of light.'" Live as children of light. Stop living in the darkness. You have to stop it because you cannot live in two kingdoms. Young people, you can't live in two kingdoms. Young people can be as much hypocrites as old people can. Let me give an example of what it is to be a hypocrite as a young person. You act one way at home. Then you go to school and you act a whole different way at school. And then you go to church and you act a whole different way there. Are you schizophrenic? You have multiple personalities. I'm saying that because when I was a young person, I know I did that. I played it out, I acted it out. And it's so easy to do, to live in all these different ways rather than being consistent in what he purchased us to be, to be a child of God and to be that Christian in the home as well as at school, as well as in the workplace, as well as at church. There may be some of you young people that you're very big hypocrites. And you know what's wonderful? Jesus offered hypocrites an opportunity to repent. And there may be some old hypocrites in this room that you do the same thing. You live one way at home, one way at church. You look real good at church, but you're a nightmare at home. Well, you're a hypocrite. You're living a double standard. And then you're another way at work. Talk a different way among the boys at the shop or the girls at the office. You're a hypocrite. You know what you're doing? You're grabbing hold of the hand of the devil and think that you can continue to hold the hand of God. Why do you want to live like the world when the world is hostile to God? Why do you wanna take its customs and its ways and its loves and its passions and its desires? Why do you want to embrace those things that are your very destruction and your damnation? Why would you want to? So let's look at a couple of ideas of what it means if we go to God and says, God, let your will be done in my life on earth as it is in heaven. I'm just gonna highlight a couple of points. I challenge you to sit down and think about these and you can write dozens. But if I go and I pray that little prayer in essence, in all honesty, God, let your will in my life be done here on earth as it is being done in heaven. You know, one of the things I think this is probably the most phenomenal thing, this is what heaven's all about. This is the joy of what heaven is. Do you know every being in heaven, angel and redeemed saint walks with God in perfect unbroken fellowship and intimacy. Not like it was in the garden where they walked with God in the cool of the day. I think heaven is so much deeper because in this world we have flesh that cannot handle the glory of God to any great extent. In heaven, we'll have a new body and we'll have a body that can handle his glory and we'll see him in ways we've never saw him. And it's absolutely phenomenal. If I go to God and I said, let your will be done in my life on earth as is in heaven, you know what I should be absolutely crying out? Let me learn to have a relationship with you on earth as they have in heaven. Let me ask a very serious question. If you don't want a love relationship with God right here, if you don't want intimacy with him here on earth, why do you wanna go to heaven then? You understand what I'm saying? To me, it is sheer madness that people who don't wanna walk with God now would wanna go to heaven. They don't wanna love Jesus now with everything in them. Why would they wanna go to heaven where it's all about loving him with everything that's in them? The reality is you would so hate heaven because you hated him here that you'd hate him up there and you wouldn't want any place. Hell would be more comfortable for you in the flames and the torment than being in the presence of God. Understand, if your life is not defined by the pursuit of God and the love of God in this life, it will not be defined by it in the next. If you want the life of heaven in your life right now on earth, then it begins with that place of saying, Jesus, teach me how to love you here and now like they love you in heaven. Teach me how to walk with you here on earth as they do in heaven. Teach me how to pursue you here on earth as they pursue you in heaven. Paul had this passion raging in him. You wanna know why I think he had this passion raging in him? It tells us in one place in scripture that he was taken in the third heaven and he saw things that were unable to be repeated to others. And then in Philippians 3.10, I preach from this because I love this. Paul had that crisis. I want to know Christ. Why would I say I want to know Christ and the devil too? What insanity. If I say I let your will be done on earth in my life now as it is in heaven, I'm saying, God, I want to know you. I want to know you. Help me to know you. Help me to know you what it is as they know you in heaven. One particular author made this wonderful little statement. He says, our goal must become unbroken fellowship with God, which is the highest honor and reward given to man. The treasure of heaven is not heaven. It's not walking on streets of gold. It's not seeing our loved ones in heaven. That's not the treasure of heaven. I want you to think about this. And this is how I view it in my own mind's eye. And I know I'm not anywhere close to it, but this is how I can, as a finite individual, comprehend that which is otherworldly. But I just imagine when I walk through them pearly gates, the thing that's going to be consuming my heart, the moment I'm there and I begin to see the wonder of what it is, it's all going to be as a big blur to me because way down, however far away that is, I'm going to see a throne that I will feel the wonder and the glory of. And I could have loved ones all around me and friends and family and all kinds of people there and see the gold of all the building and the streets and all that's there. And it would matter nothing because when I see the reality of who He is, I will run to fall at my face before Him and weep before Him and rejoice before Him and worship Him because heaven is all about Him and seeing His glory and His majesty. That is the prize. The greatest privilege is to see Him and to know Him in intimacy and to say, I want your will on earth as it is in heaven and say, God, take me on that journey now. Teach me now what it is to be a man in hot pursuit of knowing you because that's why I was created. That's the very reason why I was created, to know Him, to love Him, to adore Him and to glorify Him. Anything else you do with your life is a perversion of what you were created for. What's another reason or way that if I go and says, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, it's the issue I touch on so often because it's so important, but it's reckless abandonment. Do you know every being in heaven is surrendered to God? None of them are rebellious. The rebellious ones left, they're cast out and they're the ones we call demons today living in that kingdom of anarchy. Can you imagine God going to an angel and says, Angel Joe, hey, I got a job for you, we go do this? And he goes, oh man, all right, if I got to, you know, sure, thank you. They're abandoned, they're abandoned. They're given over completely devoted to this God because they see Him as who He is. And as a result, there's only one response in their life to abandon themselves, throw themselves into His service, into devotion to Him because they see Him in His reality. And if I go to Him and says, God, I want Your will in my life right now, I want the life of heaven right now in my life here, then ultimately I have to come to that place and learn what reckless abandonment is, the surrender, the abandonment of my entire life to Him. That means that everything I do is for God. And that means that everything I do is through God. I'm not gonna take the time to explain the difference between that, but everything I do should be I should be doing for His glory because I find my greatest joy and pleasure in Him. And that I do everything I do through the grace that He imparts to my life that I might be able to live it out. He offers us the grace to do this. We're told in Peter that He's held nothing back from all of His great and precious promises that we might be able to live out this faith. Let me touch on another point. Do you know every single being in heaven is holy? And do you know they're holy because they love holiness, because they love the holiness of God? None of them, it's a burden to. They love to be holy. Young people, let me ask a question. Do you love holiness in your life? Do you love to be holy or is a little rebellion a cool thing? Do you hear what I'm saying? It's just a little bit of naughtiness. That's okay, that's not bad. But you understand that little bit of naughtiness you've grabbed hold of the hand of the devil and he's grabbed hold of you. And now he's starting to sink his claws in you and he's wanting to get control of your life. And as you give yourself over to that little bit of naughtiness, the chains of that sin start coming upon you. Every being in heaven loves holiness. Why would I want to go to heaven? If I don't want to be holy here, why would I want to go to heaven? Young people, if you don't want to be holy now, do you really want to go to heaven? Where every being in heaven is holy? I want you to think about that. If you don't have a passion for holiness in your life, for purity, if you don't have a passion for sexual purity, it's dealing with all the pre-sexual stuff. It's having all the lusts and all the things that's involved with it. If you don't want to be pure in every dimension of your life, why do you want to go to heaven and be pure there? If you want to be a child of God and walk in intimacy with him, you want holiness here just as much as it is up in heaven. You want yourself to be sexually holy before God. You want to be pure before him and not to be tainted by this world. And the design of this world and what the world calls acceptable. Hebrews gives us this beautiful verse for those who are on the right side in a terrifying verse on the wrong side. He said, without holiness, no one will see God. And you know, that's absolutely a beautiful verse if we're trying to be holy. Absolutely beautiful, because you know what that is? That's a promise. I'll see you, God. I'll see you. For everyone that does not love holiness, you'll not see him. You'll not see him. The final point, and I'll close with this one, is you know, every single being in heaven zealously pursues God and zealously obeys him. Zeal is beautiful. That's why I think of the angels when God gives them a command, man, they're at a million miles an hour trying to fulfill it. It's their joy, it's their passion. And you know what we have done in the church in America? We've made zeal an ugly thing. Well, don't be fanatic. Don't be fanatical now. Don't be fanatical. Just calm down, calm down. You don't have to be like that. Well, if you go to God and you say, I want to be like they are in heaven here on earth, you know what? You will have the zeal of God in your life. Because the son of God came to this planet and took upon flesh and blood. And it was said of him, that zeal for thine house has consumed me. He was consumed with the zeal of his father. And why should we think it a disgraceful thing to be consumed with a zeal for God? Why should we be ashamed to worship him with abandon? Why should we be ashamed to worship him with desire and yearning? Why should we be ashamed to be a Christian in the public arena? Why should we be ashamed? The zeal of God should consume us. And if you want to walk with Jesus, that needs to be reality in your life. We all remember the events of 9-11 and what took place there. When terrorists or anarchists, as we could also call them, flew planes in the World Trade Center in the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania. At the World Trade Center, there's a story of Janelle Guzman. And she was the last survivor from 9-11. Over a day, I can't remember how many hours that she was under the rubble. And they're looking for survivors and they're trying to find everybody that they could. And here's this woman that is under all this rubble. And can you just imagine the situation, the pain, the agony, the broken bones? She was going in and out of consciousness. Can you imagine not knowing which way was up and which way was down? Because you are totally surrounded by all the cement and the rubble and debris and everything else and the pain that was in her body. And as she felt that, it's putting her in unconsciousness and she come to. And eventually, in this coming in and out of consciousness, eventually, she finally hears some noise, a faint noise up there. And she hears some voices and she's wondering, says, is there anybody that could help me in the midst of her in and out of consciousness? She prayed, imagine that. In her despair, in her pain and agony, she finally called out to God. And she says, is there anybody that can save me? Can you save me, God? And finally, when she heard this noise, she went and in a last ditch attempt, trying to go in the direction of what she heard the noise to be, she starts pushing her hand up through the rubble. And eventually the rubble starts moving away as she is able to push it aside. And as she pushes aside, a hand starts to come out and somebody sees it and runs and moves the rubble away. And there's this hand reaching out trembling and the man takes her hand in his. And in that moment, she knew she was saved. Is there anybody in this room that you feel right now like you have been totally surrounded by the pain and the suffering and the madness of this world? That you have been totally engulfed in it? That you feel it all around? You don't know what up and down is? You don't know what right and wrong is? You are so twisted with it. The pain in your heart from the sin that you've had and the things that have been done to you and the things that you have done, you feel that pain and the agony of it. And you're saying, is there anybody that can deliver me from this pain? Is there anybody that can deliver me from this sorrow and the agony of my heart? Is there any deliverer? Is there anybody that can do it? And if you will this night reach out a hand to Jesus, I guarantee you the hand will reach out and be able to pull you out of the rubble of your sin and your madness and your pain and your sorrow. It's just the big question. Do you want to be saved? That's the big question. Because if you don't want to be saved, Jesus will not save you. He'll leave you in the rubble of your pain and your sin and your misery. But if you want to be saved, the Savior will run to you and reach down and pull you out of it if you want that. And that's the real thing. And so now if there's anybody here that you're not a Christian and you want to be a Christian, let me share with you a couple of simple points and then I'll close. The only hope you have of ever becoming a Christian is that you understand these three points. And the first one is, is that you are a sinner. That you are a sinner by nature and by choice, that your sin has separated you from God and has put you at war with Him. Your sin has you on the side of the devil in the place of anarchy against God. And there's no hope of escape through your own ways. No religion can deliver you. You are in your sin, hopeless in your sin, unless you understand the second point, which is that there's only one Savior. All roads don't lead to heaven. That doesn't make sense. It's not even logical. And the world religions wouldn't even agree with that. That is just a ridiculous statement when people make that. God is not schizophrenic. He knows who He is and He revealed Himself plain and simple and He made His way clear and He made it through the way of the cross. There's only one Savior and His name is Jesus. And the final point, if you want to be a Christian, you have to see that you're a sinner, that there's only one Savior and His name is Jesus and that you have to abandon your life to Him. You have to give it up completely to Him. He'll not take part of you. He'll not hold your hand while you hold the devil's as well. You must let go of the devil's hand completely entirely and all the world and what it means and you must give your life over to Christ. You must surrender yourself to Him. And so now what will you do with Jesus? What will you do with Jesus?