Wanted: The Brave | Joshua 1:9

How do we respond when we feel like the world is falling apart around us?  Do we get angry and fight? Stick our head in the sand? In this special message from Kirk Cameron, we learn that the best approach is a Gospel-centered one.

“Think of someone you know who’s not saved but you may be afraid to share the Gospel with that person. I’ve found a way that’s radically effective in training people to share the Gospel.”
― Kirk Cameron

It is great to be here with you from California, the land of loose nuts and bolts.
I wish public libraries were built bigger.
I don’t know if you’ve been following the news story that has been alive since Christmas of last year.
But I wrote a children’s book As You Grow, which is teaching Children the value of biblical wisdom and the Fruit of the Spirit.
And I wanted to do a public story hour reading in a public library.
And I was denied by over 50 woke libraries that previously held drag queen story hours for Children.
So I let a couple of friends at the news know about this.
I wrote letters to these libraries.
I wrote letters to these libraries who told me the reason you can’t come is because your values don’t align with our community values.
We’re a gender queer friendly community and your values are not ones we’re interested in or you’re not an author of color, which is what we’re focusing on here in our public library.
So I wrote them asking them which value they didn’t align with love, joy, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control.
I sent them a free copy of the book so that they could read it for themselves and reminded them that they live in the United States of America where public libraries are actually owned and funded by the people in their communities.
And their job is to represent the values that they want read to their families.
And that if they continued their religious discrimination against me and others like me, that I would be prepared to assert my constitutional rights in court, they quickly reversed course, they caved.
Sent a link we signed up and we got to rent a room in these public libraries that they said had communities that didn’t want us there.
When I showed up in the Indianapolis Public Library, I was greeted by over 2500 parents and Children overwhelmed the library, all six floors down the escalator, out the door and down the street showing me that the perception through the media is not the reality of what’s going on with the people.
And I found that in Scarsdale, New York, I found that in Scottsdale, Arizona, I found that in South Carolina, in North Carolina found that in New Jersey and everywhere we go there are rumblings of revival that I can feel.
Can’t you feel them? People are waking up? People are standing up and speaking up.
Well, the title of this message this morning is Wanted the brave in the ninth century.
During the 18 hundreds, the Vikings pillaged, torched and butchered their way through Britain city after city kingdom, after kingdom destroying families, faith and culture until they came to the Kingdom of Wessex, the most powerful kingdom in Britain.
And for seven years, King Alfred of Wessex held back Gorum, the Viking and the massive heathen horde that was destroying Britain.
And then on the 12th night of Christmas in 88 78 King Alfred of Wessex was finally driven together with his family, out of his kingdom of Wessex, barely holding on to his life.
And he took shelter on a tiny island in a swamp where he learned as a boy how to hunt with his father.
He could have made a strategic retreat to the mainland of Europe to find safety and liberty.
But he didn’t, he stayed in Wessex and he hid in a secret base on top of the highest hill in his kingdom to observe Guram and the Viking army’s movements.
And with a small band of warriors, he began to take out their scouts and cut off their supply lines.
The people of Britain thought Alfred was dead.
They were under the heavy yoke of Viking death and tyranny, their women were, were, were pillaged and raped, their men were murdered.
Their, their property was plundered. Life in Britain had become unbearable.
And then Alfred sent a message secretly out to the men of the land to gather them for one final battle against Guam, the Viking.
And he chose the day of Pentecost for this battle.
Five weeks after Easter, the people couldn’t believe it that Alfred had summoned them to them.
Alfred was dead, there was no hope but Alfred made his way through the forest and met in the secret meeting place to find 5000 strong men committed to the cause.
And they were overjoyed as though they had just seen their king come back from the grave and Alfred equipped them and reminded them men be faithful to God no matter the outcome and he will be faithful to you.
And he assembled them into a shield wall, an interlocking of arms and shields with the soldiers forming an Impenetrable wall to lead their battle.
And Alfred locked himself and led in this wall out to the battlegrounds against Guram and his hord of warriors who had taken the high ground and are now coming down like a flood to meet Alfred and his men arrogantly believing that they would destroy them quickly and easily.
But Alfred’s men had everything to lose their Children, their future, their property.
And so they were unrelenting, relenting and determined and it was a clash of sea of shield walls.
It was a dance of swords and shields. It was an absolute bloodbath.
And the Vikings were made up of these berserker who were filled with drugs and demonic dedication as they would leap over Alfred’s shield wall only to be impaled by his soldiers swords and finally by the hand of providence.
There was a break in the Viking shield wall exploited by Alfred and his men and they destroyed the Vikings on that battlefield.
Guram, the Viking leader escaped and he hid in his fortress but he was surrounded by Alfred and his men and he had no choice but to either surrender or starve to death.
The customary practice of that day would have been for Alfred the king to drag Viking Guram and his leaders out into the open and behead them all.
And what Alfred did was perhaps the greatest act of grace of the age.
He offered to spare Guru’s life and even grant him authority to rule a portion of the kingdom.
If he would agree to convert to Christianity, be baptized and agreed to the treaty of Wetmore, which would obligate him to treat all the citizens of the kingdom equally, whether they were Saxon or Scandinavian was so grateful to Alfred that he agreed he was baptized.
He became a son of Alfred in the faith.
He was so loyal to Alfred that when he had his own coins minted, he had his name given to him by Alfred, his Christian name Ethelson engraved into the coins.
He became an ally to King Alfred in battle for the rest of his life.
Alfred began to rebuild Britain, he rebuilt the schools, he rebuilt the family of faith and government.
He assembled an army and built a naval force that would rival the Viking long boats.
He believed that the Vikings were a divine scourge sent by God to wake up his people who had fallen into spiritual apathy and believed that the future of his country depended on systemic revival.
Alfred’s law code was built upon the 10 commandments and jesus’ sermon on the mount and he believed that if a man would learn the golden rule to love his neighbor as himself, then he would need no other rule ever.
This became the foundation for what we now know as English Common Law.
And then later in the United States, the Bill of Rights and our Constitution, the whole concept of equal rights under God can be traced back to King Alfred.
One historian said of him, he was a fierce warrior, a devout Christian ever thirsting for wisdom, deeply committed to justice, a lover of mercy and a king who gave himself for his people.
He was practically a myth and a much needed reality.
He was the king of the white horse.
Alfred, the great, that’s the portrait of the brave Alfred was not watching his culture crumble while he sat on the couch watching Fox news hoping for the rapture.
He was not waiting for Jesus to just take him out of the world because he understood the family of faith, had waited 4000 years for God to come from heaven and take sin out of humanity’s heart so we could take charge of his world and heaven.
The earth for the glory of God. That’s what drove him.
That sounds a lot like the great Commission go into all of the world, make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that I’ve commanded and I’ll be with you to the end of the age.
That sounds like the original mission that God gave to the first Adam in the garden.
Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, replenish it and take Dominion over all that I’ve made in the garden.
God creates mankind and gives him the mission.
And then Jesus in the garden of Mon says, not my will, but your will be done.
Lord. And then in the great co mission, he recreates humanity as a new creation and restores man to his mission.
As I’ve traveled the country, I’ve come to believe that we have a great shortage of brave men.
I meet many men and women but men whose countenance and attitude and responses to the, the evil that’s descending upon us.
And our Children revealing that they feel weakened and confused by our culture, castrated and powerless, controlled.
And we, we, we, we wonder why the culture crumbles.
When you flip through your news feed.
Think of what you’re seeing poisonous, toxic chemical clouds in the sky, increase of crime, disaster at the border inflation, China, Russia, Ukraine, the economy, the World Economic Forum, drag queens entering in and sexualizing your Children.
How do you respond?
Hey, see in times it’s the way it’s all gonna go down.
It’s just gonna get darker, man. I feel sad for our kids. Feel discouraged.
Do you feel hopeless? Are you inching toward the cliff of despair every single day?
Are you, are you, are you getting hot with rapture fever?
You just want God to get us out of here.
What if this national setback is really a divine set up for a spiritual comeback led by the family of faith.
As I’ve traveled the country, I’ve recognized that there are two groups of people.
There’s probably more than two, but these two, I see there are reporters and there are reformers and they’re not the same.
There’s many people who can accurately report on what’s going on in the world and they tell us the truth.
Look what they’re doing over here. Look at this hypocrisy, look at this cheating over here.
You know, the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is about six months.
And we see these guys are cheating or there’s this hypocrisy over here.
Look at this evil that they’re doing.
You’ll never guess the law they just passed in Minnesota or in Loudon County and, and all of this just piles upon us the boulder of, of, of fear.
And I’m also wondering when am I going to hear the, the solution?
Tell me what I can do to change this.
But often the reporters are, they’re not reformers, reformers are those who see what’s going on in the culture and they change the culture.
They’re solution oriented, they’re action oriented, trying to reform the culture without the gospel.
However, doesn’t work it, it, it, it’s never working. It can’t work. Why?
Because you can have great advice, great policies.
You can have biblical truths, you can have all of these good ideas.
But without the gospel, you and I are still stuck in Adams Prison.
We’re slaves to sin, holding on to good advice, great ideas.
That’s why conservativism apart from the gospel cannot get the task done. I like listening to good thinkers.
People far smarter than I am with great experience and, and skill. I like listening to Jordan Peterson.
I like listening to smart men and women. I like what Praeger has to say.
I like what Shapiro has to say.
I like listening to the insights from uh elected representatives on, on both sides of the aisle.
But without the gospel, it’s a nonstarter.
It can’t last over time because we’re subject to the, the passions of our lower nature and our fleshly desires.
We’re like Paul and Silas in prison.
In the New Testament with the Gospel, they’ve got the power to transform men and nations, but they can’t do anything with it in there until God sends an earthquake to jail, break them and they go out and change history.
What we need here in America is not just good ideas.
We need a spiritual earthquake to throw open the doors and set us free from the bondage of sin and shame and guilt and give us the power to implement these ideas systemically holistically comprehensively true reformers are products of the Gospel themselves.
It’s men who have been reformed in their heart, women who have been transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit who then lead with the gospel.
Think of this. God himself is a reformer. He’s not just a reporter. God creates the world.
He forms it out of nothing, the chaos in the beginning, it’s all good and then it goes bad through rebellion and sin.
I’m not seeing God in, in the staff meeting in heaven with the Trinity talking to the Son and the Holy Spirit saying, look at that.
Look what they’re doing. Can you believe that? Can you believe that all we’ve done for them?
Look, look, look, look what’s going on over there and just sort of let it go.
No, he, he, he deploys his own great reset when the thoughts of men were only evil continually and sends the flood and he deals with the sin problem and he begins to reform the world through a reformer named Noah who begins to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and take Dominion for the goodness and glory of God.
Noah was reformer. Abraham was a reformer. Moses reformed the concept of law. Jesus reformed humanity itself.
Saint Patrick of Ireland, reformed that entire nation, Luther Calvin William Wallace Braveheart was a reformer Wilbur Force, John Wesley.
Reformers pilgrims. Our founding fathers were not just reporters and commentators whiner and complainers and referees.
They were reformers. So how did they do it?
How did they do it in the face of their own woke. Mobs, cancel culture and government tyranny.
You see what is so called progressive today is not progressive. It’s just regressive.
It’s regressing back to the pagan ways before Christianity came and civilized the world.
But how did they do it? Well, I believe that they knew an old recipe for bravery.
They understood four ancient truths that predated history itself that delighted their souls and made them brave.
And I want to share them with you today because we are in need of brave men and brave women.
Ch Spurgeon lays these out for us.
He speaks of number one, the sovereign choice of the father by which he elected us onto eternal life.
That is a matter of vast antiquity since no date can be conceived of it by the mind of men.
We were chosen from before the foundations of the world.
The Bible says, not only that, think of this everlasting love went with the choice.
It was not just a sterile act of God, but divine affections were involved in choosing you.
He loved us from the beginning.
And not only the sovereign choice of the father and the everlasting love of the almighty, but the eternal purpose to redeem us from our ruin, to cleanse us, sanctify us and glorify us.
All of that runs side by side with unstoppable love and absolute sovereignty.
And the covenant, don’t forget the covenant, which is always said to be everlasting.
And Jesus as the second party in this covenant had his beginnings from of old, he struck hands.
Spurgeon says in sacred covenant long before the first of the stars began to shine.
And it was in him that we were ordained unto eternal life.
And so in the divine purpose, a most blessed covenant was established between the Son of God and his people, which will remain as the foundation of their safety.
When time shall be no more. You were chosen before the foundations of the world.
You were loved from the beginning.
You have been given part in an eternal purpose to be members of the loving army of compassion, to bring the gospel and life to the dead.
And you have been locked in to a covenant of love sealed by the blood of Jesus Christ himself and no one can snatch you out of his hand.
How, how shall we respond to these things hunker down?
Hold the line, try to stand your ground. Speak up a little wait to be rescued.
Don’t bother polishing brass on the sinking ship of Christian culture because it’s just the Titanic going down.
There’s no hope for the kingdom of God. I say no, I think that’s wrong.
I think we do what Alfred did.
I think we do what God told us to do. Advance take ground reform.
Go ahead and polish that brass and while you’re at it, swab the deck scrape the hull, stoked the coals, grab the wheel full steam ahead.
This, this ship is going forward. Not down. How do I know that?
I know that because 2000 years ago, God unleashed upon the world, the most powerful transforming force ever known to mankind, the self governing Christian freed from the chains and the shackles of guilt and shame armed with the only weapon powerful enough to subdue the earth and its institutions, the word of God.
And he became the the force, the bulwark of a movement begun by God himself.
And against which Jesus said, the gates of hell shall not prevail.
And historically, whenever this new creation of God, a true believer understands God’s instructions and applies them to all spheres of life, he increasingly takes Dominion over his circumstances.
He progressively proves that he who is born of God overcomes the world.
He’s not dominated by history. He shapes it according to the will of God.
We are called to be reformers, not just whining complaining reporters of bad things.
How do we do it?
First thing is we need a standard to reform two which we understand is the word of God.
In America. We have progressively removed the Bible from our morality, our education and our government, even our churches and we are now becoming our own standard and now anything is acceptable.
Literally anything good has become evil, evil has become good.
We live in an upside down inside out morality.
Think of the Grammy performance this year by a very popular singer who dresses in a skin tight red leather suit as Daddy Satan singing his unholy lyrics on national television with men in cages, dressed as women performing and gyrating sexual actions for all to see all applauded, celebrated and then sponsored by your favorite health care provider.
Pfizer. We have gender affirming care so called that one author wrote is the new lobotomy back in the fifties, there was what to do with mental illness.
They put people in padded rooms and gave them medications to calm them down.
And when that didn’t work, the medical industry performed surgeries and removed portions of their brain.
This was this discredited the medical industry and was a great spot on the legitimacy of what that portion of the medical industry understood and their practices were barbaric.
And today in the name of gender care, Children, young boys are being chemically castrated without their parents’ consent.
And young girls are having their bodies mutilated in the name of care.
How do you convince a crooked culture that they’re crooked when they have simply come to believe that the standard for what’s right is what they whatever they think because we’ve gotten rid of the Bible.
Charles Spurgeon says this beautifully.
He says, don’t spend any time trying to explain how crooked a crooked stick is simply lay a straight stick beside it and the work is done, preach the truth and error is abashed in its presence.
Reformers without the scriptures are deform.
So you have reporters, Reformers and Demers without the scriptures and the gospel. Hollywood.
The medical mafia big tech are deforming Children, gender, sexuality and culture.
When Jesus was asked in Matthew 19, is it right for a man or for a woman to or or for a man to divorce his wife?
For any reason, he held up the straight stick of scripture and said in the beginning, God created male and female.
And for this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh right there.
He told us everything we need to know about gender, marriage and sexuality.
So how, how do we apply the straight stick of the scriptures to culture that has become so crooked?
We do it the same way that God’s always told his people to do it.
He gave the strategy to Adam in the garden. He he reiterated it to Noah.
It would be a uh starting with the personal individual uh transformation of the heart.
It works itself out in through your marriage and your family, your home, it starts in the head.
You are transformed in your mind, you have the mind of Christ.
It moves to your heart, it moves to the works of your hands.
It characterizes the activity of your home and it moves all the way out to the city gates where government business is done.
That’s the God gave it to Moses.
It would be, it would, it would come through all of the great heroes of the faith.
And on down, it’s an inside out strategy and it’s driven by the family of faith.
This is good news because that means that the drag queens are not really the problem.
China is not the problem.
The who the CDC Bill gates, the World Economic Forum, George Sorrow, Silicon Valley Rulers. They’re not the real problem.
By the way, they’re nothing compared to the ancient Egyptians and what they did to people or the Babylonians or the medes and the Persians or the Roman Empire or the Vikings who would, who would build idols of metal and heat them up to extreme temperatures with fire and upon their arms, they would sacrifice their Children and they would, they would flip and sizzle like baby bacon.
They would impale people on stakes and light them on fire and hold them up as human torches to illuminate gladiatorial entertainment games.
What we’re dealing with now is nothing compared to that, but it will get there because that’s the depths of depravity that exist within the human heart.
And it’s interesting. God never said fear them. You read through.
He never says fear them. He says, fear me and I’ll bury them.
He says, be strong, be courageous. He says, he, he says, be be brave.
He says, be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged.
For the Lord, your God is with you wherever you go.
He said, but if you forget me, I will bring them to you to discipline you.
He says, if my people will humble themselves and pray, don’t look at them, don’t point at them.
Your biggest problem is you’ve taken your eyes off of me.
Turn from your wicked ways, come back to your father and I’ll take care of them and I’ll take care of you.
That’s what Alfred recognized. This is the revival that we need in America.
We need to return to a vision of victory. Reform yourself.
First reformed men, reform their world, starting with their marriage and their family and they don’t stop.
They keep reforming, they reform their church, their friendships, their workplace, their government and culture.
That’s the len that lens its way through the whole lump of dough.
That’s the tiny seed that grows into the giant tree that fills the whole garden.
That’s what Alfred did, what Saint Patrick did and Knox did. It’s what the pilgrims did.
Now, here’s a word to all the men in the room who are like, bro, I’m so with you.
Are you kidding me? I’m stocked up. I’m ready to go.
I think we should just 17 76 this thing and light it up right now.
This is a word for you.
We’ve got to do things God’s way or it won’t work.
It will become worse than it is.
Now, before we go all 17 76 which is the last resort.
Let let’s first go to Psalm 17 six and call on our God to turn his ear to us and hear our prayers and change our hearts reform ourselves.
First, a Dutch theologian in the 16th century Hugo Grotius said this a man cannot govern a nation.
If he cannot govern a city, he cannot govern a city.
If he cannot govern a family, he cannot govern a family if he cannot even govern himself.
And if he cannot, and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason.
And I would add, and he cannot rightly reason unless his mind is subject to the will of God, a real man, a brave man looks in the mirror.
He stares into the eyes of the serpent of lust that lives in his own heart, greed wrath, sloth envy, pride and he crushes its head through personal repentance and faith first.
And then when he has become faithful in small things, God will put him in charge of greater things.
So when you scrolling through your news feed today or tomorrow, and you see Guram and His Viking Hordes sailing in on their long boats.
You see the alphabet army in the rainbow religion, grooming your Children or socialism.
Metastasizing like a cancer through your government, destroying your culture.
Don’t put your head in your hands and cry in your chick fil.
A soup waiting for Jesus to take you and your Children out of this world.
I think Jesus is waiting for us and our Children to pick up our Bibles and take charge of this world as warriors in his loving army of compassion.
A final word to us this morning from a reformer who got it.
German monk Martin Luther.
Ein beg is a mighty fortress, is our God.
And through this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us.
We will not fear for God has willed his truth to triumph through us. Pet scripture.
The great hymns are filled with this vision of victory and an accurate picture of the battle between good and evil.
He has willed for his truth to triumph through us.
The scripture say we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
We are God’s ambassadors on heaven being sent out in a a reconciliatory mission commanding men to be reconciled to God.
He has offered terms of peace.
He has paid the price to redeem you out of the slave block of sin and He will adopt you into his family, the the prince of darkness.
Grim, we tremble not for him, his rage. We can endure for low, his doom.
Is sure one little word shall fell, him, resist the devil. The Bible says, and he shall flee from you.
There is only one sovereign of the universe and that is the almighty God who lives and reigns forever and ever.
Jesus Christ is the ruler of the earth and the devil is a defeated foe, slinking off to the lake of fire.
That word above all earthly powers.
No thanks to them, abide the spirit and the gifts are ours through Him.
Who with us side his kingdom is for before the world existed.
He chose you. He set his love upon you. He purposed to save and sanctify you.
He put you on the winning team safe in the covenant of His blood and no one will ever snatch you out of his hand.
The kingdom of God is winning, not losing.
The kingdom is expanding, not shrinking and it advances through the hearts of brave men and women like you and your Children.
If God can be for us and He is who can be against us, brothers and sisters as those who have been born of God and are sure to overcome the world by the word of God.
I implore you, be brave.