Once upon a time, two young fish were swimming in the ocean. The sun shimmered up above. Below, it shaded into darkness. You couldn't even see the ocean floor. The two fish youngsters were making their way toward a beautiful coral reef, but it was still far in the distance. And an old fish swimming in the other direction greeted The two young fish in a friendly manner and said, good morning, fellas. How's the water? And the two said good morning and returned and swam on for a bit. And then one young fish turned to the other and said, what in the world is water? Now, obviously, some of you already get it. Some of you will get it out in the parking lot after the service. But let me explain this little parable. Like those two young fish, human beings live in an environment, in an atmosphere composed of ideas and beliefs and values. Opinions and theories and doctrines float around us all the time. But like those two young fish, often we don't even notice the environment. We're not even aware it's there. And when a preacher points it out to us, like I'm going to do this morning, we may react like those two young fish, and what in the world is he talking about? But the New Testament warns us that we are indeed swimming in an ocean. Let's see if I can get this going, Kyle. There we go. We are indeed swimming in an ocean of viewpoints and belief systems. Romans 12, 2 says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And the Phillips New Testament translates the first part of that sentence, don't let the world around you squeeze you into its mold. Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its mold. Now that verse uses a little bit different metaphor. The world around us, that atmosphere that we don't even notice, pressures us into a certain mold. Pressures us to think and act in certain ways. And this morning, I want to talk about that pressure. I want to talk about that atmosphere in which we live, move, and have our being. I want us to realize that we are indeed swimming in an ocean of ideas and beliefs and values. And I want us to think about them for a few minutes. And I want us to think about the effect they may be having in our lives. You know what's interesting? One of the reasons that little fish don't realize they are swimming in water is because the water never tells you it's there. I struggled this week coming up with a title for what I'm talking about this morning. Various authors, some of them are Christian, have tried to put a label on it, but none of them have really stuck. And so I'm not going to use any of those labels this morning, lest I scare you or put you to sleep. I'm just going to call it the ocean. The ocean we swim in in the United States of America in 2024. And I'm going to define that ocean that pressures us into its mold, this ocean in which we all swim, I'm going to define it in terms of three slogans. Sometimes we actually hear these slogans. Sometimes we don't hear the slogan, but it's an accurate summary of that ocean, of that pressure. The first that I will mention is find yourself. Find yourself. Does that sound familiar? That idea sound familiar to any of you? I start with this slogan because it's been around the longest. This ocean didn't suddenly appear in 2024 or even 1984. It's been developing since the 1800s in writings of men like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Percy Shelley, William Blake, and later men that many of us have heard of, Fredericks Nisha, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, I won't bore you with any more historical background. I just want you to be aware that many streams down through the decades have contributed to make up this water, this ocean in which we swim today. Now, I'll bet that not more than one or two of us in this room have ever read one word written by the men that I just named. Their influence has been pretty much confined to academia, to colleges and universities. But that changed in the 1960s and 70s. Their names didn't really leave the college campus, but their influence and their ideas did. It went mainstream. I grew up in those years. Hippies are not just something I have read about in a history book. I went to school with kids who dropped out. Why did kids drop out? Why did kids launch themselves in those years headlong into the drug culture? Why Woodstock, for those of you who know what that is? Why hippies? Back in that day, many of them would have told you that they were trying to find themselves. There were television shows and popular songs back in those years that centered on this idea. How many of you remember an old black and white television show from the 1960s, Route 66? I was actually looking for something to watch the other night, and I happened on this show. I never watched it as a kid. But when it piloted, it was tentatively titled The Searchers. It was about two guys in a Chevy Corvette tooling around America trying to find themselves. This idea gripped popular imagination in those decades. But what does it mean? What does it mean to find yourself? Well, this little slogan pushed two big ideas back in the 1960s. First of all, the elevation of the self. It was in the 1960s and 70s that the self became a thing. The whole concept was elevated, popularized. Many a hippie dropped out specifically to find what he or she was really like, what made her unique or valuable, what made him happy and fulfilled. And for the first time, the purpose of life became finding my deepest self and then pleasing that self or expressing that self. in tandem with this exaltation of the self, was the need for authenticity. See, I couldn't find myself if I was letting somebody else tell me who I really was. Sounds right, doesn't it? I mean, if somebody else was defining me, Well, then I would never find myself. And that's part of the reason that the 60s and 70s were a time of rebellion. Many young people specifically cast off their parents' ideas about what a good life, a well-lived life looked like. What would make them happy? What would success look like to them? In order to find their true selves, they had to reject what their parents, their siblings, their friends, their pastors, their teachers, their political parties, or any other authority structure had to say about them. Now, some of you are saying to yourself, I'm no hippie. This doesn't have anything to do with me. But you need to understand something that The authority, the relationship between almost all of us and authority structures in our life is nothing like it was 75 years ago. 75 years ago, people went to authority structures so that those authority structures could shape their lives. We looked to education to shape our life. We looked to the church to shape our life. We looked even to government to shape our life. Today, that's been turned completely on its head. If I decide to join a church, if I decide to listen to my parents, it's because I'm going to validate them. See, it's all about me. It's all about who I am. I'm not about to let them tell me who I am. And if that doesn't resonate with you, let me ask you this. How many of you here this morning are very concerned about living a fulfilling life? Come on, how many of you are concerned about living a fulfilling life? Let me tell you, a hundred years ago, that was not a thing. If you had asked my grandfather, have you been fulfilled? He would have laughed in my face. Fulfilled? I got a job. I supported my family. Where does that idea come from? Listen, it's come into even the lives of Christians. Because of the ocean we swim in. So how do we as Christians resist this pressure? How do we make sure that we're not being pushed into this mold? Well, first let me suggest a counter-slogan. Rather than find yourself, find Christ. Rather than spending our lives trying to find ourselves, we need to press every effort to make certain that we are found in Christ. Those are the words that the Apostle Paul uses in Philippians, that I may be found in Him. In Matthew 13, Jesus told a number of parables, some of them very brief. And let me read one of Jesus' parables that's contained in a single verse. Matthew 13 44 again the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and hid and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field now in ancient times many people hid their valuables not in their mattress but by burying those valuables in a field that they owned and sometimes Such people would have to flee and attack by a foreign power. Sometimes those people passed away suddenly without the opportunity to tell their heirs that there was a treasure or where it was found. It's not hard to imagine a treasure that could be lost in a field back in those times. So put yourself in Jesus' little story here. You're walking across in your sandals and your toga. You're walking across a fallow field one day and you trip over a stone and when you turn and look back at what it is, it's actually the corner of a chest sticking out of the ground. And you dig it up and you discover that it's a treasure worth an immense fortune. So what do you do? Whoever owns the field owns the treasure. That was Jewish law. So you bury that chest a little deeper than it was buried. And then you make inquiries. How much will it cost you to buy the field? What if it cost you more than all the money you had? What if you had to sell everything you had in order to buy that field? What would you do? You'd do it. Jesus taught that coming to have a part in the kingdom of God, coming to have a right relationship with God is like that. Now that little parable teaches two lessons. First of all, finding Jesus is the greatest treasure a man or woman can find. It says for joy he goes out and sells all that he has and buys the field. What every human being needs to elevate is not a search for ourselves, but a search for Jesus Christ. In Jesus are found all riches in heavenly places. The priceless elements of life are found in the treasure chest that is Jesus Christ. Love, joy, peace, contentment, purpose, strength, courage. You can add to the list almost indefinitely. The things that money cannot buy. are found in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the inexpressible gift of God. And we need to embrace that truth and we need to teach that truth to our children. And then secondly, there's no way that you can earn what Jesus offers. The man found the treasure. He didn't earn it. He couldn't have earned it in several lifetimes. We accept the free gift of God by grace through faith. On the other hand, it will cost us everything. What? See, it's a paradox. We cannot earn our salvation by our good works or in any other way. We simply accept it by faith. On the other hand, to trust and follow Jesus Christ demands everything. Jesus said in Matthew 16, if anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. If you want to find your life, if you want to find yourself, then you will have to lose it. for the sake of trusting and following Jesus Christ. There's another slogan that defines the ocean that we swim in. It is the theme of scores of television episodes and feel-good movies, even children's movies by Disney and others. slogan is follow your heart. Now this slogan makes an implicit promise. Television episodes, movies and novels, they push With this slogan, the promise that you will find the life you really want, you will find the job you really want, you will find the lover or the spouse you really want, if you follow your heart. You want to be happy? Follow your heart. You want success? Follow your heart. This slogan also implies a dichotomy. It pits the head against the heart. You'll hear words similar to these in many TV episodes and movies. Quit analyzing it and just follow your heart. Some of us think that Hallmark movies are wonderful. Because they don't feature four-letter words and the plots are tame, if predictable. But I've got to tell you, Hallmark movies are part of the ocean in which we swim. Because the plot of every Hallmark movie is this very idea. No matter what your head is telling you, the path to happiness is to follow your heart. I even found an article in Inc.com that quantifies this idea. Assuming you are self-aware, deciding to follow your heart will ultimately lead you to desirable places. Of the 1,011 people that Medical Alert Buyer's Guide surveyed, 60% of those who follow their heart said they are satisfied with their current job, compared with 50% who went with their head. I'm not sure exactly how that works. 50 plus 60 comes up to 110%. Listening to your head may lead to more tangible success, but not following your heart increases your risk of regret. So if you want to lead a more satisfying life, follow your heart. And that leads to a third point that we need to understand about this slogan. leverages the human penchant for regret. It's the flip side of the promise that I described earlier. What is preached and portrayed on the screens and in books is that if we don't follow our hearts, we will end up regretting it. I found another article. It began with this paragraph. Follow your heart. We've all heard it. And deep down, we know it's the way to live, right? After all, who wants to wake up 5, 10, 12 or more years down the road only to realize that we did the smart thing, the thing that paid the bills or landed us the prestigious career, but not the thing that we really wanted to do with our lives. Our heads were wrong, and our hearts are always right. We're taught that truth by popular media in a thousand ways. If you don't follow your heart, you'll be sure to regret it down the road. And then one final observation about this slogan. This slogan often gives people permission to do what they know is wrong or sinful. This slogan is often the bait in which Satan hides the hook. Now, I told you that TVs and movies and books portray that the heart and the head are opposites. And I need to add something to that. They also portray that it is the head that tells you whether something's wrong or right. So here's Mia. She's falling for Carl. Carl is sexy and seductive, and he's leading Mia toward a romantic rendezvous where she will compromise her morals and end up in bed with him. But how does a movie or a book portray what's going on? It's Mia's head that's telling her that that would be wrong. She has a moral struggle going on, but that's her head. Her heart is telling her that Carl is the one. And if she doesn't give in to Carl's advances, then she's going to regret it. And if she really wants to be happy, then... And I will tell you that in 99 out of 100 plots, that plot portrays Mia as happy because she didn't listen to her head. She listened to her heart and she betrayed her morals. If you find that one movie or novel that portrays her as happy because she resisted her heart and did what she knows to be right, you have found the one book or movie that's not part of the ocean that we swim in. So how do we as Christians resist this pressure, this slogan, and how powerfully and consistently it's portrayed and preached to us in the media? How are we as parents and as grandparents supposed to train our children and our grandchildren to resist that pressure, not be pressured into the mold of the world? Well, first of all, there is a biblical truth that we need to believe, and we need to teach it to our children, and that is that our hearts are sinful. Follow your heart? Never! Our hearts are not trustworthy guides. Your heart and my heart will lead us to sin. Read these three verses with me. Jeremiah 17 9 the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked Who can know it then the implication of that last question is you can't even know your own heart Proverbs 28 26 he who trusts in his own heart is a fool. Is that great? I But whoever walks wisely, wisdom is following God and His design and His Word. We'll talk more about that. He who walks wisely will be delivered. And then, of course, Christ's words in Matthew 15, 19, For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. So these verses teach us two Key truths about our hearts. Number one, our hearts are wicked, desperately wicked, in fact. They are filled with evil thoughts, evil desires, evil motives, and they will lead us to evil actions if we follow them. Now, none of us is as sinful as we could possibly be, but you listen to me, the human heart is a sin factory. And not only are our hearts wicked, they are deceitful. That means our own hearts will try to deceive us. We've just reviewed how the world system in the form of television and movies and novels partners with our hearts to deceive us, to convince us that we should never doubt our hearts. That will mean regret in the future when in fact the opposite is true. We're fools to follow our hearts. They cannot be trusted. And we will regret it if we follow our hearts rather than following our God. And so rather than follow our hearts, we need to follow the Spirit. And I'm not talking about our spirits now. I'm talking about the Holy Spirit. After he talks about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, Paul says this. I've always loved the way the ESV puts this verse. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. We're supposed to follow the Holy Spirit, but I like the idea of keeping in step with the Spirit. How do you keep in step with the Spirit? You hold Him hand in hand. It's how I like to picture myself. If I'm living the way I ought to be living, I'm walking hand in hand with the Holy Spirit. Now how do we do that? How do you walk hand in hand? How do you keep in step with the Spirit? Here's where I think a lot of Christians go wrong. They equate following the Holy Spirit with following their feelings. And we're right back where we started. They say things like, I just felt the Holy Spirit leading me to do this or to do that. Now is it possible that the Holy Spirit at times leads in that way? Yes, I think it's possible. But I do not recommend it as standard operating procedure for Christians. There's a much better way to walk and step with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the author of this book. It says Nelson down here, but it ought to say Holy Spirit. He's the author. 2 Peter 1 describes how we came to have the Scriptures. In these words, holy men of God were moved by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit moved men to write the very words that God wanted in this book. And therefore, here is what we can say without any doubt. The Holy Spirit will always lead you in line with this book. If we want to follow the Holy Spirit, here's the way. Make certain we're obeying this book. And you know how you do that in a practical way? You study this book. You think about this book. You apply this book to your life. That's the way we follow the Spirit rather than following our hearts. There's a reason why every December I try to get you to read the Bible. There's a reason why when I disciple believers, the primary thing that I'm trying to do is to get them into the Word on a regular basis. This is how the Holy Spirit leads us. Many of us have memorized Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths. Now let me ask you, how do we trust in the Lord with all our heart? How do we lean not to our own understanding? How do we in all our ways acknowledge Him? All three questions have the same answer. We study this book and then obey it. This is where God gives us His direction. When we do that, He will direct our steps through His Word and through His Spirit. And then there's a final slogan that defines the ocean in which we're all swimming today. It's perhaps the most popular of these slogans right now. You be you. This slogan focuses on identity, which has become an unmistakable part of the ocean we swim in during the last 20 to 30 years. And UBU implies that only you can determine your own identity, not anyone else. And today, even pre-adolescents are being trusted to determine that their identity differs from their biological sex. Kid 10 or 11 years old expresses doubts. The parents take him to clinic, and the people in the clinic don't bat an eye. They express no doubt whatsoever. They don't give him any counseling because he has declared his identity. You be you, little kid. Now, the UBU might change in five years, but hey, we'll be willing to cut off part of you, we'll be willing to give you medication that will change your body for the rest of your life. Not a problem. UBU sounds so simple, so friendly, doesn't it? But hidden in these trite words is a powerful argument that no person, no organization, no entity has a right to doubt who you say you are, who you identify as being. Let me quote from a book entitled Disappearing Church by an Australian, Mark Sayers. These are bullet points that come directly out of the book, a summary. Number one, the highest good is individual freedom, happiness, self-definition. That's you be you. You autonomously deciding your identity. Traditions, religions, received wisdom, regulations, and social ties that restrict individual freedom, happiness, self-definition, and self-expression must be reshaped, deconstructed, and ultimately destroyed. And then finally, the primary social ethic. What is right and what is wrong in the ocean we're swimming in? The primary social ethic is tolerance of everyone's self-defined quest for individual freedom and self-expression. Any deviation from this ethic of tolerance is dangerous and must not be tolerated. Therefore, social justice, justice in society, justice between human beings, is less about economic or class inequality, and more about issues of equality relating to individual identity, self-expression, and personal autonomy. Get that last sentence. UBU is a matter of justice today. Now, we don't hear attorneys saying, you be you in court. But they are most definitely making the case again and again that a person's self-defined identity ought to have the legal standing in our society. Let me mention a couple of examples. I think I've got the right Supreme Court pictured here. First example is the Obergefell case that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States. When Mark Sayers says that religion must be destroyed if it stands in the way of UBU, that is what happened back in 2015 when this case was decided. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his decision, he wrote the majority decision, he specifically said that in the case of same-sex marriage, the right for you to be you outweighs the Judeo-Christian definition of marriage that has been in place for thousands of years. Wow. The decision that legalized same-sex marriage rested on four premises in Justice Kennedy's opinion. The first of those was that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy. Now those are a lot of big words, so let me paraphrase it for you in simple terms. The right to homosexual marriage is rooted in UBU. If you can be you, then homosexuals have every right to marry. My second example are laws that have been passed in over a dozen states that have enshrined the right for transgender individuals to have access to surgeries and medications that make some kind of a biological transition possible. And also, most of you are probably not aware, I'm aware because I'm in higher ed, the Biden administration this week unveiled a new regulation that changed Title IX. Title IX is the law that was originally passed in 1972 specifically to protect women from sexual discrimination, particularly with regard to sports. And this new regulation changes that law to include protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Biden administration has essentially turned Title IX on its head, and now instead of protecting female athletes from discrimination in sports, this regulation now enshrines the right of biological males who identify as females to compete in female sports, to win in female sports, to shower in female locker rooms. UBU sounds so simple and so disarming. that none of us could possibly disagree with it, but you need to understand that the ocean that we're swimming in, it's not just cultural, it's not just societal, it's also legal. So how are we gonna counter the immense pressure that's coming down on us as believers in Jesus Christ. Let me give you three ideas and then we'll be done. First of all, we need to affirm the biological identity that our Creator gave us. And that means rejecting the idea that there is a spectrum of sexual identity We must reject the idea that sexual identity is a mental, emotional, and social construct. The Word of God, from beginning to end, speaks of only two biological sexes. Male sexual identity aligns with male biology. Female sexual identity aligns with female biology. Historically, it seems like it's only been 15 minutes ago that no one doubted what I just said. But now, in the ocean we're swimming in now, we need to confess these truths, and we need to teach these truths to our children. And the Second Service will We'll talk about this. We'll talk about the practicalities of this. We'll discuss ways that we can do that. In the second place, we stand against this pressure by clearly identifying ourselves as Bible-believing Christians. With the Apostle Paul, we must confess, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For it is the power of God unto salvation. In Acts, we learn that unbelievers made fun of the early church by calling them Little Christ. That's what the word Christian means. We need to make sure that those around us know that we believe in Jesus Christ. We belong to Jesus Christ. We follow Jesus Christ. Let me ask you, are you a stealth Christian? People in your neighborhood, people at work, don't know that you belong to Jesus Christ, that you worship Jesus Christ. We need to teach our children by example that we are willing to confess Jesus Christ openly and publicly, even if others ridicule us, even if it costs us. There was a stellar example of this kind of public confession recently. Scotty Shuffler is the number one golfer in the world. He has won the last four out of five PGA Tour events. The one event that he didn't win, he placed second in. One of those was a major tournament, the Masters. At the Masters, in a press conference, he was asked by a reporter, what do you think defines you? And this was the answer he gave. I'm a faithful guy. I believe in a creator. I believe in Jesus. Ultimately, I think that's what defines me most. Amen and hallelujah. In the ocean that we swim in, that kind of public testimony is what we need to be willing to give. And what pleased me most is that during that tournament, Scotty Shuffler was waiting for his wife to deliver their first child. Willing to give that kind of public testimony so that his children will know where he stands. And then there's one more answer to this question. We not only need to identify with Jesus Christ publicly, we need to understand that internally that is our identity. Who am I? I am in Christ. My inmost identity, the true self. You want to find yourself? You better find yourself in Christ. The Apostle Paul uses those words again and again to emphasize the truth that every Christian must find his identity in Christ. In Christ, I am justified. In Christ, I am dead to sin and alive to God. In Christ, I am a member of His body. In Christ, I am a saint. In Christ, I am a new creation. In Christ, I have freedom. In Christ, I am a child of God. In Christ, I am blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. In Christ I am seated in heavenly places. In Christ I will one day rise from the dead. In Christ I have the peace of God which passes all understanding. There are more, but you get the idea. My identity is Jesus Christ. When God looks at me, He doesn't see me. Praise God. He sees me wrapped in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. He sees me in Christ. And that's the only reason I can ever even come into His holy presence. The only reason I can ever pray. The only reason I have any expectation that someday I will Fellowship with Him in heaven. You be you? No. No, I'll be in Christ. That's what Paul said. That I may be found in Him. Well, as I close this morning, I ask you a simple question. Do you recognize now the ocean you swim in? Can you see the water? And a more important question, will you stand against the pressure of the world to push you into its mold?