Party Line--Discovering The Hazards Of Interference

October 14, 2002

I. Introduction:

A. Examples of daily interference

1. When you open your e-mails, you get other e-mails that you have not requested. We call them Spam.

2. When you talk on the phone, you have another party interfering with your conversation. We call this party line.

3. When you drive on the road, you have somebody that just cuts into your lane. We call them crazy drivers.

4. When you watch TV, you get frequent changes in you TV reception. Sometimes it is bad; other times, it is good. We call these signal fluctuations.

5. When you are telling a story, you have somebody that finishes the story for you. We call them anti-climax persons.

B. Fact of the matter is, everywhere we go, whatever we do, someone or something will interfere with what we are doing.

1. Not only once, not twice, but most of the time.

2. Some of these interferences will come from someone we know, people that we respect, or perhaps someone that we love.

3. Some of these interferences come in a time when we are not expecting it.

4. It comes when we are too preoccupied with something different.

5. It even comes when we are trying to relax or be ourselves.

6. Some of these interferences range from a simple annoyance to extremely hazardous.

II. Body:

A. Hazards of interference

1. The spam that goes along with your emails usually carry virus can that harm or even destroy your computer.

2. When you have a party line in your phone, important information that you are sharing by phone can be recorded and used against you.

3. The driver that cuts in your lane can cause accident and in most cases lives can be lost.

4. Fluctuations in electrical and radio signals can cause death in many cases.

a) Sensitive medical equipments are easily affected by radio and electrical signals. Notice the warning sign in most hospitals: Turn off your cellular phones, beepers, etc.

b) Same with aircraft equipments.

1) Again, notice the warning sign when you board most airplanes: Turn off your cellular, beepers, etc.

2) TV antennas that are very close to airports can cause interference as pilots communicate with the tower.

c) Magnetic scanners that police or airport personnel uses to scan people as they board the aircraft can cause death especially for those who are wearing heart pacemaker.

5. People on life support

a) Temporary electrical shortage for those in life support system can mean sudden death.

B. So what’s the point?

1. The point is, whether we realize it or not, whether we believe it or not, we are in a life support system.

2. Our life is hanging by a thread.

a) You may be young or elderly, you are in a life support system.

b) You may be a man or woman, your life is in a life support system.

c) You can be white, black, yellow, or red, your life is in a life support system.

d) You can be educated or less educated, your life is in a life support system.

e) You can be rich or poor, your life is in a life support system.

f) You can be the master or the servant, it is the same for both.

g) We are not only living in an awful and terrible time, we are living our lives on a thread.

h) Everyone born into this world is in a life support system.

C. Biblical description of this reality

1. Psalm 90:5-6, “Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.”

D. Was this the reality since the beginning?

1. The answer is NO!

2. It was not like this in the beginning.

3. Notice God’s description in Genesis

a) Genesis 1:25. Describing the animals, the plants, trees, lakes, rivers, etc., that He had created, the Bible describes, “And God saw it was good.”

b) Genesis 1:31. Describing the human beings that God had created, the Bible describes, “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.”

4. God created the world and everything that is in it with the full intention that the earth, man and animals will continue to co-exist forever.

a) When we read the first two chapters of Genesis, we cannot find any hint of any curse, death or destruction in it.

b) It is, on the other hand, the opposite of death that we see. The opposite of a curse that we can read. The opposite of destruction that we find.

1) Genesis 1:28, “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”