"If My People..."
2 Chronicles 7:12-15
2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
ILL -
Introduction: Today's message is one that I believe we need to hear, that all of the church needs to hear and that I pray that all of America will hear soon. In 1984 at a prayer breakfast in Dallas, Texas President Ronald Reagan said, "If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under." We are nation that has systematically, willfully and deliberately gone about seeking to remove God from public discourse and dialogue, remove all signs and vestiges of His influence on our culture and its institutions and vilify anyone and everyone who dares to call America back to God. We have jettisoned the very truths that gave us our moral underpinnings and we should not be surprised at the place we find ourselves in today. This has not happened overnight and it has not taken some of us by surprise. Many of us have been predicting this for years. It has been strategically and incrementally, step by step, piece by piece. There has been and continues to be a deliberate pattern of infiltration in our government, in our courts, our educational institutions and sadly and most tragic, in our religious institutions. The foundations of our great country are crumbling before our very eyes. We have a crumbling religious foundation. Here is a sign of just some of the erosion that is taking place. One of the things that technology allows us to do is to stay better informed than we ever have been. Something very important and very telling is happening in Oregon this week. It is the General Conference of the UMC. Here are some of the things that this once great denomination is dealing with:
"We are here because God has called us to serve in this denomination, and our souls are fed by the theology in which we've been raised," the 111 United Methodists write in what they call "A Love Letter to Our Church." The signers come from across the United States, and one signer is from the Philippines. They identify themselves as "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning, and Intersex" in the letter.
Their letter comes a week after 15 clergy and clergy candidates in the New York Conference took a similar step of coming out together. It also comes just two days after the Rev. David Meredith, a United Methodist pastor in the West Ohio Conference, married Jim Schlachter, his boyfriend of 28 years. http://goodnewsmag.org/2016/05/111-clergy-clergy-candidates-come-out-as-gay/#sthash.5z9EcMFi.dpuf
One of the things that the UMC do every year at their conference is to take communion. This same group set up their own alternate communion service and two UMC bishops participated. To add fuel to the fire they performed and (unofficial) ordination of a practicing lesbian minister! We have a crumbling educational foundation. Our public schools have become the proving grounds for all kinds of social and societal engineering. Christian children cannot pray but Muslim children cannot be discriminated against for wearing burqas and bringing their prayer rugs. Just this week the transgender issue hit our public school systems like a tidal wave when our President's DOJ sent a letter to all public schools mandating allowing any person to self-identify and use any (restroom/locker-room or dressing-room they choose)
Can I share a little bit of information than you can find in any biology book? If you were born with an XY chromosome you are male and if you were born with an XX chromosome you are female and no amount of surgery or cosmetics or gender identity or anything else will change how God created you. We have a crumbling political foundation. In just the span of 50 years we have gone from men like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to what we have running for office today. Gone are the great statesmen of the past and they have been replaced with men and women with little integrity and almost no convictions.
"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." -- George Washington
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams
"As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him." -- John Adams
"The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts."
-- John Jay, first chief justice of the Supreme Court.
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Memorial
"And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God ... and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord." -- Abraham Lincoln
"I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, President
"The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country."
-- Calvin Coolidge
"This Nation was established by men who believed in God. ... You will see the evidence of this deep religious faith on every hand.' -- Harry S. Truman
"[The United States is] founded on the principles of Christianity"
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, President
The Bible and its teachings helped form the basis for the Founding Fathers' abiding belief in the inalienable rights of the individual, rights which they found implicit in the Bible's teachings of the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. This same sense of man patterned the convictions of those who framed the English system of law inherited by our own Nation, as well as the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. -- Ronald Reagan
"Religious freedom is perhaps the most precious of all American liberties, called by many our "first freedom." Many of the first European settlers in North America sought refuge from religious persecution in their native countries. Since that time, people of faith and religious institutions have played a central role in the history of this Nation. In the First Amendment, our Bill of Rights recognizes the twin pillars of religious liberty: the constitutional protection for the free exercise of religion, and the constitutional prohibition on the establishment of religion by the state. Our Nation's founders knew that religion helps to give our people the character without which a democracy cannot survive. Our founders also recognized the need for a space of freedom between government and the people -- that the government must not be permitted to coerce the conscience of any individual or group. -- William Jefferson Clinton
We don't believe that freedom is America's gift to the world. We believe freedom is the God Almighty's gift to each and every person in the world. -- George W. Bush
#1 "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation" -- Barrack Hussein Obama
What I found is that the closer that you get to our day and time the fewer quotes by those who are in positions of authority about their support for and recognition of the Bible and Christianity.
Simple put ladies and gentlemen we are where we are at today for one reason and it is found in the Bible:
Psalms 33:12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.
Ezekiel 23:35 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast forgotten me, and cast me behind thy back, therefore bear thou also thy lewdness and thy whoredoms.
I. Our Pride
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves...
Proverbs 16:18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
a. The author -
Hosea 13:6 According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.
b. The address -
c. The action - Self-sufficiency
II. Our Prayers
"...and pray, and seek my face..."
a. The supplication -- and pray
b. The seeking - seek
c. The source -- his face
III. Our Penitence
"...and will turn from their wicked ways..."
a. Recognize our personal wickedness
b. Repent of our corporate wickedness
I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips...Isaiah
c. Resist the wickedness
Bro. Robert Morgan said: "Contrary to the spirit of the age, not every sexual urge is good, moral, or valid. Not every sexual inclination should be acted on. Not every sensual desire should be endorsed by the federal government and forced on Christians. Seeing the news this week, I'm reminded of Genesis 6:5: "The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time." As Christ-followers, we'll never be intimidated into forsaking our biblical convictions; and as for me, I'm not opposed to some well-targeted boycotting, protesting, and heaven-raising."
IV. Our Promise
a. To be present in His house
b. To hear the prayers of His people
c. To perpetuate the kingdom
We bemoan what is happening but until we are willing to do what God requires...
