Please turn in your Bibles this morning to Nehemiah chapter 1 as we look at what a godly burden should do in our lives. I would also like to wish everyone a happy Fourth of July; it truly is a blessing to live in this great nation. We have so much freedom and the reason we do is because of our Founding Fathers and what they believed and built this nation upon, and the men and women who have sacrificed their lives so that we may continue to enjoy this freedom.
I do have some concerns though, one of them being the decline of morality in this nation. All kinds of behavior are accepted under the guise of freedom. Like abortion – it is the woman’s right to choose! Or our sexual promiscuity, be it heterosexual or homosexual – we have the right to do what we want in our own homes! Even drug and alcohol abuse – we have the right to do to our bodies whatever we want! That is not the freedom that our Founding Fathers were thinking of and yet immorality is not thought of as immorality but simply a choice and protected under the Constitution!
The results of this logic is as follows:
According to a survey, Pat Trueman from the Family Research Council tells us, “The survey found that pornography sites on the Internet have three times more traffic than search engines, which is just shocking, because people go to Google and some of these other search engines several times a day to find material on the Internet.”
According to TVC Weekly News, “Wired magazine (June 14, 2004) reported on a new porn site called Red Light World, that provides porn addicts with a 3-D tour of Amsterdam’s Red Light district. According to Wired, ‘To those willing to go beyond its free tour and cough up $20 a month for a VIP membership, a pre-release version of Red Light World available today provides nearly all the sin one could handle on a computer.’” That is what the magazine said, not me!
Homosexuality, same sex marriages are becoming more accepted today with the premise being, “If they love each other what could be wrong with that?” A lot, basically because God says it is wrong! Back in 2003 the Supreme Court struck down the Texas Sodomy Law, which prohibited homosexual sex because it was an unconstitutional violation on privacy. This year the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that same sex couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution. The Episcopal Church has ordained an openly gay Bishop and the United Methodist Church has ordained an openly gay woman minister!
In 1999, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 14.8 million Americans were current drug users and 3.3 million were hard-core addicts, weekly users!
We can go on and see that since 1962, when school prayer was removed, morality was also removed and has been spiraling downward ever since. You can’t have a moral society without God being the center of that society and for those who disagree, we will look at that more in a minute. But first, listen to what George Barna had to say regarding morality in a survey he took. We are told:
Most of the people we interviewed believe that they are highly moral individuals and identify other people as responsible for the nation’s moral decline. This is reflective of a nation where morality is generally defined according to one’s feelings. In a postmodern society, where people do not acknowledge any moral absolutes, if a person feels justified in engaging in a specific behavior then they do not make a connection with the immoral nature of that action. Yet, deep inside, they sense that something is wrong in our society. They simply have not been able to put two and two together to recognize their personal liability regarding the moral condition of our nation.
Until people recognize that there are moral absolutes and attempt to live in harmony with them, we are likely to see a continued decay of our moral foundations. The generational data patterns make a compelling case for this on-going slide. Even most people associated with the Christian faith do not seem to have embraced biblical moral standards. Things are likely to get worse before they get better – and they are not likely to get better unless strong and appealing moral leadership emerges to challenge and redirect people’s thoughts and behavior. At the moment such leadership is absent.
- George Barna, Morality Continues To Decay, Nov. 3, 2003
Let me say this, I don’t believe it is possible, as I have said, to live a good life, to be a moral person without believing in the true and living God and applying the Word of God to your life because morals outside of God and His Word keep changing, they are in a constant state of flux! Again, some of you may disagree but listen to what Roger Oakland has to say regarding this issue:
A number of years ago I ordered a book from Prometheus Books. Prometheus is the publishing and distribution arm of the American Humanist Association, dedicated to advancing the religion of humanism and the destruction of Christianity. As a result of ordering the book, I am now on their mailing list. Last month I received their most recent catalogue containing a list of the books they promote. I noted one particular book by Paul Kurtz.
Kurtz is a leader in the field of humanist apologetics. Recently he wrote a book called The Forbidden Fruit. The following promotional statement for this book is found in the Spring and Summer 97 Prometheus catalogue:
Is it possible to live the good life and be a responsible moral agent without a belief in religion? Paul Kurtz affirms that it is. At a time when fundamentalist right-wing forces deny this possibility, [he is speaking of us] Forbidden Fruit provides a much-needed corrective. Kurtz maintains that it is only by breaking the bonds of theistic illusion – eating the “forbidden fruit” from the tree of knowledge of good and evil – that we can move on to a new stage of creative development, discovering significant moral values to guide conduct that is both self-reliant and considerate of the rights of others. [Sounds like Satan’s lies in the Garden of Eden and look where that got us!].
Mr. Kurtz is a very intelligent man. As president of the American Humanist Association, he is well respected by his peers. However, the idea he proposes in his book, that the goodness of man can be self-induced by tossing out the idea of original sin and making our own rules, needs to be re-evaluated in light of other beliefs that he holds.
Mr. Kurtz is also a very strong promoter of the idea of Darwinian evolution. According to this view which is the basis of his religion of humanism, the fittest always wins out. In order to be one of the fit, means you have to become more self-centered and aggressive. How will that ever bring about the “new morality” and the man-made utopia, Kurtz is promoting.
- Roger Oakland, Forbidden Fruit, Radio Program #494
Let me take this one step further and make some of you even more uncomfortable. This great nation of ours was not founded upon religion but upon Christianity, upon Jesus Christ! If you doubt that, check out some of our other Fourth of July messages and listen to the quotes of these great men. Many of them were pastors! Today I would like you to hear what they said regarding this nation and morality.
John Adams, Signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Second President of the United States said: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Signer of the Declaration of Independence said: “Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime & pure, [and] which denounces against the wicked eternal misery, and [which] insured to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments”
Back in 1824, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said this: “No free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country.” How true that is, just look at the oppression that Islam is bringing to the world!
Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence said this in a letter to John Adams back on January 23, 1807, “By renouncing the Bible, philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral subjects . . . It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published . . . All systems of religion, morals, and government not founded upon it [the Bible] must perish, and how consoling the thought, it will not only survive the wreck of these systems but the world itself. ‘The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.’”
Daniel Webster, an Early American Jurist and Senator said back in 1852: “If we and our posterity reject instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.” I hope people are listening!
Noah Webster, Founding Educator said back in 1832: “The most perfect maxims and examples for regulating your social conduct and domestic economy, as well as the best rules of morality and religion, are to be found in the Bible . . . The moral principles and precepts found in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. These principles and precepts have truth, immutable truth, for their
foundation . . . All the evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible . . . for instruction then in social, religious and civil duties resort to the scriptures for the best precepts.”
Robert Winthrop, former Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives said the following eye-opening words back in 1852 and again, are we listening to what he said? We are told: “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”
Thus, the key to getting this nation back on track, to keep us moving forward enjoying the freedoms that we have is going to be found in Jesus Christ and the Word of God, whether people like it or not! Now it seems like an overwhelming task that is before us, and it is, but, after that short introduction, let’s begin reading in Nehemiah chapter 1, starting in verse 1, and see what lessons we can learn and apply to our own lives that will truly impact our communities and nation!
In 606 BC the Babylonians invaded the Southern Kingdom of Judah and some of the Jews were taken captive. By 586 BC the Babylonians destroyed the temple, the city of Jerusalem and only left the old, the sick to remain in the land. As the Medo-Persian Empire finally defeated the Babylonians, they allowed the Jews to return home to Jerusalem.
Their first return took place under the leadership of Zerubbabel, who lead just under 50,000 people back to Jerusalem. Zerubbabel was a political leader whose focus was rebuilding the temple of God that was destroyed by the Babylonians. So in 538 BC he led the people back to Jerusalem and by 536 BC the foundation of the temple was laid but because of some opposition, the king of Persia ordered the work to stop and it remained that way for 15 years and then they started up again, finishing the temple in 515 BC. That covers chapters 1-6 of Ezra.
The second return was under the leadership of Ezra, who was a priest and a scribe, and he lead just under 2,000 Jews back to Jerusalem, some 80 years after Zerubbabel led the first return. Ezra’s focus was to get the people right with God, to put away their foreign wives and restore the spiritual condition of the people, and that is covered in Ezra chapters 7-10.
Now Nehemiah picks up where Ezra ended and we see the third and final return of the captives and this occurred in 445 BC. Here the focus was to rebuild the walls of the city because without the walls the city was defenseless! Keep in mind that Nehemiah was born in Persia, he never saw Jerusalem, and yet, as we have read, he has a burden for this city and his people!
Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the king and one day his brother, Hanani returns with a group of Jews from Jerusalem and Nehemiah asks him how things were going with the people and the city. And his brother tells him that things were very bad, they are in distress, the walls are still down, and the enemy is seeking to destroy them!
So Nehemiah, being a godly man, blames the ACLU and other liberal organizations for destroying his people and his city, right? Not at all! He blamed the liberal education system for destroying their children, right? Not at all! He blamed the leaders for not leading correctly, right? Not at all! Then what did Nehemiah do? Who did he blame?
He blamed the situation on his own sins and the sins of his people but please don’t think for a minute that is where he stopped. It is easy to find fault, to complain about a situation, but it is a lot harder to do something about it. May we not get caught in the blame game and be on the side lines complaining about this and complaining about that when people are dying in their sins and the nation is circling the drain! May we do something about it!
As Nehemiah heard this news he was devastated so much that he wept and mourned over the situation. As you look at this community or the community where you are living, as you look at this nation, are you weeping over what you see, are you mourning over the immorality that is growing or are you insensitive to what is going on, your heart is cold and hard to it? You see, if you are not moved then are you really happy by what you see going on? I hope not! Take a good look at the lost souls in this community, this nation, and instead of condemning them to Hell, may we bring them to Heaven through the love of Jesus Christ! But if you are not broken in what you see, then you won’t be moved to do something about it!
Not only was Nehemiah broken, burdened for Jerusalem and his people but he also brought it before God as he fasted and prayed over the situation. That is so important because there is so much we can do, but what does God want us to do to reach this community, to reach this nation? Fast and pray and see where the Lord leads!
As Nehemiah pours out his heart to the Lord regarding this situation, asking for God’s grace and mercy upon his life and his fellow Jews, God hears the prayer of Nehemiah and answers it! When the temple of Solomon was dedicated, Solomon prayed, “When Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against You, and when they turn back to You and confess Your name, and pray and make supplication to You in this temple, then hear in heaven, and forgive the sin of Your people Israel, and bring them back to the land which You gave to their fathers.” I Kings 8:33-34.
God answers the prayer of Nehemiah by having King Artaxerxes allow Nehemiah to return to Jerusalem and as he arrives he goes out at night to take a look at the city. We are told of this in Nehemiah 2:12, “Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem; nor was there any animal with me, except the one on which I rode.” This was not something that Nehemiah just decided to do, the Lord put this upon his heart and then he took those steps of faith and moved forward and did it! As he looked at the walls of the city they were a mess. Walls speak of protection from the enemies, as I have said, and in Isaiah 60:18 we are told, “Violence shall no longer be heard in your land, Neither wasting nor destruction within your borders; But you shall call your walls Salvation, And your gates Praise.”
Protecting this great nation of ours is not going to be done through the building up of our military, building bigger bombs, more sophisticated weapons but by receiving the salvation of the Lord into our lives through Jesus Christ! You mean we can have no weapons and still be victorious over the enemy? Yes, because God plus anyone is victory! You can have the most sophisticated weapons, the best military and still lose if you are not right with God, just look at Israel and the victories and defeats they had! And as we live in Christ, praises will flow from our lives!
As you move into Nehemiah chapter 3 those who lived in that area are building up the walls. Each family had a section of the wall to complete and in 52 days the walls were built! I think that is a great principle to follow, to start with your family, your neighborhood, your city, your state, the nation. It is what Jesus told us in Acts 1:8, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. The Lord has given Pastor Dave and Conrad a passion for the youth of this community. Now they could have complained about the youth, blamed all kinds of people for why they are struggling, but instead they went to action. Every other weekend they go to Washington Park and share with the youth about Jesus Christ. Why is that? Because the reality is, the only solution to their problems and our problems is Jesus Christ! Conrad also goes to the jail here in town to share with the youth the love of Christ, they are not forced to come but they come to listen and God’s Word will not return void, it will accomplish what He sent it to do in each of those kids!
You see, you hear of some problems, you are burdened over it, you are broken over it, you fast and you pray and then you step out as God leads to build up those walls of protection that can only be erected by God, by believing and receiving Him into your life! It is as we are told in Nehemiah 1:4, “So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”
Folks, I think we live in the greatest nation in the world but let us not lose sight of the fact that our freedoms, our strength is being eroded away by Christians not getting involved, not stepping forward and sharing their faith. We are living in what we might call a post-Christian era, which is hard to believe, but when you look at how the unsaved and the saved have the same morality, are divorcing at the same rate, are having abortions, and-so-on, we are not impacting anyone, not even ourselves! We need to come before God and get right with Him so that we then can move forward and touch others for Jesus!
Listen carefully to what the Lord said in II Chronicles 7:12-15, “Then the LORD appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him: ‘I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place.’” Are we willing to intercede for this nation or complain about what is going on? You see, complaining does nothing, but interceding opens the windows of heaven for God to work!
When America faced one of its darkest hours in history, Abraham Lincoln recognized the need for America to remember God and what He has done for us and on April 30, 1863 he issued a “Day of National Humiliation” a time to confess the sins of the nation and ask God’s forgiveness and this is what he had to say:
“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in number; wealth, and power as no other Nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all the blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us. It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
How often do you read of that in the history books? Not at all I think I can safely say even though it is part of our history! We have forgotten God and there are consequences to that broken fellowship and we can see that as this nation does what is right in their own eyes because there is no King on the throne of their heart, Jesus is not in their life or the life of this nation!
Robert E. Lee, the General of the Confederate Army said this, “Knowing that intercessory prayer is our mightiest weapon and that the supreme call for all Christians today, I pleadingly urge our people everywhere to pray. Believing that prayer is the greatest contribution our people can make in this critical hour, I humbly urge that we take time to pray – to really pray.”
Wouldn’t that be great if our military leaders, if our military people did that and they were directed by God? Wouldn’t it be great if our President would issue a Day of National Humiliation? You bet it would! You see, America is great because God is great, and America will cease to be great when America no longer seeks the true and living God. George Washington made this very interesting point. He said:
“The propitious [favorable] smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”
And Abraham Lincoln made this powerful statement:
“The truth announced in the Holy Scripture, and proven by all history, [is] that, ‘Those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.’”
Thank God for President Bush who is a Christian and stands up for the things of God. But can you imagine what this nation would have been like with Al Gore as President! How often do you hear of politicians speaking of their faith in the Lord? Not very often because they say “Separation of Church and State!” Garbage, there is no such thing. The wall that was to be erected was to keep the State out of the Church and was a one directional wall. The Church was to be actively involved in the things of the State and it was for many years until judges re-wrote our history! Now the State is involved in what the Church does but the Church has been banned from what the State does!
I realize that the task before us seems huge, insurmountable! You might be thinking, “What can I do, I am only one person and I have no power, no ability to do anything?” You are wrong, God plus you can move mountains and I will let you in on a little secret, God doesn’t need you or me but He chooses to work through us if we are willing to be used by Him! God is looking for people that He can work through as we are told in II Chronicles 16:9, “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him . . .”
In this nation we hear the cry that liberal is good and conservative is bad; believing in Jesus Christ is evil. As I begin to close let me share with you this story that shows what a liberal town is like, what it becomes. We are told:
A few years ago, a group of people in Missouri founded a town and named it Liberal. They were so extremely ‘liberal’ that churches were not allowed. In their boom literature they boasted that it was ‘the only town of its size in the United States without a priest, a preacher, church, God, Jesus, hell or devil.’
But Elder Clark Braden wrote up an account for the Post Dispatch showing that there was little else than hell and devil there, that it was a den of iniquity, that its hotels were brothels and virtue almost unknown. The account was so terrible that they had Braden arrested for criminal libel, and sued him and the Post Dispatch for $25,000 damages.
After the prosecution had presented all of its evidence, the case was submitted to the jury without rebutting evidence by the defendant and he was acquitted by the jury. The civil suit for damages was dismissed by demand of the plaintiffs, who paid all the costs.
Liberal was a failure, and even lifelong unbelievers, who had moved there for its advantages, left in disgust. One of them struck the keynote when he said: “An infidel surrounded by Christians may spout his infidelity and the community may be able to stand it but it will never do to establish a society with infidelity as its basis.”
- Ministers’ Research Service
Folks, we have the answer to this nations problems, and the answer is Jesus Christ! May we be the people who are burdened for this nation, who weep and mourn, fast and pray and then step out in faith and do something about it, interceding for this nation and the people and see it return to the glory it once had in the Lord one heart at a time! If we don’t, then Edmund Burke tells us what will happen, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” May we not be on the sidelines yelling and screaming at all the wrongs that are going on in this nation, but be in the game, in the race, sharing the love of Jesus with the lost and see the salvation that the Lord will bring to this nation and us!