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Sacramento Central SDA Church

Chris Buttery

Youth, Do You Dare?

For some of us older folk, you may remember when you were a kid, you used to play the dare game, do you remember doing that?

Some of you may still play that, the dare game, and you'd play it with your friends and if you did it was probably something completely silly and foolish like what we used to do we'd we were of the sort when we were living in northern Australia we were of the sort that we didn't want to go to school with our shoes on And so we would dare each other, because you know the teachers would have their eye open.

I don't know what it was about this school or this area, but they just knew kids wouldn't come to school with their shoes on.

And so we'd dare each other, yeah, I dare you to come to school without any shoes, and don't even bring them at all.

And then in high school, you'd dare, just before you get into the math class, you'd dare.

By the way, these are not ideas for our young people here this morning.

I just want to make sure that you understand that, Pathfinders and all our other young people.

But in math class, you'd, I mean, that was silly.

You know, before you get to math class, a day when the teacher's got his back to the class, you know, you jump up out of your chair and I jump out of mine and we'll just dart across the room and we'll trade chairs and play little musical chairs while the teacher's not watching and of course it was just a silly thing because you knew the teachers hadn't their eyes, they had eyes in the back of their head and they saw everything that you were doing.

I remember we played a dare on my younger brother, he was a good sport, it was very mean to say the least.

Several of us including the neighbor kids thought it'd be funny 1 lazy weekday afternoon to dare my brother to eat a hot pepper and now my brother's not dumb and he knows that peppers are pretty hot but we had a plan and we told him that it's true peppers are hot but if you eat the seeds don't even...

You won't even even know that you've had a hot pepper.

Well you know what happened And he still does to this day and he's forgiven me and we have a laugh every now and then a little bit about it when it's brought up in a conversation.

What is it about those 3 words that will get people to do just about anything?

When a radio DJ dared listeners to tattoo the station's logo to their forehead, a David Jonathan Winkleman and his step stepson didn't even blink even as their skulls were getting inked with a decimal point.

Now the 48 year old tried to sue the station claiming that he was out of a six-figure payout promised on the air.

The station's response was something along the lines of, we didn't think anyone would actually do it and the judge agreed with the radio station.

So if you see someone walking around with a station tattoo, yeah, maybe David, maybe Jonathan Winkleman.

After having their birth of their healthy son, a Jennifer Jones.

Jennifer Jones finally relaxed enough to fall asleep and it was a bad idea because her husband on a dare decided to officially name their new son, born son, Dow, as in Dow Jones, while Jennifer snoozed.

And you can imagine the horror of Jennifer when she woke up out of her slumber and what Dow Jones's first day of school at a business college would actually be like.

This morning I'd like to offer several dares to our young people and I'll be up front.

These dares aren't designed to entice you to do something not worthy of your time or attention but to challenge our young people in a direction and encourage them in a direction that is right, because this is no question that we live in a world where wrong abounds.

I want you to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Ezekiel chapter 22.

We read a very interesting passage of scripture here.

Ezekiel chapter 22, and we're gonna look at verse 23 through 30, so just bear with me here.

I wanna focus in on verse 30 in particular.

But here it is, Ezekiel chapter 22 and verse 23, and we'll read on.

The Bible says, And the word of the Lord came unto me, this is Ezekiel, saying, Son of man, say unto her, that is unto Jerusalem, unto God's people, Thou art the land that is not cleansed nor rained upon in the day of indignation.

Verse 25 there is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof like a roaring lion ravening the prey they have devoured souls they've taken the treasure and the precious things, they have made her many widows in the midst thereof.

Verse 26, her priests have violated my law and have profaned mine holy things and they have put no difference between the holy and the profane neither have they shown difference between the unclean and the clean and have hid their eyes from my Sabbaths and I am profaned among them verse 27 her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey to shed blood and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain.

And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord, when the Lord has not spoken.

The people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery and have vexed the poor and needy.

Yea, they have oppressed the stranger woefully." Just hold tight, we'll get to verse 30 in a little bit.

The setting is the setting in which Ezekiel wrote these words is interesting and very important for us here today.

About 100 years earlier, the northern kingdom of Israel had ceased to exist.

The Assyrians, they had simply subjugated the land and they'd scattered God's people across their empire.

Earlier prophets of God had warned Israel that if they refused to turn back to the worship of the true God, then they'd be exposed to the threats of the enemy and lose their freedoms and yes, even their lives.

Now understand, this wasn't God stating something arbitrarily.

The only safety was in their divine protector, you understand.

Refuse his presence, forfeit his protection, just as simple as that.

Now God's a gentleman and he won't impose himself upon anyone, he just doesn't want to do that.

It was a hostile world and God's people had succumbed to the customs and the practices of the sadistic nations around them so The northern kingdom was gone, it was finished, it was done.

Now the overthrow of the southern kingdom, Judah, was rapidly approaching.

Babylonian servitude had already begun with Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, when he came up against Judah in 605 BC.

You recall this is when Daniel and his 3 friends and the flower of the youth of Jerusalem were taken, marched into Babylon at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar where they were re-educated and where they were retrained for service to the king.

Now 8 years later in 597 BC, just 3 months after ruling Judah, Jehoiachin was taken captive along with 10, 000 of his chief people.

Now those that went down to Babylon was Ezekiel.

Jehoiachin's successor, Zedekiah, he was no better than his predecessors.

And in 586 BC, 11 years later, came the final overthrow of Judah.

The remainder of the people were taken and the temple was burned and Jerusalem was completely destroyed.

The Bible says only a few of the poor of the land were left to tend to the vineyards.

Now if you stop and think about it just for a moment, God was very patient with his people.

They were pretty recalcitrant, they were pretty hard-hearted folk in general.

Even though Nebuchadnezzar came, he did not destroy the city all at once.

It was as if God was keeping Nebuchadnezzar in check and saying this far but no further, you can't come any further.

All in an attempt, you understand, to give Judah time to come to their senses and to turn their hearts back toward the worship of the true God.

Now these were very turbulent, stressful, hard times that Ezekiel, by the way he was a young man, Ezekiel was a young man when he was taken captive and when he received the call to the prophetic office The prospects were far from bright for God's people.

The stroke of judgment had already fallen on Jerusalem and instead of sobering the people up, it just hardened their hearts to just continue to do the wrong thing.

They refused to listen to reason and now they were suffering as a result.

Now in these verses that we just read we find out who it was that led God's people into rebellion against God.

It's interesting, verse 25 and 28 tells us that it was the prophets and some of them are called whitewashed, they looked good on the outside but what came from their mouth was not good at all, they'd taken advantage of the less fortunate people.

Then in verse 26 it says the priests, These were the religious leaders of God's people and they put no difference between the holy things and the common things, they just kind of merged the 2, blended the 2, and there was no clear line of demarcation between right and wrong anymore.

Verse 27 says the leaders of the people, and they cared very little for human life.

Notice also in verse 29 that the people, the people just followed right along with the leaders giving no thought to the consequences of their actions.

Now let me ask you just a simple question, if the prophets, if the priests, if the princes, and if the people were all caught up in flagrant disobedience toward God, how many would there be left?

That's why, and we'll read in verse 30 here, it's very interesting, that's why we read what we read here in verse 30.

And God says, and I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land that I should not destroy." But notice what it says at the end, but I found no 1.

Now understand that the bottom had basically fallen out there in Judah.

Right was considered wrong and wrong was considered right.

What was supposed to be displayed in the lives of God's special, peculiar people, the good, the genuine, genuine love and faithfulness to God's will, exemplary living and education and health and trade, was replaced with a careless spirit, a spurious type of love, disobedience and lives that look no different than the surrounding nations around them.

So what was God looking for among His people?

What was God looking for among His people?

Somebody, what type of somebody was he looking for?

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Youth, Do You Dare?

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