Anchors series / Sermon 1 The Drift / July 27, 2014

Transcription

1 Anchors series / Sermon 1 The Drift / July 27, 2014 How many of you guys love playing in the water at a beach? I do. I grew up near the beach in California, and I spent a lot of time in the water. I just love the water Myrtle Beach, Outer Banks. But you always have to be careful about the current, don t you. Some currents will take you right out to sea. Other currents will move you down the beach. I ve done this a lot: I ll be goofing off in the water, not paying any attention to where I am. Then I will look up, and Julie will be gone, and our chairs are gone. Then I ll start scanning the beach, and I will have drifted 100 yards away without knowing it. She didn t move; I did. You ever been there, done that? You drift along with the current, and you don t even feel it? I have felt something similar from time to time in my life with God. I will be drifting away from God, almost unconsciously. Ever done that? That sense of God s presence, that sense of God-given purpose, that contentment that comes from being close to God as I drift, that all fades. And at some point I look up, and I have drifted a long ways from God. I hate that. I was made to do life with God; so were you. There is a hole in our heart that only God can fill. And when we drift away from him, an emptiness takes his place, a discontent takes his place, even a self-loathing, sometimes. For some people, it gets really bad. Because, as you drift away from God, as your sense of intimacy with God fades, you begin to wonder whether you really want to go back at all. You see, the farther away from God you are, the less attractive he looks, the stranger his ways seem, you re not sure you want to be close to him any more. The farther away from God you get, the easier it gets to question him, to call him weird and quaint. The farther away from God you are, the more we are prone to question whether he is really even good. Well, that s enough of that stuff. We ll get back to that drift in a little while. Now we are going to start a new series this morning, and to kick it off I m really not going to preach. I m just going to chat with you, I m going to muse, I m going to reflect. But I need you to hang with me, because we re going to go pretty deep, into some pretty important stuff. And I think as we go through this series, we ll touch on some stuff that really matters to you. Now I m going to start by giving you kind of an age test. How you answer these three questions will give us a pretty good idea how old you are. Here s question #1: Can you remember a time when Christianity was valued by nearly everyone in our country? Politicians, media, business they all valued Christianity. In fact, most people kind of

2 assumed that if you were an American, you were a Christian. It s almost like Americans were born into faith. There weren t many atheists around, and they kind of stayed in their closets. There was prayer in the schools, there were 10 commandments in the courts, and no one cared. Politicians could talk about Jesus, and no one complained. How many of you remember a time when Christianity was valued by our culture, and openly preferred by Americans? You guys are old! Me too. I suppose that s the way it was through the 50s, and maybe the early 60s. Question #2: How many of you grew up in an America that was more neutral towards Christianity. Christianity was no longer seen as superior to other religions, it was just, maybe, one among equals. In fact, it became acceptable to be an atheist. If you prayed in the schools, it had to be a tolerant prayer. There was a growing suspicion of the 10 commandments in our courtrooms. It was the time of Roe v Wade. How many of you grew up in a time when Christianity was not degraded, yet, it simply wasn t preferred any more? If those are your first memories, you probably grew in in the 60s, or the 70s, or the 80s. Question #3: How many of you grew up in an America that is often hostile to Christianity, and to us Christians? It seems like tolerance has become our highest good; tolerance of everybody except us. Intolerance has become the great evil unless you are intolerant of us. Atheism is not only acceptable now, but it has become militant. Now they are coming after us. In our culture, they tell us to take down our nativity scenes, they warn us not to say Merry Christmas in the workplace, they discipline those who pray in schools, they sue any judges stupid enough to post the 10 commandments in their courtrooms, they eradicate any mention of Christian roots from our history books. On TV, there is a condescension towards Christianity, sometimes even mocking, or hostility. We are now considered narrow, and intolerant, and quaint, and unenlightened. If you grew up in a world like this, you probably grew up in the 90s, or you are still a teenager. You see, there has been a dramatic drift, a dramatic drift away from our Christian roots, for some of us in our lifetime. How our nation is today is not how our nation was, and it is not what we were meant to be when we were founded. I think it is a no-brainer that our nation was founded on Christian principles, and that our founders wanted to create a nation that honored Jesus, and that was fertile soil for his Kingdom to flourish.

3 I could spend all morning giving you evidence. Let me just give you a few pieces. Here s George Washington (heard of him?), he says: It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. Sam Adams, when they first read the Declaration of Independence, two days before he signed it; he says: We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven; and from the rising til the setting sun, may His kingdom come. Patrick Henry (the give me liberty or give me death guy), he says: It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You won t find that one in your kids history books. John Jay, the first chief-justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; he says: Providence (God) has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. Wow! He wouldn t get appointed today! John Adams, our first vice president and our second president; he says: The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. He also said, Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Which, I think we re coming to understand. Andrew Jackson, our 7 th president; he says: The Bible is the rock on which our Republic rests. That would stir some derision today! Abraham Lincoln, our 16 th president (you ve heard of him), he says: It is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. Wow! That s not politically correct! Calvin Coolidge, our 30 th president, he says: The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country. Which is exactly what is happening today. Did you know that 51 of the 55 delegates to our constitutional convention (90%) were professed Christians, and that 27 of them (half

4 of them) had seminary degrees? These guys took following Jesus very seriously. Did you know that in 1782 our congress had 300,000 copies of Bible printed and our congress endorsed their use by all Americans. Can you imagine our congress printing Bibles today?! In fact, they wanted the Bible to be the Primer used in the schools to teach children to read! Try to pull that one off today! In that same year, 1782, our congress added: In God we trust to our coins? They meant it! Did you know that in 1892 our Supreme Court declared: This is a Christian nation, a nation founded on Christian principles. You could actually say that 100 years ago. I could go on, and on, and on. But you get the point. And I know there are people who get all fired up over this stuff. They ll go back and pick out quotes that show that these early Americans weren t really so Christian. And some of them weren t; some of them were deists. But it doesn t change the fact that they tried to build a nation that respected Christian principles. Now, some of the histories you read today are written by revisionists, who do not want you to see how religious these guys were, who do not want you to understand that our founders believed that the Christian faith was foundational for American the system. But guys, I think it s clear: our nation was founded on Christian principles; our founders wanted to create a nation that honored Jesus, a nation that provided fertile soil for his Kingdom to grow. And we have seen our nation drift, in our lifetime at least in the lifetime of us old guys. Once, there was a basic respect for God, and a fundamental acceptance of Christian principles, and a desire to build a culture that was God honoring. Now I know we made a boatload of mistakes. We mistreated God s children who were black. We mistreated God s children who were female. We mistreated God s children who Indians, and so many others. But at least we said we wanted to give God the respect and the place he deserves, and to give Christianity protection and honor. And I suppose somewhere around 50 years ago that started changing. We began to try to be more neutral, to carefully separate church and state in a different way: by removing the church from state. And the definition of tolerance began to change. Tolerance didn t mean putting up with something you don t like any more; now

5 tolerance means: all religions, all values, all beliefs, all lifestyles are equal. Which they are not. And I suppose about 20 years ago or so we drifted even further. Our culture drifted past a neutrality towards God, a neutrality towards Christianity, to a condescension an opposition, and even a hostility. Now, just about anybody who is spiritual in our country is respected, just about anybody who is religious in our country is respected, unless they are Christian. We are a safe target. Our rights are being restricted by our government, our beliefs are being mocked by our media, our children are being fed a steady stream of nonsense in the schools and on TV that undermines what we believe. In fact, the definition of tolerance itself has continued to morph so that it now means an intolerance of anything that is not politically correct. Go figure! So what do you think? Do these sound like the rantings of an old man? Some of you guys have been here at Capital City longer than I have; and you ve never heard me preach a sermon like this. Some of you guys are thinking, About time! Others of you are thinking, Uh oh, I think he s gone off the deep end. But listen, guys, I m not interested in going on and on about how sad it is that our country is drifting away from God. It is drifting, but that s not what this series is about. And I m not going to stand up here and pound this table and try to convince you that if our country will only come back to God, we ll be strong again, and prosperous again. That might be true sometimes; but not always. But that s not what this series is about. I want to talk about a problem that goes way deeper than the drift. This is a problem that goes way further back than 20 years, or 50 years, or even 100 years. I want to talk about where we Jesus followers get our values. We ve been getting our values from the wrong place! Whether you are in your 70s, or in your 40s, or in your teens, most of us Jesus followers have been drawing our values from our culture, instead of our God. We ve been doing that for 2 centuries, but we only see the chaos that creates when culture drifts away from God. How do we decide what we live for? How do we decide what is right and what is wrong? Does our country, does our culture get to decide what s right and wrong, for us Christians? Or is that God s prerogative? We ve been doing this wrong for a long, long time, but the problem only becomes vivid when our culture drifts away from God. My preaching partner, Randy, made some comment in a sermon that was critical of the gay lifestyle. He said choosing to live gay was inconsistent

6 with following Jesus. He was jumped on by one of his Junior High girls. She had been taught that in our culture it s not appropriate to call homosexuality a sin. She s one of our Christian kids. She says, to Randy, What gives you the right to condemn what gay men choose to do, if they love each other? And when Randy tried to point out that he wasn t doing the judging, it is God who draws the lines she didn t care. She didn t care what God thinks, or what the Bible says. Where was she getting her values? Guys, we have a problem; a huge problem. I have seen it in our kids here, same attitude. I have seen it in our adults here, from our 20 somethings, to our seniors. Well, we re going to tackle those problems in this series. Okay, let s get down to where the rubber hits the road. I need three volunteers (now, there are no kiddie pools up here, no buckets of ice water so you re safe) Now let me tell you something about these three people. is what the old King James Bible calls a carnal Christian. He thinks he is a Christian, but he doesn t draw his values from God, he doesn t let God choose what is right and what is wrong for him. He lets our world do that. He is a cultural Christian. Most of the time cultural Christians don t have a clue. They are so caught up in this world that they don t even realize how much their values clash with God s values. Some of you are cultural Christians, like. is what I am going to call a Christ-centered Christian. He doesn t care about what our world thinks is right and wrong, he wants to know what Jesus thinks. Even if God s ways are hard to understand, even if God s ways are really uncomfortable, even if people think they are weird, and strange, that s who he is, that s what he does. He draws his values from God. Some of you are Christcentered Christians, like. Now, is kind of a hybrid. He wants to honor God with his life, but he also wants to fit in to his world. He wants to value what God values, he wants to do what God thinks is right, but sometimes it s too hard. So, he kind of stands with one foot in both worlds. One foot is in the Kingdom of God, and the other foot is in the kingdom of this world. And as long as culture was basically Christian, he could kind of make it work. But what happens when culture starts drifting away from God? Like ours has done, over the past 50 years or so. Now, if you are a cultural Christian, if you simply let your culture determine your values, you ll drift away from God without any

7 discomfort, without any pain. And before long you ll realize that you and God are far apart, you don t agree on much any more. God looks more and more strange, more and more quaint, and unsophisticated. And eventually you will realize, you are really not a Jesus follower at all. And if you are a Christ-centered Christian, and your culture is adrift, you are pretty well anchored, your footing is solid. It becomes clearer and clearer to you that the kingdom of this world is not the same as the Kingdom of God, it never has been. And the foolishness of valuing what the world values, of letting the world dictate what s right and what s wrong becomes crystal clear. We begin to stand out, to stand apart. But what if, what if you are one of those hybrid Christians? You want to honor God, but you want to fit into this world. You kind of want to do life God s way, but you don t want to look weird. And the more culture drifts away from God, the more uncomfortable you get. I mean, even if you are Claude van Damme, or Chuck Norris, or even a Pattison, eventually something has to give, something is going to break. So, where do you get your values? Listen to what the Bible says. This is the apostle Paul, writing to people like us. He says, Don t become so welladjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Which we Jesus followers mess up on, a lot. Instead (he says), fix your attention on God (be anchored on God). You ll be changed from the inside out... Listen guys, deep down inside, isn t that what you really want? To have that solid anchor on God? Then he says, Unlike the culture around you, always (drifting, always) dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, (God) develops (this) well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:2) You see, the culture is going to drift. The real question is: Will you draw your values from culture; or will you draw your values from God, or will you try to have it both ways? Where are you standing? That s what this sermon series is all about. How do you remain Christian in a culture that is drifting away from God? And how do we Jesus followers respond to the people around us when they are drifting away from God? (dismiss the volunteers) Guys, it s happening all around us this drift. We have to think it through. There was a time when if you were an American, at least you said you valued the 10 commandments, even if you weren t very good at keeping them. But now?

8 Commandment 1: No other gods. Well, now that sounds kind of intolerant, doesn t it? In fact, if you believe in no god at all, that s perfectly acceptable, right? Commandment 2: Worship only him. Well, that s not politically correct! We used to quote Jesus, with pride, when he says, I am the (only) way, I am the (only) truth, I am the (only) life; no man (no one) comes to the Father except through me. And now, if you believe that, you are considered intolerant, and narrow, and bigoted. So be it. Commandment 3: Don t take his name in vain. Guys, even those who call themselves believers don t take this one seriously any more. He is degraded every day, and we barely wince. Commandment 4: Respect the Sabbath. For us Jesus followers, we say, Don t neglect meeting together on the Lord s day. But more than 80% of us do neglect meeting together on the Lord s day. Commandment 5: Honor your father and mother. That one has become a joke. We don t honor anyone any more. Because of the failures of a few, we have become cynical of anyone with authority, whether they are politicians, police, parents, or preachers. Commandment 6: Do not murder, a commandment designed to protect human life. Yet our culture has aborted just short of 60 million babies since Roe v Wade. 60 million! That s a 6 with 7 zeroes after it! That just here, in our country! Commandment 7: Do not commit adultery. Seriously? We ve replaced that with, If it feels good, do it! And You ve got to follow your heart. Commandment #8: Do not steal. But our culture has grown to value entitlement, which basically means: I deserve what you have. It s not fair that you have it and I don t. So, give it to me. Commandment #9: Do not lie. But our culture prefers the old line, What is truth? Our culture answers, What s true for you isn t necessarily true for me. We try to choose our own truth. We have become so self-centered and stupid. The 10 th commandment: Do not covet. And yet our culture encourages us to lust after anything we don t have. Our nation values materialism, greed, and hedonism. And so many of us Jesus followers do too. Because we draw our values from our culture, instead of from our God. Guys, our culture has drifted so far from where we were. Once, if you were a cultural Christian, you still looked pretty Christian. Not so much any more. So what do we do? How do we stay anchored in God in a culture that is

9 adrift? And how do we respond to others who are adrift? That s what these next few weeks are going to be about. Let me just give you a tip as we close. Let me show you three verses that will point the way. Ready? You ve heard these before: Jesus said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. Love God first; love people second. Love God, love people. That s what creates the tension we feel, and that s God s solution. There is a tension whenever we love people more than we love God. He has to be first. We have to draw our values from him. But then he calls us, not to ignore, or mock, or attack those who are drifting; he tells us to love them, like he does. Love God first; love people second. We ll be unpacking those things for the next few weeks