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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.
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