Sunday Night: Infallible

Sunday Night: Infallible

Place: BLCC

Date: 3/5/17

Text: Psalm 119.86; John 8.26

CT: Our Lord is INFALLIBLE!

FAS: The Washington Post calls it "the most shocking moment in Oscars history." One TV critic called it "an Oscar moment that will live forever in clip-reel infamy."??Jim Dennison was staying up for the end of the Academy Awards last Sunday night so he could write about them Monday morning. It finally came time for the final award of the evening, for Best Picture. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were the presenters.?However, Beatty was given the wrong envelope. It was a duplicate Best Actress envelope and contained a card announcing that Emma Stone had won Best Actress for La La Land. Beatty and Dunaway assumed the card meant that La La Land also won for Best Picture, so she announced the Oscar accordingly.??

Accountants from PricewaterhouseCoopers then took the stage to reveal the mistake and announce that Moonlight had won. The shocking blunder called to mind Steve Harvey's gaffe at the Miss Universe pageant and reminded us that even professional actors sometimes get their biggest lines wrong. Reality intruded on the fiction of film as we witnessed the fallenness of humanity.??

Such realism was the theme of the night.?? Expected was the usual political rancor and commentary supporting the usual liberal causes. But there were also moments of genuine goodwill. Especially the part where a group of tourists visiting Hollywood was unknowingly ushered into the awards show. They found themselves meeting Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, receiving sunglasses from Jennifer Aniston and touching Mahershala Ali's newly-won Oscar. They were obviously surprised, which lent a note of realism to what is usually a scripted celebration of scripted pseudo-reality.??The night was a reminder of the common humanity that transcends our differences.

The theme of this year's Academy Awards was "Inspiration," a word that means "to be breathed into."

It confesses that we need what we do not have, that a source outside us is essential to the hope within us.??

Life continually testifies that it is so.??

Michael J. Fox made an appearance, despite his debilitating Parkinson's disease.

The montage remembering movie professionals who died in the last year could not include Bill Paxton since he died just last Saturday at the age of sixty-one.

Mortality and finitude are part of life for celebrities and the rest of us as well.??In her acceptance speech for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Viola Davis claimed, "We are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life."

Don’t know if I agree with that.

LS: The problem fallen filmmakers face, however, is that the true meaning of life cannot be found within life.??

Even the greatest people live fallen lives without the guidance of God and his Son.

Henry Ford is one of the biggest names in American life. His use of mass production in manufacturing the Model T automobile shaped not only the economy and industry, but the values of 20th century America.

A 2005 biography of Ford tells the story of the man who achieved incredible fame and fortune, and describes how, in the end, this "gifted man was undone by his own success."

Ford loved the ordinary folk and they loved him back. By 1920, half of all cars on US roads were Fords. But it wasn't just cars that Ford was selling. He preached a new gospel to a public raised on Christian ideals of delayed gratification and self-control. Ford believed that money was for spending, and that workers should use their income to buy products that would improve their lives—products like his Model T.

Seen as a hero for making it possible for the average family to own a car, Ford's opinion was sought out for every area of life, from world peace to marriage and child care.

The adulation of others ultimately convinced Ford that he was iINFALLIBLE and led him to ruinously bad decisions. It blinded him to his own hypocrisy as he preached family values and old-fashioned virtue and yet kept a mistress. It may also have driven him to destroy his only child….

The older Ford—offended by his son's gentle style and superior education—ruthlessly undercut him at every turn, only then to mourn grievously when Edsel died young…. Ford's last days were sorrowful. On a visit to the house where he had lived as a newlywed, he told his chauffeur, "I've got a lot of money, and I'd give every penny of it right now just to be here with Mrs. Ford." (Article from preaching Today)

Do we often feel infallible in our decisions. Without God as our lead in all we do, we will fall.

Since the consequence of our sin is death (Romans 6:23), For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.