“What Has Happened To America?”
Introduction:
*This past couple of days I went to a minister’s retreat in Indianapolis,
IN and one of the spkrs was sharing how our children humble us when
trying to teach truths from God’s Word. He said they read to their
children every night and ask them if they understand what they are
learning. He said one time they were reading the story of David and
Goliath and he asked his son what he learned from the story. His son
said, “Never let anybody cut off your head.” Now most of us haven’t heard
that angle brought out in a sermon probably but it is a good point.
*He said the time he would never for get was when his son was about
three. He told this to show that even though we preach grace as well as
we know how, it is so hard for the flesh to really grasp grace. This time
he had read in the story of Daniel and the lion’s dens. Now like every
three year old his son was in love with guns. They did not buy him toy
guns but it did not matter because a bat became a gun, a stick became a
gun. He was gonna play with guns. And so they read him the story of
Daniel in the lion’s den and when they finished they asked him, “Now son,
what would you do if you were in a den of lions?” The boy said, “I would
get my guns and I would shoot those lions.” Now that wasn’t quite the
answer they were looking for so they said, “No son, what if you didn’t
have any guns? Would you pray - God, save me from the lions!” The boy
said, “No daddy, I would say - God, send my guns!”
*The point is, no matter what we preach most people say God give me a
little bit of help and I’ll do the rest on my own. Most people think that
grace is like a bank loan. Now I don’t want to offend Harold Read being a
banker, but let face it. How does one get a bank loan? You prove you
don’t need it. Isn’t that basically the truth? You go in, you show them
your assets and all your investments and you prove that you don’t need
the money and they give you some. You try to go to a bank absolutely
destitute having nothing and ask for money and see what they say. Most
people think grace is like a bank loan.
*Its what God gives you to be saved after you’ve proved you didn’t need
it. I want to make a strong commitment in my preaching to preach what
Paul called the gospel of grace. Many of us in the Restoration churches
think we are saved because of correctness instead of saved because of
Christ. We have to constantly be reminded that we are not saved because
of our correctness. Not our moral correctness, not our doctrinal
correctness. We are saved because we have put faith in Christ. Hear this:
WE ARE SAVED BY THE ATONEMENT NOT BY OUR ATTAINMENT.
*Now I know that you believe that. What I want to address today is a
dilemma that arises as we try to be faithful to the gospel of grace. And
that is: What has Happened to America? How do you balance a doctrine of
grace with a high ethical standard as we have in the Word and the problem
with our society?
*Dear Abbey was written to by a man once. A man wrote Dear Abbey and
said, I am having an affair with two women and I can not marry them both.
Please tell me what to do but don’t give me any of that morality stuff.
She wrote back: Dear sir, the only difference between humans and animals
is morality. Please write to a veterinarian for advice.
*It doesn’t seem like many people today are for Biblical morality. And so
most of us feel like spiritual salmon. We feel like we are constantly
having to swim upstream in a downstream world. And most of us are tired.
Many have given up the struggle already and have just gone back into the
downstream lifestyle.
*What I am learning is that I can not just assume that I can pass over
ethical matters to get on to the deeper truth of Scripture. We have to be
constantly reminded of what the standards are.
*I have performed a few weddings here, but you won’t see much more. Oh
its not that I am going to quit doing weddings, its just that my
standards are getting higher all the time. I have had two couples get
divorced already that I have wedded. This world is so messed up and it is
so sad. Couples think that living together is the right answer to their
situations when all the while it is the very thing that destroys their
relationship. I had been called about performing a wedding once by a
lady. She asked me if I’d marry her, I said no because I was already
married, but I told her I’d be willing to perform a wedding ceremony
after I talked with her. Now she sounded real nervous and she hesitated
and she finally said, “I’m just gonna ask you. Is it a problem that we
are living together?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “Why” I asked her why she
wants to come to a church to get married. She stammered a little and then
said that she really isn’t religious but her fiancee just insists that
they need to get married in a church. I said, “Why? Why would you want to
come into this place and stand before God and lie to Him by professing
that He is going to be a part of your marriage. I said that you shouldn’t
waste God’s time, just get a Justice of the Peace and everybody will be
happy.
*Why is it that America is in such spiritual shambles? We need to answer
this question because it is flowing into our churches and we have many
who come into our pews on Sunday morning, here the Bible proclaimed (in
many churches at least) and then on Monday night go out into all kinds of
immoral practices. We need to start impacting people more with the
standards that God’s Word gives us than we are. Here are three reasons
why America is where it is spiritually:
I. Our culture has become increasingly secularized.
*We don’t have to speak too much on this point.
*For many of you, you had similar experiences to my grandfather when you
were young. He told me if he had sassed a teacher, the teacher would have
whooped him, the principal would have whooped him, the coach would have
whooped him, the guy at the drug store would have chewed him out before
he got home and his dad would have been waiting for him at home with a
belt. We can not count on the institutions on the institutions in our
communities anymore to reinforce the values we are trying to teach our
kids at home. My kids are growing up in a different culture than when my
grandpa was young.
*Instead today it seems that many of the reigning pieties my grandfather
was taught at school: capitalism, patriotism, and faith in God; are in
fact coming under increasing attack. Have you noticed, for example, how
ministers are typically portrayed by Hollywood? Now 99% of the ministers
I know are noble, decent people trying to help their communities. But 95%
of the ministers on TV are either money-grubbing hypocrites or sexual
perverts.
*The spirit of hedonism has produced a sense that people have the right
to the fulfillment of any personal desire and moral rules are seen as
interfering with their personal liberty. Now it is just plain stupidity
to think that those of us in the church are not influenced by the
constant barrage of that kind of propaganda. And that’s one of the
reasons America is where it is spiritually.
II. The Current love affair in our culture with tolerance.
*This is less obvious than the first point I shared. In other words, its
not just an abundance of people doing wrong, its a loss of a shared
understanding of whats right. The real debate that is going on in the
street, and you’ve got to be aware of this, is a debate over the very
nature of truth.
*For centuries we looked up for truth, but many philosophers and
theologians taught us to look “in” for truth. And so the question is: Are
our deeply-held beliefs relative and negotiable or are there absolute
transcendent values for everyone? Mark this: Any culture that views truth
as relative is uncomfortable with commands.
*The latest Gallup pole says that 67% of Americans reject the idea of
absolute truth. If you poll people under 25 the figure goes up
astronomically. And most of those young people come to church and nod and
thank their preachers for their sermons and when they leave the church, I
guarantee you they do not believe truth is absolute. What they just heard
was true and good for them, but that doesn’t mean its true for everyone.
*Josh McDowell is a Christian apologist (that’s not someone who says they
are sorry for being a Christian, it means they defend the faith) and he’s
spoken on more college campuses than anyone I know. He says that 10 years
ago, the most quoted verse on a Bible college campus would have been John
3:16. Do you know what the most quoted verse on a Bible college campus is
today? Would you like to guess? Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that ye be not
judged...”
*Today, tolerance is a higher virtue than truth. And the thing that’s
really upsetting is that most of us do not really understand what’s
happening. Your little child comes home from school. “What did you learn
about in school today, honey?” “Momma, we learned about tolerance.” And
momma says, “Oh that’s wonderful honey, Jesus was tolerant, we’re
supposed to be tolerant of people.”
*Wrong momma, you don’t understand that what they are taught to be
tolerant is not what you mean when you say the word tolerant. The word
tolerant has undergone a fundamental shift in the last seven years. There
used to be the idea that tolerance meant permission. In other words, I do
not agree with your lifestyle but you have permission to pursue it in a
democratic society. But tolerance is no longer being taught to mean
permission, its being taught to mean PRAISE. In other words, its not
enough that I agree that you have the right to pursue that type of a
lifestyle but I disagree, now you see, if I don’t PRAISE your lifestyle
and say it is equal and just as valid and good as my choice then I am a
bigot. And that is what is being taught as tolerance.
*Now the way that this cancer in our American society invades the Body of
Christ is under the guise of kindness and compassion. William Willemen
preaches for the university chapel at Duke university and he tells of
having a discussion with a neighbor who was a Rabbi. The Rabbi was
discussing a comment a local politician made that was very anti-semitic.
And Willemen was trying to defend him because he wasn’t a particularly
educated man. He said, “I’m sure that what we felt he was saying was
right.” To which the Rabbi said, “And does it make any difference if he
was sincere if he was wrong?” And then he said the Rabbi said,” Is it
still possible for you Christians to be wrong or is it only a sin to be
insincere?”
*Christians used to want to be obedient. Now it seems only important to
be sensitive. I believe that kind of kindness is a cop-out from doing
justice. The prophets would rip us up for that definition of compassion.
*There are wrongs that will always be wrong before God and wrong to
neighbor. And the church must be that voice for justice in the community
even when it is politically incorrect. It is part of our task as
Christians to remind this relative society of that which is ABSOLUTELY
TRUE.
*The 10 commandments are still just as relevant today as if God had just
etched them upon the stone tablets.
III. There is a lack of a clear word in our churches.
*Its like the two old ladies who were sitting in the back pew and one was
kind of hard of hearing and she leaned over to the other one and said,
“What’s he saying?” The other said, “He don’t say.”
*The United Methodist Churches recently released a pamphlet on their
stance on divorce. Now I’m not picking on Methodists but just listen to
this quote:
“Divorce is not good but divorce is sometimes good if the person decides
that it is good to do.”
*What is that?
*The church today has moved away from blunt, value-laden language for
fluff-filled verboseness that has no substance.
*There was a person at this preaching convention I went to that went to
Bible college with me there. He was kicked out of college for a time
because he got his girlfriend pregnant. He eventually came back and he
married the girl, they’ve had a rough time but their making it now. He’s
in the ministry. Late the first night he sat down in the hotel lobby with
me and another friend of mine and talked about his experience with me. He
said you know Mike, people knew we were sexually active, but they told me
later that they felt they didn’t want to say anything because they didn’t
want to come across like they were judging. He said his mom and dad even
suspected and the only thing his mom ever said to him about sex was “Keep
your pants zipped.” The church failed them. Now I don’t excuse their sin,
although they are doing fine now and that was a long time ago, but the
church should have been able to give them a particularly Christian
response to their struggle. ANY PAGAN CAN TELL HIS BOY TO KEEP HIS PANTS
ZIPPED.
*Its easy to harang about morality but its a lot harder to ground it. And
my advice about grounding morality is to ground it where we ground
anything else that matters and that is in Jesus. Next week I’m gonna
continue on this discussion and give some answers to America’s present
sickness.
Invitation
