Are Aliens Coming For Us? | A.I., Aliens, & Algorithms

How many know what Zoinx is from?

It's Shaggy, man.

Yeah.

Every time Shaggy is scared of something, he says, Zoinks.

Um, so I got to thinking of some things that I was afraid of a little bit sometimes, sometimes when I was a little kid.

And I wonder if you were afraid of some of these things.

And if you were, I need to have a little bit of participation here at first.

Okay, so if you know, if you don't know, first is kind of a participation church.

Now, some say I need a lot of folks to say that, you know, amen or go for it, Carter, or something like that, because I'm insecure.

But they're wrong.

The reason I need it is because you gotta top it off, baby.

You gotta top it off.

You some say top it off?

Yeah, you gotta give a little top it off, a little toppy, a little top it off.

Why don't you top it off?

Can you just top it off for me?

I just need a little more gas in the tank.

And when you do that, that stirs up the Holy Spirit.

Helps us have a little bit better time today, okay?

You came all the way out here.

Why don't you just give it a little toppy, a little topperoo, okay?

So just go ahead and top it right off.

So that means say zoinks.

Say zoinks when I call the fear that you had, and you can say you're afraid of all of them or none of them if you're really um just amazingly courageous all the time.

And we're talking about when you're a kid, not right now, though if it if it's now too, that that is okay.

Um, what about when you were maybe laying in the bed or laying on the couch and it's dark and you see on the chair somebody left a jacket, but that don't look like a jacket.

That looks like somebody or something is there.

Anybody had a little bit of fear of that thing?

Yes.

Come on.

Yeah, after that whole taparoo talk, I got three Zoinks.

Fierce, you do, you don't know your name, right?

It's fierce.

So here we go.

Keep keep coming.

What about?

Um, I had this one sometimes when I was a kid, okay?

So, like, it's my job to turn off all the lights in the basement when I'm coming up, okay?

So, but when you when you're a little kid, man, you're like, I'm afraid of that.

And so you like, you click that light and you run and you run up the stairs.

How many did that one?

Anybody?

All right, okay.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Um, what about when the closet door is just a little bit open and you're trying to go to sleep and you're like, but but that door though, what is what if there's a killer that came all the way in, they got in the house and now they're just waiting.

And if I shut the door, they won't kill me.

But if it's open, they might do it.

How many ever had that fear?

Zoink, I gotcha, I gotcha, man.

I'm I'm I'm with you.

What about this?

Here's one more.

What about when you're in the bed and you're like, I need to get up now or I need to use the restroom, but I'm pretty sure there's something malevolent under my bed and it's gonna get me.

Now, if I can just, if I can, you know, scoot up on the bed and like jump off, it won't be able to get me.

How many had that one?

Zone likes, all right.

So you guys know what it's like, man.

You know what it's like to have a little bit of fear.

Well, sometimes we grow up and there's a whole lot of fears swirling around, and they're not necessarily about the basement lights and they're not about what is under the bed, but they're about bigger picture, crazy things that might be happening in the universe, sometimes in outer space.

Today I want to talk to you about aliens.

We started a series back, you know, when when kind of the fall season first started.

It was AI, aliens, and algorithms.

And so now we're on aliens.

We're just gonna take one day to talk about it.

But here's what I uh read recently from Gallup.

17% of Americans, including those in this room, say they've personally seen something that could be a UFO.

I just want you to know where we're going with this thing, okay?

Um, I'm not gonna make fun of anybody, okay?

Whatever you've experienced is what you've experienced, and you may have experienced some really weird stuff that you cannot explain.

I certainly think that's true of a lot of us.

We've seen some stuff that it's like, man, I don't, I don't know.

That that was pretty scary.

But some of the questions that begin to enter our minds is not just like what's under the bed, but it's stuff like, what if the government is hiding something?

Or what if there's something I can't explain that is actually spiritual and it's hurting me somehow, even by proximity, even if I don't totally know what it is?

Or what if there's what if there's alien life and it it's gonna mess with my faith?

What if it's gonna disprove Christianity?

What if it's gonna disprove the God I say I believe in?

I just gotta tell you, my job as as a pastor is really, honestly, dude, it's not to educate you on my speculations and just what I happen to think.

It really is to take us to God's word.

Somebody say God's word.

It's to take us to God's word and say, well, what does God's word say about anything like this?

What can we bring to bear from God's word on this topic?

Um, so you don't have to, I'm going now, I'm gonna tell you what I think, honestly, as we get through the message.

I'm gonna tell you, but you don't have to agree with me because honestly, it doesn't matter.

I'm just one human, uh, but I've got a perspective on what I think the Bible's saying, but I've also got a lot of God's word on what I know the Bible is saying, and so we're gonna take a look at that most prominently today.

This has been a weird year, a little bit, when it comes to aliens.

Okay, so in February, the president ordered federal agencies to find and declassify all kinds of records, everything they've got on UFOs.

Then between May and September, the Pentagon released six batches of files, videos, audios from their own records.

Here's what the government likes, here's everything they've got on it.

Now, 319 new UFO reports have happened this year.

Every one of them, just so you know, has been solved and had an ordinary explanation.

That can be everything from like, oh, you know, it was a it was a weather balloon, it was sun shining off of a satellite, it could be birds, like there's all kinds of things they found those particular cases to be.

78% of Americans think the government is hiding UFO information, even with all these things revealed.

And 37% believe at least some UFOs are alien spacecraft.

That's a lot, man.

And so, like, I just want to get a big picture.

What are these files saying?

What essentially they're saying is, you know, there's a lot that that isn't aliens, we're pretty sure about that.

And there's stuff where we don't necessarily think it's aliens, but we don't know what it is.

And now everyone's asking, and Square's gonna tell you, we don't know.

We don't know what this is.

We don't know exactly.

Now that can cause a lot of people some stress.

For some people, like, I know for some this is kind of like play or this is kiddie or a little bit, but for some, this is significant anxiety.

It's like, so like what's going on up there?

What are they gonna do?

Are they are they are they coming to get us?

Like, there's the version of the story where, dude, they're really they're just biding their time, man.

And they're gonna they're gonna take over here in a couple minutes.

Is that what is happening?

Is that like the end of the world?

Is this is this in Revelation?

Is that like how it all goes down as aliens come and they laid the beat down on us?

Is that what's supposed to happen?

And what can happen is we can have lots of anxiety and then it's shared online, and things that are shared online, they give it just begin to swirl up in this big set of controversies and conspiracies.

And it can lead to greater and greater anxiety.

And and what it can cause is for some, it's just like, hey man, I'm not even gonna think about this.

This is not a big deal for me, I don't care.

For others, we're just kind of like, I don't know.

I'm just gonna keep my head down and do what everybody else does.

That's that's what I'm gonna do.

And for others, there's this thing, and you might have this, okay, and there's no no shame if if you've got this thing.

We've all maybe got a little bit, but some have it more than others.

It is this little, I need to know though.

I need to find out.

And so I'm gonna spend hours and hours clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking because I need to find out all the theories.

Somebody out there knows.

Somebody out there knows something that they're not telling us.

And if I could just know, then I would feel in control of my world.

Then I would feel better because then there's not something mysterious out there happening without my permission behind the scenes.

Now I can see it, now I can understand it, therefore I can control it.

Now we know that that sounds a little bit like it's not true when we hear it said out loud.

But even so, there's something in many of us we want to keep clicking, we want to keep going down every rabbit hole just to make sure there's not something else that we could figure out and finally have the right answer.

So, back in Isaiah's time, there was a very specific moment where all of Judah is ablaze with conspiracy theories.

If there was like an ancient group chat, everybody would have been in on it.

Okay, so there's there's really three different armies that are facing them, that one of them might help them, two of them are definitely going to attack them, but even the one that might help them is actually the superpower of the area.

And ultimately what's going to happen is the challenge is gonna be hey, Judah, do you trust the Lord to rescue you from these armies?

Or are you gonna throw in with this superpower, not trusting the Lord, which is also going to hurt you?

That's the entire story.

But just in this moment, everybody's asking questions.

Everyone's saying, Hey, I heard that this army, they might jump in in a second, but I didn't know about that.

But do you know these other guys, they might come in now?

Now I can't trust them really, because if they come in, they might take us over.

Well, I don't know, do you know what the king is gonna do?

I don't know.

And so there's there's all this chatter, there's all these conspiracies going around in the land.

And God speaks to his prophet Isaiah, and he says, Isaiah, I want you to internalize this, and then I want you to preach it.

Isaiah 8, 11.

This is what the Lord says to me with his strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of this people.

He says, Isaiah, you're my representative.

You're the guy who's supposed to speak for me.

Just you know what they're doing, I don't want you to do that.

Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy.

Do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it.

The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy.

He is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread.

And he goes on to say, hey, everybody that trusts in the Lord, they're gonna be secure, man.

They're gonna be safe, they're gonna be golden, no matter what happens, God's gonna take care of them.

But everybody that doesn't, he's gonna be a stumbling block to them.

The fact that they didn't trust him is ultimately somehow going to hurt them.

So here's what I want to suggest to everybody today the threat might be real, the theory might be wrong, and the mystery might remain for another hundred years.

But here's what God wants us to do fear the Lord and trust Jesus.

Fear the Lord and trust Jesus.

See, we don't know what's out there, but number one, God wants us to reject contagious fear.

There's some fears that are contagious, there's some fears, the more you listen, the more you tune in, the more you're like, oh, I just have to know though, the more it stirs up fear inside of us.

Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy.

He says, Isaiah, first, you need to get this, man.

This is not the way of God's people.

That's not how we're supposed to be.

God's people are supposed to ignore this idea that I always need to be worried, I always need to be concerned, I always need to be considering there might be some hidden plots behind closed doors that any moment now they're gonna jump out of the closet at me.

And you're gonna say, aha! Don't you wish you would have known this?

Then you would have been safe.

And God says, No, no, no, that's not how it works at all.

I need you to reject that.

Somebody say, reject it.

Reject it.

Reject it.

Those human plots, what they do really is they they try to kick God out of the picture.

They're always suggesting God's, it's not, it's not really God's world.

It's something you need to figure out.

It's something you need to put together, it's something you need to protect yourself from.

Now it's not that we shouldn't search for truth.

Like the Lord wasn't saying to Isaiah, hey, reject all claims of evil.

He's just saying there's this people, they're just churning up conspiracy.

They're just on the group check constantly saying, maybe this and maybe this, and a little bit of that, and a little bit of that.

And God says, No, no, no.

That's not how God's people are supposed to behave.

Instead, instead of always wanting to label, well, this is what I think, and I'm in this camp, or this is what I think, and or I've got these two things, and these are my camp, God says, I want you to reject this fear that gets contagious on the inside of people and on the inside of particular ones.

Now, it doesn't just have to be about aliens.

It can be about a pandemic.

It can be about the election.

It can be about the next big thing.

Whatever the next big thing is, it's like, oh man, what happens if that?

Hey, dude, that might be interesting.

I'm not saying you don't care about it at all.

I'm just saying God says, I need you to reject this idea that you're supposed to carry around, this contagious fear, always having an anxiety attack because of what might happen somewhere because somebody didn't tell you all the facts.

Hey, part of being God is He knows all the facts, and part of being a creature is I can trust that God knows all the facts.

I don't need to like fix it, I don't need to figure it out.

And sometimes, see, these Israelites, they had just enough information to make a bunch of guesses and not enough information to get anything right.

And that's often what we have.

Doesn't that sound familiar?

You got just enough information to have a bunch of guesses and not enough information to get everything right.

But there's a God who knows.

Some of you, you, you've you've done this, okay?

Maybe maybe you've done it wrong and now you don't do it wrong anymore.

Um, you've gotten like a headache and a sniffle, and you're like, I better Google this.

And you're like, oh great, I got three weeks to live.

Right, right, because you were you you went there and said, What possibly could it be?

And here's 50 things that might kill you.

And and you learned when you did that, maybe it's better just not to ask that question when I have a sniffle and a headache.

Maybe just let it alone.

Maybe it'll just be fine.

And that's what we've got to get is sometimes, dude, the more you poke at that thing, the more fears you have.

And you should just like, dude, let it alone.

Like be interested to the degree that you are, but don't let that that that contagion on the inside of you.

And I think this even hits practically with just some of the day-to-day stuff that we worry about.

So, parents, if if you're like in some kind of online group or a Facebook group that is all about here's all the bad things that might happen to your kid today.

Uh are you sure?

Are you sure that's a good idea?

Like, hey man, you know what?

Pray for your kid.

Like, be afraid enough to pray and be apparent enough to pray and do the other half, which is trust God with your kid.

Like that's what a parent should do.

Trust God with your kid.

Instead of going down every rabbit hole of what might happen.

The the parent God wants you to be is the parent that trusts God.

Trust God and pray.

Don't sit there for hours in the chat, figuring out what else it might be.

Pray for them, dude, protect them, do whatever you gotta do, but don't just sit there and stew on this social contagion.

Okay?

So we're not supposed to fear what they fear.

Are we supposed to fear anything?

I'm glad you asked.

I'm glad you asked.

When you don't know what's out there, reject contagious fear.

There is one fear we're supposed to have: fear the one who outranks every threat.

Fear the one who outranks, dude, he outranks it.

He outranks every threat.

The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, and he is the one you are to fear.

He is the one you are to dread.

Okay, so God says to Isaiah, there's two ways you can go, man.

You can follow the crowd and just be afraid of whatever they're afraid of, or you can decide, I'm gonna fear the holiness of God.

And that holiness of God is going to overshadow every other fear.

See, see, holiness, that doesn't just mean like moral perfection.

It does, but but he's talking to Isaiah.

Remember now in Isaiah 6, that's when the Lord appeared to Isaiah in all of his glory, and there's the angels floating there in front of the Lord, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

Holy, holy, holy.

He's not just um morally perfect, he's entirely other, he's absolutely different than anything else in the universe.

We are to regard him as holy.

What we're saying, God is categorically different than anything else there is.

That means, okay, precious, even if there are aliens, even if there are, that would be like, oh my gosh, that's so intimidating.

Like they're they're they're able to do intergalactic travel.

Oh, yeah.

Even if there are aliens, here's what they ought to do: fear the Lord.

That's what they should do.

They should fear the Lord because He's entirely different.

He's entirely different than anything they have.

Oh, that's that's cute.

You can you can travel intergalactically.

God spins galaxies into existence and he takes them away, just like that.

And he doesn't need anyone's permission.

He just does it.

He doesn't have to get anywhere, he's already everywhere.

God is the God who, even if there were aliens, doggone, they should be afraid.

Okay, so in the holiness of fear, that means that that doesn't mean that we're necessarily afraid of God.

It means we have an anchor.

We have an anchor that says, dude, can't nobody touch my God?

Can't nobody touch anything in my God's hand, including me, unless the Lord were to allow it.

God's holiness anchors us.

Dude, God's holiness should startle you a little bit.

Like it's a it's it's a big deal.

Okay, so if if you're from around here, if you're from like the Midwest, if you've been around around Lake Michigan, imagine like a stormy, thundery day at Lake Michigan, like in in mid-November.

Okay, just it's it's dark, that there's white caps now on the waves.

When you you leave your little apartment, maybe, and you go, oh, I'm kind of in charge of everything here.

And then you go out in your front of the beach and you see, whoa, I'm a little thing.

I thought it was a big thing for a second.

I'm a little thing.

I'm a little thing going on.

I'm almost nothing.

There's a giant creation around me, and it's even this little Lake Michigan is powerful, dude.

That's that's an expression of God, you're just big and you're just beyond any little aliens there to come in their little galactic taxis and visit us.

God is big, dude.

Okay, God's not intimidated by that.

You don't need to worry about it.

God's got you.

Somebody say, God's got you.

God's got you.

God's got you.

And what matters more, really, more than any of that, is the fear of obedience.

Okay, you have the fear of God's holiness.

That means, so, dude, instead of like worrying about all the bunny trails and worried about like what the what the aliens might do, how about today focus on just like obeying the Lord?

How about that?

How about we do that?

That might be a much better use of our time.

Here's why.

Because I don't know if you're ever gonna face the aliens, but I know for sure you and I are gonna stand before a holy God.

And the only card we're gonna have to play is the Jesus card because we didn't do everything right.

Where say, God, please don't judge me according to what I did, judge me according to what Jesus did on my behalf.

And I'm so grateful and I'm so in awe.

He didn't have to do it, but he did do it.

I'm so in awe of it.

I better every single day say, Man, I better, I got time left.

I'm gonna live for God right now.

I'm gonna give him everything I got because I know for sure I'm going to face him.

Dang straight I am.

The threat may be real, and the theory might be wrong, and the mystery might remain for another hundred years.

But my friends, what we do is we fear the Lord and we trust Jesus.

That's what we do.

Okay, yeah, that's interesting, Carter.

But so what about the aliens?

Are they real?

Okay, the aliens real?

What's the Bible say?

Come on, come on, dude.

What's the Bible say?

Are the aliens real?

Well, here's the honest answer.

We don't know.

We don't know.

I'll tell you this: Christianity does not need an empty universe.

It doesn't need one.

Okay, so now there's been there's been saints throughout the ages who've made the case, hey, there can't be aliens anywhere else.

I just don't see that in the scripture.

Now I see certain theological realities that that would be affected if there were.

Okay, so that so when when Adam and Eve fell into sin, it corrupted the entire universe, according to the book of Romans.

So that means these poor aliens are living on a planet that is fallen because of stuff we did.

Like that's kind of sad.

That means they're living in a corrupted place instead of a perfect place.

It would also mean that those very aliens, whatever, whatever they, whoever they are, they belong to the God of heaven.

And that means they belong serving the God of heaven.

It would mean that for sure.

But there's also been saints throughout the ages who said, I think that could be true.

Even a very famous preacher called Charles Spurgeon, he's the Prince of Peters, very, like, very important guy.

He said this in 1882.

It may be true that all those majestic orbs that stud the midnight sky are worlds filled with intelligent beings.

All we're saying is God did not make a list in the Bible.

By the way, here's all the creatures I ever made.

We just know that God made them all.

The Bible, so that's why when we discovered dinosaurs, it wasn't a big deal, dude.

The Bible doesn't mention them, but that doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because what do we know?

God made them all.

Here's something else, though, we could say about aliens.

Bible readers can't laugh off an unseen world.

Humans are definitely not the only creatures, and physical beings are not the only beings, according to the Bible.

And do It's all over the place.

Okay.

So Paul literally tells us multiple times, but especially in Ephesians chapter six, dude, there are demons, and they're all over the place, and they are influencing your world for sure, and they're causing you much trouble.

Like Paul says this.

So whatever you think about the dudes that might come visit from some other planet, think a little bit about, like, take seriously, don't laugh off the idea that there's very bad operators right among you right now.

And they're very much in hiding.

They're doing everything they can to cause you trouble without you really noticing too much that it's them.

So they can't just be like, it's not a silly idea that there are creatures of darkness here.

It was Jesus' worldview himself.

And he confronted it and he opposed it.

So what do we do with this idea of demonic spirits and evil darkness?

Well, on one level, we don't laugh it off, and we also don't give it a microphone.

Like we don't say, hey, let's all just focus on demons for a while.

Let's just study these as much as we possibly can.

That's often a trap, dude.

They would love it for you to spend like years of your life just studying their interests.

Let me see if I can figure out all the levels of hell.

Demons, tell me what you think about it.

Yeah, they're liars, dude.

Uh DeDoi, no, you don't you don't need here's what you do.

Just like, why would we study cockroaches?

So we could kill them.

Okay?

That's why we would do it.

So if you're gonna study anything about demons, study God's word so you can bash them in the face with the authority God's given you in Christ.

Come on, somebody.

But just understand, dude, they're tricky.

They're trying to trick, they're liars.

Second Corinthians 11, 14.

Paul says, No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

Meaning he would love to appear as your friend.

He'd love to like get your attention.

Like, hey, pay attention to me because I'm really luminous and I can really cause you a lot of good.

And by the way, don't pay any attention to that God stuff or that Jesus stuff.

Just pay attention to me.

Oh, yeah, he'd love it.

Also, if we look at some of the ways people describe aliens, I'm not saying this is every case.

I think there definitely are cases where that was just nothing or that was just phony, but there are cases where it makes sense, okay.

Demons are described as behaving sometimes like these alleged aliens behave.

Okay, one, they're very powerful.

Okay, they're spiritual, they're not necessarily limited, they don't have our constraints.

They can move very, very quickly if they wanted to.

They're not they're not uh bound by like just air pushing against them.

So I read this, you might have heard this.

One 2019 study estimated that an object tracked off the USS Nimitz dropped 28,000 feet in under a second, roughly 46,000 miles per hour, about 60 times the speed of sound.

Now, some would say, well, maybe that was an alien.

And it's possible, Dave's like this dope tech that that's what that's what it was, and it was kind of invisible and and it was just some alien ship.

Now, I I checked it out.

Physicists would tell us if any creature like us with like a body tried to do that, even if they were in some kind of machine, unless it's unless they're somehow undoing this, if they were to drop that fast, they would liquefy.

Like they just turn into soup.

Okay, so if it's an organic being that is in that thing going that fast, like they're just dead instantly.

Well, that seems like a wasted trip if you're an alien.

Just come over here and you just die like that.

I'm just saying.

However, if if the things in the Bible are real, these demons, and they really have the purposes and intentions that they have, what's in their best interest?

Here's what it is.

It's to hint that there's something else humans should explore, but also hide.

Hint and hide.

Make the humans never really be able to get there, never really be able to figure it out, but always keep them distracted.

So they spend years writing books about it and never focusing on the king of kings and the lord of lords, that is way more interesting than a doggone, ridiculous alien.

C.S.

Lewis had these ideas, okay, in the book The Screwtape Letters, which I would highly recommend, okay, which is just a book about it's a fictional account of one mentor demon mentoring a younger demon in the ways of being a demon and how to do it and how to do it well.

And the younger demon asks this Uncle Screwtape, he says, Hey, should we let people know that we're here?

Like, like we have these humans we're messing with.

Should we let them know about us?

And this is what, of course, it's a fictional account, but I think it has some insight.

And this is how he answers.

Our policy for the moment is to conceal ourselves.

Of course, this has not always been so.

We really faced a cruel, we're really faced with a cruel dilemma.

When humans disbelieve in our existence, we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians.

Meaning, if if humans really knew we were here, it'd freak them out, man.

And it might get them to mess with the occult.

So if they don't really believe in us, well, we don't get those benefits.

On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and skeptics, at least not yet.

I've had great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalize and mythologize their science to such an extent that what is in effect a belief in us, though not under that same name, will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the belief in the enemy, which he's referring to God when he says the enemy.

He's saying, here's the problem, dude.

Um, if we do let them know that we're here, they might think and start to think, wait a minute, if demons are real, then the God of the Bible might also be real.

And they don't want us to think that thought.

So they stay hidden, but always hinting.

Um, a couple more ideas.

Here, here's just a few more ideas of why I'm personally skeptical about the alien explanation.

I'm not opposed to it.

I'm just skeptical about it.

It's because, my my friends, because we live in a science fiction culture, meaning science fiction has just been influencing us now for decades and decades, we have a mold in our brain that whatever sounds even slightly science fiction-y, we're gonna put in the science fiction bucket.

Okay?

So, what I mean is we hear, oh, there's things in the sky and they're luminescent.

Well, we've seen a billion movies about this.

It must be aliens.

But if we if we go back several centuries for most of human history, they wouldn't say aliens.

What would they say?

Spirits, angels, same exact phenomena.

They just have a different mold that they're pouring it into.

So it's rather convenient that we decide, well, it must be aliens now, happens to be now.

Not all the previous years, but now, now that it's on our minds that such things might be happening.

Also, can I just ask some questions?

Um, if you're like an alien species scientist and you show up on planet Earth, how many years you got to study us, bro?

I mean, how long is this taking?

It's like 70 years.

Okay, you didn't figure it out.

You figured out like space travel, but you still have to probe us like again and again all the time and like do it in a hidden way.

Are you why are they so dumb?

I mean, that's just my question.

How they're so smart but so dumb that they need to keep studying us without telling us anything, like it just don't make sense to me.

So I would suggest to everybody the Bible's story is already more believable than folks coming from a distant planet.

I'm not saying it's not possible.

I'm just saying the Bible already gives us lots of evidence, and the Bible also has what is proven true the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Okay?

Like that's the story right there, dude.

That's way cooler than any story that's gonna come from the stars.

It's the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So I don't know about you.

It's it's up to you, whatever you think.

I would just say, look at the Bible, dude, and the evidence fits the Bible a whole lot better than anything else coming from the sky.

Or at least don't forget about the real enemy that's already here that's trying to mess with us every day, which leads us to, God be praised, the great conclusion.

When you don't know what's out there, reject contagious fear, fear the one who outranks every threat, and trust Jesus to take care of you.

Trust Jesus to take care of you.

You know, Peter in 1 Peter 3 quotes this very passage from Isaiah 8.

And he says, Hey, yeah, yeah, man, don't fear their threats, don't be frightened, but in your hearts revere Christ as Lord.

See, Isaiah is told, hey, if anyone doesn't trust in God, they're gonna stumble.

But everyone who does, dude, God's gonna take care of them.

And then Peter comes along centuries later and says, that God they're supposed to trust is Christ as Lord.

As you trust in Christ, baby, you are covered.

He's got your back.

You don't have to fear anything.

But Christ was very clear with the disciples.

As the end of the age approached, this is Matthew 24, the first thing that Jesus said to the apostles about the end times was, do not be deceived.

Don't let anybody trick you.

There's gonna come a lot of folks, they're gonna try to take your mind and your focus away from Jesus Christ.

Don't be deceived.

Instead, rejoice in the fact that Jesus Christ, according to Colossians 2.15, Jesus Christ has disarmed the powers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

So even though there are dark forces and demonic forces, dude, if you're in Jesus Christ, you covered, baby.

You're okay.

Like he's got you.

He's keeping a whole lot of trouble off of your plate because of what Jesus did to this enemy.

He made him a fool.

He made a public spectacle of him.

He led him captive and said, Look, everybody, these are all the dopes that I laid the beat out on, who now I don't let touch my people anymore.

That's what it is to be under the blood covenant with Jesus Christ.

It means we can just rest.

You know what you should do about aliens?

And you know what you should do about forces of darkness on this planet?

You should rest.

I don't know if you've if you've ever had this experience, maybe you were a kid, maybe even when you were an adult.

Someone else was driving and you were like, I'm tired.

They got this.

I'm gonna take a little snooze here in the backseat.

You just, or maybe you're in front of you, just crank the seat back and you're like, I don't know where we're going.

I don't know how to get there.

I don't care.

I am tired, they got it, I'm going to sleep.

Do you know that's how Jesus wants us resting about the whole doggone story?

Hey, dude, I don't know where we're going.

I don't know how we're gonna get there.

I don't know what's gonna go on on the road.

I don't know.

I don't care.

What I'm gonna do is relax in my Savior's very, very costly victory and his protective arm that is upon me.

Somebody say, Oh, Carter, this is good.

I'm coming back next week.

Coming back next week.

Here's what we know about aliens, okay?

I don't know what's going on with them.

I don't know if they're real, I don't know if they're not, but here's what I do know.

According to Philippians 2, 10, guys, before it all goes down, before it all wraps up, before it ends, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And it don't matter what planet they're from, they're still gonna bow the knee to Jesus Christ.

And they're gonna get they're gonna confess out of their alien face, Jesus Christ is Lord, as they fall on their knees and worship him.

So let me tell you what's a whole lot cooler than finding out more about aliens.

I'm not saying you can't do it, I'm not saying don't have fun, I'm not saying don't read cool stories and watch cool TV shows, do whatever you want to do.

All I'm saying is, you know what's even cooler than that?

What if you could know all about the God who made everything?

And what if that God is not just like scientific and brilliant?

What if he's way into you?

What if like he really digs you and he wants to talk to you, not even just like about the universe and the mysteries, he wants to talk to you about you and about how tight he wants to be and what great friends he wants to be.

Well, that's what he wants to do.

And Isaiah 8 is our permission slip to say, I don't need to be wrapped up in what the world is wrapped up in.

I don't need to be, like, I can't it's fun.

If it's fun, dude, if it's recreational, do it.

But if it's if it's worries, if it's anxiety producing, you can just say, dude, I don't, I don't know.

But I know the one who knows.

And he and I are good, and he's got my back, and he's, by the way, he's like giving me authority over all demonic spirits.

And so, like, I'm fine and dandy.

I'm gonna chill in the backseat and enjoy my master's drive because my safety is in Christ.

So let's make some commitments today before we go to Ubash.

Let's decide I'm not gonna follow the crowd.

In fact, I'm gonna ask for forgiveness for the places that I've allowed anxiety to creep into me about stuff my God has a thousand percent control over.

Instead of chasing answers, not saying don't pursue, I'm not saying don't have fun, I'm just saying instead of chasing answers, like I gotta get to it, let's take shelter in Jesus Christ.

Because everyone who takes shelter in him is gonna be kept safe on the inside and on the outside.

Let's choose this day who we will follow.

Let's make it Jesus and not alien stories.

Let's bow our heads and then we'll be dismissed to boobash.

Jesus, we just want to thank you so much that we have such a sure foundation in you.

Thank you that um in your heart of love, you came to rescue us and protect us from all the baddies on earth and all the baddies elsewhere.

Father, thank you so much that you've given us something so much more interesting to focus on.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you for what you've revealed to us that we can spend lifetime after lifetime focusing on and being blown away by your beauty.

God, would you come make us folks that just have some kind of fear repellent on us?

Make us naturally resistant to the contagious social fears that try to keep creep in.

And make us testimony people who, through our deeds and through our words, testify of how enjoyable it is to relax in the loving Savior's arms and fall asleep in the backseat.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon.

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And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe God for something big today.