Living in the Last Days Pt. 2 | October 19, 2025

Love it.

Love it.

Well, you know, the kazoo

works the first time.

Now, uh, Russell remind me, you guys paid

a dollar how much you paid for that Kao.

$3. So we've used it now two Sundays

in a row, so that's like a dollar 50.

We're, man, we're making

money on kazoos around here.

So if you would like to get your

own commemorative kazoo signed by

the praise band to not use during

the sermon, let us know, man.

That could be great at supply.

Come quickly.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think we'll confiscate

your kazoo after that.

So, hey, uh, final

Countdown, part two, right?

Yesterday or last Sunday.

I wisely perceived Krista that

people would need to share and

obviously chopped the sermon in half.

But fool you guys 'cause I

saved the other half for today.

So there we go.

So we're gonna talk a little bit

about where we were at with our

final countdown discussion last week.

Uh, just to walk you through just a

second, the early church used phrases

like in the last days a lot, right?

They understood that they were

living in the time where Jesus.

Was gonna be making his

return probably pretty soon.

And we looked over at second

Peter how God measures time.

A little different in eternity

than we measure it, right?

That he's really only been

gone, what was it, Jocelyn?

Ah, just a couple of days.

You know?

A thousand years is a day, then a

couple days, a couple thousand years.

It's all the same, right?

When he returns, he's not gonna be,

he's not gonna be late, he's not

gonna be on the wrong timeframe.

He knows what he's doing

and he has purpose in it.

But he reminded us right through

prophets and messages that he was

gonna come and he had expectation.

And then scripture says finally he

sent his son as kind of the last

word and the last warning we looked

over in second Timothy as the church

was kind of talking about, what's it

gonna be like in the last days, right?

What is it gonna look like and seem like?

And what's, what's the

world gonna be like?

And we talked about how there's gonna

be very difficult, times hard, and.

Difficult things.

Maybe even as Jesus said, in this

world, you'll have tribulation, but

take heart, I've overcome the world.

We talked a little bit about pre-trib

and mid trib and post trib, and

then I got lots of texts from all

of you about pan trib, which means

it's all gonna pan out in the end.

Don't worry about it.

That's cool too.

I like that one.

Um, but people are gonna be only loving

themselves, consumed with self, right?

And they're gonna love their money.

We talked a little bit about

this Greek word, right?

This, uh, philos and, uh, gurus,

which is literally friend of silver

instead of being a friend of God,

and that they'll be boastful, proud,

arrogant, defiant, so much though

that they're gonna be scoffing at God.

And we looked at that Greek word a

minute, which basically just, it means

blasphemous, blasphemy towards God, right?

And then in a twist, none of

us saw coming disobedient.

To their parents.

Disrespectful.

Disobedient to the authority

that God's placed before them.

Ultimately demonstrating an inability

to be obedient and respectful to

the eternal king of kings and the

ultimate authority God himself.

And ungrateful.

We kinda wrapped up our time

talking about gratitude and

being full of gratitude, right?

And how, in a funny kinda weird

twist, it actually kind of like

undoes all of these things, right?

Selfishness and coveting don't work with

gratitude, arrogance, defiance, disrespect

for God, for parents, it doesn't work.

If you're being grateful and thankful

for what you have and what God

has done, and you're living in the

expression of that gratitude, there's

no room for all of this other mess.

But the reality is, in the last days,

this is what the world is gonna look

like around us, and it's the world

that we gotta navigate, the world

that we marinate in, and how do we.

Walk through it.

Right.

Pretty, pretty dark stuff.

Pretty discouraging stuff.

But wait,

there's more.

He goes on to say they will

consider nothing sacred.

Kind of an interesting statement.

What do you consider sacred?

You know, let's think about that.

Like, we kind of dumb everything down and

we kinda, we kind of like, you know, knock

it off this pedestal of sanctity, right?

The word sacred here refers

to this idea of holy, of pure,

of set apart, of undefiled.

And I don't know if you've looked around

the culture much, but there's a whole lot

of stuff that seems pretty defiled to me.

I, I had a chance to do like a bunch

of weddings over the last couple weeks.

It's been kind of fun.

I had two this week and, uh, just

yesterday we're at a wedding and it

was really, really beautiful to have

a chance to talk about the sanctity.

The sacredness of covenant

marriage between one man and

one woman before God, right?

But the marriage bed scripture says,

man, it gets defiled because of our

sinfulness, our impurity, and we're

supposed to, as followers of Jesus,

keep the marriage bed undefiled.

It's supposed to be sacred.

Marriage is supposed to be sacred.

We live together.

We just do whatever we want to do, and we

sort of ignore God's very clear call to

treat marriage, this sacred relationship

between one man and one woman before God

in a covenant that as long as you both

shall live, you walk in, in faithfulness.

That's important.

And it's a picture, just a little

snapshot of what it looks like to be

in covenant relationship with God.

He uses that illustration, faithfulness,

selflessness, serving each other

in love, not giving 50%, 50%.

Dropping a hundred percent

each, giving selflessly all in.

That's that picture, right?

And in our culture, man, marriage

definitely not treated sacred.

There's very little

that we treat as sacred.

Now, I would encourage you to think

about, as a follower of Jesus,

what's sacred in your life and

what are you treating as sacred?

I don't know if anybody's

even asked you that before.

I don't know if I've asked myself

that before, to be honest, right?

What are we treating sacred?

'cause I think there's probably a lot of

stuff that we're just sorta treating and

maybe even defiling the sanctity of, but

this is what it's gonna look like, right?

They will be unloving.

The world, the culture, the society,

the people are gonna be unloving.

I love to talk about this, man.

What is the defining characteristic

of a follower of Jesus Christ?

Is it how much you know?

Is it your deep intellectual

ability to decipher scripture

and theological content?

Is it Bible memorization?

Is it doctrinal argument ability?

Is it your church attendance

with the Gold Star?

What is it that defines

a follower of Jesus?

Right?

A defining character.

The defining characteristic.

Jeopardy fans.

What is love, right?

Love Jesus said.

People are gonna know,

you're my disciples.

Not by what you know, not by all of these

different things that you might measure

value and success and importance, but

by the way, you love the way you love.

Let your love be evident to all.

I was just thinking about this today,

how, you know, we sh our sharing time.

I don't really know what's happening

and I want you to know I'm gonna keep

preaching people so you can try as hard

as you want, but over the last like six

weeks, it seems like we have a good 20

minutes of sharing and uh, that's great.

I mean it's great and it's great

because you can go a lot of

places and watch a lot of shows.

And get a whole lot more

impressive preaching.

Not the jokes as much.

They're pretty good here, but you know,

there's a lot of places you can go to

get more wowed in your church experience.

But there's not a lot of places you

can go to experience family and love.

And that's what the church is man.

It's the body of Christ,

the family of God.

And sometimes what you share in a sharing

time hits somebody way harder than some

eloquent sermon that gets unpacked or

some amazing song that we introduce.

You guys are important in

relationship to each other and you

guys embody that in a cool way.

So I don't even feel like I should talk

about love much 'cause you guys crush

it on this whole front, but the world

around us, man, it's pretty unloving.

I dunno if you've noticed that lately.

Not a lot of love and it's unforgiving.

This word is tied to the idea here.

Unforgiving of irreconcilable.

Do you remember a couple weeks ago we

talked about second uh Corinthians, where

God has called us to be people who carry

out the ministry of reconciliation, right?

That God is reconciling himself

through Christ and he's given us

the ministry of reconciliation.

He's reconciling the world, not

holding men's sins against them.

And he's committed to us this ministry

of reconciliation as followers of Jesus.

We're supposed to be about

forgiveness and restoration, right?

Reconciliation ought to be our

middle name, but this world around

us, man, why do people get divorced

for, oh, irreconcilable differences.

We just couldn't find a way

to forgive and to be restored.

And that ought to be the heartbeat

of followers of Jesus, but in the

world around us, we're gonna see

it's not, they slander each other.

Can I do this real quick?

This word, I was just going

to do a quick drop of the word

slander, and then I started digging

into this word a little bit.

And if you'll just like

put a mental note here.

I'm just gonna give

this its own week, man.

This is pretty cool.

So come back next week if you

wanna hear more about slander.

I think that's where I'm gonna go.

Don't slander me if I don't do it.

Deal.

But just save this word.

'cause there's some power here

that we need to talk about.

And this will blow your

mind in the last days.

People are gonna have a real

struggle with self-control.

Now, thankfully, nobody struggles

with that nowadays that we see, right?

Except for everywhere.

And did you know that self-control is

actually one of the fruits of the spirit

that are listed in scripture, right?

That it ought to be something on display.

Yes, it's the very last one on the

list, but it still counts, right?

I learned that a long time ago.

Even if I was last on Jamie's list,

I was still on her list, right?

That's important.

So self-control ought to be some evidence

of the Holy Spirit at work in us.

And if we have no self-control,

we're just gonna go all over, man.

We're gonna do some crazy stuff.

Cruel and hate.

What is good.

The world around us will

be cruel and we'll hate.

What is good, man?

We see this everywhere, don't we?

It's reminiscent of the days of Noah.

The Lord saw how great in Genesis

the wickedness of the human

race had become on the earth.

Check this out, man.

Every inclination of the heart,

of the thoughts of the human

heart were only evil all the time.

I dunno how to describe

cruel, hate, evil, wickedness.

Better than that, every inclination

of their heart, every impulse,

desire, thought, every action

of their spirit was always evil,

constantly, every time, all the time.

And man, we live in this world where

wickedness and evil, they are rampant.

And God did say in the last days it'll

be as it is in the days of Noah, people

will be eating and drinking and giving

in marriage and marrying and doing life.

And here's another reference

to the days of Noah.

That the wickedness and the

evil will just continue.

Right?

Just watch what's going

on with technology.

I had a, a law enforcement officer

tell us one time that pornography

always chases technology.

It's always the first one

in always new technology.

Pornography's first.

It just is.

It just always finds a

way first to anything.

Just reading about AI stuff yesterday,

Jamie sent me something about the adult

restrictions coming off of chat GPT

for anybody who can sort of validate

they're an adult, like just constant

things are changing, changing, changing.

Why?

Because evil is in pursuit of you.

Wickedness and sin is in pursuit of you.

The prince of the power of the air is in

pursuit of your spiritual destruction.

You're not playing with safe phones

and safe technology in a safe world.

You're playing in a world that is

cruel, that hates what is good.

And as followers of Christ, we gotta

be discerning and pay attention

and walk with great integrity and

with great light and great clarity.

Because the enemy lurks all over

trying to bring destruction.

They'll betray their friends.

No loyalty.

They'll be reckless and careless.

Destructive in how they

walk in relationships.

Puffed up with pride.

Do you notice pride made the list twice?

That's interesting, huh?

Arrogance pride.

Me, me, me.

You know the best way to walk

before God is him, him, him, him.

The king is in the room.

And nobody sang that song when you

walked in from the bathroom and turned

and said, ah, the king is in the room.

Right?

And yet, that's how we live, right?

That we're on the throne of our own

heart and God is our trusted advisor.

Lemme tell you a little secret.

God's on the throne of your heart and

your opinion really doesn't matter.

You're not his trusted advisor.

You know, God, if, if I got

an idea and thankfully God's

like Andy, I already know.

No.

Right.

That's just where it goes, right?

Just no, just no.

I'm the king.

You're not with pride.

This one really stinks.

None of the lovers of pleasure, people

who love pleasure rather than God.

This phrase in a lot of translations,

lovers of pleasure rather than lovers

of God, instead of in place of lovers

of pleasure, rather than lovers of God.

It's interesting how

Satan twist things, right?

'cause did Satan create pleasure?

No, he didn't create pleasure.

He didn't give us beautiful weather

and sunrises and birds chirping,

and he didn't create sexuality.

God did great, great design

at the end of the day, right?

Like he put pleasure into his creation.

But what does Satan do?

He perverts.

He always perverts.

We use that word in a

sexual connotation, right?

To be a pervert, to pervert.

And all it means is this to

twist, to twist, to twist.

Satan takes something good like

pleasure, and he twists it right?

He twists it so that we chase that rather

than the one who created us to experience

some good pleasures within a proper

context of covenant marriage, right?

In faithfulness in relationship and

obedience, it's part, it's really like

probably a hard question, but one you

probably should ask yourself, right?

Am, am I a love, a lover of

pleasure or a lover of God?

If God were to look at my personal bank

account, how I spend my money and my

lifetime energy bank account, how I

spend my energy and my thoughts and my

passions and my interests, am I a lover

of pleasing myself, of experiencing

pleasure or am I a guy who loves God?

And I think it's important

for us to ask this question.

I really do.

And, and here's why.

Because I think God's gonna ask

us this question, and it probably

doesn't matter all that much

about what you think about you.

And you might be able to be like,

well, you know, I'm not really,

I think what would God say the

answer to this question is?

Is Andy a lover of

pleasure or a lover of God?

Am I a lover of pleasure

or am I a lover of God?

'cause that's a really important question

to answer as a follower of Jesus, because

where your heart is, that's where your

time, your energy, your resource, right?

Your treasure is, it's where you are gonna

pursue things and chase things and invest.

Really how you answer this question is

a pretty profound kind of examination

of who owns your heart, lovers of

pleasure rather than lovers of God.

They'll act religious, but

they'll reject the power.

That could really help them, right?

There's this big act going on of looking

like they're religious and pious, and that

they're spiritual and saying all the right

things and dressing all the right ways.

It's one of the reasons why I

like sharing time, because you

can't really, you can't pretty up

sharing time at White Rock, right?

People who come to our church and

are very uncomfortable because you

guys are raw and real and genuine.

Um, a we get two kinds of people.

One group of people are like,

holy cow, I didn't know that

was a thing in the church.

I, I need to come back

and watch that again.

And other people who are like scared

to death because they're busy acting

religious and their goal is to act

like they're somebody they're not.

Listen, you can look around

the people in this room.

You can look up on this platform at all.

The guys up here, okay?

That's just me.

And you can say there is no

perfect person in this room.

Not anywhere.

No flawless, no perfectly

pious, wonderful person.

I mean, Jamie's next door

helping with the teens.

So otherwise she'd be like, amen.

Or the preteens, or she'd be like, amen.

Right?

There's no perfect people here.

And that's okay because we serve the

perfect God and he invites us into a

perfect relationship where we bring

our flaws and our imperfections and

we just start walking with him and

he begins to transform and change us.

We don't become super human

and super powerful and we

become awesome in ourselves.

Now we, we get to experience his

cool, awesome, transforming love that

reshapes and molds us and changes us.

And after a while we look

different than the person who

started a relationship with him.

And that's pretty spectacular.

But that all only happens when we stop

acting religious and we stop acting

like we're something and we just get

real with who we are before the Lord.

And we bring our sin, our failures,

our struggles, everything we got.

And we just say, Lord, here I am.

What do you want to, what

do you wanna change in me?

What do you wanna do in me?

What do you wanna do with me?

Can I still hang out with you?

The answer is yes.

'cause he loves you.

Stay away from people

like this, this list.

Now, does that mean that we don't

talk to anybody in the world

and share the love of Jesus?

Of course not.

But what the scripture is saying is be

careful how intimate you allow yourself

to associate and how closely you get

bonded at a heart level with people

who are living like this, especially

calling themselves followers of Jesus.

Because we need to tell them, Hey

guys, listen, the scripture says this.

We gotta live a little differently.

I'm here to help you.

I love you.

How can I encourage you?

But if we're just being a phony

follower, Jesus acting religious, and

this is really the fruit of our life,

we better be really careful, right?

Like if this list is a friend group

description for you, I would encourage you

to really pray about your friend group.

I don't mean like people that

you would be s. Be be, you know,

kind to and and cordial with.

But I mean, if your friend group lives

out, these values, you need to change

your friend group because that's too

much intimacy, too much connectedness,

too much deep relationship walking

together as iron sharpens iron

muck, smushes muck into more muck.

Right?

I mean, I think that's sort of a thing.

Okay, last days, here's the deal.

You can argue all you want.

Like I don't think we're in the last days.

That's fine.

The early church did.

And if I had nothing but this

listicle off of, I would say

yeah, we're in the last days.

We are.

We just are.

Look at the description, unless God's

word is just wrong and just toss it out.

But lemme just be honest with,

you're gonna do that then.

I don't even know why

you're here this morning.

Right?

'cause everything's about what

he's shared and what he said

and what he's revealed to us.

We're in the last days, right?

We are literally, I think.

In the final countdown.

How long is it gonna be?

We don't know, but we're there.

And so we gotta quit acting as a church.

Like, eh, that's a long way off.

Now we're there, right?

And in fact, scripture says instead

of being all fussy and whiny, and

mopey and pouty, because we're in

the last days, we're supposed to

encourage one another with this.

We're supposed to encourage

each other, right?

Hey, great news.

It's the end of

day.

I dunno.

It's the end.

The end of the world.

You know what RM said?

I feel fine.

I feel fine, right?

Stupid song.

But anyways, I love the chorus.

Always love the chorus.

It's the end of the world, and I

feel fine, but as a follower of

Jesus, we shouldn't just feel fine.

We should probably feel good.

I mean, you have to be

excited about hard things.

That's okay not to be like

suffering, tribulation, difficulty.

Yes, I was hoping, nah, none of us were.

That's okay.

But man, we should not feel discouraged.

We should instead be encouraged

and encouraging one another.

Right?

Scripture says in Thessalonians, therefore

encourage one another with these words.

And they're talking about their

coming of the son of man and the end

times and what it's gonna look like.

Hey, when you see it coming, when you

recognize you're in the last days,

don't be discouraged, be encouraged.

Encourage each other.

'cause we know who Jesus is.

We know what our

destination's gonna look like.

We know there might be some hard things,

man, but he is gonna fulfill his purpose

and take us out of the muck and the mess

and transform new heaven, new earth,

amazing reality that lies before us.

For those of us who are in Christ,

there's a lot to be excited

about and encouraged about.

I love this passage in

Acts in the last days.

God says, I will pour out

my spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy.

Your young men will see visions.

Your old men will dream dreams.

If you're not seeing a young

generation finding their voice for

Jesus, you're not paying attention.

We're in some last days where young

people are finding a voice to speak

truth and to stand up for Jesus in

their, in their campuses, in their high

schools, in their sports events and,

and situ, I mean all over the place.

Just watch.

I mean, and of course the enemy wants

to drown that out, but you're not gonna

be able to, 'cause there's a young

generation of people who are beginning

to prophesy, and I don't mean like some

kinda weird spiritual gift prophecy

that everybody's trying to argue about.

Maybe fortune telling, future telling.

I'm just saying speaking the truth in love

with boldness and clarity to the world

that's happening in this young generation.

We're seeing it happen.

And young men are gonna see visions

not here's, here's cool guys.

Get this.

As young guys, I was always discouraged

about the end of the world, and I didn't

feel fine because I wanted to do stuff.

I wanted to be somebody.

I wanted to make a difference and

have an impact and fulfillment.

And that's what the scripture says, right?

Young men are gonna see visions.

Do you know what that means?

It means they're not gonna just fade

into oblivious, pointless living.

They're gonna have a vision about

what it can be and what life can

look like, and the impact and

purpose and fulfillment and meaning.

That's what vision is.

They have vision and purpose

to what they're doing, not just

meaningless wandering, right?

And I love this old guys enjoy this.

The old men, they're involved.

Now they're taking naps, right?

They have a little dream action.

Let's be honest.

It's okay.

Get a little rest.

But listen, listen, listen.

I'm gonna go outta my way and probably

get myself in trouble with everybody

who's got more hair than me and is gray.

But retirement is not a biblical concept.

It's an American concept.

It is not a biblical concept.

You can't show me somebody

in the Bible who retired.

You just can't.

Now, do you stop working as hard

at some of the things you do?

Sure.

But that's just, you know,

working in the nap schedule.

But you're still living

with purpose and meaning.

Visions and dreams is a parallel

to purpose and living with

purpose and having vision for

what you're doing with your life.

And we got a whole generation that's been

trained to work hard and then just play

hard and be self-indulgent for the rest

of your life until you step into eternity.

And I'm just gonna tell you, there's

gonna be a lot of people who meet

Jesus and he is like, what were

you doing those last 20 years?

You could have served and helped

and spoke and, and you could have

had such an impact for eternity.

But you listen to a world that said,

sit on the shelf and watch right now.

I get it.

You're not gonna have the same pace as

those young people who are rocking it.

I'm learning a lot about

that right now in my life.

But.

Don't surrender purpose and meaning.

Don't buy into the world's idea

that here we are in the last days.

So go hide somewhere, wherever you're at.

Be an influencer for Jesus.

Speak truth, prophesy.

Tell the truth of who Jesus is

and what He's done in your life.

Wherever you're at in whatever

environment he's got you.

That's purpose and that's

meaning, and that's the call to

every follower of Jesus Christ.

Whether you're sitting in the front

row, rocking middle school, or you're

sitting in the far back rows trying

to decide if you even wanna show up.

'cause it's not fun to sit in here

until the air conditioning turns

on and then you're cold and then

you're hot and then music's too loud.

It is what it is, right?

We're all people and we all got stuff.

But at the end of the day, I

love about this church, man.

We have old and we have young,

and everybody has value and

everybody's called the purpose.

And the way you walk it

out, man, it's pretty epic.

Hey, little plug.

Oh, we could use some more help in

our children's ministry department.

My wife's over there helping

a couple weeks a month trying

to help with the pre-teens.

'cause we need some more pre-teen workers.

We need some more kids workers.

We're doing great on the teen front.

Josh keeps stealing 'em all 'cause he is

like, come to my cholesterol, it's rough.

But instead of sitting on the shelf and

watching and coming and being entertained,

uh, you could come talk to me.

I would love to help get you connected

'cause we just need more help.

'cause if we're in the last days, it's

time for God's people to be busy speaking

and teaching and leading and investing.

Not sitting and watching

and being self-indulgent.

Right?

Because final countdown into

the world, I don't know.

But we should feel not just fine.

We should feel excited and we should

be ready for the return of Jesus.

'cause he's coming and when he comes,

Jesus told us a little parable.

He said it will be really good

for that servant that when the

master returns, he finds us busy at

work doing what he left us to do.

Unless you've got a list that Jesus

gave you and it's all checked off and he

signed it, I don't think anybody should

be just sitting around doing nothing.

God has called us to serve and to

impact and to make a difference

so that we're living ready.

So I dunno how that applies to you,

but I want to be part of a church

that loves, like you guys love.

It's incredible.

And I wanna make sure we translate that

love into service because love is action.

So let's not sit on the sidelines.

Let's not just sit and watch

and wait for Jesus return.

Let's get busy.

Let's be invested and engaged

and making a difference, right?

Because He's coming, he's coming.

Lord Jesus, thank you for

the truth of your word.

Thank you for the warning,

but also the encouragement to

be about purpose and meaning.

What we have a chance and

God, you know, each of us.

You know where we're at, you know what

gifts, talents, abilities you've given us.

You know what kind of resources

we're working with, time

and energy and even money.

But God, you have called every single

one of us to not be consumed with

ourself, but instead to look different

than this list from second Timothy.

And to be people who love and serve,

are and are at work in reconciling

a world who's lost to the Savior.

So God, I pray that you would examine our

hearts, you would speak and point really

firmly to some areas in us that we need

to surrender to the king, turn over to the

king, and walk in obedience to the king.

That we might be part

of something amazing.

And as you return and you show

back up, instead of being like,

finally you're here, we're like,

Jesus, hang on one more second.

I gotta make one more little impact here.

'cause we're busy trying

to reach the whole world.

With hope and life.

Thank you for my friends here.

Lord, this is an incredible family.

And God, I pray you'd encourage us to be

busy, not busy with the things of this

world, but busy watching and pouring

in that eternity would look different.

Thank you for your love.

In Jesus name, amen.