Thoughts from sermon, 1/22/12
Scripture:
Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. 1Peter 2:12
Today, more than any recent time, I see a shift in what Christianity is doing to America, and it frightens me. Our speaker this morning gave an example: “Christians saying, ‘Jesus is the only way’ is considered hate speech in our country. I am old, and will soon be, Lord willing, older. I recall the spirit of the times in the 1970s. Headlines screamed day after day of government wanting to run families, of CPS being called whenever a parent spanked a child, even in the grocery stores. I remember the “unisex” drive to merge both sexes, a denial of differences between boys and girls, and I remember having trouble finding the men’s section in the shoe store because of all the similarity in men’s and women’s shoes. I remember a dearth of Christianity, at least coming from the nation.
I remember also many hippies being saved. I recall efforts by giants like David Wilkerson, and Jews for Jesus to reach out for lost youth. Well I should remember them, for I accepted Christ in just such a time, May 5, 1972. The spiritually dead time of the 60’s broke into revival of the 70’s and led to even Time Magazine heralding “The Year of the Evangelical”. But as I look back now, the early 80’s were nearly 30 years ago, and what has happened to America since then?
The speaker this morning brought up ‘cutters’, but I remember cutters throughout the 80s. Still, I wonder if she did not have a point, for even after thirty years it still remains an unknown to mainstream society, but is perhaps growing in the field of what I would call bizarre. Now, being nearly 60, I do beg forgiveness on the part of those who are younger, but please let me tell you what I find so appalling in today’s world. Cutters do bother me; they bothered me when I first saw a pretty young high school girl cutting herself in 1985. What is the thing with tattoos? I do not understand why people want to deface their bodies for a lifetime. I have never understood the nearly twenty years of baggy pants and young men. Do they really want everyone to think their pants are falling down? I have always wondered whether there is not a hidden metaphor in there somewhere, where the children are trying and failing to fill the pants of their parents. And the piercings? I grew up slightly after the beatniks, and thought they were weird, but they cannot hold a candle to the people who seem to want to pierce every inch of their bodies.
I recall drugs being a problem; after all, Nixon declared his “war on drugs” in the sixties. But I still wonder if the problem has not gotten lots worse. I do hear employers all over the country having a hard time finding enough employees who can even pass a drug test. Evidence for Christianity leading the nation is at a low; the president belonged for over 20 years to a church which seems to be anything but Biblical, in its hatred and bigotry, and tolerance of even Islamic members. What is Christianity if not an exclusive religion?
Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me.” I know it to be somewhat old fashioned to quote the Bible, but there it is anyway. Our society today does, as our speaker said, want to accept anything and everything as valid, and it seems to successfully put down any who want to hold to a creed. It seems that there is a damnable doctrine of “tolerance” out there that disabuses any notion of good and bad, of right and wrong.
But I want to look at things through the eyes of my Lord, and I have to say that I see a lot of similarities between today’s society and the time of the late sixties and early seventies. There was a big push toward government doing everything in both times; both times seem to suffer with a rapidly decaying family. Charles Murray gives a lot of disheartening statistics on out of wedlock births and lack of marriages, which I think to be even worse than I knew in earlier times. My Lord says, “Do not say there are yet four months more and then harvest. I tell you, open your eyes and look on the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” (I believe our speaker referred to this verse??)
I cannot tell you how excited I am! We live in the last days, the days just before our Lord will take us away, and when the world will be judged for its lack of faith. I ask you what better time could we live in? Our church is stepping into a 44,000 square foot facility, and this morning at Starbucks our barista marveled, saying what are you going to do with all that space? My prayer is that all of those empty nooks and crannies will be filled with the harvest of souls from Elk Grove. I want Young Life using it. I want it filled with youth, as MaryBeth outlined for us this morning. I want outreach to the homeless. I want active evangelism started in our community. In short, what I do not want, is for it to remain empty.
It is just for such a time as this that we live. It is our responsibility to bring a message of hope to the hopeless, and I cannot remember a time in which our message is more ripe for giving. We stand at the cusp of history, not yelling ‘stop’ as Buckley says, but giving the only message possible to stop the downfall of America. Let us begin with Elk Grove, holding her up to God in prayer, that if by any means, the Lord will use us to harvest the bountiful harvest of needy souls. It may well be, as our speaker said, that we have stagnated horribly as a society, but within that horrible stagnation is the richest of opportunity for generation. Will you join me in fervent effectual prayer to the Lord of the Harvest, that He might provide a rich harvest, beginning in Elk Grove, right in the building, formerly known as Gold’s Gym? Oh, that we might see a change, that the gym which glorified nothing but the bodies of men and women, might speak instead to their souls, and begin pouring the immeasurable love of God into them!
Revival begins with one person asking himself what would Jesus do. I went to Biola in the seventies, and know of three professors in Biola who dared to stand up in the seventies and ask God for revival, and the things they received for Biola forty years ago are still impacting the school today. Three men, praying and emptying their souls before God, claimed the junior high school adjacent to their property, and today Biola is able to reach and teach twice the students! Along with it came a surge in missionaries sent round the world to give the gospel to the needy.
There is a famous story about D.L. Moody, that as a beginning Christian, he read the words, “It remains to be seen what one man, wholly committed to God can do.” It is said that Moody determined to be that man. Look what happened! I say to you, God, who is the same God of those praying professors, who is the same God as Moody had, can bring great revival in this last time. Oh, that you might see it by faith, and enter into prayer together. Perhaps I could amend the saying that inspired Moody: “It remains to be seen what one church can do for God, wholly committed unto Him.”
Standing in the Need of Prayer
1. Not my father, not my mother, but it's me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
Not my sister, not my brother, but it's me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
2. Not the people that are shouting, but it's me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
Not the members I've been doubting, but it's me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
3. Not the preacher, not the sinner, but it's me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
Not the deacon, not the teacher, but it's me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
Chorus:
It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord,
Standing in the need of prayer.
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