Extreme Makeover: Living Room Series

Project Living Room: RENOVATING THE AMERICAN FAMILY

EPHESIANS 4:17-19, 23-24

Opening

As a nation, we are ignoring God’s ways. And this nation is already experiencing the judgment of God!

God will not abandon His people, but life as we know it will disintegrate to a cultural blow up!

To a firefighter, that’s one of the most terrible words in the English language. A blow up is a very lethal occurrence in forest fires. We know little about blow ups because few fire fighters trapped in them have ever lived to tell the story. One rare survivor described a blow up as a terrific draft of super-heated air with tremendous velocity that swept up the hill exploding all inflammable material causing a wall of flames 600 feet high! This wall covered 3000 acres in less than 10 minutes.

To me, a blow up is an accurate analogy of what is happening to American society. At some point, in the last decade, elements combined into a lethal fire ball of destruction that now engulfs all of our institutions including the most essential one of them all, the Family.

In fact, many fireballs have been aimed directly at the institution of the family & marriage.

Here’s an index of 6 Leading Spiritual Warning Signs that we have ignored and that answer the question,

“What has happened to the American Family?”

ÿ Spiritual Warning Sign #1: We’ve lost our reverence of God.

Prov 1:7 Says the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Prov. 14:27 says “Respect for the Lord gives life. It is like a fountain that can save people…”

As a people, we’ve ignored the rules because we have lost our respect for the Ruler.

In our culture much of the time, God is ridiculed & not even recognized.

Examples:

Prayer in Schools

God off the dollar bill

Ten commandments in public places

We have taken several steps backward.

When this country was founded, honor & respect for God was the cornerstone of this nation.

ÿ Spiritual Warning Sign # 2: We’ve Abandoned Absolute Truth (Moral Absolutes).

John 8:31-32, Jesus says, If you abide in my word you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

Romans 1:25 says “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie…”

A little girl was observed by her pastor standing outside the preschool Sunday School classroom between Sunday School and worship, waiting for her parents to come and pick her up for "big church." The pastor noticed that she clutched a big storybook under her arms with the obvious title, "Jonah and the Whale."

Feeling a little playful, he knelt down beside the little girl and began a conversation. "What’s that you have in your hand?", he asked.

"This is my storybook about Jonah and the Whale," she answered.

"Tell me something, little girl," he continued, "do you believe that story about Jonah and that whale to be the truth?"

The little girl implored, "Why of course I believe this story to be the truth!"

He inquired further, "you really believe that a man can be swallowed up by a big whale, stay inside him all that time, and come out of there still alive and OK? You really believe all that can be true?"

She declared, "Absolutely, this story is in the Bible and we studied about it in Sunday School today!" If it is in the Bible it is TRUE

Then the pastor asked, "Well, little girl, can you prove to me that this story is the truth?"

She thought for a moment and then said, "Well, when I get to Heaven, I’ll ask Jonah."

The pastor then asked, "Well, what if Jonah’s not in Heaven?"

She then put her hands on her little hips and sternly declared, "Then YOU can ask him!"

The little girl wasn’t willing to bend in her belief that the Bible is absolute truth,

But today, tolerance is today’s national truth. According to this philosophy, everyone has the right to decide what is moral & true.

For example, in the last decade we’ve seen a steady disintegration of standards on network TV.

As Steven Bochcoo, co-creator of NYPD Blues & Hill Street Blues, says, there is no such thing as broadcast standards today. It’s really what you can get away with. That becomes the standard.

ÿ Spiritual Warning Sign # 3: We’ve Accepted Divorce as the Norm

In Malachi 3, the Lord says, “I hate divorce, says the Lord God…”

And for good reason. Divorce destroys families and cultures. A Chinese proverbs says, “In the broken nest there are no whole eggs.”

What a profound summary of the negative impact of divorce.

I’m thankful that some of the voices in todays culture are beginning to agree.