From His Heart

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On today's From His Heart broadcast, Pastor Jeff Shreve explains how a believer can, in practicality, be an atheist.

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An atheist doesn't pray. And a practical atheist doesn't really pray either. An atheist doesn't trust God. A practical atheist doesn't trust God either. They live in worry and fear, not believing in God. An atheist lives only for this life, for self and this life.

And so many Christians are living just like that. They live for this life. They're not thinking about the life to come. Practical atheism is something that's easy to fall into. It's a trap that's easy to fall into.

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We can heal every scars.

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Have you ever noticed yourself slipping into a cycle of worry and fear or doubt about things happening in the world or in your life? Do you get bogged down in the what ifs and the might happens?

Welcome to From His Heart and the preaching and teaching ministry of Pastor Jeff Shreve. In today's inspiring message called Practical Atheism, we're gonna see how to persevere through difficulties as we trust in God, who is there for each of us and who wants the very best for you and me. But why? Well, because he loves us.

This encouraging and inspiring lesson is one of six in Pastor Jeff's series, how to live the Christian Life in an Unchristian World. Now, this is a powerful and timely series. We're in all the rest of this month. If you miss any of these programs, be sure to go back online and listen once they've aired at fromhisheart.org.

So let's continue. Now, open your Bible to the second chapter of the Book of Daniel, as Pastor Jeff describes what practical atheism looks like.

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Atheism is the belief that there is no God. Atheism comes from the Greek, "ah," which means no or not, and "theos," which means God. You put them together and you get "no God." An atheist is someone who says there is no God. I believe there is no God. Now, I want to just check to see how many in this room would say, "Jeff, I believe there is no God." Can I see your hand? Don't be afraid. If you believe there is no God, we're not gonna... Well, I will point you out, but now we're not gonna make... You know, nobody. I don't see any hands up. There's no one in this room. There are probably very few people watching on TV or listening on the radio that would put their hands up and say, "Yeah, I don't believe there's a God." There might be some, but it would be pretty few.

You know, you don't have a lot of quote-unquote atheists in the church, but atheism is a big problem in the church. Not intellectual atheism—not people who say, "I don't believe there is no God." It's people who live like there is no God. Practical atheism plagues churches all over America. Practical atheism, living like there is no God. I heard about a little boy who was coming home from church. He was in the back seat with his mom and dad, and he was crying. His dad said to him, "Son, what's the matter? Why are you crying?" He said, "Well, Dad, the preacher said that every child should grow up in a home where it's a godly Christian home." He said, "Yeah, son, that's good. What's wrong with that?" He said, "Well, Dad, I want to grow up with you and Mom."

Now, some of you didn't like that joke, but hey, practical atheism can hit us to where our kids don't know. Do we really live like there's a God? One of the key ways to check yourself to see if you've fallen into the trap of practical atheism is to take a little test. First question: Does it have to do with prayer? An atheist doesn't pray, and a practical atheist doesn't really pray either. I mean, an atheist doesn't connect with God. A practical atheist doesn't pray much and doesn't connect with God. They may pray the little "now I lay me down to sleep" tape recorder type of prayers, but they're not connecting with God.

How about this question or this test question? An atheist doesn't trust God. A practical atheist doesn't trust God either. They live in worry and fear and don't believe God. An atheist, an intellectual atheist, doesn't give to the Lord's work to further the gospel. Why would he? Why would she? And so many who call themselves Christians don't do that either. They don't give to the Lord's work. An atheist lives only for this life, for self and this life. And so many Christians are living just like that. They live for this life. They're not thinking about the next life. Practical atheism is something that's easy to fall into. It's a trap that's easy to fall into.

Now we're in a series on the Book of Daniel, and we've called this series "Shine: How to Live the Christian Life in an Unchristian World." If you remember the story of Daniel, Daniel was a teenager, probably 14 or 15 years old. Daniel gets kidnapped. The Babylonians come in and they attack Jerusalem. They besiege the city. They put Jerusalem under their thumb. The Babylonians are the big bad boys on the block. In 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar is their king. When they subjugate Jerusalem and Judah, they take some people with them, cherry-picking some of the really sharp-looking kids and taking them back to Babylon. Babylon's hundreds of miles away. Daniel and some of the nobles' kids are part of this group.

Daniel has three friends. We know them best by their Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They take them back to Babylon and put them in Babylonian graduate school because they said these kids are pretty sharp. They're going to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans. If you remember the story, they changed Daniel's name to Belteshazzar. Daniel has a great name: "My God is Judge." They change it to "Bel is my protector," which was their Babylonian God. They had one national God in Babylon, and his name was Marduk or Bel. They wanted to indoctrinate these boys into the ways of Babylon so that they would forget about their homeland and forget about Yahweh God.

But the scripture says in Daniel 1:8 that Daniel made up his mind that he was going to live for the Lord. He made up his mind, "I don't care where I live, I'm going to shine for the Lord, and I'm not going to defile myself with the sin of this world, with the king's choice food that had been offered to idols." Remember this, students: Daniel is around your age; he's 15 years old, and he takes a stand. He's going to shine. He made up his mind. His mind said this: "I trust God. There is a God in heaven." The key verse of Daniel, chapter 2, verse 28, is "There is a God in heaven." Daniel lived it out. He practiced his faith. Practical atheism wasn't a part of Daniel's life because he lived every day and practiced every day. You couldn't be around Daniel for a short while before you knew that man believes there's a God in heaven, that man lives as if there's a God in heaven, and that God is real.

You and I can learn so much from Daniel about how to really live out Christianity. Because here's the thing: we have people in our lives that if we're not living it out, they don't know it. Have you ever had the experience? I know I've had this, where you find out that someone's a Christian, and you've known this person for a long time, and it's like, "Wow, I didn't know you were a Christian." It's really bad when it's you, right? They look at you, shocked. "I've known you for years. You're a Christian? I didn't know you were a Christian." Why? Because I thought you were a practical atheist. I look at your life, and I don't see any difference. I don't see you trust God, and I don't see any kind of fruit of the Spirit. So I didn't think you really believed that there is a God in heaven.

Well, let's look today from Daniel, chapter two, about what God has to say about how to move from being a practical atheist to being a practicing Christian. Daniel, chapter two. I'll begin reading. In verse one, it says this: "Now, in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams, and his spirit was troubled, and his sleep left him. Then the king gave orders to call in the magicians, the conjurers, the sorcerers, the Chaldeans, to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king. The king said to them, 'I had a dream, and my spirit is anxious to understand the dream.' Then the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, 'O king, live forever. Tell the dream to your servants, and we will declare the interpretation.' The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, 'The command from me is firm. If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you will be torn limb from limb, and your houses will be made a rubbish heap. But if you declare the dream and its interpretation, you will receive from me gifts and a reward and great honor. Therefore, declare to me the dream and its interpretation.'

They answered a second time and said, 'Let the king tell the dream to his servants, and we will declare its interpretation.' The king answered and said, 'I know for certain that you are bargaining for time, inasmuch as you have seen that the command from me is firm, that if you do not make the dream known to me, there is only one decree for you. For you have agreed together to speak lying and corrupt words before me until the situation has changed. Therefore tell me the dream, and that I may know that you can declare to me its interpretation.' This is pretty tough. The brain trust, the magicians, the Chaldeans, the soothsayers, and the fortune tellers were all like, 'Hey, there is not a man on earth who could declare the matter for the king, inasmuch as no great king or ruler has ever asked anything like this of any magician, conjurer, or Chaldean. Moreover, the thing which the king demands is difficult, and there is no one else who could declare it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling place is not with mortal flesh.'

They're saying, 'Hey, Nebuchadnezzar, give us a break here. How are we supposed to know what you dreamed? Tell us the dream, and we're good interpreters of dreams.' Nebuchadnezzar says, 'Forget it, I'm not telling you the dream. You're supposed to be so smart. You're supposed to be the fortune tellers, the guys that can tell the future. Well, tell me what I dream.' It says in verse 12, 'Because of this, the king became indignant and very furious and gave orders to destroy all the wise men of Babylon.' So the decree went forth that the wise men should be slain, and they looked for Daniel and his friends to kill them. Daniel and his friends had just graduated at the end of chapter one from the three-year Babylonian graduate school, and they were still kind of apprentices.

Now they're 18 years old, but they're in this group of the wise men of Babylon. Because Nebuchadnezzar got mad at the wise men of Babylon because they couldn't interpret his dream, they couldn't tell the dream and its interpretation. Nebuchadnezzar is just like, 'You guys are done.' Back in those days, when the king said, 'You die,' you died. That's just the way it was. They go to kill all the wise men of Babylon, and that includes Daniel. Daniel's like, 'Whoa, this is a bad deal, right? I'm getting killed.' In chapter one, he stood up because he wasn't going to defile himself with the king's choice food. He stood up and trusted God. God does not want me to eat this food sacrificed to idols. He doesn't want me to eat, you know, ham and cheese sandwiches. I just can't do that. I'm a good Jewish boy. I'm going to honor the Lord. The Lord backed him up on that. He had vegetables and water, and God made him strong with the vegetables and water.

So chapter one was dicey. Chapter two, now he's going to die. The decree is firm, and the king has said all the wise men of Babylon are going to die. He's in a bad situation, but he knows something. He knows that there is a God in heaven. Now, I want to give you three encouragements from this story that will help you, that will help me to live out our Christianity. Encouragement number one: Because there's a God in heaven, we don't have to worry or fear. See, one of the biggest things that we do to show people that we don't really believe there's a God in heaven is when bad news comes our way, we freak out. The Bible says over and over, do not fear. Do not be afraid. Don't worry. Jesus said in the great Sermon on the Mount, as it's recorded in Luke, right after he says, 'Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you,' Luke says, then the very next thing was, 'Do not be afraid, little flock.'

I like that, you know, because Jesus is the shepherd. He says in John, chapter 10, 'I'm the good shepherd.' The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. That's the motif that's used in the Bible. We are sheep, and he is our shepherd. He's a good shepherd who loves his sheep and who lays down his life for his sheep and who leads his sheep. The Bible calls Jesus the good shepherd. In John, chapter 10, the Bible calls Jesus, in Hebrews, chapter 13, the great shepherd who rose from the dead. Then the Bible calls Jesus the Chief Shepherd. In First Peter, chapter 5, the Chief Shepherd who is coming again for his own. So when you think about that, do not be afraid, little flock. For I am the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. I am the great shepherd who rose again from the dead. I am the chief shepherd who is coming again in power and great glory.

So you don't have anything to be afraid of because the shepherd takes care of his sheep. The shepherd is in control of all things. Now remember this: Because there's a God in heaven, we can be calm and confident because God is in control. Daniel heard the news. Hey, Ariarch, the guy that Nebuchadnezzar sent, the captain of the king's bodyguard, is coming. He finds Daniel and says, 'Oh, Daniel, I'm glad I found you. Where are your friends? Because I'm going to kill you now. I gotta kill you.' Daniel's like, 'Hey, Jack, time out. Run that by me again. What did I do? I just graduated summa cum laude from Babylonian graduate school. I mean, they were throwing me a party at the end of chapter one, and now you're getting ready to kill me.'

The scripture says in verse 14, 'Then Daniel replied with discretion and discernment to Ariarch, the captain of the king's bodyguard who had gone forth to slay the wise men of Babylon. He answered and said to Ariarch, the king's commander, "For what reason is the decree from the king so urgent, so harsh?"' Then Ariarch informed Daniel about the matter. Notice Daniel is not freaking out with the news. He's got discretion, he's got discernment, he's got wisdom, he's got prudence, he's got a calmness about him. How in the world does he have that? He knows there's a God in heaven. He knows that God has him in the palm of his hand. He knows that he doesn't have to fear because the Lord has said to him in an Old Testament kind of way, 'Hey, don't be afraid, little flock. I'm going to take care of you.'

In the book of Isaiah, the Lord says, 'When you pass through the waters, they will not overflow you, and through the rivers, they will not drown you. When you walk through the fire, it will not burn you, nor will the flame kindle upon you. So do not fear.' Daniel took that to heart. He wasn't going to fear; he was just going to trust God. There was a calmness about him. Listen, I don't know what you're facing today. Some of you are here, and you're facing maybe you're getting ready to graduate from high school or college, and you don't know what you're going to do. You don't know what the next step is. Many who graduate from college and don't have a job are nervous because they're like, 'Man, I gotta get a job. I don't have a job. What am I going to do? I don't know what I'm supposed to do.'

There's worry and there's fear about the future. Some of you are facing financial difficulties, job difficulties as an adult, and you have bills and obligations, and you say, 'Man, I've lost. I need another job. I don't know what's going to happen.' Worry and fear can fill your heart. Some of you are facing physical issues. You're facing chemo. You're facing serious medical issues, and your heart can easily fill with fear. You gotta remember there's a God in heaven who's in control. I don't need to be afraid. Maybe you're here and you say, 'You know what? I want to be married.' And your biological clock—you're a woman—and your biological clock is ticking. You say, 'I want to have children, and my clock is ticking, and I can't turn it back. There is no Mr. Right. There's no Mr. Okay. I can't find a Mr. I mean, there's nothing.' You trust God. The Lord's in control. The Lord knows all of this stuff. God knows. God works. He knows where you are. You never get off the radar with God, so you just trust him.

Daniel said, 'This is bad news, but God knows where I am, and so I'm calm about this. My life is in his hand. I don't need to worry. You don't need to be afraid because he knows what he's doing.' You might hit some rough patches, yeah, because that's part of life. But you can have calmness and confidence. Do not be afraid, little flock. The Lord says, 'I will take care of you.' So that's the first encouragement: hey, there's a God in heaven, so we don't have to worry or fear. Secondly, because there's a God in heaven, we can pray, and that God will answer us.

Daniel gets the news from Ariok. 'Hey, I gotta kill you and your three buddies because you're part of the Babylonian brain trust. Nebuchadnezzar says, "You guys are worthless," and so he's wiping you all out.' Daniel said, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out, time out.' He said, 'Let me go into the king and request some time because we need to pray.' He had such power about his life because the favor of God was upon him when he went before Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar gave him time. The Chaldeans and the magicians and the soothsayers asked for time too, and he said, 'Forget it. I'm not giving you time. I'm killing you guys.' But he did it for Daniel.

So Daniel comes back home, he gets his three friends, Ananiah, Hazariah, and Mishael, his three Jewish buddies, all the same age, and they begin to pray, and they begin to call upon the Lord. Hey, because there's a God in heaven, we have the privilege to pray. Jeremiah 33:3 has been called God's phone number. It says, 'Call to me,' in the amplified, 'Call to me, and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things fenced in and hidden, things which you do not know, which you do not distinguish and recognize, have knowledge of and understand.' That's God. He's going to show us things. He promises, 'I will answer you. I will show you things you don't know.'

Now, what did Daniel and his three friends need? They needed to know the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had. And that dream came from God. As you study chapter two, you'll find out that Nebuchadnezzar had a very big problem. He had a dream that God gave him about the future. God plagued him with this dream. It says in verse one that he had dreams, but it was the same dream over and over and over again. It was a scary dream, but it was a dream about the future. It was

Speaker 1

Today's message was part one of the lesson called "Practical Atheism" from Pastor Jeff Shreve's six-lesson series, "How to Live the Christian Life in an Unchristian World." You see, in today's world, living the Christian life can be difficult as the struggle to compromise our faith and conform to society's code of living presses in on us. But what does God have to say about battling the pressures and temptations of compromise?

One way to learn how to be ready for the spiritual battles we face is to study Pastor Jeff's new series, "This Is War: Overcoming the World, the Flesh, and the Devil," which we aired earlier this month. The series is also our gift of thanks to you for your support to From His Heart this month of any amount. You can get the series on a USB flash drive, on CDs, or you can watch it on DVDs or as an MP3 digital download. When you make that gift today by calling 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-24253) or going online to fromhisheart.org, you are investing in the eternal lives of those who will hear and respond to the good news of Jesus. Just request the series, "This Is War: Overcoming the World, the Flesh, and the Devil," when you reach out today.

Time's up for today. I'm Larry Nobles, inviting you to join us next time when we'll explain how to respond to a person who describes themselves as a Christian, but there's never been any real evidence in their life that they have been or are one. Discover how to know what to offer the practical atheist when you listen next time to From His Heart.

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There is true, there is bless, There is hope that you always dream of he can heal every scars of real truth, real love, real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

From his heart is the listener supported broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Sri Lanka speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world.

Remember that no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more at fromisheart.org.