Sermon Cloud

          Why America is dying…and what you can do about it.

These days, we’re almost afraid to open the newspaper or hear the news.

Terrible storms.  Awful crime.  International threats.  Moral decline.  Uncontrolled immigration.  Islamic terrorism.  Financial crises.

You wouldn’t think you could do much about all that by yourself.  And you might not think that a 4,000-year-old story would be relevant.  But you’d be wrong on both counts.

In the Old Testament, the Bible tells the story of the Hebrews as they entered the Promised Land.  In Deuteronomy 27, Moses told representatives from each tribe to stand on two mountains, six on each.  On Mount Gerizim (a beautiful, lush, green place), six shouted blessings.  On Mount Ebal (a stony, dark and forbidding place), six shouted curses.

Moses summed it up with a challenge in Deuteronomy 30:19-20.  “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.

For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers…”

Incredibly, the people chose to forsake God! 

We in America faced the same choice.  And, incredibly, we seem to making the same awful choice.  Curses instead of blessings.

But first, let’s talk about the manner in which God blessed us.

It started with the Great Awakenings before the American Revolution that set in place the groundwork for the great struggle from England.  It is said that men who were plowing in the field on Sunday morning would fall under tremendous spiritual conviction. Fall to their knees, give their lives to God and regularly worship from then on.

During the Constitutional Convention, there was an impasse that almost paralyzed the founders.  Benjamin Franklin, no religious man himself, rose to the occasion.  Here is his speech from June 28,1778.

In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. -- Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor.

To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance.

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: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be become a reproach and a bye word down to future age. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move -- that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.

Last week, I heard the moving story of the Midnight ride of Paul Revere.  More accurately, it was the story of what happened before the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.  I heard this on the radio just this last week.

Revere and his party needed to alert the colonists that the British were going to attack.  But in order to do that, they had to pass directly under the guns of a huge British ship in the harbor – a ship fully manned by experienced troops who were under full alert. 

Worse, it was a cloudless night with a full moon.  The patriots neared the boat know that to speak at all or to make any noise would mean certain failure and perhaps death.  Yet, just as they approached the ship, a small cloud – the only one in the sky – suddenly covered the moon, enveloping the harbor in darkness.

Paul Revere and his men slid past the ship.  As soon as they were safe, the moon reappeared.  Revere and his cohorts then rode off with their alarm, “The British are coming, The British are coming.”

The American Revolution is replete with stories like that. God’s direct intervention.  God’s direct blessing.

The Battle of Brooklyn demonstrates "providential intervention" to an extraordinary degree. In late August 1776, Washington's troops on Long Island had been outfought and hemmed in at Brooklyn, with their backs to the East River. Defeat and capture of his 9,000 soldiers seemed imminent. If that happened, the war would be lost.

Washington had to retreat. There was no choice. But to cross the river, he had to get hundreds of boats, which he didn't have, and favorable weather conditions, which he also didn’t have. Moreover, the British could sail ships up the river to block escape. The American army was trapped and a disaster was in the making.

On August 29 bad weather-and bad judgment-kept Lord Howe from advancing his troops across the mile and a half of open terrain separating the two lines. A violent storm broke out. Howe decided to put off the attack until morning. Then storm brought a northeast wind so strong that the British ships could not sail upriver.

The storm was a mixed blessing for the Americans because, while it deterred the British ships, it also made the river so rough that small boats, heavily laden with soldiers, could not cross the mile-wide river.

One of Washington's generals in Manhattan commandeered sufficient small boats for the retreat but the weather prevented their use. About eleven o'clock, according to David McCullough in 1776, "as if by design, the northeast wind died down. Then the wind shifted to the southwest and a small armada of boats…started over the river from New York…"

All night long the army retreated across the East River, boatload by boatload, aided by darkness and the deception which Washington ordered: leave campfires burning to give the appearance of our troops remaining in place. But with daylight, the deception would be exposed! And the river was open to British ships.

Incredibly, yet again, the hand of God intervened.  Just at daybreak a heavy fog settled in over the whole of Brooklyn, concealing everything no less than had the night.

The fog was so thick that one man could scarcely see another six yards away. Yet even with the sun up, the fog remained as dense as ever.  But on the New York side of the river, there was no fog at all. The "heavens" assisted the American cause. The entire army escaped without a single loss of life. When the British attacked that morning, the first redcoats to reach the river saw only the fog and heard only the oars of boats taking the last soldiers across. By 7 a.m. Washington and his army were safe in New York with their horses, field artillery, baggage and equipment. It was a miracle on the order of the Hebrews, pursued by Pharaoh’s army, crossing the Red Sea.

Our history has been replete with blessings like that.  Which is why it is so distressing to see our nation actively choosing the curses, especially in the last forty or fifty years.  And the downward trend is accelerating.

Think of what was on Television in 1958.  Compare that to television today, fifty years later.  Leave it to Beaver, the Mickey Mouse Club, Ozzie and Harriet.  I’ve mentioned before that a leading Catholic priest; Bishop Fulton Sheen was a national television star.

He actually won an Emmy.  A Catholic Bishop won an Emmy for outstanding television.  Try to even imagine that such a thing would happen today.

The night he accepted his Emmy, he was to sit through those interminable acceptance speeches.  You know what I mean.  The award winning gets up there a thanks everyone under the sun.  His producers, his agent, his co-stars, his writers.  So when it finally came time to award an Emmy to Bishop Fulton Sheen, he was ready.  He came to the microphone and said, “I, too, would like to thank my writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John!”

Today, almost anything goes on network television.  And anything DOES go on cable.  Diane and I watch the Sports, Cable News and the Food Channel.  We pay for cable with dozens of channels, but there is often nothing on any of them.

The media – when we study it – is telling us something.

We are like the Hebrews.  We are doing what they did.

They chose the curses!  That is exactly what The United States has done.  We have forsaken God.  And we are now suffering the consequences – the curses of Deuteronomy 28:15-68.  There are at least 36.  Here are just a few:

Verse 16 - Nationwide problems -- happening everywhere.  Skyrocketing food prices. Shortages.  Inflation in the basics of life, especially gas, oil and food.  There is a shortage of volunteers for Meals on Wheels.

Verse 17 - Agricultural problems – Sound familiar -- rising food prices, shortages, even poisoned food?  Floods in Iowa that have devastated the corn crop.

Verses 21-22 – All manner of disease and health problems -- super viruses, sexually transmitted diseases, drug-resistant illnesses.

Verses 27 – Foreign diseases that were previously unknown.  Illegal immigrants bring new ones every day.

Verse 30 – Failed marriages.  Homes lost.  Crops failures.  Does any of this sound familiar?

The curses go on and on.  Verse after verse, each one worse than the last.  The curses become so awful that they are almost unimaginable.  The Jewish people never thought the curses would happen.  But the curses did happen to them.

All because the Jewish people had forsaken God.  And so have we.

Please turn to Deuteronomy 28, starting with verse 15.  Read it silently as I read it aloud.  Ask yourself if you actually want to see America fall to this level of desperation.

However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.

The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.

The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.  The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron.

The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.

 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. Your carcasses will be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind man in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.

 You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and ravish her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand.  A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. The sights you see will drive you mad.

The LORD will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. The LORD will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your fathers. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. You will become a thing of horror and an object of scorn and ridicule to all the nations where the LORD will drive you. You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off.  You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land. The alien who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, but you will be the tail. All these curses will come upon you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you.  They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever.  Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

Read the rest of the chapter.  The curses get progressively worse – to the point of national defeat, slavery and even cannibalism.  

To all this, your natural response might be to ask, “But what can I do about all that?  I’m just me.”

I am a Christian pastor.  You would expect me to urge you to attend a Bible-believing church.  And I do.  I firmly believe Jesus when He said in John 14:6 -- "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

That is the path to eternal salvation.  But I am not referring to personal salvation. Not at this moment.  I am talking about national survival. 

So – anyone here in person or listening to this message – here is the answer to your question: “But what can I do about all that?  I’m just me.”

The answer is for you to go to church or synagogue this weekend.  And every weekend after that.  Worship God.  It almost doesn’t matter which church you select.  Or what denomination you choose.  It doesn’t matter whether you are Catholic, Protestant or Jewish.

To the degree that our nation honors God, our nation will be lifted up by the hand of God.  1 Samuel 2:20.  "Therefore the LORD, the God of Israel, declares: 'I promised that your house and your father's house would minister before me forever.' But now the LORD declares: 'Far be it from me! Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained.

Daniel 5:23. God says this, speaking to a Persian King. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them.

You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see, hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.

So to all I say, regarding Sunday worship, just go!  And your going will help put America back on the path to God’s blessing.  One of the many benefits you’ll secure will be a wonderful life of freedom in a marvelously blessed country – for you, for your children, for your grandchildren. 

The alternative is truly awful -- suffering, sickness, poverty, national disgrace and, eventually, slavery.  The Hebrews ignored Moses and made the wrong choice.

What about us?  What about you?