So I will tell you, all of our campuses, I have missed this right here. I'm going to tell you, Kobe tried to mess us up, but we're back now, aren't we? And yeah, yeah, proud of you, proud of you. Hey, we've been talking about how to handle pressure, uh, in this new series, Under Pressure, and we said last week — and if you guys don't know, go to sleep, it's okay, I see you kind of doze, and there's two right there like, hey, I love you, but man, I did, it's okay — uh, but we've been talking about how to have the pressure that surrounds you, uh, and to do that, you got to deal with the pressure that's inside you, right? And we said last week, we all have shame. There's like a box of shame, and, uh, it's a lot of things have been done to you, or that you've done. And it's not just guilt where I feel bad about something, but shame says, I'm bad. And many of you feel that way, and it's not true. God's got a plan for you, God loves you, and.

But what happens is, when you get like pressured, or you get insecure, you get fearful, it's like somebody like lights a match and throws it in that box. It's like full of gunpowders, blows up. And and so we said, we want to deal with what's inside you. That was last week. And this week we want to talk about dealing with the pressure that's outside of you. It's the peer pressure that you face. You say, well, yeah, man, there's a lot of it out there, and it's hard being a kid. I understand that. Here's the thing about peer pressure — if you don't deal with it now, you, it will follow you your whole life. I mean, I go into nursing homes, like really old people, and they're still dealing with peer pressure in their wheelchairs, rolling up trying to get to the right table. I mean, it never ends.

And so to deal with that, you've got to decide if you're going to be willing to follow the one in the midst of the many. And the one is Jesus. And and if you don't get that, like you said, well, I'm too young — no you're not. We're going to talk about this today. You're not too young to get that. And I did the numbers on this. If just 18 of you, 18. If 18 of you decided, like what you saw with baptism, that you realized when you come to know Jesus, you've been born again. The old you has died, a brand new you has been raised to walk in newness of life, and you took that seriously, you would change your school. If you took that serious, even though you had to be by yourself, you would change your workplace. If you took that serious, and where you play golf, it would change your team that you play with. And the reality is, that's hard to do.

And for most of us, this is what happens, okay, stay with me, is that you — you know the right thing, and you want to do the right thing, and you love God, and you love Turning Point, we can, and you love everything about the fact that God is there, you're just not really following in Him. And the reason is, we all like religion. I mean, we we like religion to get more and more information about God, more and more information about the Bible. Oh yeah, I know that story. Oh yeah, I know that's wrong. Oh yeah, I know that's right. But but sometimes we're not actually following Jesus. And for some of you, there's a lot of adults here, like, you're religious, and you know about Jesus, and you know about the cross, and you know about the empty tomb, and you know church is important, and you know that you need to be more moral, but you've never been saved. Listen, Christianity is not knowing about Jesus, Christianity is following Jesus.

And it's so hard to do that, man, I know it. Listen, they did a study on students, and they asked them — this is not to make you feel bad, okay? This is, I'm trying to help you understand why this happens. They did a study on 10 000 students. They said, do you think having sex outside of marriage is right or wrong? And they had a bunch of them says, I think it's okay. Yes. They had another group that says, no, I don't think it's right. Here's the problem — when they went back and they talked to the students, they found out the people said, no, it's not right, we're having sex more than the people said it was wrong or it was okay. I mean, I mean, the reality is, if you're not careful, you will know the right thing, but you won't actually do the right thing. And the challenge is to to be faithful in realizing, that's not what you believe, it's what you do, that's who you are.

2400 years ago, the people of God were just like this. They were a lot like us, a lot like America, a lot like South Mississippi. God has said, this is what you're to do. He says, this is how you're to follow me, you're to have no other gods but me. And the people of God said, no, we we love you, we're going to go to the temple, but we're not going to just serve you. We're going to do things that we want to do too. We're going to hold on to you, but we're going to hold on to the things that we enjoy doing, because hey, that's kind of who we are and we're living in the real world. And they had a form of godliness, but they denied its power. And if you're not careful, what will happen is, you'll have a form of godliness, you'll have, yeah, yeah, yeah, God, but you'll deny His power through obedience, that when you obey what He has said to you, man, you get stuff you can't get any other way.

And I'll just tell you, it never gets easy to do the right thing. I mean, it's easy to be a chameleon. It's easy to be whatever place you're at, or the people you're with, to change colors to kind of fit in, and let them squeeze you into its mold. But but if you want to have a great life, you're going to have to be willing to stand alone when everybody else does something that you know God's not called you to do. Now, because of the people of God, we're not willing to listen to prophets, like people like me, who would come before them and say, hey, if you don't repent, I'm going to bring judgment against you, I'm going to bring a foreign government against you. It'd be like God's saying, if you don't begin to follow me and do the things I'm asking you to do because I love you, I've got a plan for you. He says, I'm going to bring the Chinese. He says, I'm going to bring the Russians.

Well, 2400 years ago, it was worse. He brought the Iraqis, he brought the Iranians. It was the Babylonian empire. And they came into Jerusalem, the city of God, and the big wall that was around the city, they tore it down. They went into the temple, in the Holy of Holies, burned the temple down, went into the Holy of Holies and got some of the things in the Holy of Holies, and they took it to their god in Babylon. They took the holy things of God and took them out of the Holy of Holies and put them in their god Dagon, in his house. And you say, well, goodness gracious, that's terrible. He gets worse. They took ten thousand people hostage. They took the best and the brightest, the people in your school that make 36 on their A.C.T., people without blemish, people that were smart. And they said, we're going to take them to Babylon, and we're going to make them Babylonians. We're going to teach them, and we're going to train them, and we're going to make them be like us.

You say, well, what's that got to do with us? What it's got to do with you is that Babylon has come here. But for the first time, I think it's dawned on us that we're living in Babylon. You're not being taken to Babylon, Babylon has come to you. I did the definition on Babylon. Babylon means a city or community devoted to materialism and pleasure. Have you ever known any group of people, in any area of the country, that's any more into materialism and pleasure and comfort as we are? You say, well, what do we do? We need to fight against the government, we need to tweet, we need to protest, we need to loot, we need to shoot. Listen to what Jeremiah says that they were to do in Babylon, and it blew me away, because it's counter to everything in our culture.

Says, "This is what the Lord Almighty says to all those carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon." He says, "Build houses, settle down, plant gardens, eat what they produce, marry, have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons, give your daughters in marriage, so they too may have sons and daughters, increase in number, do not decrease. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for the city of Babylon." What? "Because if it prospers, you too will prosper. Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty says: do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams they encourage you to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them, declares the Lord." He says, you need to be my people in a foreign land.

You want to deal with peer pressure, you want to have a great life, you've got to be different than 90 of the people around you. You've got to have the gumption, you've got to have the grit, you've got to have the understanding of the majesty of God and how big He is and how you are His. He loves you, His way is the best way. You say, well, how do you do all that? Well, in Daniel chapter one, let me read this real quickly. This is the story of what happened when they took them in to Babylon, verse three. And let's get down to verse three. "Then the king ordered Ashvanez, the chief court official, to bring into the king service some of the Israelites from the royal family and of the nobility, young men 16 years old, without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well-informed, quick to understand, qualified to serve in the king's palace. And he was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. And the king assigned to them the daily amount of food and wine from the king's table, and they were trained for three years, and after that they were into the king's service. And among them, who were chosen from Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Michelle, and Ezra. And the chief official gave them new names. He changed their name. He said to Daniel the name Belshazzar, to Hananiah, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Michelle Meshach, and to Azariah Bendigo. But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and ask the chief royal officer permission not to defile himself in this way."

In chapter three — and you might not know this, this whole story, because I'm realizing not everybody knows the stories in the Bible — but but but the king said, hey, I'm going to put this 90-foot statue out in the plains of Dora, and when the music sounds, you bow down to it. And when the music sounded, there were three boys, three men of God, who said, we won't bow. I want you to get that picture. Think, think about, at your school, think about, if they had a major meeting and there were thousands of people there, were probably hundreds of thousands of people there, and they started playing the music, okay? When the music started, everybody knelt down except for three young men. They said, we won't. We're not bowing. We only bow to our God. What would you have done? I mean, this is incredible. And you said, well, I would have stood. Well, if you knew you're going to be thrown into a fiery furnace, would you still have stood? Nobody. Took those three men, three young boys, and he threw them into the fire. And that was like the end of the story. They're gone. You better kneel.

You say, what does all that mean? Let me tell you two things. It'll be a short sermon because I know you're tired, okay? Some — we've already gone, I think she died, oh, anyway, I will raise her right. You come up, come out of there, come, and yeah, she's alive, Rose, that is, yeah, rising, okay? Here's what — I'm just playing with you, it's okay. Yes, I'm going to go back slowly. Realize what Babylon is doing to you. You want to stand when everybody else kneels, you need to realize what Babylon is doing to you. It's trying to change your identity. These boys had biblical names, and they said, we're going to change your name, so we're going to give you Babylonian names. It's no longer God is good, but you're the moon god. It's no longer look at our God, it's going to be, you're going to serve Marduk. They were trying to change their identity. They were trying to tell them that they weren't children of God, that they were children of Babylon.

Listen, let me tell you, with everything that's going on around you, the the culture we're in, Babylon is trying to change your identity. They're telling you, you've got to dress like this, and you've got to look like this, and you've got to do this. No, you're children of God. You represent another kingdom. Your daughters and sons of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. You're a people belonging to God. Don't let our culture lie to you. That's what Babylon's doing. He's trying to brainwash you. You go, you're being so crazy. No, no, no. They took three years to give them an MBA, masters in Babylonian activity. And they're kind of showing them everything they need to be doing. And this is what they're saying to them: it's okay, you can go to Tournament Point Weekend, but you need to also go to the other weekends where you do things you know you shouldn't do. That's what the Babylon culture says. Babylon says, hey, you don't just need — there's not just one God, there's a lot of ways to God, there's a lot of ways to heaven, you can do whatever you want to do, you just kind of throw God in on the side, like, like, you know, like, like a good lucky charm, and say, hey, I need God because I want to win this game, but actors, I'm going to do what I want to do. Just listen to the science, just just do what everybody else does. You do you. That's what Babylon's telling you.

I I was looking up at the stats. I don't know if you know — does anybody here know Carly D Emilio? Does anybody know her? It's okay if you do. Don't, you're not, you don't get started, you just said you've heard of her, okay? How many of you are lying right now? Would you raise your hand? Yeah, all of you. And that's a sin. See what I'm telling you? Yeah, yeah, you. Is that how you say it? Oh, you didn't understand what I was saying, okay? That's, how many of you know her? Thank you. Yeah, like, I didn't, I didn't really get what you were saying. Yeah. The 46 million people. You know what she's telling you? This is how you ought to dress, is how you ought to wall, this is how you ought to talk, and you listening to her. You say, well, how do you know that? Because you're spending one and a half hours a day on the tick tock. She woke up, she was dead, and they said, yeah, the tick tock, yeah, oh, oh, they preached the old man, no, he won the tickataka. Yeah, yeah, I'm not done yet. Between eight and 12 years old — that's younger than TPW — you're spending four hours in 44 minutes on your phone. I knew, I mean, I didn't have the heart to read like, you know, 13 through 20. My heart wouldn't let me do that. You know how many advertisements you're saying a day? 6 000. Did you know that?

Babylon has an algorithm on you. They are working you. They they are manipulating you. They're squeezing you into their mold. They're brainwashing you. They're taking your feelings and your ideas, and they're saying, no, this is who you are. This is who you are. More young girls are taking their life right now than ever before, because of Babylon. And the gospel says, you are beautiful. You are made by God and for God. He loves you. He's got a plan for you. But here's the third thing they do. After they send him to school, and like, these guys like, okay, you can change my name, okay, you can like put it all up on the screen, but I'm not eating that food and drinking that wine, because that comes from your god. Babylon offers you social status if you'll play the game, and if you'll do what everybody else does, if you'll sit at the king's table and eat the king's food.

Do you understand what was going on when they had those parties? These are 16 year old boys. Their frontal lobe had not been matured. They were all kind of wine, women, and song. It was crazy. They were they were playing songs like, like, you know, you, it's going to be — it's getting hot in here, I'm going to stop right there, y'all going to make me lose my mind. Oh, y'all know that song. Uh-huh. I love it, man. I love TPW. Yeah, I was, I was at a place to read — can I do this just for us for a second? I was somewhere recently, and you know, you think like it's only — only — well, I'm not beating up on, I'm not beating up on anybody. But I was at a place, and that song came out, and there was an old lady behind me that got, made me crazy in the air. Well, I said, girl, you need to sit down, I mean, don't do that, if you that age, I mean, it was old lady, I mean, she's thinking Jericho, it's a medicine, they take now. Here's the thing — that's what Babylon will do to you. That's what Babylon will do to you. They are working you. They're changing the price tag so you'll sell your soul for a bowl of porridge in Babylon.

Let me ask you something. When you leave here — and I know I got some merch — when you leave here, and the band starts playing, what are you going to do? When you leave the confines where everybody is around you, and the band starts playing, are you going to kneel, are you going to stand? He said, well, how do I do that? Good question. You have to decide where you draw the line before you face the test. Daniel 1 8 says, hey, I have, I have decided that I'm not going to kneel, I have decided, I have resolved, I have rehearsed, I have drawn the line. It's like Clint Eastwood said, a man's got to know his limitations. If you don't have principles you can stand on, you will fall for every proposition. How far are you going to go with sex? How far are you going to go with your phone? How far are you going gonna go with alcohol? How far are you gonna go with your friends? You better decide now. If you don't draw that line now, when you get in that moment, you won't even realize you're doing it. You didn't realize you're doing it. You know why? Because Babylon is pushing you away from the Lord every single day.

You see, how do you know that? Because it's happened to me, and I'm the preacher. I went to the New Orleans Saints game on Halloween. Big mistake. But I wanted to go. I, I want to see Tom Brady hopefully lose and never play again. And uh, and maybe Gazelle would be there, she's ugly. But here the thing is, I went, and and I guess you talking about, I think about this, it was Halloween, it was Halloween in New Orleans, and and I ran into to to, uh, Father Tommy's friend, and that, that's what is a pastor in our area that I love. And it was so crazy. And I went into the game, man, I could just feel it, like, I was in Babylon, I was in Babylon, I was in Babylon. And sure enough, I sit down, these great seats, and there's people in front of me, and they are so drunk. I mean, they're singing every song. There is a guy with his girlfriend and his girl, her girlfriend, and they're all like going crazy. And the guy said, we've never seen this before, why did you come with us, it's all because of you. And they start getting like crazy. He's dropping bombs, and I'm thinking, dang, that's terrible, you shouldn't do that. But I'm off, I'm off the clock, I'm off the clock, you know, nobody knows me, man. I've been hearing so much stuff on Netflix and Hulu and and and everything else primed it, like, it's kind of, kind of lowered the standards for language. Like, you can't watch anything without language. He's dropping the bombs, dropping the bombs, dropping the bombs. There's a guy in front of him, he stands up and turns around and goes, that's the last one coming out of your mouth. And I went, whoa.

And so the drunk man and his girlfriend and her girlfriend turned around and looked at me, looked at me. Of all the people in the whole building, they looked at me, and they said, did, did we offend you? I'm thinking, what, what, why me, why, why, damn, how about them? I mean, why me? Why did we offend you? And I think you know what I said, but I, I, I — why didn't I say yes? Because I was sliding. Babylon was having an influence on me, and I forgot that one person with God is a majority. And whenever God tells you, you stay with it. You say, how do you do that? You're willing to step into the fire — the fire being left out, the fire of losing a relationship, the fire of not being in the crowd that you've always dreamed of, the fire being called names, the goody goody. Oh, you think you're better. Because when you step in the fire, there'll be somebody with you. When Nebuchadnezzar — I love this — he looked down in the fire, he said, didn't you throw three in there? There's a fourth, and looks like the Son of the gods down in there. That's what God doesn't, He's got your back. Say, see, when you, when you refuse to kneel, He's right beside you, like, let's go. See, I'm afraid this is what's happening to a lot of you. When the, when the music starts playing, you know, I ain't gonna nail, but I'm gonna, I'm wondering, I mean, you know, I got to stay alive. Well, I ain't gonna nail, but I'm gonna kind of get some dogs up in here and hunker down, you know.

When revival hits, just 18 of you is all we need. We don't need all of you, just 18. It's when everybody else nails and you stand and you turn around and say, that's enough. Because you know what, when they tied up, I was jumping in. I was ready. I had been stretching. I was back there stretching, you know, kind of getting ready, yeah. Because you got to stand together. Let me ask you, and we'll be done, where is it in your life that the music's playing? You can't help but you're just bowing. I get it, man. I'm not, I'm not hurt. Listen, I'm not hating on you, you, I understand, man. All the stuff that you're getting, like, that you're not murdering somebody, it makes you think you're Gandhi. I get that. But where's it in your life? Oh, pornography. You know, when the first young boy sees pornography, parents, when they're eight, our kids need us. The next great awakening is going to come from here, if we're willing to do our part. But if you set your kids up just to be the homecoming queen and be Miss Mississippi — nothing wrong with either one of them — but if that's all you set them up for, you're setting them up for failure.

So I'm going to ask you to bow your heads for just a second, and look, I know this is a difficult message, but here's the thing — if you keep kneeling to Babylon, it's going to crush you. But if you'll stand for Jesus, that will last. It'll be your best life. So I invite you to get a bigger picture of God, to see, on the cross, He defeated Babylon, He defeated sin and shame in death, and He offers you life. C.S. Lewis says, and you'll never tame the lions in your life until you let God be the untamed lion in your life. And today I want to invite you to do that. Music's playing. In just a few moments, I want you to stand. And if there is something you're bowing to that you know is not right, would you lay that at the cross and say, God, help me. Help me, God. Put the right people around me, God. Help my parents to step in and help me, God. I don't want to just be the queen of Babylon, I want to be your daughter, I want to be your son. God has so much for you that Babylon is taken away from you. Lay it down. Stand for God.

God, we thank you that you're so patient with us, that you love us when we really have multiple gods. We're not just two-timing you, God. We have eight or ten different things we go to instead of coming to you. Father, pour out your spirit on us. Father, do in us what we can't do on our own. Help us to confess to the right people, God. Help us to talk to you and read your word, God. Give us the courage to follow you, to step in the fire. Because when we step in the fire, that's where we meet you. And Father, I pray these things in Jesus name, amen.