In this episode of Beholding Bible Truth, Scott continues the summer series, addressing the deep-seated human desires for fame, identity, and to be known, exploring how these are truly fulfilled in Christ. The discussion brings to light historical insights with discussion of observations made in the 1830s about the unquenchable pursuit of prosperity that are still relevant today. Scott also encourages us to allow God to fulfill our desires, seek a godly reputation, and live for God's glory rather than personal recognition.

Scott also discusses the modern culture's allure of fame and its implications, including pride, power, and recognition, while highlighting its dangers, such as arrogance and lifestyle changes. The episode discusses how Christians are not immune to these desires and must constantly check their motivations. Listeners are reminded of the importance of seeking approval and identity in God, understanding that real contentment lies in God's recognition and not in superficial fame.

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Key Topics Discussed:

• Desires for fame and identity in Christ
• Modern culture's allure and dangers of fame
• Seeking approval and identity in God
• Pitfalls of superficial interactions
• Importance of godly reputation and humility
• Bringing glory to God in our endeavors

Hi. If you're looking for greater hope, assurance, and confidence through the shifting sands of life, then join me on today's episode as we dig deep into the bible to discover rock solid truth for life and living from the God of the bible. I'm your host, Scott Keffer. Hi, and welcome to today's episode. As always, for a deeper experience, you can go to the show notes and download the blank insight sheet. Fill in the blanks along with the group. Depending on how you're listening to this, there will be a link to the episode website at beholdingbibletruth.com, and a sheet with the answers is included as well. Enjoy today's episode.

I put on here, I never saw the I never saw the movie, but I certainly remember the song. It won an Oscar and lots of time played on the radio fame. I'm gonna live forever. Right? Everybody knows it. Right? But it was it was well known. I didn't see the movie or not. Thought it was interesting. Oscar Academy Award, Golden Globe fame.

I wanna I'm gonna live forever. I'm gonna learn how to fly. I feel it coming together. People will see me and cry. Fame, I'm gonna make it to heaven. Light up the sky like a flame. I'm gonna live her for I'm gonna live forever, baby. Remember my name.

So here's the question. What's fame? Write down for you. What does it mean? Fame. What's fame? What does fame mean to you?

Recognition.

Recognition. Recognition. Who else? Fame? To me.

Yes. To be known by many?

Known. Yeah. Known by many. Claim.

A claim?

A claim. Plain or mouse?

Sense of importance.

Sense of importance. Sounds of importance. Anybody else say anything different?

Kind of along the same lines, notoriety. Notoriety.

Notoriety. Notoriety. So what makes it so desirable? Right? Recognition known by many claims, notoriety, importance, sense of importance. What makes it so desirable? What makes fame so desirable? Because it's interesting as I would say fame is an important, something important in culture. Yes. Yeah. Right. Right culture.

And that, if you think about it, is it just important in today's culture? No. If you look at it, it's been important in culture, which means it's there's something important about it to all people. Right? Because it's it's been in all cultures and and all times. Right? And I put I put on there the, humans have always coveted them while it says Achilles, the Greek hero of Homer's Iliad, chose to die in battle attaining what the Greeks call Cleos, the immortality that comes from a glorious reputation. So what makes fame so desirable?

You live beyond yourself. Live beyond yourself. We all desire we all desire to be loved and known, and we're all bags of skin. And realistically, we wanna live beyond that. To be living in people's hearts, in their minds, and beyond when we when this bag of skin is gone and, known into the future.

Known into the future. What else? What makes it so desirable? Pride. What is it?

Pride.

Pride? What else? What makes it so desirable?

It can be associated with power and money.

Could be. Yeah. With power and money. Right? Open doors. Right? Access to things. Right? K. Well, what makes it so desirable?

It's a sense of rising above others.

Rising above others.

Just Just

wanting to know that my life matter.

Wanting to know that my life matters. Some of the desires are okay desires, They just get right? Get get, pulled into the wrong direction that they

could be. So But what are

the dangers of what are the dangers of fame? What are some of the dangers of fame?

Arrogance. Arrogance. Follow yourself? Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Taking personal credit for it rather than giving that credit to God.

Personal credit and even not giving the credit to other people. Right? Mhmm. Nobody nobody gets where right? Nobody gets where they want. Anybody who's read the Midford series? The books, the Midford series? So we went to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and the woman who wrote the Midford series remember her

her name? I don't

remember her name. Jen Kelly. Jen Kelly.

Jen yeah. She lived in Blowing Rock, North Carolina and it was it was kind of the setting of Midford if you read it. She lived there until she couldn't live there anymore because they figured out where she lived. And then they would plant themselves outside of her house, and they take pictures. And so, practically, once they understood where she live, she had to leave town. Right? So, practically, fame has the sense of if you're well known. Right? The the dangers of that is you can't go anywhere. You can't go anywhere.

What else? Dangers of

Well, in order to maintain it sometimes, you have to, like you alluded to, change your lifestyle. You start living for others instead of maybe your family or yourself. Yeah.

And if you really want it, maybe you're willing to do anything to do anything to get it. You can do anything to get it. Right?

Sometimes, fame can go and withdraw us from the world.

Yep. Yep. So the the kind of mistaken understanding obtained with Christians is now we've become a Christian, and we no longer have the struggle that we did before. In other words, Christians can't want fame, but we're Christians. Right? Well, so if you think about, there are some there are some good desires that become not so good as a result of sin in the world system. Right? And so we've had we we come to Christ. We're still on this journey of sanctification, which is which is, you know, grace renewing and restoring our desires, if you will, our heart, and bringing it in line with god, but we still struggle with that, don't we? And so someone would say, well, fame has to do with worldwide recognition everybody knows

your name. Right? Interesting. So I

put on a everybody knows your name. Right? Interesting. So I put on there. So for you, what areas are you seeking fame? What areas are you seeking fame? Where could we seek fame? Pickleball. Pickleball. So it could be sport. Right? Could be sports.

Work.

Could be family. Could be work. Right? So lots of places. It doesn't have to be national, does it? It could be local and whatnot. Right? So the the importance, as I always say, you know, most important thing about scripture is it's not PFO. These are non proverbs or others. Right? So I know so and so that needs to hear this message. I hope this is recorded because they are really seeking faith.

How many know people were really seeking faith? Come on. You know people. They are really seeking faith by the horns. Right. So the scripture said, holding everything out, mirror. Right? So the whole idea is so to just identify, okay, where where am I seeking, say? Where am I seeking thing? In the video, he's gonna talk about where thing goes goes wrong. And then we're gonna come back and look at at believers, how can we think about this, and what's our our response? As a reminder, we're all about this close. We're all about this close, but whatever it was I mean, for Ravi Zacharias, it was an addiction.

Right? Sexual addiction. And we're just it's not Ravi. It's us. You know, I gotta remind myself we're all we're all that close to whatever that thing is. Whatever that thing is that snags us. Yes.

It's a short timeline from being famous to infamous. Yeah.

It's a it's a step, isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it? Not just timeline, but it's it's all and it's a reminder that it's just like Jonathan Edwards said that the the judgment of God isn't like a time in the future. He said for people who don't know Christ, it's as if they're walking on a frayed afraid well, more like a bridge, like, on a frayed bridge that could fall at any time. Right? So the same thing to hear, we walk beside it because it's around us all the time tempting us. Right? For sure. So it's important for us to understand not to to gloss over, but to understand we're we're all vulnerable to that. We are all vulnerable in all sorts of way. Because we're gonna say, well, I've never had that kind I've never had Remedy Zach or I just kind of thing. No.

But I can be seeking fame on a local level, small level, a small place. Right? And yeah. So good thought. Good thought.

I thought that Jim turned me for a sense of, like, and that's something to Job where he says, where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Just, like, you know, how we can think where someone may just tell them the video about that. So that's what I thought of. Just Where were you? Right.

Yeah. That's a good one. Good questions.

Go ahead.

He said, focus on the glory of God.

Focus on the glory. Yeah. Go. Yep. I think mine's just more of an observation. It seemed like alone, like, you know, when he thought his brothers were behind him, you know, with this reputation of, you know, don't mess with any you know, he acted a certain way, if I'm sure. And when that went away, I don't know whether he still acted the same way, but, you know, his vulnerability became very, you know, much exposed and because probably of this attitude and this lifestyle. It's because, like, you no longer have that connecting or whatever.

Sometimes I think the pride is maybe based on something you think you possess or something that you have standing behind you or whatever. That's pretty easy to lose that.

Pretty easy to lose that. Yeah. Yeah. I search for what's a 5 letter word. You do scrabble at all, but

what's a 5 letter word for fame and fortune? Oh, glory. What's the perks? You know? 1, 2, 3, 4, just a little bit of a sudden letter. Startup came up. What's the word for payment startup?

The sense of recognition, the sense of being known, the sense of being something value, all of that. Right? So I thought if that's the case, if we if inherently, there's a there's a desire that's inside of that that that as believers, god is is cleansing, if you will. That desire, it's not gone away. So I thought about that. How do we how do we do that? So if you flip over and because we in in some ways, we all if you look at kind of the 6 core motivations of every human being, fame is on there. It just is for all of us. Right? It goes wrong, but it's it's so I thought, sorry. If if if we are motivated to seek it, how do we keep the motivation? Because I don't know how you motivate I don't know how you seek humility.

I that's I'm like, the minute you seek humility, it's prideful. I just don't know how you see humility. Right? It's a it's a it's a result. So I thought, well, what would you see? I started to think about that. What we see? First of all, we do we do see. Right? So what would I see? Well, first of all, we seek approval. Right? So we should seek approval, but we should change who do we seek approval from. Right? So we are taught the concept of the audience of 1.

Right? So seek approval from god. Seek approval. We all seek approval. Right? That doesn't go away. I just have to make redefine. The scripture says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, how you think. Right? So we have to transform what we consider approval. Who do we seek approval from? So let's read this Galatians 110 again.

For if I now receive either favor of men or of God, or am I striving to please men, If I was still trying to please then, I would not be a boss servant of Christ. So he says, if I was still trying, what does that mean? That means inherently, certainly before we are Christian, we sought to please men. Why? Because we're wired to seek approval. I forget that. That does not change. It's not like that goes away. So he's saying I had to redefine how I seek approval. Right? If I was still seeking it from men, right? Favor of men.

So, who am I seeking favor from? So I went from here to here. So understand, your default is going to seek favor from from people around you, isn't it? Right? So I have to be careful. I have to seek favor from god. Seek favor. His master said to him, well done. See, we're wired for well done. Does everybody get it? That's not going away. We just had to define who do I want a well done from.

Forget the difference? It doesn't go away. So, we all seek well done, right? So, we seek approval from god and and and in Hebrews, it says, without faith, it is impossible to please god. Without faith, So we seek approval from god, and we do it through faith. Right? We do it through faith because we have to apply what what he's doing. Right? If he comes to god, let's believe that he is, and we have to trust that he is a, underline that, a rewarder of those who seek him. He is a rewarder of those who seek him. So we should see, keep seeking, but we seek approval from God. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Number 2 is this sense of, it seems to me, it's a place where everyone knows my name, where I am somebody, where I am known. So so the question is my identity. It's identity. We wanna all feel like we're somebody. Right? So we seek our identity in being known by god and thought of by him. Being known by god and thought of by him. Do you ever wonder, does my life matter? Does, you know, am I am I valuable at all? Right? So the scripture says, so people say, you know, when I came to correct, you know, when I came to know god and Galatians says, you're confused. It's not you knowing god.

It's whether god knows you. So it says, for now, that you come to know god or rather to be known by god. That's the most important thing. That's the most important thing. And he says, amazingly, behold, I have inscribed you on the palm of my hand. He talked about how Pallone had all these tattoos. Right? God has tattooed you onto the palm of his hand. What does that mean? Are you valuable to him? You're in the palm of his hand.

You are inscribed permanently inscribed on the palm of his hand. That's who you are. Right? That's who you are. Mhmm. And then it says, how precious are thy thoughts to me, oh god. How vast is the sum of them? Oh, lord. How many thoughts do you have of me? He says, if I should count them, they would underline, outnumber the sand. And when I'm weak, I'm still with you.

So if you've been to the shore, you know, there's a lot of sand. That's how many thoughts that god has of you. Now I cannot imagine thinking that much of me. No. I think a lot of me, but I can't imagine god thinking that much of me. What's that mean? His thoughts are always of you. There's so many of them. So you wonder, is somebody thinking of me? Yes.

God is thinking of you all the time. In the midst of the thing with Mary Ann, is god was god away somewhere else? Is he not in this every moment of every day? Of course. We're confused because we don't see all the thoughts or know them. But right?

That's before when you're saying, yeah, just thinking of me, look at everybody else in his room. He's thinking of all of us. Think of all the energy and the thoughts and the care, you know, right here that we it's amazing.

It is amazing.

God bless it.

Hard to comprehend. So you gotta think that much. But that's not my identity. Right? That's part of fame. I wanna know that I'm somebody. Right? And and he reminds us, understand that you're somebody to God, that you're known by him.

The third

thing I thought is to seek excellent behavior. Keep your behavior excellent. Was that neat? Act well among the Gentiles out in the world. Why? So that the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may, on account of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. So you should write down there the man behind the black curtain. Yes. So in the Wizard of Oz, you remember, they're they're trembling there, and he says, you're like, the brute and powerful all of us, and they're freaking out. And Toto runs over and grabs the curtain and slides it back and they see him pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

So in our world, that great and powerful Oz, which is the public persona view, should match the man behind the curtain. If I get it, we should be the same. The man behind the curtain should be the same as your post. And what he said, of course, today is, you know, in with Facebook, it's your branding agency. Everybody gets to create their their their Christmas letter on Facebook. You know the Christmas letter where everything's amazing, and you're amazing, and your kids are amazing, and all is amazing. Right? Everybody likes that. You want your behavior to be excellent.

The next thing is to seek he said, do you see a man, underlined, skilled in his work? You will stand where? Before kings. He will have fame. That's fame, isn't it? You'll stand before kings. Right? He will not stand before obscure men. Seek to deliver excellent work. And that does mean while we while we are our professional career, whether we're retired or not, we're always work. We're doing work. Right? Whether we're retired or not, we're doing work.

It's saying sign it. Seek to deliver excellent work. He said, you want fame, we have fame for your work, you know, and and not because you put a bible verse on it. I don't believe that, you know, as Jesus crafted stone or he did woodwork, he didn't he didn't, you know, ascribe a a verse to everything. He he ascribed a verse to it in the in the way that he did his work. But does that make sense? Mhmm. He should be the most excellent stoneworker, the most excellent woodworker, same for us. Whether we were retired or not, it doesn't matter.

We're always doing work, aren't we? We're doing some form of work around the house or whatever. Next is seek a godly reputation. Seek a godly reputation. It says in, Romans, there was a report. What was the report of? Your obedience. Report of your obedience has reached to all. Right? Saying, right? Saying, therefore, I'm rejoicing over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent and what is evil. So he's giving us a sense of what that could look like so that you will underline prove yourself.

There's a proofing, if you will. The b, blame us and innocent, children of god above reproach, where we live in. In the midst, what are we living in the midst of? How many look around and say, this is a crooked and perverse generation. Crooked and perverse, is it not? Well, she the Bible is not surprised. It's the age of injustice. Right? Crooked and perverse. Among whom, what should we appear as? Light in the world. Light.

That's what we should see. So he's saying, seek a clear and blameless conscience. Seek a clear and blameless. Does that

mean perfect? No. How am

I blameless? By the blood of Christ. Through the confession of sin, I remain blameless. But you get that? You're not perfect. You're not sinless. I have a blameless conscience. How is it? I've confessed my sins. How should I how often should I confess my sins? How about every day? About through the day? About the blood of Christ cleansing me from my sin. Ever get it? So the way I have a blameless conscience before god is to apply the blood of Christ to my sin.

Is that good news? No, that's great news. That's called the gospel. It's the blood of Christ. Here's another one that is important. You will and we all have levels of recognition, don't we? All have levels of recognition. If you look at Remy Zacharias, I don't know that if recognition there's level of recognition was the result of that or not. The sin was a sin. He could have that same sin and had local recognition.

Don't know. God gives people different levels of recognition. He grants them. Forget that? How do I know that? Scripture says, god is the judge. What's he do? He puts down 1 and he lifts up another. Therefore, you should seek contentment in your level of recognition. You should seek contentment in your level of record. Alright.

So seek seek to minister your gifts in his strength for his glory, I think was the one we talked about. And then lastly, so seek approval from God, Seek your identity and being known by God and thought of by him. Seek excellent behavior in the world. Seek to deliver excellent work, whether you're retired or not. Seek a godly reputation. Seek a clear and blameless conscience. Seek contentment in the level of recognition God has given you, seek to minister your gifts and his strength, and lastly, seek to let God get the fame. Seek to let god get the fame.

Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see what your good works in order to give you faith. No. It's a take.

Glorify your father.

Yeah. Glorify your father who's in heaven. Right? So we point. We point always. We're we're voiding. We're voiding. So, you know, there'll there'll be times when you'll receive recognition and we receive receive it gracefully. You only say, oh, no.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

We receive it gracefully. Give it back to the lord. Right? So and and honor him as

you can. Honor him as you can.

Right? And then, I love that in Psalm 1 15, he said, not to us. Not to us, oh lord. Not to us. He said it twice. But to thy name give glory. Not does, but to thy name give glory. So seek to get to let god get the thing, and, he's he's good at his own reputation management.

We don't have to worry about that, whether he does or not.

Alright. So write down the insight about fame, seeking fame. Instead of seeking fame, there's some things we can seek. I've got an insight about seeking. These instead of personal fame, and insight. You got In

some ways, it's it's freeing to know that we are wired to desire that well done. You know? And because some people feel guilty when we're like, well, I'm not seeing God do it Google. But it was freeing, you know, that's who we are intuitively, but we have to keep reminding ourselves to get it back to get it. So it's freeing some ways to know that.

It's helpful, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. That's that's how we're wired. We're wired to seek we're wired to seek approval. We just have to get it, constantly sanctified. Right? Which is what we're doing.

Just to be reminded of that.

Good. Good. Good. Good. Great. Very important. Mhmm. Require for approval.

Mhmm.

And there's you know, there there there are times where I I need that, and I can get it from people I respect, godly people that I respect, the affirmation. Right? That's what accountability is about. Right? That I get the the affirmations when those are saying, you know, locally well done. It's like Paul said, we heard about your reputation. Right? I've heard about you. So who else? What'd you get?

Scott. While we were in, exile, I brought up

the history of,

the lack of genuineness and truth in society 2024. And Warner Wallace brings this up as symbolic immortality. So it becomes a substitute for eternal life. So people seem to be we seem to want to deal on superficial levels. Mhmm. But what's more importantly to me more important to me is that people seem to be content with dealing at superficial levels. We've had this discussion, before about three levels of conversation. Ron Moore brought this up in a in a sermon, I think, in Ecclesiastes series, what do you call it? Shiloh's midlands and the depths.

It's very rare that somebody wants to do depths of conversation. It's shallowness, and then it's it's all fleeting. It's all temporary. And this, sadly, this leads then to the perception and the understanding and the concern for eternal life. And that's, obviously, that's a destructive path to follow.

Yeah. Very destructive. Yes. The lack of genuine yeah. He gives people different level. You just gotta be in you know, it's easy to that's why I say go on the line, cultivate faithfulness, and then trust your level. God gives some here and some here, and, you know, we can have plot envy, we can have gift envy, we can have all that stuff. Right? So be okay.

He's gonna raise up some and raise up some higher than others. But it's it's great. Yeah.

Every year ago, when Larry Lubin came on our leadership team for the men, transferred to introduce him as a he's Larry Lubin. He's a former general. And Larry would always come back and said, I have a hire right now. I'm a private in God's army.

I'm a private in God's army. That's right. Know know your station, ma'am. That's good. That's a good one. Who else? Anybody else? Yes.

Okay. So maybe can we seek first his kingdom and his righteousness? Then what? Maybe we have that long work

Yes. His kingdom, his righteousness. So let him redefine how we think about it. Remember, we're wired for this. We just need it constantly sanctified. We need to constantly sanctified by his blood as I fall and I seek it the wrong way and, you know, by his grace and his spirit, right, to seek it in the right way. Because I seek by faith, right, his favor, if you will, right, his approval on a regular basis. Yes?

This came, first of all, this is a great track to remind you, so thank you for this full presentation. You said said something earlier, and I, was looking up the verse about a name, you know, then you gave it later. It's October 221. So when I was looking up, I'm like, it says, word by which a person or a thing is known, one's reputation or essential nature, oh god. This is kind of an off the wall comment that my dad was so big on instilling in my family of others, you know, that I was raised and were named in the reputation. Mhmm. And his friends were not really well named. I can't remember their names, but they were, like, killer and something else.

I like Brenda. I eat that. You know? And so, I mean, we do have to be careful with those we associate with and the name you're bringing forward.

Good name. A good name. Right? So this idea of fame, it's it's our recognition. It's what we're known for and about. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, we're good. Hopefully, this yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think we'll get

something. The idea of he made a statement in there that was not really kind of made it in passing that celebrity is rooted in comparison. And it seems to me fame is based on comparing yourself with other people. I'm more important, I'm more well known, I have more notoriety, whatever. And it seems to me that creates a question for somebody even like I'm thinking about Jay Warner Wallace. Why did he create this program? Does he want to become well, he's probably the most in demand apologetic speaker in the country right now. He's got you know, he's everywhere he's writing books, he's he's famous. He has attained fame in his field.

So does he does he do this for that? It seems to me you gotta check the motivation for what any of us who try to do something important or creative in those eyes or whatever are doing, have to pause and ask ourselves why are we doing that. It's like your why questions from last week. Why, what can, the danger, I think, is that we're always comparing ourselves to other people. You know, I could say, humility is great. I'm probably the most humble person I know. You know? What an absurd thing to say. But, yeah, it's pretty complex, I think. He's had a lot of different concepts and notions in this lesson of symbolic immortality and that's an inferior substitute for what we really want, which is eternal life.

But the whole idea of celebrity and the idea of fame is a tough one. All the sports, achieving anything in sports is all based on comparison, and you're doing something better than somebody else. And if you're going to be doing excellent work, it's excellent in comparison to what? So you're always comparing yourself. And there are kings and there are obscure men. There's a comparison right there. So I think we just have to check ourselves in any endeavor, what we're really trying to achieve. Is it for us or is it for him? And as you say it, the bottom line is to seek to let God, get the fame, let him get the glory. We can be vehicles.

So

One of the things that you didn't touch on in

the in

the in the book, I'm on page 73 about pulling back. And one of the quotes here, Craig Bartholomew, pursue obscurity. Famous people want to be known superficially by many. Humble people want to be known deeply by a few. But we as kind of going back to what I was saying earlier, we are content with being a mile wide and an inch deep, but not concerned about being an inch wide and a mile deep. We're not just our perception. I don't know. Was American society always this way or have we migrated to this position? I don't know the answer to that question.

Yeah. We're wired for this. And I think if you understand that your deepest desires are all fulfilled in him. Your deepest desires for for fame and for for identity and to be known are all fulfilled in Christ. Right? So let him fulfill your desire.

Go go back to the Tocqueville quote that Ron Moore or no. Excuse me. Dave, did not use last week in a sermon. Said the human heart or Tocqueville concluded that the human heart is never satisfied by their pursuits of prosperity. Right? And this was this was 18 thirties, and here that was different.

And may the god to whom all fame belongs. May he bless you. May he keep you. May he cause his face to shine upon you. May he lift up his countenance and grant you shalom deep in your soul as you know that you are known and loved by him and that you are inscribed upon his hand, and you walk in that this day. May he bless you and keep you.

Amen.

Thanks for listening. I hope you have greater hope, assurance, and confidence in your life and a deeper trust in the God of the bible and his son, Jesus Christ. Until next time. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the lord lift up his countenance on you and give you his peace, his shalom in your soul and in your life. Until next time, may God bless you and keep you.