Influencer – Time of Our Lives

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Today, we are wrapping up a series that I've really enjoyed.

The series is called Influencer.

And if you've missed any of the series, allow me to catch you up very quickly.

We've wrestled with one question.

Here it is.

How do you live a godly life when culture shifts?

And let's be honest, culture is always changing, it's always shifting around us.

Isn't it?

Just this week, we got a text alert from my kids' school that there was a suspicious person on site.

I had another friend this week or last week tell me that their school went into a lockdown.

In my generation, coming up as a kid, that wasn't a thing.

Culture changes very quickly.

And if you've lived more than 25 or 30 years, you have witnessed season after season after season where one incident that happens in our country, where one war on the other side of the world, where one Supreme Court decision, where one presidential executive order can literally change everything overnight.

And so what we've been doing is we've asked the question how do I stay godly?

And how do I stand firm for what I believe in a culture that's always changing and compromising and shifting around me?

To do this, we've looked at the life of Daniel.

In week one, we said this.

Daniel modeled what I believe we have to model as Christians in an ever-changing world, which is to be people of both grace and truth.

And if you lean too far to either direction, you miss the point.

But grace and truth together is like medicine to the world around us.

Then week two, we said this.

We said that there is a war going on all around us.

And the war is over the topic of what will you worship and what will you bow down to.

If you missed either of those two, I want you to go back online and check those out.

Today, I want to look at a prophetic story in the life of Daniel that I believe has massive implications on how you live your life and how you invest your most precious commodity, your time.

Well, let's get after it together today.

About seven years ago for Christmas, my family got something new.

It was a new piece of technology.

Today it's not quite as big of a deal, but seven years ago or so, it was so new.

It was so cool, it was so fresh.

It was this thing called an Amazon Echo.

Have you seen these before?

Maybe you have one of these at your house.

If you don't know what it is, you talk to it and you wake it up by saying, Hey Alexa, and then you can tell it what to do.

You can tell it to add something to your grocery list, you can tell it to set a timer for when you're baking something.

My family uses it, but we don't use it for that.

The truth is we got this thing and we just use it as our personal jukebox.

So what happens is we'll say, Alexa, play some song, and it just plays it for us and almost inevitably turns into a dance party at my house.

And so about six or seven years ago when we got this, it was so different, it was so unique for us, and it was fun.

And in that same season, there was a movie that came out that my little daughter Ella, who was like two or three years old at the time, she just loved it.

The movie was this movie called Sing.

Have you seen this movie?

It's good.

I'm gonna be honest with you for a moment.

Um, I have seen every kid's movie ever for the history of all kids' movies ever.

And my favorite part of kids' movies is movie theater popcorn, everybody.

And um, or a good quick nap.

I just, I'm not a big kids' movie fan, but this one, this was good.

And at the end of the movie, there was a song that uniquely captivated my daughter's attention.

This elephant sang a song called Don't You Worry About a Thing.

And it was such a beautiful, fun song.

And if you know the song at the end of the song, there's a part where the song breaks down and goes, Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba lot of bahs, ba ba-ba.

And so Ella was little and she didn't know the name of the song, so she would say, Dad, play ba-pa-ba.

It's cute.

So I told Alexa to play the song, and the song would play.

Well, then Ella figured out that she was smart enough to talk to the Amazon Echo and to request the song.

So I'll never forget there was this day I was in the living room, just kind of doing my own thing, half paying attention, and I hear Ella say, Alexa, play ba-pa-pa.

And Alexa thought for a second and it said, playing ba ba bubble butt.

I don't know what that is.

I don't know what her and her mom listened to when I'm not there, but like, that was not it, you know.

You know what's so funny is we understand that if you give something the wrong information, you're gonna get the results you didn't ask for.

We understand that, right?

We understand if we do things the wrong way, we're gonna get the wrong results in other parts of our life.

Like, if all you eat is fast food for every single meal, you are not gonna be the most healthy.

If you never sleep at night, you will never feel rested.

If you never put in the hard work, you will never achieve or grow in your career.

We understand that to get the results we want, we have to put in the right input.

We understand this.

Here's what I want you to understand today.

The same is true for the things of God.

If you want the blessings of God in your life, if you want the goodness of God in your life, if you want God's results in your life, you live your life and play by God's rules.

Here's what's happening in the story of Daniel.

The people of Israel have been overtaken.

If you remember week one, we said this.

This is some 600 or so years before Jesus is born.

The people of Babylon and their king, King Nebuchadnezzar, come and they take over the people of Judah, the people where Daniel lived.

And they make them their slaves.

And Daniel comes into the king's house as a slave in his house, kind of a different role for him because he was seen as an intellectual, and his whole world turns upside down, but the king turns the people of God away from the things of God, and then the things that happen in his country are literally just the result of him turning the people away from God.

But here's what I want you to get today: God is a good, loving Father who wants to warn his children and to correct his children so that he doesn't have to discipline his children.

He loves you so much that he wants to give you a warning.

Today I want to talk to you about a prophetic warning in the book of Daniel, chapter five, that really was for the people there, but the principles are so true and serve to us today as a prophetic warning for us.

Daniel chapter five says this.

King Belshazzar, let's pause here for just a moment.

Daniel lives under four different kings.

This is the second of the four kings.

King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles, and he drank wine with them.

Let's pause here for just a moment.

Often in the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, when scripture goes out of its way to tell you that people were drinking and having a good time, there is kind of an undercurrent or an understanding to what you're reading, which is the people were there just for the moment.

They were living in the moment, not worried about tomorrow, not worried about their work, not worried about things that are still left undone at home.

They were just here now in this moment, missing everything else.

Let me say this to you: nothing wrong with having fun, but like that's not a really great way to live your life.

So the king throws this massive party for a thousand of his buddies, and they're all eating and drinking and having a good time.

It says, while Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem.

So he's literally having this party, and as a way to flex on everybody, he remembered that his father, when he besieged and took over the people of Israel, when he did this, they took a lot of the religious artifacts, a lot of the things that belonged to God and God's people, and they brought them into the king's palace.

And so what happens is there's this party, and he brings in all these special gold goblets that were things that really represented the goodness of God.

He treated the sacred things as common things, so that the king and his nobles and his wives and concubines might drink from those special goblets.

So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and concubines drank from them.

And as they drank the wine, they praised the gods, lowercase g, not our God, but the fake gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

And I want you to see the next word.

It says, Suddenly.

Here's what this means to me.

It means that at any given moment, you just need to be aware that God might do anything necessary to get your attention.

Like you may be going down a path and God does something and it smacks you up the head, but it's like God saying, Because I love you, I'm going to warn you.

Because I love you, I'm not going to let you run off of this cliff.

I'm not going to let you hurt or harm or injure yourself.

Because I love you, I want the best for you because I love you.

So there's these group of people, there's a thousand plus of them having a party.

They're living in the moment, living for the moment, and all of a sudden God says, I'm going to interrupt this to get your attention.

Suddenly, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster in the wall.

Can you can you imagine this for a moment?

The king is drinking out of this like this goblet that represents our God.

He's drinking, and all of a sudden he's like, Wait, what?

What?

And he looks up and he sees what appears to be a human hand, and it's literally like writing in the plaster.

Think of the strength it would take to write in the plaster of a wall, and it writes this message, and he's thinking, What is in this drink?

Like, right?

It's like, I know it's Miller time, but I did not expect all this.

It's like, anybody else seeing this?

And everybody sees this hand as it's writing on the wall near the lampstand in the royal palace.

It says the king watched, says the hands, uh the king watched the hands as it wrote.

His face turned pale, and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.

I honestly think that's strong.

You'd have to pick me up off the ground if that happened.

And he was confused by this, and so he did what but many people would do.

And it says the king summoned the enchanters, astrologers, and diviners.

Then he said to these wise men of Babylon, here's what I want.

Whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck.

Flava, flav, and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

It's almost like Shark Tank.

He's like, I am willing to give 33% equity in my kingdom if you will tell me what this writing represents.

Now we don't know a lot more details than that.

Rembrandt in the 1500s, he painted this painting, or 1600, 1635, painted this painting called Belshazzar's Feast.

And this is his interpretation artistically of it.

Here's what we know in a few verses we'll read what the words said.

But we know that these words were inscribed in the wall in Aramaic.

Now, what's interesting to me is Aramaic was the language of the day.

It is the language that the people spoke.

And even though it was the language of the day, the people, those mystical thinkers, had no idea what it meant.

Here's some of the things that we know.

We know that Aramaic is a consonantal kind of language.

What that means is not a lot of vowels used in it.

So if the words are pushed together, maybe in some way, maybe that's a reason he couldn't read it.

Another interpretation from Rembrandt's painting is that Rembrandt had the words going down instead of side to side.

Maybe that's a reason.

Whatever reason it was, all these mystical thinkers could not interpret the things of God.

And I just have this own, my own simple interpretation of it.

It's because the things of God can only be interpreted by the people of God.

Like the things of God, what God says and what God does, can only be interpreted by people who are in close standing with or in relationship with him.

And so none of these mystical thinkers can read it.

And so the king's wife speaks up.

She goes, babe, I got this idea.

Remember that guy, Daniel?

He was one of the slaves that we took from Judah.

Remember him?

He worked for your father, and your father trusted him.

Maybe he can do it.

So they bring Daniel in, and it says this a few verses down.

So Daniel was brought before the king, and the king said to him, Are you Daniel, one of the exiles my father, the king, brought in from Judah?

He said, I have heard that the spirit of the gods, again, lowercase G, I've heard the spirit of the gods is in you, and that you have insight, intelligence, and outstanding wisdom.

The wise men and the enchanters were brought before me to read this writing and to tell me what it means.

They could not explain it, because the things of God can only be explained by the people of God.

Now I have heard that you are able to give interpretations and to solve difficult problems.

So let me let me throw a little proposition at you.

If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple, the color of royalty.

You'll have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

Now there's this interesting moment because Daniel is a person of God.

He knows God.

And he knows that if he's going to do what God has him do, he's going to have to step courageously into a divine moment of opportunity.

He's going to have to be willing to say something difficult to the king who, with the snap of his finger, could have Daniel put to death.

So Daniel takes his courage and he steps into this moment and he says to the king, I'll tell you what the word of God says, but you need to know you're probably not going to like it.

King agrees.

And then Daniel steps into the moment and he says, You've done it this way, but here's what I want you to see, just a few verses down.

He says, Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven.

All the other verses you've talked about, the gods, lowercase G, no, no.

You have set yourself up in a match against the Lord of heaven.

You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles and your wife and your concubines, you drank wine from them.

Like what an insult to our God.

He says, You praise the gods, again, lowercase g, of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand.

But again, you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.

You disrespected and dishonored our great God.

And then comes the warning.

This is what the inscription that was written said.

It's four words, three unique words.

Mini, meanie, tekel, parson.

Meenie, meanie, tekel, parson.

Let's just pause here for just a moment.

Um, these words in Aramaic are all nouns.

Uh, a simple translation actually would transliterate these to different coins.

It'd almost be like penny, nickel, dime.

And Daniel's going to interpret these words, but when he interprets them, he's not going to interpret them as nouns.

He's going to interpret them as verbs, as action points.

What's interesting, even as I read this, is like, why would mean be said twice and then two separate words?

It could be for emphasis, it could be something that's just like, let me beat this drum twice to make sure you understand it.

Or it could be that in Hebraic language, poetry was a big deal.

So to make this have a rhythmic sense to it, that's why he said it twice.

We don't know exactly why, but that gives you some examples why.

And he he reads these words, meeny, meeny, techo, parsons, and then he goes on to say, this is what these words mean.

And I'm gonna say this to you.

These words had they meant something significant to the king, but they mean so much to you and me right here in this moment.

The first one is this meaning, it means God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

Can you imagine the moxie it would take to stand before the king who could, with his words, have you put to death, and to say, God wants you to know that your days are numbered and your kingdom has come to an end.

Can you imagine the courage it would take to do this?

Here's the prophetic warning from God to all of us today.

We need to remember that our days are numbered.

Don't you dare forget that your days are numbered.

Every single person who breathes on this side of eternity faces the day when their life will no longer exist.

Um, a couple years ago, I had the privilege and honor of doing the funeral for my grandfather, who I really loved, to called him Papa.

And uh it was a beautiful ceremony as we honored him.

And after the ceremony was over, he lived to 95 years old.

And after the ceremony was over, his older sister Olita, who is still alive, she came up to me and she goes, Jason, that was a beautiful funeral.

Will you do my funeral?

That's an awkward question.

I'm like, Do you want to schedule it?

Like, what do you mean?

She goes, No, no, no, I'm not gonna die anytime soon.

She goes, I plan to live until I'm at least 108 years old, or I get ugly, whichever happens first.

It's like, wow, what a woman, you know?

Like, it seems like people who get a little older in their life, they tend to understand something.

That death doesn't have to be scary.

Death is just a doorway into everlasting life with God.

That death doesn't have to be something we are afraid of, but instead we should live knowing that our days are numbered.

Did you ever notice this?

Things that we have an abundance of, we tend to take for granted.

We tend to hold on loosely to them.

But when things are limited, we hold on tight.

Um, did any of you have this experience growing up where if you forgot to turn a light off, your parents would say things like, Do you think we own the electric company?

Anybody have this happen to them?

And the reason we say this, think about your life for a moment, is you think to yourself, if I leave that light on, it only cost a few cents extra, but if I do it every single day with multiple lamps multiple times a day, times 30 to 31 days in a month over time, that might add up to a few dollars.

Those few dollars could be the difference between me being able to afford an extra meal or not.

Like when you have unlimited money or plenty of money, you're not worried about the lamp.

When you have limited money, you you hold on tightly to control.

Here's what we're to remember: our days are limited.

No matter how many days you think you have, you need to remember that your days are fleeting, they're here, then they're gone.

The author of Hebrews says it like this He says, people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.

Anyone else encouraged by this Bible verse?

It's just this is the reality.

This is the reason that that funerals can be so challenging for people.

It's because like we're living our life.

YOLO, you only live once, like no big deal.

I'm like living for the moment, in the moment.

And the funny thing is, there are these moments where it's like reality slaps us in the face, and we realize there will be someday when the room is full of people that loved us, that are celebrating and remembering and mourning our lives.

Don't you dare forget your days are numbered.

And the second warning is the second word in the phrase, it's the word tekel, which literally means you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

Your life has been weighed out, like we've examined everything.

And if we were to examine our lives, let me ask you a question.

What percentage of our lives would we say centers around us, our happiness, our comfort, and our joy?

Chances are it's most of us.

So here's the warning from God don't allow your life to get out of balance.

Don't you dare let your life get so focused on you that you give nothing to serve anybody else.

So I studied our time this week.

The average American, according to the latest studies, that the average American lives 77.27 years.

All of you are gonna outlive that by many years, but 77.27 years is the average life expectancy of an American.

This is so fascinating.

Look how we spend our time.

The average American eats out 14,411 times, including 1,811 trips to McDonald's.

Ba da bop bop bop, diabetes.

Cool.

Um we spend 13 years and four months watching TV.

Next one.

We spend five years waiting in lines.

And if you have Disney annual passes, it's like 15 years waiting in lines.

We spend one year looking for misplaced items.

This must be the women, because the men, it's like 10 times this, right?

We attend 35 weddings and we drive 627,000 miles, which, if you were to circumnavigate the equator, is 25 times around the earth.

This is how we spend our time.

Let me say this to you, there's nothing wrong with any of these things inherently.

But if you realize that your time is precious and you have a limited supply of it, and if you're gonna live your life in a way that serves, honors, and blesses other people, are some of these worth it?

Was 13 out of your 80-ish years watching TV, was it worth it?

You see, for many of us, if we don't pay attention, what tends to happen is our life gets out of balance.

Everything is for us, and so we work harder, we work way too many hours.

We ignore our family.

If you study the stories of people giving their testimonials or their confessionals on their deathbed, so often people say, I wish I wouldn't have done as much, I wish I wouldn't have worked as hard, I wish I wouldn't have all these things, because it wasn't all that mattered.

This is the reason Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, says in Ecclesiastes chapter 4, it's better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.

Ecclesiastes 4 · chapter mention

It's better to not have as much, but to live a life of peace and tranquility than to give all of your time and all of your energy chasing the wind, which is futile at best.

Let me ask you a question.

Do a self-audit.

If you're to examine your time, would you say that you have given all of your time to you or are using your life in a way that serves and blesses and honors someone else?

The third thing, meeny meeny, tekel, number four, peres.

If you remember the words we read earlier, it said parason, which is that's the plural of this word, peres, which literally means your kingdom is divided and given to the means and persians.

The king couldn't see what was happening right underneath his own nose.

It's like he had ignored all.

Of the warnings and the prophetic word from God for us today is this is we need to stop ignoring the warning signs.

I told you earlier, God's a good father.

And because he loves us, he will do anything he can to get our attention to warn us.

He will do anything he can to make sure that we don't go off-road with our life and wreck our life, or maybe even more likely, not wreck our lives, but to just waste our lives.

What happens when we ignore the warning signs from God?

Well, it's really simple.

The risk of sinful choices increases.

My emotions get all over the place.

I'm less productive because I'm so distracted by everything.

And here's the worst one I can no longer hear God.

I wonder how many of us were so distracted by the busyness and the chaos of life that we've just crowded out the voice of God.

It'd be like this: Tampa Bay Bucks play tomorrow night at Raymond James Stadium, 7 o'clock.

And imagine if you and I were to go to the game and we got front row seats on the 50-yard line right across from each other.

If during the game, when the place was filled with 90,000 fans, you screamed as loud as you could, there is a great chance I wouldn't even hear one note of what you said because it is so noisy, it is so chaotic.

If we were to go right now when there's nobody in the stadium and sit in the same seats, you could almost talk at a comfortable voice and hear the person across the room because there's nothing competing for your voice.

I wonder how many of us, if we did a self-audit, we ignore the warning signs from God, not even on purpose.

We just fill our lives with so much noise and volume and chaos.

Here's a question.

Are there any moments in your life where you sit in silence?

Do you fill every car ride with radio or sports talk radio or phone calls?

Do you wake up and immediately go to Instagram and TikTok and email and messages?

Or do you have moments in your life where you say, God, just speak to me?

I'm just here to be with you.

We ignore the warning signs.

The story goes on to read this.

It says this.

Then at Belshazzar's command, Daniel was clothed in purple and a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

And then the next three words are haunting.

That very night.

It's not like in SpongeBob where it's like one eternity later.

No, no.

That very night, Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain.

Darius the Mead took over the kingdom at the age of 62.

It's fascinating how God was trying to get his attention by any means possible, and yet because he ignored the things of God, he suffered the consequences of his decisions.

So what do we do with this?

If we're going to be people who change the world, if we will be people of influence who actually make a difference in the world, let me give you two thoughts and maybe a bonus number three that's not even in your notes.

Number one is we have to live with a sense of purpose and urgency.

These two words matter.

Purpose is the why behind you live the way you live your life.

Most people live life floating through life, just trying to eke out an existence.

Go to bed every single night and you say, Well, that's just another day.

But people who live on purpose and who know their why, they go to bed every single night saying, That's how you do it.

That's how you live a life that matters.

What is your purpose?

It's not about you.

Your purpose is to make a difference in the world for the kingdom of God.

We have to live with purpose and urgency.

Why urgency?

Because time is running out.

You read the book of Revelation, you read the prophetic books of the Bible, there will be a day when Jesus returns for his bride.

We don't know when that day is.

So we choose to live with urgency, knowing we don't know when he will return, but we do know that we will be ready for his return.

And we will do everything we can to reach people for it.

So here's a prayer.

I think you should pray.

Build this into your prayer life.

These are King David's words, Psalm chapter 39.

Psalms 39 · chapter mention

He says, Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be.

Remind me that my days are numbered, how fleeting my life is.

You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand.

My entire lifetime is just a moment to you at best.

Each of us is but a breath.

It's here and it's gone.

We have to live with purpose and urgency.

Second thing we need to do is we need to remember to put the first things first.

Think so often we're so consumed with us, seeking our desires, our way, our hopes, our dreams.

It's the American way.

Listen to Jesus' words.

Matthew chapter 6, Jesus Himself said, But seek first.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

So, like before you do all the stuff for you, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.

And then as a result of putting God first, all these things will be given to you as well.

What would it look like if you said, God, I'm all about you, what you want more than me?

Here's a bonus number three, it's not in your notes.

Write down number three.

We need to live with eternity in mind.

Why does this matter?

When we live with eternity in mind, our hope isn't in our circumstances.

Like nowhere in scripture are you promised a happy, easy life if you make the decision to follow Jesus.

It's interesting if you were to go back in time and study the progression of the writing of worship songs and hymns that were sung in church.

Pay attention to a lot of the songs we sing now.

We say, we sing things like, God, you can do it again and again and again, you can heal me, you can save me, you can redeem me, you can restore me.

We sing about the faithfulness of God and the love of God, and all those things are true.

And I believe all of them.

I believe God can heal.

I believe God can restore, I believe God can do all those things.

But here's what's interesting: if you just go back 50 years to the writing of church hymns and songs, very often they had nothing to do with our circumstances, and they had everything to do with heaven.

Why?

Because a person whose hope is in heaven doesn't have to live in fear, a person whose hope is in heaven doesn't have to live in worry.

A person whose hope is in heaven isn't based on their circumstances because their hope is in heaven.

Pay attention to the way old hymns were written.

The first verse was about God, the second verse was about the Son, the third verse is about the Holy Spirit, which is why you were Baptist.

You always skip the third one.

And the fourth stanza, the first fourth verse was often about our hope being in heaven.

It's not here.

What happens when you live with an eternal mindset?

It takes the pressure off of this world.

Maybe for some of you, you need to walk outside today, and you need to do something physical with your body to remind your soul of something.

Maybe you should walk outside and just look up.

Why?

Because you're symbolically saying, God, instead of looking at my problems and me magnifying them and telling me how big they are, I'm looking up to remind my heart about how big you are, and to remind my soul that this life isn't all that there is to this life.

My hope isn't here.

My hope is in heaven.

It's the reason the old song sang, when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be when we all see Jesus will sing and shout, victory.

How do you live a life of influence?

You become a person who, in a world of compromise and in a polarizing world, you are a person that balances grace and truth.

How do you become an influencer?

When the world demands that you bow, you stand firm on the things of God for your great God.

How do you become an influencer?

You realize that time is fleeting, but our hope is in heaven.

So I'm going to redeem my time.

Let me say this to you: nothing wrong with loving your life.

Go on that vacation, walk that beach, live your life to the fullest, but don't do all of it for you.

Live a life that cares for others.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this place?

So, God, give us the courage to stand against the current of culture.

The current of culture that's all about us and making us happy and getting our needs met.

And God, may we be the kind of church that realizes that heaven and hell are real, that eternity is at stake, and that our hope isn't in our circumstances, our hope is in heaven.

God, may we heed the warnings and remember that our days are numbered.

May we heed your warning and may we make the kinds of decisions that think with eternity in mind.

God, forgive those of us who have made our lives all about us and about our comfort.

May we turn our hope back to you, not our circumstances, but to you.

May we live with eternity in mind and may we be reminded today that we can have influence when our world doesn't get shattered every time our circumstances around us change.

But we can have influence when we realize that our hope is in you.

We thank you for it, God.