CELEBRITY CHEFS

A professor at Dallas Theological Seminary is speaking in a chapel service. His topic is an exposition of Psalm 19. During his teacing of the psalm, he begins to talk about the various ways God reveals Himself. One of those ways, he says, is that God reveals himself through history, that is, God reveals Himself as a moral God. Then, he states the principle: "No nation endures that flaunts disobedience to God's principles."

THE STAGES OF DECLINE: DECADANCE

In one historian's opinion, the last stage of an empire, nation, or culture is that of decadance (a flaunting of God's principles). He defines the stage: "In the age of decadence many people choose to behave in ways that are unsustainable, apparently unaware of the consequences. They indulge in excessive, often conspicuous, consumption. An absurdly wealthy elite emerges, but instead of repelling the masses, it is admired and celebrated [by the masses].

"Those outside the elite aspire to similar levels of consumption . . . People become convinced that increased consumption is the key to happiness, but in its pursuit, they become measurably less happy. As David Morgan says, “You can never get enough of what you don’t need.”

CIRCUSES AND CHEFS

Rome had its calculated distractions to keep the attention of the masses off what was actually going on--they developed a celebrity-worshipping culture (the gladiators and the charioteers). Instead of gladiators slaughtering one another, a culture can become distracted by sports as well as by reality shows on TV. One historian noticed something else in his study of the characteristics of a culture in decline: the rise and celebration of chefs as celebrities who became members of the elite, wealthy class. They too served (no pun intended) to distract the population from the important issues of the day. 

In the Decadance Stage of decline, an a-moralism pervated all the empires, nations, and cultures ripe for the plucking. They all lasted roughly 250 before the consequences caught up with them. Flaunting God's principles cannot be sustained.

SPRING BREAK

We need look no farther than the annual Spring Break baccanalian festivals tolerated on the beaches of South Padre in Texas and the Floridian beaches. Those beaches are an example of the "educated" and the wealthy who are hell-bent to satisfy their lust in the shortest possible time with the greatest amount of excess possible at the time. 

On Spring Break, "people drink themselves to the point of unconsciousness and shamelessly collapse in the streets and the beaches. In Roman times, binge drinkers were left to their fate. Today’s debauchery is supervised by the police; its ‘victims’ are taken care of by hard-pressed health care professionals, placing further pressure on the public purse. And, all the while, supermarkets and corporations make a killing selling discounted booze to people barely old enough to buy it. This is our modern-day bread and circuses, with drunken, obese citizens literally becoming a burden on the state."

THEIR EDUCATION

It is this educated elite that have grown up, not only indoctrinated and in relativism, but also in the flaunting of it, trying to live without guilt, without shame, and without parents to say, "No. Not on my dime and on my watch!" To see the photographs of South Padre with its worship of Bacchus, and to hear the interviews of the hedonists staggering around in the sand, we're seeing those who believe it and live by the credo: "There are no consequences," with obscenties directed toward their parents thrown in for good measure.

There is no election cycle that will stop the decline into decadance; it's naive to believe that. The problem is the sin nature of man. Therefore it's a spiritual problem that can only be cured by deliberately going into all the world and making disciples, teaching them to observe all things [Christ] has commanded.



  

THIS IS CONTROVERSIAL?

A grandfather makes an announcement regarding his granddaughter: "We're raising her as a girl."

Wait. What? One feels compelled to make an announcement like that? Isn't it obvious that one doesn't have to announce it or make something like an official statement about it?

But wait. It gets worse. His statement prompted protestations and demonstrations as there were those who took him and his family to task at what they believe to be an outrageous position because, according to them, biology doesn't determine whether a person is male or female. Not only that, but his granddaughter, according to them, should be free to choose, later on, boy . . . or . . . girl. Think about it for a moment: we've come to the place in which saying, "We're raising a girl as a girl"  provokes debates, protests, and a demonstration.

ANOTHER CLASSIC CASE

This is yet another classic example of what we might call "The Pharaoh Syndrome" which is the loss of rationality due to the hardening of the heart which occurs when an individual says, "No" to God's revealed will--he loses the ability to think and therefore, eventually, God lets him proceed to his own self-destruction.

We see this syndrome in Exodus as Amenhotep II kept making decisions that wrecked the Egyptian economy, the nation's water supply, and the health of himself and his people, yet, so hardened was he that it's recorded he had "no concern" about the matter even as things continued to fall apart as he marched to the ruin of his nation.

This grandfather who made the announcement, who is he? He's fairly well-known. He's Jerry Falwell Jr., the President of Liberty University, the very, very, very large Christian university whose founder wanted to make it the Notre Dame of the South.  Here's what he said, "“She’s our granddaughter, and we’re raising her as a girl. We’re not letting her have a choice. God makes the choice of what the babies are going to be and God decided she would be a girl,”

Now the drama intensifies--the protest and demonstration in opposition Jerry Falwell Jr., where did they come from?  The world? Some secular, humanist, atheist group? No. the protest and demonstration came from students at Liberty University. Listen to one of them: A senior and demonstrator, said the group hoped to use the event to spark a shift in attitude on a largely conservative campus. “Our hope is to start a conversation that can hopefully lead to change within social perception and university policy. Hopefully, we can create an environment where comments like [the President's] aren’t welcome and aren’t normal.”

A news report stated, "Carrying signs in support transgender rights and waving a gay pride flag, a group of about 30 students rallied at the heart of campus [of Liberty University] from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m."

Yes, you read that correctly--the senior said that their goal was that such comments as the President of the university made should not be deemed normal on the campus of a Christian school. And furthermore, he said that their goal was to make certain that such comments wouldn't be welcome on the campus of a Christian school.

The Pharaoh syndrome is on the campus of a Christian university.

SYMPTOMS OF A HEART THAT'S HARD

Case study: the hard heart of Pharoah. Source: the book of Exodus.

The hardening of Pharaoh's heart or anyone's heart is an extremely serious matter. The heart of the unbeliever can become hardened (Exodus 6 ff). The heart of the believer can become hardened (Heb. 3:8, 13, 15; 4:7). To harden one's heart begins by saying "NO!" in the face of and while staring at  God's will. The process of hardening occurs when a person says, "NO!" repeatedly to God's will.

From a case study based upon the book of Exodus, we can see the symptoms a person, a church, or a nation will exhibit which clearly show a hardened heart, a heart and mind that stand ramrod straight against the will of God.

The symptoms of a hardened heart are:

1. A willingness to do things that are irrational. We see this as Pharaoh continued to say no even in the face of one plague after another, especially those which had a direct, deleterious effect on him, his wife, and his family even to the point of the death of his oldest son. Amenhotep II had seen nine previous plagues come true down to their last detail, yet when warned about the coming of the Death Angel, he still shouted, "NO!" He refused to let Israel go.

2. A willingness to do things that lead to one's own destruction. The Pharaoh's hardness against the will of God led to his own death by drowning.

3. A willingness to take others down and to harm, even destroy them in the process. The Egyptians suffered because of Pharaoh's repeated "NOs!" His "NO!" wrecked their economy with God's turning the Nile against them, ruined their water supply (except what they could dig out of the ground), damaged their crops, destroyed their food supply from the Nile (fish). Their health was damaged by frogs, gnats, and dog flies, a species which causes widespread blindness. In all of this, Exodus records Pharaoh's "lack of concern."

4. The loss of the ability to discern right from wrong. Right becomes wrong and wrong becomes right. This is seen all through the plagues of Egypt. In the beginning, the sorcerers, according to Pharaoh, were right; the old fool Moses is wrong. We see this moral failure in the doctor who recently told a woman contemplating abortion, "If the baby is born alive, I'll break its neck." And our neighbors to the north furnish another example of this moral loss: Every elementary school in Ontario, Canada, will be forced to fly the gay pride flag for at least one week in June, which is Pride Month in the province. Greater Essex County District School Board nearly unanimously voted on the motion last week; the only dissenting voice on the board was swiftly shut down.

5. The overwhelming desire to save face. Amenhotep II and his people believed he was a god. To acquiesce to the old man Moses would be a blow to his pride. (His poll numbers would go down.) In the face of overwhelming evidence of the fallacy of evolution (the Secon Law of Thermodynamics, a professor at SMU said, "It (evolution) had to have happened anyway."

6. A hard heart will disregard any and all consequences of its actions in order to pursue its predetermined rebellion.

7. A hard heart will believe lies and deceptions, even to the point of clear evidence presented to the contrary. Even when Pharaoh was told by his court that something supernatural was happening, when he saw Moses' predictions, one after the other fulfilled, he still shouted, "NO!" He was in his bunker of unbelief and he wasn't coming out, no matter what, for nine plagues, that is, for one year of saying, "NO!, NO! NO!"

8. A hard heart will deflect and change the subject when confronted. Pharaoh says the Jews are lazy and underperforming in their assigned tasks when Moses' demands their exodus.

From the above infamous eight, the Christian is forewarned: it is a dangerous thing to say "NO! NO! NO!" to God and to continue in a persistent sin. A teacher in seminary refused to say "NO" to his pattern of lust and eventually broke into a woman's house, assaulted her, and is in prison today. A pastor refused to say NO to the same pattern, committed adultery, lost his house, family, and endured the humiliation of his own son's spitting on him.

The advice of Proverbs and I John 1:9, over and over again is to turn from "NO!" to "YES!"

THE CHRISTIAN MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

Christianity is a thinking person's "religion." (I use the word religion advisedly, but you know what I mean.) For example, when we read Stephen's defense before the high court, he doesn't start with "For God so loved the world . . ." [John 3:16 has a two and a half chapter context that precedes it.] Nor does he begin with "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." [I know that Paul began that way with the jailer in Acts 16:31, but read the next verse.] What does he do? He goes back to 2,000 BC and begins his gospel presentation with the call of Abraham and from there traces the history of Israel down to his own day. (!)

PETER

Listen with fresh ears to Peter's sermon in Acts 2 to a huge audience of all kinds of people--religionists, state officials, and ordinary Joes assembled for an annual convocation of Jews from all over the world. What do we hear? We hear about the foreordained plan of God, going back to eternity past.

PAUL

When Paul had an opportunity to speak on Mars Hill to the Athenian court which put him under the microscope, he starts revealing the "Unknown God" to them and culminates with the resurrection of Jesus.

As we read through Acts, we see the Apostles "explaining," "reasoning," and "dialoguing" with people and groups. On the other side of the coin, we hear the listeners questioning and in the case of the noble Bereans "examining" what Paul said to see if "these things were true."

THE MASTER TEACHER

When Christ spoke to the crowds of average people He went back into history to correlate Moses and manna in the wilderness to Himself as "the Bread of Life." In the Upper Room Discourse most, if not all, of what He said, as He told them was way over their intellectual pay grade at the time, but later, "You will understand," He said. The Upper Room discourse aside, His parables challenged the listeners to think, to examine them with mental rigor.

Each of the above examples challenged the intellects of the listeners and were far and away from sermonettes to tickle the ears of unengaged, lazy listeners.

THEIR WRITING

When the apostles wrote to the churches, their writings engaged and challenged the mind. Romans isn't "Dick and Jane Go to the Farm." To understand Revelation, the first hearers had to have a rich background in the Old Testament and if they didn't, they were to get one. Peter remarked on how some of Paul's writings were "hard to understand." The writings of the Apostles are of such intellectual fodder that, 2,000 years later, we still gather to pore over them word by word by word, using all the tools at our disposal--the original language of the text, the cultural background of the text, the context of the text, and other Scriptures pertinent to the subject.

THE CHRISTIAN MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

If you've traversed the shelves of Christian bookstores, it's like looking the Gerber's shelves at the grocery store. Pablum for the petulant. There are many tomes for the wading pool, but little for the deep end.

SOLUTION

Apologist Ravi Zacharias decries such a state of affairs and suggests a solution to this dearth of deep intellectual waters. He begins by suggesting "a balanced study" which takes discipline and hard work to understand as much as we can. He's despondent over the fact that if we were to ask the average young person in our churches to state the basic idea of the book of Romans, he can't do it.

He suggests, but with a warning, that believers take time to gather in small groups to study and discuss the Word. But he issues a caveat: the danger of a small study group is that the lowest common denominator in the group will hinder its progress.

So, what to do? Zacharias cites the absolute importance of private study, not abandoning the group study (the believers in the early church met in homes going from house to house every day). In one's private study he recommends getting into "pieces of fine writing--literature, devotionals, books that challenge and bless the believer's mind." In the process, of course, there's to be direct contact with the Bible.

He warns that the goal of all this group and private study is not to use it as a sledgehammer to clobber people, not to take pride in how much we know, but to study to allow the pursuit of God and His Word to change our lives, to grow in grace.

Of course, this is not to say that the believer is to lock himself into a book-lined study and not to say that he's to isolate himself to small group discussions. There must be along with the study and the Christian discussions, the getting off the bench and into the game of life, confronting unbelief. 

The alternative to the above reading and study suggestions is that over time, we we'll grow stale, stunted, and stuck with a wasted mind. And let's face it, apart from rigorous study, broad reading, and getting "out there," and its accompanying spiritual growth in grace, you'll become boring.

And that's a terrible thing.

HOW WE GOT HERE

We look at our society today, its ethics, its education, its entertainment (I use the word advisedly), its politics, its government, and its churches and wonder, "How did we get here?" "Here" is our present situation, the milieu in which we live. For example, how did we get to the point where a man can decide that he's a woman and a woman can decide that she's a man and we must accept their pronouncement and refer to him as "her," or her as "him." If we don't accept their irrational decision, there will be penalties, shaming, guilting, and sometimes legal repercussions. Then when we look at our language, we marvel, sadly, at how it's changed, even among very young children to become vulgar, uncouth, crass, language which would make the Philistines blush.

THE FRIENDLY SKIES

How about this news item: "A number of major airlines including Delta and American have announced that they are adding new gender options to accommodate passengers who identify as non-binary so they no longer have to choose between either male or female." So, how did we get "here?"

THOSE HIPPIES THEN

As we would expect, getting here started a while back, back in the turmoil of the 1960s and 70s. This was the time of the Viet Nam war protesters, the hippies, and the academic and violent revolt of  college students and faculty against Western Civilization (i. e. Christianity). This was a revolt against God-ordained authority. There was an agenda behind the scenes, being played out in rejecting Western Civilization.

THOSE HIPPIES NOW

Today, the hippies and the college rebels have cut their hair, taken a shower and are inside the corridors of power. These barbarians are no longer at the gates; they've gotten the walls. And once inside, they brought their worldview with them, the worldview that there is no ultimate authority who/which is going to tell them what to do. This is why they have no inhibition to change the rules; there are no rules except what they decide. They've been engaged in an agenda to destroy education, to destroy marriage, to destroy the family, to destroy gender. To them, their are no fixed rules governing those the definition of those things.

FUNNY THING

Have you noticed something about them--there's one characteristic that's in the way they live and move and have their being: criticism. From their movement comes an ever-increasing and constant flow of criticism i. e. a criticism of marriage, of the family, of education. This is coming from the universities which allow students to major in "Studies."

Notice something else: they offer nothing in place of what they're denouncing. It's just a tear-it-all-down-mentality. What does that leave us with? What do we replace marriage, family, etc. with? They have no answer. But culture abhors a vacuum. Something rushes in: Chaos. And that's what we're living in today. And that's why it's here.

THE MISSING VIRTUE

In essence, it all goes back to the virtue they despise: humility, the foundational Christian virtue. Augustine said" The most important Christian virtue is humility. The second most important virtue is humility and the third is humility. It's the foundational virtue because without humility, a person cannot accept the Bible its statement of the gospel. That involves humility because part of the gospel is that man is a sinner, fallen, flawed and unable to do anything about it to deliver himself by his works from that situation, hence the need of the Savior.

But since the Fall (Gen. 3) man has been irrationally running from that authority and hiding himself in the trees. We see the immediate effects of the Fall--Adam and Eve became irrational and thought that they could hide from a God who's omnipresent. One can run, but one can't hide. Yet running itself doesn't get a person any distance from omnipresence. Their running demonstrates how the Fall of man changed man's intellect to the point where he believes the illogical.

The solution is that our culture, like the Prodigal Son, must come to itself and return to the influence of the Bible which one permeated our land. The problem isn't political; it's spiritual.

THE AMERICAN IDOL

They have enshrined into law our American idol. They did it by majority vote and with the stroke of a pen and there the idol was for all the world to see. The enshrinement has been a long time coming, but it's here, the American Baal and Moloch all rolled into one standing astride the land like a giant Colloseus.

Only the American Idol doesn't go by the name of Baal or Moloch, it goes by the name of "Comfort," in particular, "My Comfort." It has other names too, names such as, "Convenience" or "My Right." The worshippers bowed down then rose up and cheered when the Comfort stood in place. They laughed; their was joy in their land at last, at long last. It is evidence of the paganization of a culture.

The idol Comfort, like Moloch, will demand its sacrifices and the worshippers stand ready to provide them by the millions. The sacrifices aren't animal or vegetable, they're human, babies to be exact, babies demanded by the insatiable maw of Molech. The worshippers will make such sacrifices because those sacrifices are adjudged to have impinged upon their comfort or have violated their supposed right to choose. Their comfort has been codified into statute.

The sacrifices, by law, can be made even as the worshipper is in labor to deliver or in some cases, as some worshippers advocate, upon delivery.  With the law, amid the cheering, and the joy at the sight of the American idol, a moral rot has entered the land.

Bob Barr said it well, "The moral abyss into which it is drawing us, however, is cold and dark."

PRETEND OR ELSE!

There was a popular song in 1955 called, "The Great Pretender. " It became a big hit in England and America. It was a ballad about a heartsick fellow who was cast aside by someone he loved and he spends his life pretending. The song says:

Oh oh, yes I'm the great pretender
Pretending that I'm doing well
My need is such I pretend too much
I'm lonely but no one can tell

Oh oh, yes I'm the great pretender
Adrift in a world of my own
I've played the game but to my real shame
You've left me to grieve all alone.

LET THE GAME BEGIN

We're living in a culture which is, like an immature child, playing the game of "Let's Pretend." Our society is made up of those who are aggressive and sometimes violent in their demand that everyone play "Let's Pretend." We see this aggressiveness in the fact that when you refuse to join in the game, they will come after you by telling lies which slander you, filing lawsuits to ruin you, and shaming or shunning you in any and every way they can. 

THE RULE OF THE GAME

The one rule of "Let's Pretend" is: "Let's pretend the Bible does not exist." This rule has many applications. To play by the rules of the game (and you must play) you are to pretend that the Bible does not exist in education, in your business, in your conversations, in your written statements on the Internet or in any other cultural text. You must pretend that the Bible does not exist in any artwork, decorations, or in any celebration in which you might engage. If you write a script for a motion picture or television, the rule says that you must pretend that the Bible does not exist.

AND YET

They are demanding that everyone live in a make-believe world, a Never-Never Land of uneducated, immature Peter Pans, as children who never grow up, but live denying the reality of the real world facts which are: "The Bible is the most influential, the most translated, the most debated, the most loved, the most hated, the most important, and the most quoted composition that's ever been written." (Matt Walsh) Add to that "mostest list" that the Bible sells the most copies. And add to that that the Bible is the Book that has molded the world in which we live in the West.

KAREN PENCE

The Vice-President's wife, Karen Pence, endured the wrath of breaking the rule when she began to teach art at a Christian school. She knew the rule but broke it because of her commitment to Christ. A fit of ungodly, unrighteous anger descended upon her. The rule clearly states, "Stay silent to keep your job. Change your policies to keep your educational opportunities. Say nothing so that you’ll preserve your public reputation." She courageously refused to play.

Eliminate the Bible from one's education and reading list? Is there something sinister going on in the game? Listen to Jesus words in Luke 8: "Now the parable [of the Sower and Seed is this: the seed is the word of God.  Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart so that they will not believe and be saved." There it is. There is something sinister, conspiratorial in the game, even though the originators of the game are unaware of it. They have become Satan's useful idiots.

Deuteronomy 6 gives us the principle on which we refuse to participate in the game: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." (See also the book of Proverbs.)

Those who are truly disciples of Christ will not be the great pretenders. In Acts 5, the authorities commanded Peter and John to play "Let's Pretend:" "When they had brought them, they stood them before the Council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name, and yet, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.”  But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men."