When Sin and Folly Abound — E.A. Johnston

Moral Decline and the Loss of Public Decency

I've lived a long time, and I've seen a great moral downgrade in America that alarms me. Things were different. When I was a little boy in the 1950s, I remember women wore hats on their heads and white gloves on their hands, and modesty and decency was a priority.

There was a sense of decorum and stress, and a consciousness of shame in society back then. It was a time when homosexuals stayed in the closet, adulterers didn't brag about it, and gross sin remained in the shadows.

Nowadays, everything is out in the open, as there is no moral code in society anymore, and every line of decency has been trampled over by indecent individuals who glory in their shame. America began to unravel morally in the mid -1960s, and it has been unraveling ever since, to the point we are at now, the end of our rope, where wrong is right and evil is called good.

Isaiah's Picture of a Sinful Nation

Christian America has completely disappeared, as it has become pagan America, as sin and folly rule the day. And that's the title of my message this evening, friends, When Sin and Folly Abound. My text can be found in the book of Isaiah.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in chapter 1, beginning in verse 4. Here now is the Word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His Holy Word. Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters.

They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger. They are going away backward. I will stop there, friends. Here in Isaiah is a sad picture of a nation, drowning in her iniquity and bent on sin and folly, as it stands in opposition to a holy God.

National Moral Decay and the Judgment of God

We see their moral decay is great, for in verse 6, God declares of them, from the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there is no soundness in it. In other words, from top to bottom, every tier and level of society, things are morally rotten, like an open sore that festers and putrefies.

When sin and folly abound in the land, then God's judgment falls on a sin and people, and this is reflected in verse 7. Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.

Here stands a bleak picture of a country laid waste from the judgments of God. Let me ask you, friends, is this not our own deplorable condition today in this country? Natural disasters follow on the heels, one after another, from floods and fires, tornadoes and earthquakes, all throughout the land.

Mass shootings have become so common, it's not safe to even go out in public anymore. You can be gunned down by a madman anywhere and at any moment. Why the church ignores all this, as she snores in her insensibility and spiritual stupidity, is my second point in my message this evening.

Sin and Folly Abounding in the Church

This first aspect from our text is when sin and folly abound in the land. The second tragedy is seen when sin and folly abound in the church. I've never seen a day when there is so much compromise in our churches of the land.

The gospel is compromised. The word of God is compromised. The lives of church members are compromised by carelessness and sin. Sin and folly grow in the churches like tall weeds in an uncultivated garden.

The churches have lost their voice of authority. Many pulpits are silent on the demands of the gospel and the cost of discipleship. Holiness is a taboo subject. Sin is seldom mentioned and few warn of a coming judgment or preach on an everlasting burning hell.

Inside the church, the standards have fallen. One cannot distinguish the worldly lives of church members from the rest of the world. But we forget, friends, that God cannot condemn sin in the sinner and condone it in the saint.

Christ's Judgment of His Churches

We see judgment from God all around us in the land, and yet we refuse to acknowledge that the risen Lord is judge of his own church. In Revelation 2 .18 we read,. These things sayeth the Son of God, who hath eyes like a flame of fire.

God has set a high standard for his church and for his people. As he walks among the candlesticks, his eyes burn as flames of fire. When he sees iniquity and sin and folly abounding. When sin and folly abounds in the church, that in itself is an indictment against them.

In verse 20 we read,. Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

And I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. I submit to you, friends, that the risen Christ has given his apostate churches in this country space to repent, and they have repented not.

National Tragedy and the Church's Need for Repentance

Every time, it chokes me up even to say it, because of what happened today out in California with another shooting. But every time another national tragedy occurs like a mass shooting, it's another indictment against an unrepentant church that is overrun with sin and folly.

In Psalm 85, the psalmist laments, Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. Wilt thou be angry with us forever? The tragedy today in our churches is that they are too fast asleep to realize that God's righteous anger is lined up in opposition against them.

I never dreamed I would live to see the day in our churches where sin and folly is rampant in the people of God, who choose laughter and levity over a holy solemnity of reverence for God. When sin and folly abound in the land, it's because sin and folly abound in the church.

Heaven help us in this tragic day in which we live, when a sin-sick society spins out of control, and the church is fast asleep behind the wheel of a runaway locomotive that is fast running out of track, and up ahead the bridge is out, and nobody seems to notice or care.