“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
for the LORD has spoken:
‘Children have I reared and brought up,
but they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.’
“Ah, sinful nation,
a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers,
children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the LORD,
they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are utterly estranged.
“Why will you still be struck down?
Why will you continue to rebel?
The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores
and raw wounds;
they are not pressed out or bound up
or softened with oil.
“Your country lies desolate;
your cities are burned with fire;
in your very presence
foreigners devour your land;
it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.
And the daughter of Zion is left
like a booth in a vineyard,
like a lodge in a cucumber field,
like a besieged city.” [1]
It has become something of a custom that I set aside the first month of each new year to survey the state of our present culture, reminding us as followers of Christ of our responsibility in our present society. Admittedly, the state of western culture is not healthy. In fact, a pervasive cultural rot is evident throughout our present western world. The message I am bringing at this hour gives me no joy; yet, I must not be silent. Convinced of the leading of the Spirit of Christ, I find that I am compelled to cry out a warning, as did the prophets recorded in the pages of the Old Covenant. I have concluded that western culture is decaying at a breathtaking rate. I wonder whether Canada, or whether the United States, will still stand in the very near future as a beacon of hope to nations struggling in the dark night of oppression and corruption.
Already, I find that when I speak of the freedoms I knew as a young man, I’m compelled to say to younger Canadians, “There once was a country…” It seems almost as though I am dreaming when I speak of a day when a family could buy a house, and a car, and also furnish the house with all that was required for their comfort, even as they fed that family with a what could only be described as a cornucopia of nutritious food, doing all this on one income. It is sometimes hard to believe that cursing and swearing on television or in the movies simply did not occur. Was it only yesterday that nudity was not a form of entertainment brought into our homes via television and the internet?
Perhaps I tend to be reflective whenever I come to the New Year. Such a reflective pause was once expected of all of us; this was the rationale behind making resolutions for the New Year. We were encouraged to reflect on our shortcomings during the year which was passing into memories; and based on our shortcomings we would resolve to make necessary adjustments to our lives so that the same mistakes would not plague us again. As a pastor, I suppose I’ve moved away from worrying about annual resolutions since I’m compelled to continually confront my personal shortcomings, especially in the realm of the spiritual, and begun to weigh national failures. I understand that I don’t have the ear of members or parliament; neither do I anticipate that members of our provincial legislature will take note of what I may say. I don’t even expect that our city council will be aware of what I may say. However, you hear me, and you will know of my concerns and witness the remedies I advocate based on the Word of God.
My heart has grown increasingly tender as I’ve aged. I don’t know that I differ in this respect from other men who have reached an age that now approaches fourscore. I stand firm against any effort that leads us to yield to sin, nor shall I excuse the actions of sinful people. Nevertheless, I am more easily moved to tears as I weigh the consequences of sin for those who are enmeshed in the hideous tenacles of sinful behaviour. Thus it is that I often weep silent tears for the death of the nation in which I was born, just as I also weep for the nation that received me as an immigrant over forty years ago. The nations of the west are dying, and nothing short of divine intervention can halt what is surely coming. And that knowledge moves me to deepest compassion.
The Lord GOD pronounced judgement on Nineveh through the Prophet Jonah. The reluctant prophet walked through the city, repeatedly crying out the dire warning, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” [JONAH 3:4b]! And the city did repent, from the king to the lowliest member of that wicked society. And yet, judgement did come, though it was delayed for almost two hundred years. For the inclination of a society to exalt its own thoughts over the revealed will of the Living God is pervasive and the wickedness that attracts us will in time reassert itself even to our descendants.
The message this day is intended to be a warning, focusing as it does on the nations of Canada and the United States and our maddening descent into societal decay. In particular, I intend to focus on the exclusion of God from national consciousness. Together, I trust we will understand the consequences of the choices society is making.
A BRIEF RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE NEW WORLD —
“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
for the LORD has spoken:
‘Children have I reared and brought up,
but they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.’”
[ISAIAH 1:2-3]
Citizens of our western world, Canadians and Americans, appear deliberately ignorant of the conditions that impelled the Puritans to leave their homes to seek refuge in a strange, new world. The history of the founding of this New World, and consequently the histories of our western nations, are no longer taught in our schools. It is as if there is a conspiracy to ensure that our children will be kept ignorant of who we are and how we came to be. That concerns me, and it should concern you, because we know that a nation without a history has no future. Perhaps this is just as well as far too many of those hired to teach are incapable of handling the history of our nations with any degree of accuracy.
The education cartel that rules over the contemporary educational system has substituted a mythical account of peace prevailing throughout the forests and glades, across the vast prairies and over the mountain peaks of the New World that was marred only by “white supremacy,” in a strained attempt to explain the founding of our two nations. The myth of the noble savage living in a land where freedom wafted on gentle zephyrs so that all tribes dwelt in harmony which was only interrupted by those first English settlers who came as conquerors is the narrative provided to students in modern educational facilities. The appalling ignorance of those young scholars is exceeded only by the lack of honesty by those who are supposed to teach.
We no longer remember that those first European settlers to the North American continent did not come as conquerors; they were seeking freedom to worship God according to the dictates of their own hearts. They were driven from their homeland by tyrannical dicta that endeavoured to impose shackles on their souls. Seeking freedom, and impelled by the Spirit of God Who alone gives freedom, those pilgrims were seeking to worship freely and without obeisance to kings or governors or parliaments.
As is always true of worshippers of the Risen Lord of Glory, those who established the great nations of Canada and the United States were eager not only to quietly worship in secluded enclaves, but also to tell others of the life that is offered in Christ the Lord. You see, one cannot be a follower of Christ if that one is deliberately disobedient. Listen to Jesus on this issue. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” [JOHN 14:15].
Again, the one reading the Gospels will witness Jesus saying, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” [JOHN 14:21].
Consider one further statement from the Master. Jesus said, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” [JOHN 15:10].
Let me point to one further exceptionally pointed statement that occurs in John’s Gospel. We read in JOHN 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” Obedience to the commands of Christ is evidence that one possesses eternal life. A life marked by disobedience demonstrates that the disobedient one is under the wrath of God. It is essential that we note that we do not obey Christ in order to be saved, but because we are saved we will obey Christ. This point is too vital to fail to stress the importance of obedience to the Risen Lord of Glory. Obedience to His commands is the sole evidence of a redeemed life. If you are a saved individual, you want to obey Christ.
I have emphasised these sayings of the Saviour to point to the impact those English settlers had as they set foot on the soil of the New World. They took seriously the command of the Master when He commanded, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” [MATTHEW 28:18-20]. We can be certain that they took His command seriously because they were willing to leave the comforts of their natal land to seek freedom in the New World. Moreover, these freedom seekers did not merely go through the motions of attending services of worship and reciting a liturgy. They endeavoured to live godly lives that glorified the Saviour.
What may be missed in a study of the lives of these pilgrims is that they shared the message of life with the natives encountered in this new land. They did not come to these forested lands to conquer those living there, they came seeking freedom for themselves and for those who would come after them. These early settlers did not, as was true of Spanish conquistadors in more southern climes, compel the natives they encountered to submit to rituals that they neither understood nor received voluntarily. These English settlers did proclaim the message of life in Christ, but obedience to the rites and rituals proclaimed by those first missionaries was not compulsory for those who heard. It was only as these first settlers were followed by representatives of the English Crown that the freedom they sought was once again restricted by government fiat.
The heavy hand of state-sponsored religion grew intolerable, leading many who were not part of the Anglican communion to join the rebellion in order to cast off the oppression of the English crown throughout the American colonies. It was the heavy hand of the state religion that many found odious. As an example of the heavy hand of the state religion, Baptists in Virginia believed that taxation to underwrite the Anglican churches violated their conscience. Because they objected to paying this religious tax, they were dispossessed of their lands, and their skirts cut off at the buttocks before being turned out into the wilderness in the dead of winter where it was hoped they would die of exposure. And this heinous action was carried out only because they objected to paying taxes to support the state church, the Anglican monstrosity!
Baptist preachers in Massachusetts were stripped of their shirts and beaten with rods, the beatings administered being so severe that blood ran down their backs filling their boots. Afterwards, the wounds were so deep and the pain so intense that these men were unable to sleep except by resting on their hands and knees. The crime that brought such a severe sentence? They had preached without receiving state licensure! They had also refused to present their infants for baptism by the state church!
Yet, these freedom-loving, freedom-seeking men and women persevered in worshipping the Risen Christ. They penetrated the forests and pushed across the plains, planting churches and proclaiming eternal life through faith in Christ the Risen Saviour Who gave His life for sinners and Who conquered death. Their faith drove them to be self-dependent rather than depending on government handouts for support. They tilled the soil, planted and tended their crops, raised a few animals to provide meat, milk, butter, and eggs to supplement what they could gather from the bounty of the land. Then, each evening they would settle before a warm fire to read the Word of God, pray together as a family, and retire to bed to rest for the work that lay ahead the following day.
It is a truism that when America was good, America was great. And the same held true for Canada. Many who hear me speaking are old enough to remember when this statement was true. The nation that honours God is blessed by God. The nation that ignores God cannot expect to be blessed by the God they refuse to acknowledge. Truly has the Psalmist testified, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD” [PSALM 33:17a]. And so long as the United States and Canada exalted the Living God by embracing the precepts given in His Word, they were blessed. Though we are reluctant to say so, when our nation ceased to exalt the Living God by embracing the precepts of righteousness that He has given, we learned to our chagrin that we are incapable of showing goodness.
The trappings of God’s blessings linger with decreasing evidence so that those of other debased societies attempt to join us in order to enjoy the benefits of righteousness. But rather than finding the blessings they anticipate, they discover too late that the country that was once blessed has become a monstrosity best characterised as a beautiful cesspool. The bright lights shine somewhat more dimly so that those living there are no longer able to see the homeless lining the streets of our cities and they must consult a map to be able to avoid the filth accumulating on the sidewalks and along the city streets. And though the city may occasionally move the dispossessed out of view and wash the filth from the streets, the cleansing is temporary and soon everything returns to the dismal scene that defines life in our once gleaming, alabaster cities.
In our modern nation, wealth is corroded, moths eat what was once a source of comfort, and we are turned out of the very houses that were once the envy of the world. The words of the half-brother of our Lord are thus fulfilled in this present moment. “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you” [JAMES 5:1-6].
THE CONTEMPORARY VIEW OF GOD —
“Ah, sinful nation,
a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers,
children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the LORD,
they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are utterly estranged.”
[ISAIAH 1:4]
Paul’s stinging indictment of the socio-religious conditions prevailing in that distant day, given in the opening chapter of his Letter to the saints in Rome, anticipates the conditions of our own day. The chapter is a revelation of the degradation of the human heart once the True and Living God has been excluded. Shocking as the Apostle’s description is, the darkest word is reserved for the final condition of that society, “Although they know God’s just requirement—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do these things but even applaud others who practice them” [ROMANS 1:32 ISV].
Paul succinctly captures the degeneration of society, emphasising the step-by-step progression as societal decay accelerates. Truthfully, I could have cited any of a number of the Minor Prophets to illustrate what was taking place in any of those ancient societies at the time they were writing, but the Apostle to the Gentiles is adept at revealing the deliberate progression of Roman society, which serves to expose the deliberate choices of any given society that is intent on excluding God while exalting their own desires.
The Apostle observed that not only was the culture of that day descending into an ever-darker morass of degradation and declension from the standard of righteousness, but the culture was also intent on compelling others to celebrate their deliberate degradation. It was not enough that a minority immersed in a degrading lifestyle was tolerated within that ancient world, but everyone must be compelled to approve of what was being done. Much as witnessed in our own present society, there could be no dissent from the wickedness. Isaiah had that society, and our own present society, pegged when he wrote,
“Beware, Beware, those who pull evil along using cords of emptiness
are as good as dead,
who pull sin as with cart ropes.
They say, ‘Let him hurry, let him act quickly,
so we can see;
let the plan of the Holy One of Israel take shape and come to pass,
then we will know it!’
Beware, those who call evil good and good evil,
who turn darkness into light and light into darkness,
who turn bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter.
Beware, those who think they are wise,
those who think they possess understanding”
[ISAIAH 5:18-21 NET BIBLE, 2ND ED. ]
But what is the prevailing attitude toward God in our present western culture? How do we who are living in this degenerating western culture view God? If we view the sweep of prevalent attitudes revealed in our modern societies, God is not a significant factor in determining how we conduct our lives throughout our days. The average Canadian, or the average American for that matter, gives no thought to what the will of God is when confronted with a question of how to respond to challenges concerning how he should act or what she should choose when presented with alternative points of view. We make our decisions based on our desires, and it is thus evident that we are slaves to our wants. We have adopted the attitude based upon the excesses of the sixties and expressed in contemporary society since at least the seventies, “If it feels good, do it!”
In general, it would appear that the moral choice for Canadians is dictated by pragmatism and is therefore quite fluid rather than being based on an unchanging standard. If a standard is embraced, it will be defined through one’s personal desire, especially if the choice made makes one feel “happy.” Thus, we are far more likely to allow our desires to dictate our life choices rather than seeking to do what honours God. Our personal comfort, our immediate desire, takes precedence over doing what glorifies God. Therefore, our morality is fluid, always changing to allow for fulfilment of our immediate desire rather than reflecting what we know is God’s will. God, if one even thinks of God, seems far distant at best and not a factor in the decisions we make. Certainly, most of us will concede that this is evidently true in the realm of politics and the imposition of regulations designed to control the public. But we are less likely to admit that this is true in the daily decisions that most Canadians must make. Within contemporary society, we have adopted a laissez faire attitude toward social currents; and this choice leaves most Canadians incapable of weighing the consequences of a given course of action. We act on impulse, never considering where our immediate choices must inevitably lead.
It is a serious matter to forget God. Isaiah inveighed against the people whom God had chosen exposing them for their neglect. At one point, the court prophet wrote,
“You have forgotten the God of your salvation
and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge;
therefore, though you plant pleasant plants
and sow the vine-branch of a stranger,
though you make them grow on the day that you plant them,
and make them blossom in the morning that you sow,
yet the harvest will flee away
in a day of grief and incurable pain.”
[ISAIAH 17:10-11]
About the same time that Isaiah was prophesying, the LORD, speaking through Hosea, warned His people,
“Since you have forgotten the law of your God,
I also will forget your children.”
[HOSEA 4:6b]
And thus, we also are warned. To treat God with disdain, to fail to acknowledge Him as God, is to invite dire consequences. I don’t mean to imply that God will punish, though we deserve His judgement, but we are told that He will surrender us to our own desires. And the prospect of getting what we want is terrifying for the perceptive among us.
Allow me to expand on that thought since it is critical for us to know what may lie ahead. In the Psalms is found one Psalm that reviews the history of Israel and the manner in which the LORD dealt with them. I find that particular Psalm to be stunning because of how it played out. The Psalmist notes that the people wanted what they wanted and God gave them what they thought they wanted. Listen to what the Psalmist has written.
“They soon forgot [God’s] works;
they did not wait for his counsel.
But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness,
and put God to the test in the desert;
he gave them what they asked,
but sent a wasting disease among them.”
[PSALM 106:13-15]
We may recall that particular incident, but the Psalmist continued by moving to yet another devastating event in the history of the nation.
“They made a calf in Horeb
and worshiped a metal image.
They exchanged the glory of God
for the image of an ox that eats grass.
They forgot God, their Savior,
who had done great things in Egypt,
wondrous works in the land of Ham,
and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
Therefore he said he would destroy them—
had not Moses, his chosen one,
stood in the breach before him,
to turn away his wrath from destroying them.”
[PSALM 106:19-23]
It was only the intervention of one godly man that spared the nation. Just so, though our own nation may dissent from righteousness, it is apparent that it is only the presence of the righteous that now stays the hand of God.
People within our society know what they want, but they have no idea what they need. I could wish there was a movement to raise up leaders among the churches of our Lord, just as I could wish there was a leader within the nation, that possessed the honesty of Jehoshaphat. You will perhaps recall how Jehoshaphat, facing a critical moment in the history of his nation, boldly prayed, “O our God, will you not execute judgment on [those seeking to harm us]? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” [2 CHRONICLES 20:12].
This is the way we who follow the Great Shepherd should pray! We don’t know what to ask, but we know our God! And we know that He will give what is needful and what is best. It is the way that is revealed when the Apostle speaks of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian. Paul writes, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” [ROMANS 8:26-27].
It is painful for me to acknowledge that the culture in which we are now immersed does not even remotely reflect the values held by the culture that existed in the West only a few decades past. Following the Second World War and throughout the fifties and well into the sixties Canada and the United States still reflected biblical standards that had marked past generations. People living in that earlier day held values revealing a biblical foundation that had undergirded society. Even if some were not disposed to believe in the Lord God, there was generally witnessed great respect for the tenets of the Faith of Christ the Lord and the outward evidence of righteousness. Immigrants to our nations came because they sought opportunity to become productive citizens; they came seeking a chance for the future and not merely to be what they had previously been except receiving lots of free stuff from an overly generous government. Immigrants wanted to become Canadian, or become American. That was what was!
From childhood, we were trained to tell the truth, to avoid lying. We did not speak ill of another person even when we were angry with them; sarcasm had not yet become a form of entertainment. All of us living in those halcyon days were taught to esteem honesty and self-reliance. We understood that we could not depend on bureaucrats living in Ottawa or in Washington to resolve the immediate challenges we might face in day-to-day life, and we were thus expected to adapt and overcome whatever problems might confront us. That was an earlier day, and it is not like that today.
Our families and the entire society encouraged thrift; one could never tell when there might be an emergency and what we had saved would be the means by which we would be enabled to meet the crisis. Even children were encouraged to have a savings account, even if it was only a plaster piggy bank. People commonly saved pennies in a jar, rolling them up and exchanging them at the bank from time-to-time. And all of us were taught to be generous. No one wanted to depend on charity, but when the need was there we knew that our neighbours would be generous toward us, just as we would willingly show generosity to our own neighbours. Government did not attempt to be a parent; children knew a parent would be home when they returned from school. Our society encouraged couples to work through their difficult times and stay together for the sake of the children because we believed our children were not disposable. And when, as was inevitable, some few couples could not remain married, extended family accepted the responsibility to support their own. That day has past and things are quite different now.
Disrespect toward teachers or toward the elderly was unknown. To speak disrespectfully to an older person would bring a swift rebuke from one’s parents, often accompanied by a box on the ears or a rap on the head. Maybe that is why our heads are as hard as they are rather than being mushy as seems to be the case for many in this day. If there was no parent to correct the disrespectful speech or attitudes, you could be certain that any adult would serve in loco parentis to quickly correct the errant youth.
When I reflect on what prevailed only a few short decades past, contrasting what was with what is, my mind turns to the dark prophecy delivered by Isaiah when he wrote,
“The LORD says, ‘I will make youths their officials;
malicious young men will rule over them.
The people will treat each other harshly;
men will oppose each other;
neighbors will fight.
Youths will proudly defy the elderly
and riffraff will challenge those who were once respected.’”
[ISAIAH 3:4-5 NET BIBLE (2ND ED.)]
Surely, this is an accurate description of life in our present Western world! That dark statement is a stunning reminder that when a society forgets God, when a society ignores the Lord of Life, the consequences are certain—and they will always be dark.
THE HIGH COST OF “DOING IT” OUR WAY —
“Why will you still be struck down?
Why will you continue to rebel?
The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores
and raw wounds;
they are not pressed out or bound up
or softened with oil.
“Your country lies desolate;
your cities are burned with fire;
in your very presence
foreigners devour your land;
it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.
And the daughter of Zion is left
like a booth in a vineyard,
like a lodge in a cucumber field,
like a besieged city.”
[ISAIAH 1:5-8]
Societies pay a high price for excluding God from the culture, and that cost is extreme. Step-by-step God surrenders a culture to the cravings the culture imagines they must have. What is especially distressing about this condition is that such a culture is incapable of recognising they are now being judged. At each step of the downward trajectory, the culture is delighted with what they have received, never realising the loss of rich blessing even as the people resent the consequences of the choice they have made.
I find it to be a principle of Scripture that societies that are under divine judgement are unable to recognise that they are being judged until it is too late. The same principle holds when churches fall under divine judgement. When judgement is brought down on a nation, there is no more time for repentance. Nations don’t get a “do over.”
I suppose this dark progression into cultural irrelevance and disappearance into the mist of forgotten history is displayed in few places in a more glaring fashion than what is recorded in Paul’s missive to the Christians in Rome. Though you have no doubt heard what is written in that passage on numerous occasions, the message this day almost demands that we look once more at what is written. I know that I have already referred to Paul’s words written in the opening chapter of this missive, but the message almost demands that we hear God speaking through the Apostle yet again. Therefore, I invite you to turn in your Bibles to that first chapter of Paull’s Letter to the Christians united in the Faith in the capital of the Empire, Rome.
As he opened that letter, Paul developed an outline of the rapidly accelerating downward spiral of any nation that forgets God. He began with the premise that is too readily neglected, writing, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” [ROMANS 1:18-23].
When a society ceases to be grateful to God, failing to honour God as God, the society grows vapid and vacuous, the citizens losing the ability to think rationally in their minds. The evidence that this is the case can be witnessed in the societal push to accept the fiction that gender is fluid and able to be changed on a whim. The demand that people agree with the mental illness that some have accepted as their reality is proof that our own society is incapable of being rational any longer. We will believe anything!
With this foundation, the Apostle presented the first step in the movement away from God and downward toward irrelevance and ultimately moral dissolution. He wrote, “Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” [ROMANS 1:24-25]. People wanted to be enthroned as ruler over their own lives, and God gave mankind what they wanted. The consequences of receiving what they wanted was immediate and it was inevitable.
As Paul develops the second step onto the inevitable slide into cultural oblivion, he wrote, “For this reason,” because they seated themselves on the throne of their heart and excluded God from hold His rightful place as Sovereign of life, “God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” [ROMANS 1:26-27].
In that culture that has shoved God aside in order to promote what the culture desires, darkness descends without opportunity to stop or even to slow the cultural rot. The Apostle observes this inevitable conclusion, writing, “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” [ROMANS 1:28-32].
It is a principle of the Faith that people actually do not know what they want. Thus, when people receive what they imagine will make them fulfilled and sate their raging desires, it inevitably results in ruin for those people. As I have already mentioned, this is clearly seen in the 106TH PSALM, when the Psalmist writes,
“[The people] soon forgot his works;
they did not wait for his counsel.
But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness,
and put God to the test in the desert;
he gave them what they asked,
but sent a wasting disease among them.”
[PSALM 106:13-15]
God will give people what they think they want, but it never works out the way they hoped. The same holds true for nations, just as it does for churches. Let the wise hear and act accordingly.
I have spoken at length, focusing on the conditions that prevail in a culture that has forgotten God. And I believe that in the truest sense, we living within Western societies have forgotten God. Of course, I’m primarily focused on my adopted home of Canada and on my natal home, the United States. Perhaps it is not too late to change the trajectory of these nations. Assuredly, it is not to late for individuals, those who now hear my voice, to turn from pursuing their own desires and from ignoring the God Who loves them and Who has blessed them richly throughout the years past. And that is our prayer today. Amen.
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
