Sermon: What's Wrong With America

The Truth About America - Why are so many in America feeling like something is just not right.  There seems to be a troubling spirit hovering over us.  It is a feeling of fear and of uncertainty.  69% of Americans believe the country is in decline.  83% are worried about America's future.  What is happening and what can Christian Americans do about it?

http://landmarknazarene.org/media.php?pageID=36

Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.

America was founded on Christian principles

‎"One of the great strengths of the United States," President Obama said, "is ... we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation" - The President was in Turkey when he denied the Judeo-Christian heritage of America. Is this more evidence that he doesn't know our history or that he denies it?  Or, is the meaning of his words twisted because they were taken out of context?

"It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people, they will be called 'sons of the living God.'" - Romans 9:26

Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.

The Truth About America (Part 2) Our God Fearing Founders

The Truth About America (Part 2)
Our God-fearing Founders
By Kevin Probst
Balshazzar, the king of ancient Babylon, invited 10,000 guests to a banquet. He hosted a feast in honor of their false gods. While they were drinking and reveling Balshazzer saw a finger writing on the wall. He was stunned by the words written, "The days of your kingdom are numbered. You have been weighed in the balances and you don't measure up. Your kingdom will be divided and given to your enemies." (Daniel 5)
The Babylonians had built an impregnable double wall about their city. These two walls together were 47 feet thick. The space between the walls was filled with dirt and gravel so that four chariots could race upon the wall side by side. The wall was manned by thousands of guards. But on one particular night, Cyrus, the captain of the Medes and Persians, with the help of two Babylonian traitors entered the city through an underground passage. The prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground." (Isaiah 21:9)
When a nation eliminates the true and only God and substitutes Him with a false god it has sealed its doom unless the people repent and a great revival occurs. Jesus is weeping, “America, America, how I have longed to gather your children unto me but you have rejected me in favor of other gods!” There are prophets throughout the land crying out, “O Lord, will you not hear. There is contention and strife, the wicked surround the righteous and justice is perverted.” We are drunk with the wine of materialism and pleasure. We are overtaken by our sinful desires and we are celebrating our idols. We think we have built walls that can protect us and we pretend we are invincible. Our enemy is conspiring against us and we tell ourselves he is our friend.
Can I share a truth the wicked don’t want you to know?
The Founding Fathers were God-fearing men who established this nation as a Christian Nation. They were not perfect but they were men who understood the need to harness the true nature of man by entreating a holy God to assist them in their massive endeavor.
I. They had a strong belief in God.
1. Christopher Columbus – No one can know for sure but he very well may have been a born again Christian. “Christopher” means Christ Bearer. In 1492 Columbus set out to find a passage to the far east but having been convinced that Christ would return soon he felt it his calling to spread the knowledge of Christ wherever he might. Seventy three days after setting sail to cross the Atlantic his crew became mutinous. Columbus made a deal with them. If they failed to discover land in three days they would reverse course and return to Europe. He spent those three days in prayer and fasting. On the third day they spotted land.
They docked their three ships and named the new island, San Salvadore, which means “Holy Savior.” On every island they visited they erected a cross and left these words, “As a token of our Lord Jesus Christ and in honor of the Christian faith.” They named another island “La Navidad” in honor of the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary. They named another island, “Santa Cruz” in honor of the Holy Cross of Christ. Another island they named “Trinidad” in honor of the Holy Trinity. It’s absurd to portray Columbus as anyone other than a man very conscious of a divine intervention in his life.
2. Patrick Henry, the first post-colonial governor of Virginia once said, “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.”
3. Benjamin Franklin – Our earliest representatives had gathered in 1787 in Philadelphia for the purpose of writing a constitution. It was one of the hottest summers on record. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Tension began to build and tempers flared. The oldest statesman there, well into his 80’s, stood slowly on his old, feeble bones and leaned on his cane. All conversation ceased and his old, gruff voice pierced the silence. “I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that “except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel.” Ben Franklin went on to suggest they open every session henceforth with prayer and they did and they wrote the greatest government document ever known to man.
We must return to the God of our founders. We feel confident of our safety behind the walls we have built. We deceive ourselves with a sense of false security. “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” (Psalm 9:17) All the nations and all the empires of the past who have forgotten the true God were eventually felled and destroyed. If God makes an exception for an American culture waving its fist in the face of God then he violates his own just nature and ceased to be God. He promised us this couldn’t happen. “I the Lord, change not!” (Malachi 3:6)

Jumping off 'The Ledge'

Many Christians, especially Presbyterians and Baptists, have embraced and attempted to live by the teachings of the Westminster Confession since it was formulated by the Church of England in 1646. It attempts to answer a mystifying question that has dogged man for thousands of years. What is our purpose? Why were we born? Why are we here? The answer given by the Westminster Confession is simple and direct: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God.” We were created to praise the Creator. Unfortunately, most in our modern culture worships the creation rather than the creator. “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…” (Romans 1:25)

The Westminster Confession reinforces the idea that men were created to worship: “Religious worship is to be given to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and to him alone: not to angels, saints, or any other creature.” American society is becoming more and more pantheistic, substituting the worship of nature rather than worship the true God.

New Age guru, Shirley McClain, was given a five hour block by ABC to promote her mystic beliefs. McClain promoted the idea of God being a part of everything and everything being a part of God. She claimed to have some sort of Aquarian revelation while walking along the beach one day. She lifted her hands toward the heavens and said, “I am god.” She felt a bit sheepish at first but as she repeated it again and again she said she finally embraced her inner god nature.

A major contradiction in this belief that we are all threads in a god quilt is the failure to reconcile good and evil within our very nature. If God is holy, sinless and perfect in his purity, how can he then also be sinful and unspeakably wicked? Light and dark cannot simultaneously exist in the same space, nor can purity and sinfulness coexist in the same entity. Therefore, if man is sinful in his nature his claim that “I am god” is an absurdity. Christ died on the cross to bridge the great gap that separates us from the living God. We can experience reconciliation with God through repentance and forgiveness but we can never become god. It’s an age-old problem that goes all the way back to Eve’s desire to become God in the Garden of Eden. The same problem surfaced again at the Tower of Babel. It is still prevalent today.

Who is surprised that Hollywood and the modern media would give a platform for such tripe? A true Christian would not slough off his God-given responsibility to be a conscientious steward of the earth God has given. God created the earth and saw that it was good and was very pleased. The first responsibility of Adam was to tend to the garden in which he lived. We still have an obligation to care for and respect the creation.

But, many have gone beyond being good stewards. They have violated the chief purpose of God for man by glorifying nature rather than God. Hollywood and the media have given Al Gore and others an inordinate amount of time to use their studios as a bully pulpit to promote the worship of Gaia, the earth goddess.

Men were created to worship. Worship is an involuntary response like breathing or blinking our eyes. When we worship God, the Creator, we are able to maintain a proper perspective of God, his creation and our place in it. When we choose to worship others or other things our minds become more and more distorted. An apathetic failure to fulfill the chief purpose of man will bring major distortion but an aggressive determination to substitute God with a false idol will bring gross distortion and a dreadful response from a God who is terrible in his justice.

This brings us to another twisted Hollywood promotion. Matthew Chapman, who ironically happens to be the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, has directed a movie called “The Ledge”. In a nutshell, the movie depicts a fundamentalist Christian husband whose wife yields to seductions of an atheist friend. Just as Hollywood used “Brokeback Mountain” to promote the acceptance of the sin of homosexuality, it now uses “The Ledge” to promote acceptance of the sin of unbelief.

The Christian is depicted as the evil one forcing another to commit suicide while the atheist is the classic victim. The non-believer is sexy and attractive to the leading female while the Christian husband is stiff, stodgy and overbearing. This is typical for Hollywood to trash the Christian and glorify one who declares there is no God.

If man’s chief end is to glorify God, is this not a perversion of the true purpose of man? Chapman says, “I hope atheists who are still in the closet will take heart from the film and think, I am not alone.” The intent of the film is to unite atheists and encourage the acceptance of the general public of their God-denying beliefs.

It borders on blasphemy. Chapman puts his viewers on the ledge and encourages them to jump off into an abyss of moral decay because we have failed to fulfill the primary purpose of man, to bring glory to the true and living God. Think of it, millions of people will shell out multi-millions of dollars to see this film and each of the dollars they spend will have written on it, “In God We Trust.”
Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.

What More Could He Have Done?

Isaiah tells the story of a man who planted a vineyard (Chapter 5) He chose some very fertile land in which to plant. Israel and the Jordan River Valley is home to some of the most productive land in the world. He worked extremely hard to build his vineyard.

“He dug it all around and removed its stones.” (v. 2) Wheel barrow after wheel barrow of rocks had to be removed. He worked for days to extract all the stones. There is a old saying that when God was spreading rocks about the earth in accidently spilled a great number in the area we call Israel. The owner of the vineyard had to hire a crew to remove all the rocks. He cut terraces in the land and used the rocks to fortify them.

“He then planted the choicest vine.” (v.2) He dug deep into his pockets and bought a very expensive, top-of-the-line vine stock. It was a vine known to produce the very best grape.

“He built a tower in the middle of it.” His vineyard was nearly complete and it covered many fertile acres. He was the envy of his neighbors. The tower was a two-tier affair. A watchman stood guard at the top of the tower to guard against thieves and wild animals and the bottom of the tower was used to store tools and implements to work in the vineyard.

“He then hewed out a wine vat.”(v.2)Tremendous effort was required to build this vineyard. The owner was very pleased with his finished product. He was anticipating filling his vat with bushels of grapes and dropping the rock on them to crush from them juices that would make the best wine in the area. He had risked a lot of money. He had contributed a great amount of time and effort and now it was time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of his labor.

“He looked for it to yield grapes.” (v.2) But a tragic thing happened, instead, “it yielded wild grapes.” The fruit of this vine was weak. It produced tasteless berries that would provide a worthless wine. The owner was disappointed but also perplexed: “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?” he asked.

Isaiah’s song is tragic. It is the story of the country he loved so much. God chose the most fertile land in the world and gave it for the people he had chosen. He removed the rocks, the pagan peoples who were intent on destroying his people. He built a watch tower to protect his people from invaders. He did everything that could possibly have been done to plant a people who would produce spiritual fruit and glorify him.

What does a farmer do with a fruitless vineyard that produces worthless berries? He curses his vineyard. He vacates the watchtower. He removes the hedge about it and ceases to prune the branches and hoe the rows. Briars and thorns eventually overtake it. It is trampled by wild animals and vagrants. Finally, the rains cease and the vineyard is wasted and produces nothing of any value.
This vineyard (Israel) was planted at the crossroads of the world to bear witness of the glory of God. Their failure was miserable and they were worthy to be judged of God. So, famine overtook the land and God rose up an enemy (Babylon) to take them into exile. Their homes were emptied, their streets quiet and lonely.

This prophecy was for the people of Israel but I can’t help but see parallels for my own country. Several hundred years ago our forefathers came here (America) with intentions of building a society that would grant them freedom to worship as they pleased and in which they could bring glory to the God they loved. God honored the desire of their hearts by leading them to a very fertile land with abundant resources. They had been afforded a great opportunity to become that “city upon a hill” which would be a light to show the way to a darkened world. The blessings God showered upon the American people were phenomenal.

But, America, much like Israel, began a slow descent into disobedience and unbelief. What started as a slow, gradual process is now a very slippery slope. Like a water slide at Six Flags, we are plummeting into rebellion and defiance against the God who blessed us.

The briars and thorns are now overtaking the vineyard. The judgment of God rests upon America. Our economic system is in shambles, our politicians habitually lie to us, our citizens are addicted to pleasure and leisure, our families are fragmented, our judicial system is filled with weak-minded judges who are far more interested in promoting personal agendas rather than uphold foundational laws.

I think Jesus was weeping when he looked down upon the city of Jerusalem and said, “"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34) He foresaw the judgment that would come upon the city forty years hence.

O America, America. You despise the prophets sent to you and you ignore the message of truth. I think God must shed tears as he looks upon a once godly nation. “My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.” (Psalm 119:136)

Isaiah gives the reason the vineyard was cursed in verse 24. “They have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.” Many Americans have a twisted perception of God. They correctly see him as a caring Father whose love is longsuffering and patient and his mercy is incomprehensible. Many believe this perception gives them license to reject the laws of God. But his love for his children will not cause him to compromise his perfect justice. If God is not just God he is not God at all. His sorrow will finally turn to anger and his justice will be fearful and terrible.

He is now asking us, “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?”
Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.