We all were taken back this week by the events in Parkland, Florida. Each time it happens everyone seems utterly befuddled as to the whys. Most often like Adam and Eves sin it becomes a blame game. But no one seems to stop and look at just what has changed in America in the last 45 or so years.
World war II had a much more profound effect on Americans future than most understand.
Prior to that the Biblical Family that pretty much had existed from Adam and Eves time did a major change.
Men went off to war for nearly 4 years, women went to the work place in a way they never had before. Rosie the Riviter. While husbands seemed to have a moral shift regarding fidelity, woman began to have a social shift in how they saw their role in the Godly family.
Following the war and until this day we have watched as the Family as God intended it became more and more fragmented with each new generation. Until we arrived at where we are today, where marriage is no longer considered necessary, sex is the norm when you begin to date, and many kids have no clue who their fathers are.
But the breakdown of the Biblical Family hasn’t once graced the conversations on the nightly news.
In Part I believe it is because of the place we stand in Gods timetable.
When I titled the message “ Understanding the Spiritual winds of change” it was because there is an understanding through scripture of the time in which were living and in fact the direction it will take from here.
First off there will be a conclusion to this present heaven and earth, and it is pretty clear from Scripture that it will not be an easy time for the believer.
The destruction of the Godly family has been perhaps the most diabolical things satan has ever pulled off, but just to put your heart at rest God, the Lord God, is still soverign, and still on the throne, and faith in the name of Jesus is still the only means by which one can be saved.
But where are we at: Lets look.
Perhaps one clue can be seen in what Jesus tells us regarding the last days.
MATTHEW 10: 21-23
21"Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 22You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 23When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
Now I harken that back to a passage I had used a few months back - One where God explained that things would happen that obviously by implication would say the family would universally fractured or broken.
Malachi 4:6 6He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction."
Now that says a lot – No where in the history of all of creation has the family universally been so tattered.
Headship is made fun of, a submissive wife is looked upon as weak, many kids are clueless as to who their real fathers are, and gangs have replaced families. Boys and girls don’t even know their own gender inspite the obvioius.
That doesn’t seem so far from or else I will strike the land with total destruction.
I remember in 1990 when Promise Keepers came into existence, how excited I was. I thought finally common sense was going to return. Men were going to take responsibility for their homes and familes. And for a time it really did seem they would.
But with that time faded and so did that hope. – Now I cant say with any certainty that was Gods opportunity for the hearts of fathers to be turned back to the chidren but it sure seemed like it.
And now we are left over and over with a culture and society that is becoming increasingly anti- God, anti- Biblical family, and anti-Christian.
Perhaps as an example of that was seen recently when at first our Vice president said his policy was to not be alone with another woman without his wife being there. For that he was mocked and made fun of.
Then this week the Views Joy Beyhart went so far as to say that being a Christian may actually be a mental disease.
VIDEO CLIP
Another example of the distain that is growing toward Christians was note in an article yesterday by Fox News Reporter Todd Sterns.
Show Photo
Or perhaps these as a few examples of the winds of change spiritually.
There was the Baptist ministers in Texas, for example, explaining their astonishment that he had lived to see the day when a mayor of Houston would subpoena the sermons of five Protestant ministers, to see if their words about sexuality ran afoul of a new city ordinance.
Or the recent trend to “derecognized,” or denied the privileges allowed to other student groups, on campuses in numerous states to Christians—this, for being what one writer dubbed “the wrong kind of Christian,” that is, those who believe traditional moral teaching.
Then there are the bakers in Oregon, the florist, the photographer who wont compromise their faith and so they have all but had their future and lively hood destroyed
.
There are businesses like Hobby Lobby that faced a 3 million dollar a day fine initially for not providing their workers with the day after abortion pills. Or the nuns who refused to also.
Or the high school football coach suspended in Washington State in 2015 for kneeling to say a prayer at the end of a game; the American military chaplains who have been reassigned on account of their faithfulness to traditional Christianity; the court clerk in Kentucky who refused a marriage licence to a same sex couple and was put in jail.
We live at a time when vindictiveness in the name of the sexual revolution is apparently boundless; the Christian staffer at a day-care center who would not address a six-year-old boy as a girl, and was fired on account of it; the teacher fired in New Jersey for giving a curious student a Bible; and related cases in which acting on religious conviction has been punished, at times vehemently. …
An adjunct professor at the University of Illinois, Kenneth Howell, hired to teach a class in modern Catholic social thought, is suspended from the classroom for teaching modern Catholic thought about natural law.15 The head of the religion department explains that his explication of Church doctrine concerning homosexuality caused accusations of “hate speech.’ …
A U.S. Marine in North Carolina is court-martialed, given a bad-conduct discharge, and denied military benefits because she pasted a motivational passage from Isaiah 54:17 near her office computer (“No weapons formed against me shall prosper”). According to a military judge, the quotation “could be interpreted as combative … [and] could easily be seen as contrary to good order and discipline.’
These disparate stories taken from recent headlines are examples of a toxic new force now hurtling across the United States and other advanced societies.
They are part of the mounting toll of a widespread and growing effort to shame, punish, and ostracize people because of their Christian Faith.
One can only imagine how long it will be before Christians are singled out for their unwillingness to take a mark of some sort.
Church its not an attack on Religion, it’s a direct attraction on Christianity.
From the earliest days the church was called to:
PERSISTENCE THROUGH PERSECUTION
Acts 4:8-21 New International Version (NIV)
8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people! 9 If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, 10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. 11 Jesus is
“‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’ 12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 14 But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say. 15 So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and then conferred together. 16 “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everyone living in Jerusalem knows they have performed a notable sign, and we cannot deny it. 17 But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in this name.”
18 Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! 20 As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
Jesus had no visionary dreams of quick or easy success. He does not speak of warm reception and success but of disappointments and heartaches. He prepares His followers for a long, difficult battle. He openly tells them that the missionary aspect of His followers would be countered with serious and even deadly opposition. He through the apostles warned that it would grow increasingly worse, so much that if He did not intervene in the end, that even the elect wouldn’t make it.
Hostility is the general attitude of the world (Titus 3:3), especially toward the gospel. To make clear the dangers involved in the mission Jesus sent them out as sheep in the midst of wolves.
Wicked men are like wolves: violent, clever, aggressive, and skilled at stalking and attacking [because they love to devour and destroy].
God’s people, especially His ministers, are like sheep among them. Because of their changed nature and disposition, they would be non-aggressive and defenseless.
Yet by faith in the Good Shepherd's ability to protect, defend, and provide for them, they were to go, for some of these wolves would become sheep.
We are told to “be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”
“Innocent” translates “unmixed, pure” They were to avoid all things which gave advantage to their enemies.
Sermon on the mount - 10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. 12Rejoice and celebrate, because great is your reward in heaven; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you.
It looked unkind for Christ to expose to so much danger those who had left all to follow Him. Yet He knew that the glory reserved for His sheep, when in the great day they shall be set on His right hand, would be a recompensed sufficient for sufferings as well as services.
WHEN THE TIME COMES THAT THEY SAY SPEAK NO MORE We must follow the lead of Peter in Acts 4
18 Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! 20 As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
Our Lord spoke plainly to His followers of the perils and persecutions which awaited them in doing His work, yet He sent them out in spite of the cost. These disciples did not shrink from service even after suffering for His name sake.
The early church went through tragic waves of persecution under ten Roman emperors. During this time, perhaps as many as 175 million Christians were killed. Until the rule of Constantine, Christians were systematically scourged, beaten, and burned. Caesar Nero had believers dipped in hot wax so he could ignite them and use them as torches in his palace gardens
.
Verses 19 & 20 promise that the inner prompting of the Holy Spirit would tell them what to say in each situation they would face. “But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say, (20) For it is not you who speak. but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”
Christ does not want them concerned with what they would say, but that they would endure.
III. ENDURE TO THE END, 21-23. Church I cant say difinatively what any of us will have to face for our faith, but I can say we are moving in a precarious direction, and perhaps most would prefer not to think about it, its my belief that God does want us to consider and be ready for anything that would come our way.
Jesus warns His disciples of the extreme extent what they could suffer and from whom in verse 21. “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death."
The persecution was not going to be confined to mistreatment by political, and military strangers. The prophet Micah spoke of the day of God's visitation as a time when "a man's enemies will be the members of his own household" (Mic. 7:6).
Verse 22 holds up endurance as a need for those being saved. “You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.”
The final statement brings forth the radiance of His eternal glory from behind these dark clouds of difficulty. "It is the one who endures to the end who will be saved.”
Tortured for Christ
Enduring and persevering is not the same as never failing. It is getting back up when one stumbles to continue the course of the Christ-like life. It is continuing to serve Christ even though sin or fear or doubt may occasionally cause the servant to falter and even fall.
“All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Pray to stand firm in the faith. Pray to maintain the joy of the Lord, and His love. Bless those that curse you. Pray for boldness. Pray for the conversion of others because of your faith and stand. Pray solely to stand on Gods strength and not our own.
The time to be certain is not at the point of the crisis, but now. setting apart Christ as Lord in our heart, living for him every day, loving others as he loved, blessing those who curse us, but standing true to his word without compromise. The world may change, but Gods Word never will.
