We want to thank you for listening to this week's sermon from Harvest Bible Chapel, Kansas City. We pray that you will be encouraged and challenged by God's Word today. If you would like more information about Harvest, please visit our website at www.harvestkansascity.org. So my name is Tim Yatch. I'm our student ministry director. If you don't know me, my wife is Tracy. She's not in the service. She's out serving somewhere, but we've been married for 11 years. We have two kids, a almost four-year-old, Adeline, and a two-year-old named Caleb, who is amazing, yet emotional all at the same time. Kind of big and emotional, like me, I guess, if you will. And we have another baby due. She's very, very pregnant right now, in October. So just about two months away. A little, actually less than. It's kind of crazy how time flies. But we're so blessed to be here, so glad to be here. Our family has truly grown exponentially since we moved to Kansas City almost three years ago. We've tripled the amount of kids that we're going to have. So we've gone from one to three, which sounds like I know a lot more than what it actually is. So it's my blessing to be here today with you. And as I mentioned, I'm the student ministry director here, and so I'm preaching on a topic that is very relevant to not only our students, but to all of you. And this is a little bit different. We're wrapping up our cultural topic series that Pastor Jeff started a while ago. And so we normally march through a text, just boom, just plow through it. And I know Pastor Jeff, he's got all this light preaching excitement and all this stuff he's going to be bringing next week. But today we're examining a very relevant topic. And if you haven't guessed it already, it's the topic of social media. Social media. And I hope that you are, hashtag, very excited. Okay? You can speak in hashtags. I don't know if you knew that, but you can. It's very fun. So before we get started, let me throw some statistics at you that I found. Joe Carter, he's an editor for the Gospel Coalition, he wrote these out. He said that there are 58 million tweets per day. 9,100 happen every second. The average person interacts with their mobile device, their phone, 40 to 80 times a day. 40 to 80 times a day, 90% of that for social media and social usage. If social media companies were countries, Facebook with over 1.1 billion users would be the largest in the world, second only to China. China would be the largest. Google Plus would be at 693 million users is up there. Twitter has 554 million users. Larger than the United States and India, actually. Every minute of every day, 684,478 pieces of content are shared on Facebook. Every minute of every day. Think about that. 684,000 pieces of information and photos are shared every minute on Facebook. You're probably thinking, yeah, my kid's like half of that, right? They're on there so much. I say all of these just to make the point that social media isn't going anywhere, despite what you may desire, it's not going anywhere. I thought MySpace would kill social media when it started, but it didn't. Facebook has come along, and Twitter, and so on and so forth. Instagram, Snapchat, and the next ten popular sites. These means of communication are going to be part of our lives going forward, and there's really not a lot that we can do about it, because they make a lot of money. So they're going to be out there. And so how do we, as believers, interact with social media? What are we to do with it? What are the positives and the negatives of social media? What principles should guide our usage? These are some questions that I will seek to answer during this message. It's going to be intensely practical in parts, too. There's a lot to this. There's a lot more that could be said. But the first thing we have to realize when it comes to social media is we have to realize the risks of social media. Realize the risks of social media. That's your first point. A passage that's going to guide our thinking on this subject is Ephesians 5, 15, and 16. I'm going to reference it a few times. This is an awesome passage to kind of almost take any number of topics that are maybe not addressed specifically in Scripture, but you could take this passage and it applies very much to many of those things. So, I'll read it for you. Ephesians 5, 15, and 16. It says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of time because the days are evil. This word for look that says look carefully carries the meaning of guarding or protecting or watching or being aware of, beware of. Paul is telling us that we need to have keen eyes for what's happening around us as we walk through the choppy waters of our lives on this earth. But why? Why do we need to have such keen awareness? Why do we need to be so aware of what's going on? Well, the last part of verse 16 gives us the answer. It says, because the days are what? Tell me. Evil. The days are evil. And evil is alive and well when it comes to the way that many choose to use social media. And as a side note to this, something I want to make very clear from the very beginning is that any form of social media or communication isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's not an evil thing. Social media is not the problem. And you could probably guess what the problem is if you just take your finger like this and you point it at yourself. You're the problem. We're the problem. We're the problem. Our sinful, perverse, attention-seeking hearts, we're the problem. So I want to make that clear just so you get that from the very beginning. So where should we beware of social media as believers? I'll go ahead and name several areas of risk. I'll cover those here. The first one is this, and it's pointless information overload. Pointless information overload. And you probably, as soon as I say that, you're like, oh yeah, I know a lot of people that share a lot of pointless stuff. But never has there been a time in our history when we know so much about a person, yet we know so little all at the same time, right? Now while I sometimes enjoy knowing what a person I've met maybe two times as an acquaintance is having for breakfast, hopefully Lucky Charms. I mean, amen to that, right? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I mean, that's good information to have. It's not really very important information unless they're like, unless you're a breakfast blogger looking for, you know, you're a cereal breakfast blogger and you want to know information about that. It doesn't do anything for your relationship with that person. In fact, it seems shallow at times, right? Now I realize that some of you, including myself, point very pointless or post very pointless things to different sites. Goofy photos and goofy things that happen and things along those lines. But the point here is there's nothing wrong with those things. But is that the extent of what you share? Does it go any deeper than that? Are you using this opportunity, this tool, for something greater for the kingdom of God? That's the question. or do you primarily share pointless drivel? Great word, drivel. We should be about more. See, pointless information overload leads to our next risk, and I'll call this connected loneliness. Connected loneliness. See, it's so easy to know, again, a lot about a person, but not really actually know them. Your relationships become a string of photos and random thoughts. You just kind of are, it's a blip on the radar. gives you a false sense of relationship and reality. You start to feel like you're more connected to someone than you actually are. Sherry Tull, she's the director of the MIT Initiative on Technology, she says, Isn't that so true? It's what we see in much of social media. It's a sad reality that someone could seemingly know a person very well, but in actuality not really know them. This could be easily the story of our lives relationally if we don't allow people into our lives. We just keep them on the surface. We're going to offer some remedies. I'm going to offer some remedies to this a little bit later. So the third risk inherent to social media use is me focused-ness. Me-focused-ness. So we are the generation, which I'm not proud to say, I'm not excited to say, in which the selfie was born. Okay? Does anybody not know what a selfie is? It's too bad. I'm going to share what it is anyway. So, a selfie is basically a picture that you take of yourself. You know, look at all glamorous, like many times it's in the mirror. You take a selfie in the mirror. That's what I see often more than anything. The word was actually added to the Oxford Dictionary as the word of the year in 2013. Doesn't that seem ridiculous? Of all the words for us to make up and make our real words, selfie is the word of the year in 2013. So for the sake of the illustration, I think we should take a congregational selfie. I'm just kidding. I'm not going to do that. I think that'd be more of an ussy, because we're all together, or a churchy. Churchy, if you will. So, you guys can, you can trademark that. So a selfie is not a bad thing, again, but again, we must examine our motives for posting it. What's the purpose? Why are we doing it? The selfie shows, it illustrates how easy it is to be focused upon appearance alone. The Bible says that God looks at the heart, not the outward appearance, right? But it's so easy for us to be focused upon the outward appearance. And it even illustrates even maybe a deeper, greater point, and that's obsession with ourselves. Obsession with ourselves. Our work, our education, our sports achievements, the things that we buy, the things that we're proud of, these are the things that are typically posted in social media. It's easy to post something with the purpose of genuinely just trying to draw attention to yourself. You're like, hey world, look at me. Look what I did. Look who I am. We have to guard against that. This type of self-focus is often unwise, if not downright sinful in many cases. I was doing some reading on this and it says one thing I found was that studies have shown that overuse or wrong motives in social media participation can actually breed narcissism. And I'll describe what narcissism is, found a couple definitions of that. The first one is this, extreme selfishness with a grandiose view of one's own talents. That's the first one. And the second one is, Man, that's much of what you see. See, having a sense of accomplishment and excitement over something you have done is not a bad thing, but we must ask, why again are you posting this? Is it for someone to see how awesome you are? How wonderful or intelligent you are? See, we must be on guard against boasting. Jeremiah 9, 23 and 24 says, That's a great verse. He is to be the subject of our boasting. Paul speaks about this in 2 Corinthians 12 when he talks about how we are to boast in our weaknesses because it's through those that Christ is exalted. That's the type of boasting that we are to do. So is that your goal? Is it to put yourself on display or is it to put Him on display? The fourth risk that is so easy to slip into is shameful speech, shameful speech. Colossians 4, 5 says, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer each person. See, Christians often use, I see this all the time, Christians often use social media as a sounding board or a platform for complaining, arguing, gossiping, truth-hammering, or just simply speaking in ignorance. We have to be so careful with what we say. See, there's something about being partially anonymous, hidden behind a computer screen, that gives you a sense of power at times, doesn't it? You feel like you could say anything that you want. And a good way to gauge that is, okay, would I be willing to say this to a person that this is directly about? Or am I just willing to hide behind the screen and say it? See, the passage says, let your speech always be gracious. We're not to be like to truth police, you know, busting down doors and taking no prisoners. We're to do this with grace and with love, challenging, which I'll speak about later, See, your tweets, your posts may be the only window that somebody has into your life of what Christ has done in you. Isn't that crazy to think about? Doesn't that take the responsibility to a whole other level? That what you say on social media might be the only way that someone hears about Christ? It's possible. You never know. So would someone know that you are a Christ follower by what you say? Would it be evident to them? Or would your life consist of sports trivia and goofy posts and movie quotes? Got Questions Ministries is reading an article. It says, it's important to understand the impact that our status, statuses, photos, comments, or blog posts may have in the future. It should be remembered that social networking sites involve publishing to the entire internet, including family members, current and future employers, college admissions personnel. The ramifications of any statement, both now and in the future, should be considered. It should be assumed, and listen to this, it should be assumed that everything written is permanent and viewable by everyone at all times. There's a record. And that's a scary idea for some of you, I imagine. Especially for a teenager who's trying to get their first job in finance, and their employer's looking at the things they posted when they were 13. See, the days are evil, the risks are inherent, but let me remind you again that social media itself is not evil. Tim Challies, he writes about this. He says that, I love this quote, It is not technology itself that is moral or immoral, but our use of that technology, our application of it, our dedication to it. It's a great quote. As with any convenience or entertainment device, we must use wisdom, we must use caution as we navigate it, as we use it on a regular basis. So I would say that's enough of the negatives, which I'm going to hit a couple more a little bit later, I promise. There's a lot to this. But it's important to realize, too, that while there's great risks, there's also great rewards of social media. That's our second point, to realize the rewards of social media. We can compare it in a very similar way to the way a two-year-old, my son, would use a very sharp knife. It would not go well, okay? Like, walks and just falls down. I'm not going to give him a knife and say, hey, go use this. Cut me up some vegetables or something, right? But no, if you give a knife to a culinary-trained chef, like, they're going to go, and they're going to be like, they whip it out, and they know exactly how to use it. See, we have to be very skilled in the way that we use social media. It's a tool that we can use with wisdom and with skill. So let's look at some rewards of social media. The first one is this, greater community. Greater community. Now social media cannot replace face-to-face meeting together in the Acts 242 type of way that church is to be done, and that's the devotion to the Apostles' teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. It's not meant to replace it. A form of technology is never meant to replace church. Many churches stream their services online. There's nothing wrong with that. There's people that have disabilities and problems where they can't get to church. There's nothing wrong with that. But online church should never be a substitute for real church. You're just a spectator. You're just watching an event happen. It's like watching it on TV. It's not the same thing. We're to be involved in each other's lives in a greater way. Now social media can assist in building community by sharing with each other the bigger and the small areas of life. There is a sense where when you're reading the things that people are posting where you feel a little bit of a connection to what they have or what they're doing. We get to share small areas such as breakfast cereal, right? But also bigger areas like a new job that they just got that they're very excited about. Or the fact that they're having their first baby after months, after years of trying. There's great reward to it. You can see how people are being transformed and how God's Word is working in their life by the things that they're posting as well. So greater community is a great reward. The next benefit or power available is through invitation. We have greater opportunity for invitation through social media. As you've probably noticed, we share our events that are happening here in our church via social media, and we encourage you to do the same. We're gonna continue to do that. Why? Because this is the primary vehicle of communicating in our day. As much as you may not like it, it is the primary vehicle of communicating, so we are going to continue to do that. And you can invite your family and your friends as well. It's simple enough. If you don't know how, talk to one of us. We could help you out. But it's not that difficult to invite somebody to an event. And you don't have to invite all thousand of your friends to make it happen. You could do it specifically. You can invite your friends to be a part of what God is doing here at Harvest. Like our Vertical Church Band that just came and different events such as that. It's much less scary, truly, to invite someone in this way versus like, hey, going and knocking on their door and inviting them to church. But I would still encourage you that this is not to be the primary way that you would invite someone. It's not to be the primary way because you still need to work up some courage and go and speak to people and say, hey, come with me, see what God is doing. Come to church. Come here. It's so easy to dismiss all the invitations that we get for various things. Just like the way we dismissed the invitations to play Candy Crush on Facebook. Because I'll tell you what, I don't want any more invitations to play that game. And if you keep inviting me to play, I will never, ever play it. So I just want a public service announcement, so don't invite me to play it. See, we ignore all kinds of invitations. So we have to be a little bit more bold, I would say, with people. But you never know. You still should share the things that are going on, share the invites. So our next reward is that of encouragement, encouragement. And there's three different ways that I'm gonna talk about that we can encourage, encourage people in our lives via social media. And the first one is by inspiration. We get encouraged by inspiring them. Again, Colossians 4, 5 says, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salts, sharing scriptures, and book quotes and how they're impacting you. That could inspire somebody to pursue God in a greater way. I think it's a great thing to do is to actually picture the people that you're intending to reach by what you post. Be like, I want to, I want to, I want to try to draw them to Christ. Like God's the one who does the drawing, but the things that we say have a great part in that too. I'll give you an example of something that I read. And this is a quote by Francis Chan that has been posted by people. It says, Like, when I read that, I was like, man, could I say that? I mean, those are the inspiring types of quotes, the inspiring types of things that we can post, that the Holy Spirit so easily can use to draw someone to Christ. It's an opportunity. The next form of encouragement is challenging encouragement. Challenging encouragement. See, one of the ways that we can bring encouragement to the people that we interact with on social media is by sharing or talking about different social issues that are happening in our day. You can probably think of a few in particular that have been going on right now. This is a very fine line. You can do this to antagonize people, to start arguments, to cause quarrels, or to just smack someone with your opinion on the issue, or you can do it in love. Two issues that have blown up on social media over the last few months have been on homosexuality and marriage, and also abortion with all the Planned Parenthood videos. Now you may feel obligated to share certain posts or certain information about those, but you have to be so wise when you do it. You have to be so gracious when you're doing it. I'll be the first to say that I don't repost articles and blog posts that I just read right away. Give them time to kind of be out there, be verified, be seen as truthful. We have to be so careful about that. Because the problem is, many times the things that are being posted are from a certain opinion, even if it's an opinion that we agree with. And there may be, there's some mistruths or an ignoring of the truth within that article. We have to be very careful. I'll give you an example from my own life. I recently posted an article on a pastor in Oregon who was being threatened with jail time for refusing to perform the ceremony of a homosexual. This naturally kind of riled me up because of what I do for a living, of course, right? And so I read the article a few times and I was just like, oh, I was just, I was just all appalled. I was, and so what did I do? I posted it. I'm like, I'm doing my part. I'm going to post this article, right? We get all excited and some people share it and we're like, yeah, they rally with me and it's all good. But then I realized, and it was brought to my attention from a homosexual family member, actually, Boy, that this article was actually, it was written and there were some things that were left out. One of them being that this pastor, per se, he was an interfaith minister, meaning that he would perform ceremonies for anybody regardless of their faith. And also, he did it for money. He was a paid interfaith minister, so he was just a random guy, basically, who would perform ceremonies who happened to have a license. Now does that change my opinion of what was happening there? Not really, but the point still remains. That changes the article. That changes the thrust of it. That changes, that changes what it really means. So we need to be wise with what we post. Psalm 34 13 should guard it. It says, Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise. So you may find that there are certain issues that you feel a very strong, moral, biblical passion that you feel like you have to share about. There's nothing wrong with that. For me, that's the issue of abortion. And I believe that we do need to be a voice for the unborn in our country. And these Planned Parenthood videos, crazy stuff, right? Crazy stuff. The atrocities of our government, as far as supporting this institution, is a horrible thing. And so we need to be a voice. We need to be a voice in that, but also by using much grace, much, much, much grace in the midst of that truth. Our last means of encouragement via social media is that of evangelism. Evangelism. 2 Corinthians 5.20 says, See, you are an ambassador for Christ and so am I. That means that we go and we share Him. We are an instrument for Him to be used wherever we are. And that means online as well. You are the mouthpiece of God to your thousand friends and Twitter followers that you have. You have an opportunity to share the gospel with them in a way that you never could have 200 years ago. You may be the only voice, the only voice that will share the gospel with them. Again, I can't stress that enough. You have an opportunity to put him on display with every word that you write or say. to share how the gospel is impacting your thinking, your living, your family, for people to see how God is changing you, that's an impactful thing. And you might be thinking, well, this is all a stretch. It's just a website. No, it's more than that. I'm telling you that it's more than that. It's an opportunity. It's an opportunity that you have, and maybe, maybe your response to this message is that you need to get on social media. and actually use it as a tool for God's glory. Maybe you need to get off of it less, which is what we'll talk about later. See, there are obvious risks and rewards, so you must, in the midst of this, weighing the risks, weighing the rewards, what is your response? So our third point is realize your response to social media. Realize your response to social media. So what I want to do in this point is really use some very practical application points that you can chew on. Let me talk about a few other things that I've uncovered as well in my study of it. So I've spoken on connecting a few times. And what I would encourage you to do is to let or make your connection with people go beyond just the surface level. Go beyond just what you post. And that's by being connected to the body of Christ. By being connected to the body of Christ. You can write down Hebrews 10, 24, and 25. It says to not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but to encourage one another. And all the more as you see the day approaching, right? We are to meet together. We are to be together. All of you have that little pamphlet, you know, inside of your bulletin for small group signups. I would encourage you that if you're not part of a small group, stop listening to me right now and write, fill your information out and join a small group. You have permission, I promise. Go ahead and do that. Join a small group. Do life together. That's how you're known. That's how you'll be truly connected to the body here at Harvest. We need to do life in a greater way than a 140 character tweet. So number two in the response is to find your identity in Christ. You could write down 1 Peter 2.9, Galatians 2.20. Your identity should be found not in how you portray yourself online, but in who Christ says that you are. Your identity is found not in what you portray yourself to be online, but who Christ says you are. Tony Reinke, he writes about how much of what we do on social media is, quote, image posturing. You guys heard that phrase? Image posturing. What that means is to manufacture the image that you want others to see by what you post about yourself. Paul Tripp, great writer, great speaker, he shares a story about this. And he was talking about a family who, they went on a camping trip, right? Which you know when a story starts with a camping trip, it's a bad story because nobody wants to go camping, right? But, you know, the food is, it's rolling on the ground, hot dogs are dirty, kids are crying, it's hot, there's mosquitoes like this big, you know, biting everybody. Everything's horrible, right? So while this is going on, So what do they do at the end of the trip? What do you do at the end of a family trip? You get together for a family selfie. You're like, ah, this is awesome. So everybody, then you post it to social media. Everybody sees it and they're like, oh man, they're having so much fun. Like, why aren't my camping trips that way, right? You know, it's image posturing. We're trying to portray something, you know, that is not a true statement about what actually happened. I would say don't posture your image. Be real. Be real. Be human. Be who you are in these forms of social media. Be who you actually are. Be honest. The third response that I'll speak to is in regards to your children, and that's simply to guard them. To guard your children. Guard your children. Maybe your response to this message is that you need to shepherd your children better when it comes to social media. And if you remember our original verse in Ephesians 5, it tells us that we are to guard the way that we walk. And we learn to walk by crawling, rolling over, stumbling, falling, running. We learn to walk very slowly. And your kids are learning to walk still. and you're to help them in that. And one of the great ways that you are, you must shepherd them when it comes to their social media usage. See, young people are at greater risk when it comes to this because there are sexual predators, there are thieves, there are slanders that are abounding when it comes to these forms of media. I was watching a video that I believe to be true, but I'll share a little bit about it. It was by a guy named Kobe Person, and it was a social experiment. He wanted to figure out if by speaking to a 12- to 14-year-old girl that he doesn't know if he can get her to meet up with him in person, even though she's never met him before. So he's about 25 years old. Parents were involved in this, and the parents were all like, no, they would never meet up with a stranger. But boy, he started talking to these girls over a couple days, just befriended them. He had a fake 15-year-old profile with a picture that says, hey, I'm new to the area. And they just keep talking, chatting, and doing all their stuff. And then eventually, at the end of the conversation, he's like, hey, can we get together sometime? Hang out or whatever? And all three of the girls, two of them 12, one of them 14, all three of them, all three of them were willing to go and meet him in person. One of them got into a white van with no windows in it. How about that? One of them met at a park after dark, after her parents were asleep. And boy, when her dad jumped out from behind the slide, you should have seen the look on her face. Holy cow. All that to say that children, adolescents, are vulnerable. There are predators out there to take advantage of them in that way. So we must have caution. I was reading an article by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And it was saying, because of their limited capacity for self-regulation and susceptibility to peer pressure, children and adolescents are at great risk in social media. Recent research indicates that there are frequent online expressions of offline behaviors, such as bullying, click-forming, and sexual experimentation. See, what does that mean? What that means is that what used to happen on the playground is now happening online. bullying, experimentation, all these types of things. These things are happening online nowadays. And sometimes it's happening anonymously. There's a site called Social Number out there. I was looking at it. And CNN and USA Today are calling it the site where no one knows your name and the site where we are all just a number. It's an anonymous social media posting site. Think about the damage and the incredible hurt that could be done to a person when you could just say whatever you want about them, and they wouldn't even know who it was. That's dangerous stuff, and that's the way this is all going. Now, students may not like me for this, but I do believe that your parents They need to be active participants in your social media. They need to have your passwords. They need to monitor your internet usage because they are guarding you. And I'm telling you, you're going to hate it, but they need to be involved in that way. At the very least, you need to have very open and honest conversations regarding these topics. So your third response. is that of controlling the addiction. That could be your response to this message too. If you remember the statistic that I shared earlier, the average person is on their phone 40 to 80 times per day. 40 to 80 times per day. My question for you is, are you addicted to your phone? Are you addicted to social media? As soon as you feel the notification in your pocket, are you pulling it out? Or do you have restraints? Bruce Hindmarsh, he writes about this. He says, our spiritual condition is one of having spiritual ADD. He says that we are more easily distracted from the important issues of our lives moment by moment. The nature of digital communication is that we are endlessly distracted. Endlessly distracted. I find that in my own life. I'm so distracted by what's going on. I'm so distracted by this little vice in my pocket. That's why I find it necessary to get up in the morning and spend time in the Word with the Lord. Why? Because other people are sleeping and they're not going to text me, right? We need to avoid the distraction. We need to take Colossians 3, 1 and 2 to heart, which says, Our constant distraction-oriented minds are set on the things of this earth when we check our phones so frequently. So what is the remedy to this addiction? And I would venture to say that it's spiritual discipline. We need to have greater spiritual discipline. We need to get back to the things that we did at first. Time in His Word, in the morning, prayer, meditation. And how about this one? Fasting from your phone. Fasting from social media. You would be shocked by the amount of attention that you would have if you didn't have this little device that was constantly buzzing in your pocket. Your ability to focus on the Lord would be so enhanced. So I would challenge you to think about that. See, one of the excuses that I hear from so many is that they don't have time for their devotions. I hear that from students all the time. But is that really true? Is that really true? Your time spent on these different social media outlets betrays that idea. It does. So go ahead and bow your heads. Try to avoid the distraction in your purse or pocket. Just listen to a couple things here. This is a quote from John Piper. It says, So where do you need to apply this? Where's the Lord pricked in your heart and said, this is for you, listen up. Go ahead and take a moment and commit yourself to Him anew right now.