This morning we have a challenge before us. We are recognizing those who have graduated from high school and college as well as those who have graduated in even larger ways. We are remembering this weekend those who fought and died in our nation’s military and we should also consider those who have died and lived and died as soldiers in our faith. They died to this world, lived for Christ and then died physically so to receive their reward in heaven.
The key to a successful death is a purposeful life.
Hebrews 11:35 says that those in the great Hall of Faith lived as they did so that ‘they might receive a better resurrection’.
Hebrews 11:39-40 says, ‘And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised because God had provided something better…’.
There are some young people we are recognizing this morning who are embarking upon the years before them in which they will decide what their life will be all about.
Will it be about the here and now or about a ‘better resurrection’?
Will it be about their ‘gaining approval through their faith’ or about seeking approval from the world.
We are witnessing an epidemic in our nation of people who are now living only for this world. They are living only for this life and making their decisions based upon how they can make the most money, be the most comfortable or live the longest amount of years.
The unique thing about Hebrews 11 is that most all of the people who are mentioned as part of a great Hall of Fame of faith could have just as easily found themselves as members of a great Hall of Shame. There are no perfect people in Hebrews 11.
There are no perfect people in this auditorium this morning.
The key element was their faith.
A strong enough faith to override the weaknesses and failures of their humanness.
During the week this room is a most amazing place. It is so peaceful and a great atmosphere. These pews have no sin. I have never come in here and heard the pews or the carpet or the lights complain or say anything negative. Even these first few pews never complain about being ignored or feeling lonely and the back pews never complain about the extra weight of people who crowd into them. It is such a great place and THEN on Sunday…..we arrive. We bring in our sin, our stuff, warts and all. But we also bring in something else, Someone else: The Holy Spirit comes. He can take us from our Hall of Shame to the Hall of Faith.
Hebrews 11:1 says, ‘Faith is the assurance/substance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not yet seen’.
I love how Watchman Nee, a great Chinese believer of a century ago, explained this. Just like there is a realm we never experience when we are blind or deaf (grand canyon or beautiful music) so without faith we will never see the SUBSTANCE of or experience what God has made real and available for us. Without faith we are blind or deaf to God’s spiritual riches even though they are real and completely within our reach.
Our five senses (touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing) are limited to God’s purpose and design for our existence in this physical world. God exists beyond these limits and we sense Him as He chooses to make Himself Known within the range of these senses.
Faith ads another sense.
True faith is something we learn how to walk in just like we learn to walk physically. When you learn to walk physically you will stumble, fall, get up and learn to trust others along the way. What if a baby was born and we expected it to run like it was in the Olympics. The truth is that a baby is going to have to do a lot of crawling and stumbling and falling before it can ever run. Too many people wait to use their faith until they are in the midst of life threatening challenges and then they wonder why they struggle to believe God. They have not learned to walk in faith and grow in faith through the smaller challenges of life.
Most who live for this world are not people of faith. It is not a part of their lives. They live a lifetime never experiencing the realm of what God has for them.
Most in our American churches today see faith as a foreign language because they have been so saturated with what the Bible calls the ‘spirit of the age’.
In England they are closing churches every day and opening a new Mosque every week. The farther a nation drifts away from God the more unfamiliar the waters become. America has drifted into some very ugly waters where things we never thought possible have now become very common
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The Naked Communist(1958) by Cleon Skouse(ex FBI agent) 45 goals in January 1963. Congressional Record-January 10, 1963 by Florida Congressman Albert Herlong(Dem) How successful have they been over almost 50 years?
1963 was a pivotal year. Just consider what was popular to our culture in that year. TOP 10 TV SHOWS: Beverly Hillbillies – Bonanza(Bin Laden favorite) – Dick Van Dyke Show – Petticoat Junction – Andy Griffith Show – Lucy Show – Candid Camera – Ed Sullivan – Danny Thomas Show – My Favorite Martian.
TOP MOVIES OF 1963: Cleopatra – It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World – How the West was Won – The Birds – Dr. No – Tom Jones – Sword in the Stone – Charade – Great Escape – Bye Bye Birdie
How do you change a culture with those types of appetites? Here are some of the goalsfrom th Naked Communist related to changing American Culture.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
17. Get control of the schools. . Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations.
20. Infiltrate the press.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
30/31. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. ‘discourage the teaching of American history."
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
38. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.
5 Months later Goal 28 was accomplished: June 17, 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that any Bible reciting or prayer, in public schools, was deemed unconstitutional. This was a huge turning point in our culture.
A book written the year I was born outlined a plan that has now come together better than most any plan of subversion in history, other than maybe the Trojan Horse.
Tim Wideman said, ‘We have gone from Norman Rockwell’s America to Hugh Hefner’s America’.
What kind of church will God use to combat the effects of a culture like the one we now have? It will take a church full of those who are willing to sacrifice like maybe none before them.
The problem is that we don’t live in a time where the ‘spirit of the age’ is one of personal sacrifice. I think that a day like Memorial Day seems very awkward to many in our culture who can’t think of anything they might be willing to die for.
We don’t like to deny ourselves anything much less life itself
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I was reminded this week of the events that unfolded at a place called MASADA. I was amazed at the spirit of sacrifice that was in the DNA of the people of that time. MASADA was a rock in the desert upon which a village of about 1,000 Jews lived in the first century. When the Romans came and attacked Israel and Jerusalem in 70AD Masada was an out of the way place that could have been left alone but the Romans did not want to leave any place in Israel that had not been defeated. The Roman army came and sieged Masada for 3 months until it was inevitable that they were about to break in. That last night the people of city came together. ‘We do not want our women and children to become slaves of the Romans’. Each man was given the responsibility of slaying his own household. Then ten men were chosen by lot and given the assignment of killing all the other men. Then one man was chosen to kill the other nine. Then that last man was to commit suicide.
When the Romans broke through the wall they found a city of corpses and they were given no slaves and no victory
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Those kinds of people are almost impossible to find today.
Everything in our culture creates a different mindset and communicates to us that there is nothing truly worth that kind of sacrifice.
Would you call yourself a person of great faith?
Do you have a sacrificial spirit when it comes to the things that really matter?
Memorial Day is a day when we remember those who died for things that they believed mattered. It was because of their willingness to sacrifice that we here now can enjoy what they saw as important enough to make the ultimate sacrifice.
We are sending our kids out into a world in which we desire them to be heroes for the kingdom of God as others we remember today were heroes for our nation. They are going to be taking on a world that is spiritually darker than we have ever known in America.
Josh McDowell stated recently that we may be living in Americas ‘last Christian generation’.
A Survey of young people indicated that
63% don’t believe Jesus is the Son of God
58% believe all faiths believe equally valid truths
51% don’t believe in the resurrection
68% don’t believe in the Holy Spirit.
75% don’t believe in absolute truth.
The survey also indicated that when young people don’t have a foundational faith in God that they are
48% more likely to cheat on exams
200% more likely to steal
300% more likely to use drugs and 600% more like to attempt suicide.
Of this young generation without God there are 3.5 million who suffer from depression and 2000 who take their lives each year.
Recent stats I came across regarding college professors:
25% are atheist/agnostic
50% have ‘unfavorable feelings’ toward evangelical Christianity
51% think the Bible is a bunch of myths.
Two quotes I came across made by university professors:
Daniel Dennett - ‘They will see me as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions and they are dead right about that – that’s what I am and that’s exactly what I am trying to do’.
Richard Rorty – ‘We try to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalist will leave college with views more like our own. so we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity and try to make your views seem silly rather than discussable ‘
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Recent across denominational statistics state that 85% of kids who leave our churches either don’t come back at all. Instead of becoming heroes for the faith they are becoming casualties in the conflict.
We send too many out ill equipped for the battles they will face with a lost world. The professor sounds right because we have never told them why he is wrong.
We don’t tell them because most in the church don’t know those answers themselves.
William Lane Craig wrote, 'I think the church is really failing these kids. Rather than provide them training in the defense of Christianity’s truth, we focus on emotional worship experiences, felt needs, and entertainment. It’s no wonder they become sitting ducks for that teacher or professor who rationally takes aim at their faith'.
One of the comments made about our website was that we have had visits by people from every continent in the world. People are looking for somewhere where they can find the Word of God presented. I have pretty much the same thing on my sermon Facebook page just from the people who contact me there. I don’t have a way to know everyone who goes there like we do on our website. This past week between hospital visits and phone calls to our members I was communicating through Facebook with someone in the Philippines and trying to help them with a major decision they were making. This person had told me before that all they have is a Bible, they have no books to read and so what they find on the sermon site provides something like a book for them.
My point is this, and this may be a hard one for us: I am discovering is that there is an obvious spiritual hunger in people around the world that is absent in most American believers. It has gotten worse with each generation and it is glaringly obvious when you compare the spirit of people from other parts of the world who have a passion to know God’s Word. Not one of them has ever talked to me about the music they listen to any style of worship but they strongly stress a burning desire to hear from God through His Word.
Ravi Zacharias spoke about being on stage at a conference where different preachers were invited. He was sitting next to one who preached to many thousands each week. He said the man leaned over and said to him, ‘I am glad that we have realized that the things my father’s generation fought about really didn’t matter, things like inspiration of Scripture’
This is the world our kids are entering. This is the world we live in.
This is the world you may have sheltered yourself from but it is very real.
God is calling us to be salt and light in a sinful world. He is calling each one of us, including the kids we send out, to become heroes for the kingdom of God.
Someone has said that, ‘One of the problems with Christianity is that it is so daily’. DAILY is what it means to truly be a Christian. That is why Jesus said, ‘Take up your cross DAILY and follow Me’.
Basketball coach Bobby Knight said this about DISCIPLINE:
‘Discipline is doing what needs to be done, doing it when it needs to be done, doing it the best it can be done, and doing it that way every time you do it’. DAILY
If basketball is worth that kind of attitude then how much more is our faith in Jesus Christ worth it?
IF GOD IS WORTH ANYTHING THEN GOD IS WORTH EVERYTHING!!
THREE KEY ELEMENTS TO PROTECTING OURSELVES IN THE BATTLE
1. Go somewhere where protection is necessary:
Remember that each one of us is called to go where the conflict is.
While we may be concerned about what battles our kids may face we need to ask ourselves why we are not dealing with similar things.
2. Don't go anywhere alone:
Jesus promised to be with His disciples when He called them to go out into the world carrying His message. Make sure you know Him.
Christianity is not an it but a Him! It is not a religious system of do’s and don’ts, spiritual principles and social connections. It is one connection, to a Person. It is a relationship and not a religion.
In John 14 Thomas asked Jesus a question when Jesus spoke of them following Him. Thomas said, ‘We don’t know the way’.
Jesus said, ‘I am the way…no one comes to the Father but by Me’.
3. Take time to prepare yourself:
Someone said that, ‘Nobody drifts into a holy life’. You have to determine daily that you will build your faith and prepare for the battles you will encounter.
This goes for kids going to college, high school or any of us who take on the challenges of living the Christian life and sharing the gospel with those around us.
This is the Christian life. Anything less is everything less and falls short of the calling that is ours in Christ.
This morning how would you answer these questions?
1. Am I sure today that I am a Christian?
Is there truly evidence in my life that I can point to?
2. Am I living the kind of life for Christ that I am proud of?
Should there be more to it than I am experiencing?
3. Am I actively striving to grow in my faith, find a place of service and prepare myself to engage a world antagonistic to Christ?
If you cannot answer those three questions in a way that you feel good about then this morning you may need to step out, come forward and ask God to do a work in your life that is long overdue.
