FINDING OUR NATIVE TONGUE
John 8:42-44
Friends, did you know that there are 6000 languages in the world
One is said to disappear every fortnight—2 weeks.
200 years ago the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt stumbled upon a village in what is now Venezuela. While there he heard a parrot speaking and asked the villagers what it was saying. No one knew since the parrot spoke the last words in the Atures language.
Two elderly brothers who live in a coastal village in Scotland are the only two people left who can speak a particular dialect of the Scots language. Their people made their living fishing on the water and now that the fishing industry has disappeared nobody has learned the dialect in two generations.
What they discovered is that
When a way of life begins to disappear
So do the words and the language that describe that life.
Has the Christian way of life so disappeared in American that
We have lost the language to describe and share it????
Has the media and modern secular society, and the churches move toward inclusive language, threatened our Christian tongue in the Wesleyan tradition with extinction?
Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. 43Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. John 8:42-43
I. THE LOST LANGUAGE OF GOD
Why is my language not clear to you?
First of all Jesus said:
Because you are unable to hear what I say.
When the cup is full you can’t fill it with something new.
Not until you empty what is in the cup, only than can you than fill it.
Our ears are full of the words of our world.
We have allowed our society to fill our ears
To the point that we are ashamed of our God
And of our Biblical faith
So that we no longer share it or live it in public.
When is the last time you heard in your office or on the street of Aberdeen,
Any talk about Jesus or your Biblical faith,
Or any talk about sin in our society?
When is the last time you heard sin called sin even in some of our churches?
If there is one good thing that can come out of the rise of Islam popularity,
It is demand to be permitted to pray 5 times a day.
Muslims are demanding time and space in the office, work place, and schools.
So they can kneel, face the east, and pray to ALLA.
SLIDE They don’t care who see them or knows.
Like Daniel who prayed at an open widow facing the heavens.
Boldly in the face of the king’s decree to worship only His God.
Have we lost the language and the courage to face the lions of our day?
Jesus asks: Why is my language unclear to you?
Why was it that when President Reagan talked about his faith in God the nation respected him but when President Bush said that the most important man in history that changed his life was Jesus Christ, it brought criticism on him.
Is it because the world wants to lose the tongue of the Christian vocabulary.
We want to delete the Name of Jesus in our conversation except
In the verbiage of swearing and cursing.
The world is changing friends, you know it and I know it.
Christian are at war with the world.
The pressure is similar to what my grandparents felt in WWI and WWII.
That they quite speaking the German language.
Lest they thought to be in sympathy or allied to the German enemy.
Has Christianity become so unpopular that we are afraid to speak the language of God
Lest we be ridiculed and ostracized?
Jesus ask: Why do you not understand my language?
Not ONLY have we lost the language.
We have replaced it with a new language.
II. THE REPLACED LANGUAGE OF TODAY SOCIETY.
43Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. John 8:44
We no longer speak the truth.
Because we have sold out to another family.
Whose father is political correctness,
The father of secularization
Who has removed God from Education,
the media, the Arts, science, and Government.
And now is trying to remove God from the church.
Nicholas Van Hoffman
We have clouded our God language so much.
That we don’t know what God is saying today.
We have developed a religious mush language.
This religious mush appears to millionaires and movie stars.
Who wear the cross but don’t carry the cross.
We hear them say I can worship God just as easy on the golf course,
in the boat, or out shopping, at the mall.
We hear it from politicians at convention and in the debates,
From clergymen speaking invocation Or giving opinions on national TV
We hear it at both Democratic and Republican conventions.
The religious language of the world has no theology to speak of,
Its just a Cream of Wheat divinity.
No credo, no tenets of faith,
No rights or wrong,
There is nothing in the prayers at our public gatherings that would
Call for believers or nonbelievers to lower their heads when
the Reverend, Rabbi, Father, or Imam, or Guru So-and-So
will lead us in an innocuous, harmless prayer,
to some God who is neither jealous nor true.
In fact you can even invoke this God to start a hooker’s convention,
and He won’t be offended.
Today’s God of the Rotary, the Optimists, the Shrine,
Protector of the Buddy System,
the Lord of the Secular Ritual,
Whose law is not chiseled out of tablets of stone,
But written on sand.
Open to amendment, qualification and erasure.
This god will compromise with you, make
allowances and declare all wars holy, all peaces hallowed.
All lifestyles sacred, all sins forgiven.
SOURCE: Nicholas Van Hoffman as quoted by Adrian Rogers in Ten Secrets for a Successful Family, pp. 29-30.
You can find this king of God on the YouTube,
Or My space, or any blogs.
Even the discussion blog on Aberdeen American news,
We hear it from the Shock jocks and rappers that
have turned vulgar language into popular expressions.
Jesus ask: Why is my Language not clear to you?
{{{44You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.””}}} John 8: 44
Jesus said: You have listened and succumbed to the language of your father the Devil.
You may say: Not me.
But look with me for a moment at our language.
Can you justify your language on Biblical truths?
Does our gossip align with the Sermon on the Mount?.
Does our cursing come from the hill of Mt. Calvary?
Does the way we shout at our children,
And throw malice at our spouses, gossip about our neighbor,
come from the Heavenly Father?
Or are we just speaking our native language?
Our language wounds us doesn’t it?
Our drama team today illustrated appropriately that we can even kill with our words.
That’s why Apostle Paul writes:
7You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Colossians 3:7-11
The language you end up talking is the life you end up walking.
We all know that people talk faster now than they ever have.
Men did you know that because a woman’s vocal cords are shorter than a man’s she can actually speak with less effort than you can. Shorter vocal cords not only cause a woman’s voice to be more highly pitched, but also require less air to become agitated, making it possible for her to talk more with less energy expended. Sparks, quoted in Homemade, Dec., 1984
No wonder why your out of breath and words before they are?
And that is the last I am going to say about that.
Statistic tell us the average person spends one-fifth of his or her life talking?
A single days’ word would fill a 50 page book.
A years words would fill 132 books of 200 pages each.
How many of those words were spoken in anger, carelessness, or haste.
Jesus said: By your word you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned. Matthew 12:37
Have our words destroyed family and friends,
Created doubts and disbelief?
Opened the door for divorce and doubt.
Created disharmony.
Because we have lost the language of love and forgiveness.
And lost sight of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Rebuked by her mother for being sullen and grouchy,
a teenage daughter responded,
"How come when it’s me it’s temper, and when it’s you it’s nerves?
James 3:6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
Native Americans in SD know that to preserve their culture
They need to preserve their language.
That is why there are now classes that you can take
To learn the Lakota language.
Tutors you can hire.
Native People know that preserving their culture means keeping their language alive.
HOW DO WE KEEP OUR NATIVE TONGUE OF CHRISTIANITY ALIVE?
III. THE NATIVE TONGUE OF CHRISTINITY
Jesus said:
47He who belongs to God hears what God says.
The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God." John 8:47
Jesus is saying:
First-MAKE SURE YOU BELONG TO THE RIGHT FAMILY
If you haven’t accepted Christ –accept him and let God adopt you as his child.
If you have accepted Christ, then let him tutor you in the things of god.
Let the Holy Spirit help you to surrender all your life.
To help you find complete forgiveness
To help you get involved in worship.
To help you live with your family.
Some young people don’t want to hear any talk about God.
You know why.
Because when you talk about God then you must think about obedience.
You can’t obey God and dishonor your parents.
So its easier to say: Don’t talk to me about God.
Second: TO REDISCOVER THE LANGUAGE OF GOD.
Look at His creation.
There is no lost language of God in the universe.
Psalms 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Are we looking and listening in the right places.
Like BRIAN age 11 said: I once heard the voice of God. It said "Vrrrrmmmmm." Unless it was just a lawn mower.
Psalmist says:
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Psalms 8:3-4
I was out the other night watching for the falling comets display.
The later it got into the night the brighter the stars shone.
Just the fact that I could see the big dipper structured in the immense universes,
Brought me to praise and glorify God.
So many people spend their nights going from bar to bar.
That we miss the wonder of looking from star to star.
God is still speaking in the rippling brook
And song of the bluebird.
In the voice of the thunder and the rustling leaves.
Curiosity of a child that stops to see a crawling bug.
You have set your glory above the heavens. 2From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger. Psalms 8:1-2
3. YOU CAN RENEW THE LANGUAGE OF GOD BY
HIS WORD. Studying his laws and precepts in bible study.
II Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. II Timothy 3:16
God’s word equips, teaches, corrects and trains in Righteousness.
Why is it that our society still seeks to
Scratch off of our walls and halls,
Any vestige of God’s word or commandment?
Because they know the power of having the word
That moves us to live it.
Do you know the language of God?
When I was about 10 my older brother and sister
Came home from high school and starting speaking a different language.
I cam remember I was standing between our windmill and granary.
Leon and I couldn’t understand them but they seemed
suddenly be able to communicate with one another very well.
We couldn’t figure it out
I remember getting so angry at being left out of their language.
But I was also very curious about learning how they did it.
Well it was simple when you know the secret.
You take the first letter off of every word and put it at the end with an a added.
Owha reay ouya?
How are you? was
They would respond
Ine-fa, n-day ou-ya?
Fine, and you?
Can we so speak and live the language of God,
That the world curiosity would cause it to stop, turn, and listen.
So they will not only learn the savior language,
But learn of the savior and
But bend their knees
And turn away from evil to good.
Will you help me to restore the
Lost language of salvation
He who belongs to God hears what God says. John 8:47
Hymn 463 “Lord Speak to Me”
