Culture Shock

Daniel 3:4-30

INTRO: One side says: Culture. Other side says: Shock.

What is culture shock?

Defined in Webster’s dictionary as:

“A sense of confusion and uncertainty sometimes with feelings of anxiety that may affect people exposed to an alien culture or environment without adequate preparation.”

Have you ever experienced even a mild form of culture shock?

·        Visit a place where “Jeopardy” comes on at 7 PM instead of 7:30. Just can’t get used to it.

·        Moving to New Orleans, where they didn’t have Cheerwine soda, Neese’s sausage, or Duke’s mayonnaise.

·        Eating mangoes and jellyfish at a Chinese restaurant in Penang, Malaysia.

·        Riding on the back of an elephant in Thailand, when our “elephant driver” suddenly turned around, picked up our then 6-year-old son and – without asking, placed him precariously on the elephant’s forehead.

Culture shock.

Many teenagers today say their parents would be shocked if they knew what was going on in youth culture.

Listen to the words of one teenager:

“It used to be that parents protected their kids from the hard truths of life. Today, teens protect their parents. It’s a harsh world out there, and I don’t think my mom or dad could handle the things that I deal with each and every day, so I don’t say anything. … I simply let them pretend that things are the same as when they were kids.” [T. Suzanne Eller, Real Teens, Real Stories, Real Life (Colorado Springs, Colorado: Life Journey, 2002), 13]

Shocking things going on in the lives of teenagers today.

Research shows that …

·        Among people born 1984 or later, only 4% are Bible-based believers.

·        Currently, there are over 300,000 pornographic web sites for teens to explore on the internet, and the number is growing every day.

·        The average age of first Internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old.

·        The average age of first sex is15.8 years.

In his book, Seven Laws of the Learner, Bruce Wilkinson cites the following statistics:

·        3.3 million teens are alcoholics

·        1000 teens try to commit suicide daily

·        10% of H.S. students have experimented with or are involved in a homosexual lifestyle.

The days of Ozzie and Harriet, of Richie and Joanie Cunningham, and of Theo and Vanessa Huxtable are gone – if they really ever existed to begin with.

This is the culture and the climate teenagers are living with every day.

No wonder that teenager said, “I don’t think my mom or dad could handle the things that I deal with each and every day, so I don’t say anything.”

She knows the culture she has to deal would be radical and shocking to her parents.

But, I want to tell something that may be shocking to you in a good way.

God is doing great and wonderful things among young people today.

You don’t hear that said all that much. That’s why it may be shocking. But God is doing great things.

I believe that God is in the midst of bringing spiritual renewal and revival to churches and to families by moving in the hearts of teenagers.

Do you realize that teenagers attend church more than adults? A 2003 survey says they do:

38 percent of adults say they attend church weekly.

43 percent of teenagers attend church weekly.

According to the 2001 Roper Youth Report, more kids and teenagers head to church in any given week than surf the Web, see a movie, hang out at parties, or visit the mall.

If American teens won $100,000, they say they would:

Buy gifts for parents: 93 percent

Save money for college: 55 percent

Give money to charity: 45 percent

Great need in our families to have

Parents

Teenagers

Grandparents

Grandkids

Committed to a God-centered, Christ-centered, biblical way of looking at the world.

Standing for God in the midst of an ungodly culture.

Greatest example I can think of that in the Bible is found in the book of Daniel.

Daniel and his friends – Jewish people – godly people, the brightest and the best of their generation.

Taken captive from their homeland in Israel, and taken to Babylon – the most worldly, most wicked, most seductively sinful culture in the ancient world.

There – in the midst of an ungodly culture, they stood for the Lord.

Daniel 3.

Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.

That’s how we know them.

That’s not what their mamas named them.

Shadrach – Hananiah

Meshach – Mishael

Abednego – Azariah

Taken to Babylon – given a new name, a new place to live, a new culture.

But made a decision – they were not going to let their culture keep them from serving the Lord.

[Read Daniel 3:4-6]

Nebuchadnezzar. King of Babylon.

Had built a huge statue, covered with gold.

60 cubits high. 90 feet tall.

6 cubits wide. 9 feet wide.

Don’t miss the significance of the number “6.”

The number of man. Man was made on the 6th day.

A man-centered religion. A man-centered type of worship.

It’s not about God, it’s about you.

What did Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do?

Notice several things.

First of all …

1.     The Pressure to Conform to Our Culture

Conform – to be shaped after someone else’s image.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego faced real pressure to bow to that idol.

[Read Daniel 3:7]

Peer pressure. Notice two times the phrase “all the people.”

All the people were doing it.

Their friends. Their neighbors. The people they went to school with. The people they worked with. They were all bowing to the image.

Not only peer pressure, but also …

Fear pressure.

[Read Daniel 3:8, 12-15a]

Accused by other Babylonians. Maybe because of jealousy. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were probably known as the smartest, healthiest, most high-achieving young men among their peers.

Threatened by the King. “I’ll throw you into the fiery furnace.”

Peer pressure. Fear pressure.

How can we keep from being swayed by the pressures of the culture around us?

We have to have a living relationship with Jesus Christ!

IL: God’s Mirror

From the time AnaLisha was in first grade, people called her ugly.

When she entered high school, she hoped it would be different. Surely she would be surrounded by people who were more mature and who would accept her. On the first day of school, she overheard a group of people talking. One guy said that if he were as ugly as she was, he would kill himself.

So much for a new start.

Nine years. That’s a long time to hear people call you names. When she looked in the mirror, she began to see herself as they did. She started to think about suicide and was very depressed. How could God love her if she was this unattractive?

As she grew older, AnaLisha’s appearance began to change. The cruel words finally stopped, but she still felt as ugly as ever.

Ugliness had become her identity.

Listen to her words:

When I turned sixteen, I had to face the hard facts. I had never had a boyfriend, so this had to be the absolute final proof that the words were true. Depression began to creep back in. I knew that I didn’t want to go back to that dark place, so I took a chance. I talked to my youth pastor and to some of my good friends about how I felt. They reacted in total surprise. They had no clue that I felt the way I did. My friends helped me to understand that I was looking in the wrong mirror for the answers. I had allowed people who didn’t care for me to shape how I felt about myself.

For the first time, I took a long look in God’s mirror, and there I was – His child, His creation! God made me the way that I am. He delighted in me.

Long to hold up God’s mirror so that every person here could see you as He sees you.

Someone He loves with all of His heart.

Someone with sin that can be forgiven and a past that can be overcome.

Someone with a wonderful purpose here on earth through Jesus Christ.

Someone with a glorious future in Heaven through Jesus Christ.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego saw themselves as God saw them.

That gave the ability to stand up under the pressure to conform to their culture.

The pressure to conform to culture, but also …

2.     The Power to Challenge Our Culture

[Read Daniel 3:15b-18]

I love this. They stood toe to toe with the most powerful man in the world, and said, “We’re not going to back down. We’re not going to bow down.”

v. 16 – “We have no need to answer you in this matter.” Not up for discussion.

v. 17 – “Our God, whom we serve is able to deliver us …”

He is able.

v. 17 – “He will deliver us” – that’s a faith statement.

v. 18 – “But if not …”  - that’s an obedience statement.

Their faith in their God gave them power to challenge their culture.

Why did they have that kind of faith in God?

Because they had a God-centered, biblical worldview:

·        They believed in absolute truth.

·        They loved God.

·        They believed that God is the all-powerful and all knowing Creator of the Universe.

·        They believed that salvation and deliverance were God’s gifts to his people.

·        They believed they had a duty to obey God, no matter what.

What happened as a result?

[Read Daniel 3:19-20, 24-25]

One like the Son of God – Jesus Himself was with them in that fire.

And as a result they did not burn.

[Read Daniel 3:26-27]

Someone has summarized their story this way:

·        They did not bow.

·        They did not bend.

·        They did not burn.

IL: Rosa Parks is one of the most famous names in civil rights history. In 1955, Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man. She was arrested for her defiance.

In her book Quiet Strength, Parks writes:

When I sat down on the bus that day, I had no idea history was being made—I was only thinking of getting home. But I had made up my mind. After so many years of being a victim of the mistreatment my people suffered, not giving up my seat—and whatever I had to face afterwards—was not important. I did not feel any fear sitting there. I felt the Lord would give me the strength to endure whatever I had to face. It was time for someone to stand up—or in my case, sit down. So I refused to move.

In an interview about that historic day, Parks corrected some misconceptions:

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

Tired of giving in. Tired of giving in the world.

Parents – tired of giving in to the sinful culture around us.

It has been proven that when parents uphold standards, teenagers will come up to those standards.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse has released an extensive study on teens and substance abuse.

Their main finding was that "teens whose parents have established rules in the house have better relationships with their parents and a substantially lower risk of smoking, drinking, and using illegal drugs than the typical teen."

The study discovered that the successful parents habitually did at least 10 of the following 12 actions:

·       Monitor what their teens watch on TV.

·       Monitor what their teens do on the Internet.

·       Put restrictions on the CDs they buy.

·       Know where their teens are after school and on weekends.

·       Are told the truth by their teens about where they really are going.

·       Are "very aware" of their teens academic performance.

·       Impose a curfew.

·       Make clear they would be "extremely upset" if their teen used pot.

·       Eat dinner with their teens six or seven nights a week.

·       Turn off the TV during dinner.

·       Assign their teen regular chores.

·       Have an adult present when the teens return home from school.

Of the teens living in lax homes, only 24 percent had an exceptionally good relationship with their mothers and 13 percent with their fathers. Of the teens living in relatively strict homes, 57 percent had an exceptionally good relationship with their mothers and 47 percent with their fathers.

Jesus will give us the power to challenge our culture.

3.     The Potential to Change Our Culture

Something amazing happens at the end of this passage.

[Read Daniel 3:28-30]

What did Nebuchadnezzar do?

He blessed their God, instead of cursing their God.

He upheld their values, instead of outlawing their values.

He elevated their position, instead of throwing them into the furnace.

Everything changed. Because they dared to stand up and shock their culture.

Two groups: “Shock” and “Culture.”

The Morgan sea gypsies are a small tribe of 181 fishermen who spend much of the year on their boats fishing in the Andaman Sea from India to Indonesia and back to Thailand. In December, though, they live in shelters on the beaches of Thailand. In December 2004, in the hours before the killer Tsunami crashed ashore, the Morgan sea gypsies were living on those beaches. They were in harm's way and would have likely all perished—had they not listened to their elders.

For generations, the elders of the tribe had passed along one piece of wisdom. The tribe's 65-year-old village chief Sarmao Kathalay says, “The elders told us that if the water recedes fast it will reappear in the same quantity in which it disappeared.”

And that is exactly what happened. The sea drained quickly from the beach, leaving stranded fish flopping on the shore. How easy it would have been for those who live off of the sea to run down where the water had been minutes ago and fill every basket available with fish. Some people did just that in other areas of South Thailand. Not the Morgan sea gypsies. When the water receded from the beach, the tribal chief ordered every one of the 181 tribal members to run to a temple in the mountains of South Surin Island. When the waters crashed ashore, the 181 sea gypsies were safe on high ground. Craig Brian Larson, Arlington Heights, Illinois; source: "How 'Sea Gypsies' Survived the Tsunami," Associated Press, as seen in

Who Am I?

I have dreams

That will come true

I have goals

That I will conquer

I have morals

Which will remain pure

I have pride

That I will not let fall

I have ability

That I will turn into strength

I have respect

Which will not turn into rebellion

I have direction

And will not get lost

I have love

That is not bound by race

I have courage

Which I will use to stand up for what I believe

I have a mind

That will not be wasted

Who am I?

I am an American teenager

…

I will rise above your standards

By Melissa E., Age 18 [T. Suzanne Eller, Real Teens, Real Stories, Real Life (Colorado Springs, Colorado: Life Journey, 2002), 62-62]