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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find [email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible Study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: About 40 years ago, sociologists became interested in why or what happens when they get older.
I remember a special by one of the networks where they visited a nursing home out in California. Several were interviewed. One stuck in my mind through the years.
This was what I used to say, a little old lady of 82. I've sort of changed that some. I can barely remember when I was 82. But after the interview, the interviewer said, now is there anything, Myrtle, that you'd like for the people out in the audience to know? She said, yes, said, all right, look right in the camera.
18 year old girl.
I want you to know that behind this old wobbly body there's an 18 year old boy.
You know, as we get older, we're naturally going to be more unsteady in her walk and our standing and so forth. But something in the last about six weeks has made it worse. And I'm trying to find out if it's something that's correctable or something I have to live with.
If that's true, I can do that. I read of one man that had crohn's disease for 23 years before he was able to accept the fact that he was never going to get any better.
And then he had a need to be healed from his need to be healed. But I don't think I will suffer from that. But to our lesson of the morning in Psalms 11, David is having trouble. An enemy is pressing upon him very sorely, and he says, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?
We know the importance of the foundation, how that this determines the solidity of the structure itself.
And our lord. In Matthew 7:24, as he concluded the Sermon on the Mount, said, he that hears these sayings of mine, and does them shall be like unto the wise man that built his house upon the rock. And the rains descended, the floods came, the wind blew and beat upon the house, but it fell. Not because it was founded on the stone, the rock, but the foolish man built his house upon the sand. The rain descended, the floods came, the wind blew against the house and it fell. And great was the fall thereof.
Now, this morning, much of what I have to say will be of a negative nature. But I don't want you to think for one minute that I have any doubt about the future and any doubt about the final outcome of all of God's experiment here with the earth and with us. You know, one thing about the book of Revelation, a lot of symbols we don't understand, but one thing is clearly shown in this book, that whatever forces rise against truth and righteousness and faith to God, in the end God will conquer. You know, I like that. When Christ on the white horse is coming and a mighty army with him, but he doesn't need his army because he slays all of the enemy with a sword of his mouth. And so there will be victory. We will overcome. And while David there in verse two tells about the enemy has bent his bow against me, he has fixed the arrow in the string to shoot at the upright. But in verse four, he says, the Lord is in his holy temple, the throne of God is in heaven, and he sees. Let us always remember that God sees and God's will will be done in the final conclusion that matters. But today we are living in a world of change.
Now, change within itself is not bad.
I remember when I was a boy, I hated Monday, especially in the summertime because Monday was always wash day.
And we had a cast iron pot out in the backyard, three legged deal. And on Monday we'd have to go and fill that pot up and then build a fire around it to heat the water. Then bring out the wash bench, put two galvanized number two tubs on it, fill one halfway with cold water and then bring the hot for the other. And I can still see my mother with a rub board there with life soap, scrubbing pants and shawl and collars and so forth, and then put them over in the next tub. And my brother Olin and I were then to rinse them out good and then squeeze them to get all the water out we could and then hang them on the clothesline.
Well, this was at least a half a day job for a family of four with three of us or a family of five with three of us. Four with three of us working. Got to get my numbers right.
But today you ladies gather up your clothes and go to your washer and put them in and close it up, punch a couple of buttons, go about your business. Hour later you hear Dean change it over to the dryer and so forth. That's a good change.
I'm not the primary washer at our house, but it is a good change.
I remember also back in the late 60s, I was living in Montgomery and there came an announcement that the general electorate Frontier Lab was coming to Montgomery and would be located out in the Normandale Mall. Well, mentioned a lot of things, but the thing that intrigued me was this. They said, we're going to have a stove there that you can put a paper napkin over the eye, then put a skillet on that and fry bacon, fry eggs. I didn't believe it. Well, that's not possible. So I went out here, the guy came out, he brought his little stove there and set it down, plugged it up, and then he took a white plain napkin, paper napkin, and put it on it. Put the skillet, you could smell the bacon, and then you could see the eggs sizzling. And then he raised it up and pulled out that napkin. Not a smudge on it.
I thought, wow, what's the world coming to? And then they called it a radar stove and said soon it'll be commercially put out for the people to buy. Well, a couple years later, I remember Amana was one of the leading companies there. They had what they call the radar range. And I bought one even though it was over $400 and I was making less than 20,000 a year in those days. And it was a marvelous thing. And now all of you use them. You've bought them, used them about every day, except you call them a microwave.
And these changes are good and we could give many more, but there are changes that are not good.
There was one time when a man's word meant his bond. I've seen my dad discuss trade with someone and then when they got through and both of them were agreeable, they shook hands, didn't sign any note, didn't sign any document. They shook hands and a man kept his word because his entire reputation depended on that. And today you find contracts signed, notarized, all of that, and then still many have to be sued to get them to honor that contract.
Another change. There has always been sin in the world since Adam and Eve were put out of Eden. In fact, it got so bad early on, God had to start over with eight people instead of two this time. Noah and his family, others destroyed in the flood.
But the thing in the past, sinners have usually agreed that this is sin.
And sin was called by its right name.
But back a number of years ago, Dr. Meninger, the founder of the Menninger foundation, wrote a book entitled Whatever Happened to Sin?
But we have. Now that you have your standard, I have mine. You can't condemn my standard because that's mine. There is no absolute truth.
And I never thought I'd live to see the day when sinners called in the Bible abominable. Sinners would actually have special days to march and celebrate their sin.
That's the world that we're living in.
There was a time when two people stood before a minister or before a judge and promised that they would be true and faithful to each other until death day us part.
Today, if current events go as they are, about half of those that do that will break up. And this has placed a terrible toll on our young folks. And boy, we have this scourge of pornography.
According to studies, the most active use of pornography, those who make more hits on the pornography websites, are young men between the ages of 12 and 24, many starting at the age of 8.
In addition to that, a poll made a couple of years ago by the Dura Examining group of evangelical churches, not the general run, that evangelical churches and practicing Christians are claiming to be Christians. And they found that 41% of those in that category of the men said, we struggle with this, 13% of the women, and think of other things. This has brought on Almost every minute, 24 hours of every day.
There is one in this general age group that attempts suicide. And many of them succeed in that. During this same age or during the teenagers, you find of the young women that are unmarried, every 30 minutes, 2800 get pregnant, and during the same time, 2,200 abort their babies.
So this is the kind of change that we're seeing in our world now. There are things that don't change.
James says in James 1:17 about God, there is with him no shadow that is cast, a turning, no variation, no shadow cast by turning. In Hebrews 13, verse 8, it says of Jesus, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, forever.
God's word does not change. Jesus said, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word will never pass away. And Peter referred in 1st Peter 1:25 to the word of God that lives and abides forever.
So there are things that do not change.
But the question what do the righteous do?
I suggest three things.
Number one, we've got to be bold enough to speak out against these evils, these sins in our world.
Be like John the Baptist who told Herod Agrippa, it's not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. Spoke out, cost him his life. But he announced what God would want him to announce to that king.
Then also have the courage to stand by what we believe and not be moved from that. You remember in Daniel 3, King Nebuchadnezzar built a huge golden image, 90ft high, 9ft wide, put it out in the plain of Dura, gave the announcement that when you hear the sound of the various musical instruments, you bow down to this image. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego did not bow down. And some of their co workers that were jealous of them anyway told the king. The king was angry, but he liked these men. He called them in and said, now look, if when you hear the sound of the music, you bow down to my image, we'll forget about your failure to do so.
And they said, O King, there's no use of our speaking to you regarding this matter. Our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace, and he will deliver us from your hand. But if not, we will not bow down to your gods Courage thrown in the fiery furnace. In this case, Jesus probably in there with them when they came out. Not a singe, not a hair was singed, not a smell of any burnt cloth whatsoever. And that old spiritual says, they wouldn't bow, they wouldn't bend, they wouldn't burn, but they had the courage to stand regardless of what happened, whether life or whether death was the result.
And then number three, trust.
Have the trust of job in job 1315 when he said, though he slay me, yet will I trust him.
Russell Lowell, the American poet, wrote a poem entitled His Present Crisis, in which he said, truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. And yet behind that scaffold in the dim unknown standeth God amid the shadows, keeping watch above his own.
God will not leave us, he will not forsake us. So whatever it may be, he will be there. But moving on, we are also living in a world of corruption.
Here are CEOs that will cook the books in order to get a better bonus.
You have politicians willing to sell their vote to the highest bidder.
You find the lack of standing up for principle and for truth in so many cases. I don't believe there's ever been a time when we had more people, almost on a daily basis, public figures that are either forced to retire or indicted because of misuse of funds or because of the defects in their character.
And this will destroy Our nation, Solomon said in Proverbs 22:1. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
I was encouraged a few years ago when I visited West Point. And there in the cadet's old chapel stone walls and engraved in those stones, sin is a reproach to any people.
And how true that is.
Back in 1841, there was a French diplomat by the name of Alexis de Tocquel that came to our country to see what was the secret of her greatness. He spent nine months here going all over the country. When he went back to France, he wrote two volumes. And in that he said, america is great because America is good.
If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
And how true that is.
So what do we do?
Well, each of us is going to have to personally make a difference. We can't change others except as we can encourage and as we can show our own example. That old saying that honesty is the best policy for the Christian, this is not altogether true. Honesty is the only policy for the Christian. Then we've got to have the honor to protect our name. Realize how important this is, Solomon said. A good name rather to be desired than silver and gold, yea, than much fine gold. So protect our reputation. Be people that are honorable in all of our dealings and where they don't have to check to see whether or not we're cheating on our income tax, whether or not we're padding our expense accounts because they know that we're going to do what is right.
We can't speak for everyone, but we can act for ourselves.
In this time when we have the corruption, then we've got to have those convictions that we embody and that we stand by.
But we're also living in a time of great conflict.
You have conflict of one nation against another. You have the Chinese and the Russians, North Korea, South Korea, Israelis, Palestinians in our country opposite many others.
Then within our country we have conflict, racial tension. We have class problems. We have the young versus the old.
And then coming on down in the home, we have conflict, often between parents, one parent against another, between parents and children. And then sibling rivalry among the children.
And then what is perhaps worst of all, we have conflict within the conflict of what we want to be and the realization of what we are and how far short we fall short of our goal.
Of course, having great goals is not bad. Someone said a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or else what's a heaven for?
But in this internal conflict, Paul had it, he said in Romans 7:15. He said, I don't understand what I would I don't do and what I hate that I do.
Philip Yancey, a religious writer, has written a lot of good books. He said, in examining my life, I have found that most of my problems circle around two things.
First, God doesn't act in the way I want him to act.
And second, I don't act in the way God wants me to act.
So in this time of conflict, we've got to have compassion, you know, Jesus was filled with compassion.
On one occasion, three things came down upon him almost at once.
Word came to him that John the Baptist has been beheaded by Herod.
Here the 12 returned from their limited commission, all excited and eager to tell him what had happened to them to download.
Then in addition to that, Mark says the people were pressing them so that he didn't even have time to eat.
And Jesus said to him, come aside, let's rest. And so they got in a boat to go over to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The people that had been pressing against them saw where they were going and they went around the northern shore. And when Jesus came to the shore, there they were, great moladud of them, waiting.
And Jesus looked out and he saw that many sick, maimed, various illnesses in the group, Others eager to know what he had to say.
Others there just more curiosity seekers.
But it says, and he had compassion over them. Here's his vacation. They come in interrupted, but he takes time to do for them.
Then you remember they went on with the speech on late, and the people were out in a barren area where there was no place to buy food.
Some of them were faint.
And Jesus fed 5,000 men and the women and children with a five loaves and the two fish.
And yet a little after this, some of those same folks were following him. And they said, if you're really the Messiah, give us a sign. You remember Moses in the wilderness, fed the people for 40 years.
And Jesus said, it wasn't Moses, it was my father. But you don't follow me, because you have seen a sign and believe you follow me for the loaves and the fish, knowing that those were still in the crowd, still he had that compassion.
Well, in our struggles, if we could have more sympathy for those that we feel do us wrong.
And in turn, if we made the golden rule our rule for living, Matthew 7:12 as you would that others do unto you, do ye even so unto them. For this is the law and the prophets, we would settle so very Very many of our troubles, so many times our conflict comes because we have too much pride to admit we may be wrong or to admit the other has a point.
And these things come hard sometimes.
But if we could just have that ability to give and not always seek our own, but seek that which is best for others.
Have an illustration that you've heard before, but it so well illustrates the point.
Two farmers at each other's throat over and over again.
The whole argument was over a fence line. The neighbor over here said, you put that fence four feet over on my property. The other said, no, no way. We're not moving that fence. Finally, though, he got tired of it all and sold his farm.
And when the newer fellow out, thinking about buying it, came out to the fence and walking along, the neighbor came over and said, are you planning to buy that farm?
Said, well, really I am.
That way you're going to have trouble.
Said, what do you mean? That fence is over in my side and we're going to have trouble. And the men said, well, I don't think we will.
Bought the farm, moved in, went over to see his neighbor, said, now come down here and show me just where that fence ought to go. And the man measured off 4ft and said, it ought to be right over here.
And the other said, well, you know, let's be sure about it, and to make certain that I'm not on your land, let's just move it over here 10ft.
And the other sort of shamefacedly looked down at his foot and thought, and then raised up, said, well, if you're going to be that way about it, just leave it where it is.
If we just had that give in about us, but we always want to maintain our way.
I want to read something to you that in conclusion that to me makes a lot of sense. This is written by Howard Williams, waiter, back in 1906.
It's entitled I Would be true.
I would be true for there are those who trust me I would be pure for there are those who care I would be strong for there's much to suffer I would be brave for there's much to dare I would be friend of all the foe, the friendless I would be giving and forget the gift I would be humble for I know my weakness I would look up and laugh and love and lift I would be faithful through each passing moment I would be constantly in touch with God I would be strong to follow where he leads me I would have faith to keep the path Christ trodden who is so low that I am not his brother. Who is so high that I have no path to him who is so poor that I may not feel his hunger? Who is so rich I may not pity him who is so hurt I may not know his heartache who sings for joy my heart may never share? Who in God's heaven has passed beyond my vision? Who in hell's depths where I may never fare?
May none then call on me for understanding. May none then turn to me for help and pain and drink Drain alone his bitter cup of sorrow or find he knocks upon my heart in vain.
The foundations of her country are being shaken.
But with this change comes courage.
With this corruption comes conviction. And then with this conflict comes our consideration, our condolence, our care.
May be some in the audience this morning that have never really had a strong foundation.
The only sure foundation, the right one, is the one that's built on Christ.
Surely you believe in Christ, that he is the Son of God?
The big battle centers around whether or not we're willing to repent. Are we willing to give up our way for his way?
If so, there'd be no problem for us to confess that faith and to obey the command of our Lord to be baptized for the remission of sins.
Maybe some of you have had that faith, but it's gotten cracked a little.
If this is something that you need to tell us about and let us pray with you, for the invitation is for you. But if we can help you in any way in your Christian walk, let it be known now while we stand the same.
