Stemming the Tide

SERMON: 2015-07-05--g0615--stemming-the-tide-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:32:08.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: Segment [0] begins the main theological discussion and exposition of the sermon. Segment [321] provides concluding remarks and summarizes the material, marking the end of the core sermon content. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- We've been asking ourselves the question in recent weeks, "Why should the Christian believer care about the changes that we're seeing in society with regards to gender, sexuality, and gay marriage?" And so far you will recall that we have looked at three out of four answers to that question that we want to consider together. The first is this, the counterfeit diminishes the value of the real. We talked about that last week in some detail. The counterfeit diminishes the value of the real. Why should anybody put so much effort into creating and sustaining a biblically based marriage when other people enjoy the same privileges without regard to hard work or responsibility? Secondly, we saw we need to care because it encourages what the Bible would call deviant or unnatural sexual behavior. What becomes lawful in one segment of society also becomes lawful in an other segment of society. And many of the practices of the gay community are increasingly making headway into the mainstream population. Witness the gay pride parade that we saw in this town even yesterday, more and more people are getting on the bandwagon. Thirdly, we saw that our Christian freedom will be increasingly restricted. Here is a quotation from Hillary Clinton. We all know her well. She is presently candidating for the Democratic nomination for the next presidential election in the United States. Here is what she said after the Supreme Court decision of the week before last. She said, "So while we celebrate the progress won today, we must stand firm in our conviction to keep moving forward. For too many LGBT Americans who are subjected to discriminatory laws, true equality is still out of reach. While we celebrate today, our work won't be finished until every American can not only marry but live, work, pray, learn, and raise a family free from discrimination and prejudice. We cannot settle for anything less." Notice in that earlier slide her emphasis not only on marry but live, work, and pray. What that means is that we will not rest until the church wholeheartedly embraces same-sex marriage and the whole lifestyle that goes along with it. Our freedom as Christians will be increasingly compromised. For those of you who may think this is far removed from you and why get haught and bothered about it, here is a clip out of Friday's newspaper, "An Ontario court has upheld the Law Society of Upper Canada's decision not to accredit an evangelical Christian law school that forbids students from having sex outside of heterosexual marriage." That's a reference, of course, to Trinity Western University. The Ontario Law Society says, "We will not accredit you in the province of Ontario. Trinity Western has taken them to court. The three appeal court lawyers have turned down their appeal." But what is fascinating to me, fascinating, is the reason they give. Because here is the quotation, "Contrary to the contention of the applicants," that's Trinity Western University, "that requiring persons to refrain from such acts that is homosexual acts does not intrude on the rights of the LGBTQ persons, it is accepted," now listen to this, "It is accepted that sexual conduct is an integral part of a person's very identity. One cannot be divorced from the other." Do you hear what they're saying? What they're saying is that who you are and the right to sexual expression are intrinsically linked if you're part of the gay community. What they don't seem to realize is that for the Christian, who you are and what you do from a Christian point of view is every bit as much linked together. And so here you have judges who are already moving us away from Christian freedom in face of the freedom that is attributed to a certain segment of society, sexually speaking. If that's not enough for you yet to convince you, remember this young -- I didn't bring the picture along, but remember the story of Erin and Melissa Klein in Oregon who refused to do a cake for a same-sex couple, remember that? Well, the judge came down with a judgment this past week, would you like to know how much he fined them? $135,000. Can you believe that? And he put on them a gag order to say you're not allowed to talk about it. Now I'm pretty sure that'll get overturned in appeal, but it shows you where you find -- where we find ourselves in today's world. So that brings us this morning then to a fourth reason that you and I ought to be concerned about the trends of our society. I introduced this briefly last week, we'll talk about it in more detail this morning, and that is the fact that it will completely destroy the world as we know it. It will destroy the world as we know it from a biblical point of view. And I know that in a group as diverse as this, there are different opinions about that, and some of you will like the things that we're talking about, some of you perhaps will be offended by the things that we're talking about, but we want to measure everything by scripture. And scripture says that when we sow to the flesh from the flesh, we're going to reap corruption. And when we ended last week, I said there were two ways in which this movement is, if it's not eventually stopped, will produce the end of the world or society as we know it today. And the first reason for that I mentioned is that it will collapse, that is, society will collapse on itself. And I say that because that's what scripture teaches in the words of our text. Do not be deceived, God cannot be mocked, a man reaps what he sows, the one who sows to please his sinful nature from that nature will reap destruction. One who sows to please the spirit from the spirit will reap eternal life. Here's a diagram that we looked at some time ago, and I've pointed out that every person living in the world has the option of following a sinful nature or living for the Lord. The natural man cannot live for the Lord, but can only live for the Lord through faith in Christ. So we are sowing either to the flesh or we are sowing to the spirit. And the problem with sowing to the flesh is that there operates what I call the law of diminishing returns. The more you give in to sinful cravings, the less satisfied those cravings are and the more input they need. Paul puts it this way in Ephesians 4 verses 17 through 19, "I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility or the uselessness of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they give themselves over-desensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more." Notice the pattern. It starts with separation from God. It leads to a darkened understanding because of the ignorance that leads to a hardening of heart. You lose all sensitivity. You give yourself over-desensuality and so you indulge in every kind of impurity. You sow to the flesh and from the flesh you will reap destruction. There isn't a one of us who doesn't experience that in his or her own life. Look at fleshly appetites, look at a desire for some addictive product or look at a broken desire for attention or all of the things that drive the human heart for recognition and fame and whatever else. The more you give into that, the more you want it. It's the law of diminishing returns. The Bible says, "What you sow, you're going to reap. And if you sow to the flesh, from the flesh you will reap corruption." Now here's the problem. We've talked about this before in passing. The space between sowing and reaping can be many, many years. You know, those of you that are gardeners and if you haven't looked at the gardens around the church or the gardens over here with the vegetables that are growing, you need to take a good look because they are gorgeous this time of the year. But every packet of seed will tell you this much time between seeding and harvest. And you try to pick seeds, don't you, that fit the climate where you live lest late frost or early frost kill the plants that you're growing. The same thing is true in society and in the individual life. The first time you cheat on your wife, your marriage won't necessarily fall apart, chances are she won't know about it. And the first time you're nasty to your kid doesn't mean that he's going to get rebellious and walk away from home, but eventually you keep sowing into that, you will reap the harvest of what you have been seeding. You keep spending more money than you're making, you can get away with it perhaps for a long, long time, but eventually you'll find yourself in the place where grease finds itself and now you're out of money and what are we going to do? What are we going to do? So there is a huge span of time sometimes between sowing and reaping, so much so that people don't see in the reaping the results of the sowing. They make no connection between the two of them. And the more our society comes under pressure, the more troubles that we face, the harder we try to fix things, the less capable we are of going back to where it started and fixing it where it needs to be fixed. Because when you sow to the flesh, from the flesh you will reap corruption, eventually a system always collapses on itself, that's true individually, but that's also true corporately. Now beyond that of course, and we've talked about this as well, at least I introduced it last week, beyond that God steps in, in judgment. God steps in, in judgment. Do not be deceived, God cannot be mocked, a man reaps what he sows, the one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The Bible talks about the harvest of the earth coming due. Listen to this verse from the book of Revelation, "Another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, 'Take your sickle and reap.' Because the time to reap has come, the harvest of the earth is ripe." And what that means is that God watches people sowing to the flesh, he lets it go and he lets it go because he is long suffering, he doesn't want people to perish, but evil gets bigger and bigger and bigger until God has to step in and stop what is happening. That is the reaper going forth, his own children of Israel in the Old Testament, you may remember, were slaves in Egypt for over 400 years, do you remember why? Because the sins of the Canaanites were not yet completed in the promised land, so God gives them 400 years to repent, 400 years to come to their senses, they go from bad to worse until finally the Bible calls it the measure of sin being full. And when the measure of sin is full, God does what only God can do and he brings about what the Bible calls the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord in scripture is when God steps into history and says enough is enough. Obadiah, verse 15, there are no chapters, so there is no chapter reference there, "The day of the Lord is near for all nations, as you have done, it will be done to you. Your deeds will return upon your own head." In Isaiah 212 the Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and the lofty, for all that is exalted and they will be humbled. See at the end of the day, God is ultimately responsible for what happens in the world. And when the people that God has raised up to provide law and order, when the people who represent God do not represent him properly and evil continues to flourish until it threatens the well-being of all of creation, then God must step in in judgment because judgment, please understand, is always the reverse side of God's love. If you have cancer and you go to a doctor who says, well, we'll just let it go because, you know, we don't want to be too drastic about your cancer, you're not going to like your doctor very long because you're going to die when it should have been his job to stop it from happening. And that is why throughout Scripture there are these seasons when God steps in with these catastrophic judgments. And so you have the flood of Noah. Why? Because God saw that the evil of man was evil continually. You have the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because their sin reached heaven in such proportions that God had to step in and turn it upside down. Later on, you have the exile of Israel out of the promised land because their sins were just as bad as the sins of the nations whom they had replaced, and the Bible says the land spit them out because they were polluting the land with their gross and sinful behavior. And ultimately, of course, you want to see the judgment of God. Such Jesus is death on the cross, and you have to understand that if he didn't spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, God must eventually judge the nations of the world for their unbelief and for their sin. And that is the significance when sin gets legalized by government agencies. You've got to remember that Romans chapter 1, which describes the process whereby God gives people over to their sin, ends with the phrase, "They not only do these things, but they approve those who do them." And as you've heard me say before, it's one thing to do things wrong and know that you're doing things wrong because then there's still hope for you. Where it gets skewed is when you're doing things wrong and you no longer recognize that it is wrong, you now elevated into a position of normalcy and goodness that, my dear folks, is when the harvest of the earth comes due. Listen to these words from Dr. John Piper. Some of you are familiar with him. We watch some of his video teachings here periodically. And in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling, week before last, he wrote a blog called "So-called Same-Sex Marriage, Lamenting the New Calamity." Very well written because what he says is, "My sense is that we do not realize what a calamity is happening around us. The new thing, new for America and new for history, is not homosexuality. That brokenness has been here since we were all broken in the fall of man. What is new is not even the celebration and the approval of homosexual sin. Sexual behavior has been exploited and reveled in and celebrated in art for thousands of years. What's new is normalization and institutionalization. This is the new calamity." He goes on to say, "Christians, more clearly than others, can see the tidal wave of pain that is on the way. Sin carries its own misery, and on top of sin's self-destructive power comes, eventually, the final wrath of God. Sexual immorality," he's quoting Paul now, "impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, on account of these, the wrath of God is coming." Why should we care? Because it sets the world up for judgment. Judgment because we're overtaken by our own sin, which gets out of hand, burns down the whole house, and judgment because God says, "I can't let this go on indefinitely." And how do we know, and Dave talked about this a couple of Sunday nights ago in passing, how do we know that many of the things that we can't figure out in the world today, economic distress, changing weather patterns, people, nations rising against nations, terrorism on every hand, how do we know that those aren't already the rumblings of judgment coming upon the nations of the world? So what do we do? Shake our hands, shake our heads, sing songs of lament, we can do all of that. But I think there are a couple of positive things that we can and that we want to be doing, and in the time that remains this morning, I'm going to introduce just one, and then Lord willing, when we have more time, we'll need to come back to the others. What can we do? Well, as always, biblically speaking, we need to start with prayer, particularly what the Bible calls prayer of intercession. "I urge then, first of all," says Paul, writing to Timothy, "that requests prayer's intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone." Intercession is a particular type of prayer. Intercession is the kind of prayer where you stand between God and the world and you plead with God for God to extend mercy and grace to the peoples of the world. Mercy means don't hold their sins against them, don't give them what they deserve, don't give any of us what we deserve. Grace means give favor that is not deserved. Intercession is standing between God and sinful humanity like the priests did in the Old Testament, and you say, "God, extend mercy and grant grace." Now the Bible is filled with powerful examples of intercession. There's Jesus in John chapter 17, interceding with God the Father that all his followers would be one, even as the Father and the Son are one. It's going to take a little bit for that prayer to get answered around the world, I might add. There's Daniel in Daniel chapter 9, having read in the book of Jeremiah God's promise that after 70 years the people of Israel are going to be returned to the promised land, and he begins to cry out to God on the basis of covenant and he says, "Oh God, have mercy, forgive my sin, forgive the sins of the nation, help us to get back in your good graces." There's Moses in Exodus chapter 32, you recall how cantankerous the Israelites were as they were being led through the wilderness, and he just cries out when God is ready to judge the whole nation of Israel and he says, "Lord, if need be, remove me from the book of life but preserve your people." But most of all, for our purposes today particularly, the example of intercession that stands out is the intercession that Abraham does for Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis chapter 18. Gosh, you remember the story, God has entered into covenant with Abraham, has promised to bless him with a child even though he and his wife are long past child bearing ears. And so in Genesis chapter 18 you have this fascinating story where God and two angels show up on Abraham's doorstep in the form of human beings. And according to Middle Eastern custom of hospitality, Abraham invites them in and God makes the promise that in a year's time Sarah is going to get pregnant, Sarah laughs, the laugh of unbelief, the name Isaac later on means he laughs because she couldn't believe that God could do that, can I still have pleasure, she says, at my age. And then as the three leave and Abraham walks along with them, the Lord says to Abraham or the Lord says to himself, "Can I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?" And he goes on to describe how the cry against Sodom and Gomorrah has reached heaven. And remember their sin was the sin of homosexuality as well as inhospitality and you know, the flesh gone to its full conclusion. And he says to Abraham, I'm going to go down there and check this out to see if this is so and the clear implication is if it is so, I'm going to judge them. And this is where Abraham really shines in the story because he appeals to God for the God of all the earth to do right and to exercise justice. And so he says, "What if there's 50 righteous people left in those two cities, will you destroy the city?" And God says, "No, I won't." And Abraham, you know, he gets to be on a roll and he says, "What about 45?" And God says, "No, for 45 I won't destroy them." And then he goes through the list, what about 40, what about 30, what about 20, what about 10? In each case, God makes it very clear that if there are as few as 10 righteous people left in those particular cities, God will not judge the city. And the fact that ultimately he turned it upside down tells you then is how corrupt those cities really were. But what really fascinates me and strikes me about that intercession that Abraham does with God is three things very quickly. Number one, his tenacity. He does not let go. He's like a dog with a bone. God, you can do this. Number two, he appeals to God's sense of justice. The refrain through that whole chapter is, "Will not the God of all the earth do right?" He appeals to God's sense of fairness, "You cannot destroy the whole city and the righteous people with it and still be a just God." And then of course the third thing is that it really demonstrates and it shows God's heart. We often picture God as a bloodthirsty God just waiting to jump and to smack people over the head. And a lot of the times we're like Jonah sitting under the fig tree just waiting for God to strike Nineveh when judgment is the last resort of God. And I love the way Peter puts it in 2 Peter 3, 9, "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness, but he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance." And that's what intercession is. And that's one of the most powerful tools that God has given to you and to me. It's very easy to stand back and to wring our hands and to shake our heads and to sing our songs of lament and say the whole world is going to hell and there's nothing much that I can do about it. And yes, indeed, that's the way it looks because the train is barreling down the tracks. But you know, the book of James says that the prayer of a righteous man or a righteous woman has incredible power in its effect. And one of the first things that you and I ought to be doing is spending time in our prayer closets, identifying with the sins of the world like Daniel did, crying out to God and saying, "God, please have mercy. Don't let us continue down this path until there is no path of return." [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:32:00.920; remove through 00:32:08.000] , that's [CUT] the way it looks. [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:32:08.000; resume after this marked segment]