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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Kyle Griffith

“Stolen Valor”

I'm studying in the School of Medicine right now.

It's funny because my old Bible teacher from Bakersfield was supposed to be here, but he bailed on me.

So now you get to hear from his students.

So you get to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing as we go along.

Glad to have the opportunity to preach for 2 reasons.

1, anyone who knows me knows I like to talk.

And it's good when I'm in a building where people literally came in just to hear me talk.

And the other thing is that it's legal here, which I've lived in places where it's not.

And You may be wondering, you know, why the military camo?

What are we talking about stolen valor for?

And we'll get right into that in just a bit, but before we do, let's go ahead and have a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day that you've given to us and this opportunity to be here to open your Bible freely, to learn from you freely, to ask for your Holy Spirit freely.

We ask that you would freely pour it out upon us, especially upon me as I share.

I ask that you would put your words in my mouth and that it would be from you and not from myself.

And I ask that everything that is spoken here and everything that is heard here would be things that we not only listen to, not only agree with, but actually internalize, apply to our lives, and then also are willing to help others to do the same and have the hope that's within us.

First off, has anybody heard of that phrase, stolen valor?

So I got a little definition here, you know, that will hopefully serve our purpose.

An instance of a person falsely claiming to have served in the military or a member of the military falsely claiming to have served in hazardous conditions in order to gain the respect and other benefits associated with such service.

And so you can see this picture of this guy.

Now, I don't know if anybody has a military background.

For all the Iranians listening, I do not.

But this guy right here doesn't take much experience to know that he doesn't really know how to wear the uniform at all.

All those medals are just kind of all over the place.

Let me put them here and make people respect me or whatever.

And so that's basically the idea of stolen valor.

You wear the outer appearance of military.

If you're wearing a combat uniform, you'll put on the patches, you know, Ranger School patches or whatever else.

And you'll say, hey, I was in the military.

I was a Navy SEAL, Green Beret, behind enemy lines, Ranger, whatever, you know.

And they'll come up with these stories and try to gain respect and honor, and sometimes military discounts at Home Depot, using this facade.

And so let's distill this down a little bit more.

What exactly do we mean when we talk about Stolen Valor?

The core behind it is you want all of the benefits of the military and you want none of the challenges, you want none of the obligations, you want none of the danger, but you want all of the benefits.

Now why am I talking about this right now?

Ephesians 6, 12, For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and against powers, and against the rulers of darkness in this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

So could this imagery of stolen valor possibly apply to some of us today in the Christian Church?

Are some of us wanting the external appearance of something good and something holy while at the same time on the inside we're an imposter.

We have no desire to do anything for Christ.

We have no desire for anything more than the honor, the title, the rewards, whatever it may be.

Now that could be as we relate to other humans.

We want people to look at us and say, oh, that's a good person.

They carry a Bible, and it's King James, so that's great.

We look at it like this, but it could also apply in our relationship with God.

So in other words, we might be in a situation...

We might be in a situation spiritually where we're saying, I want to do the least I possibly can for you and still get the reward.

And this is why I don't like the idea of salvational issues when people talk about, is this a salvational issue?

Because what that really tells me is I'm looking for excuses to do the most sin possible and still make it into heaven.

We should not be asking, what is the minimum I can do and still end up in heaven?

We should be asking the question, what is the most I can do for God?

Now, you know, I actually have a Muslim friend, actually, who shared with me a saying from the prophet of Islam.

And don't get freaked out that I'm about to quote it or whatever.

But I found it very interesting, something he shared with me on multiple occasions.

And I'll try to translate this, hopefully, accurately.

But what he said is, there are things that are clearly good, you know, the good is clearly seen, and then there are things that are clearly bad, the evil is clearly seen.

Don't put yourself in the middle, Don't put yourself in the gray area.

You know that there are things that are clearly unequivocally good, and there are things that are clearly unequivocally bad.

Why are you trying to skate around in the middle and do the gray area things?

And how much bad can I get away with and still be good?

You know things that are 100% acceptable and kosher and halal, as they would say.

So why are you skating around in the middle area?

You know, do the best that you can for God, not the minimum to squeak by.

So we need to be careful that Satan does not lead us into spiritual stolen valor, where we're seeking the benefits of carrying Christ's name, but yet we're not willing to actually serve him.

So this is a long quote from Great Controversy, but I just want to focus on this last section right here, where it's in yellow here.

It says, like a skillful general, he, meaning Satan, lays his plans beforehand.

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“Stolen Valor”

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