A People Who Call Evil Good, and Good Evil

It's been an interesting morning, sort of an interesting weekend, I guess. Over the weekend, the

Maryland House of Representatives voted to profane the

Divine Institution of Marriage. I believe it's the seventh state where this has taken place now in the

United States. And, while pondering that evidence of further cultural decay,

I turned on Dr. Albert Moeller's The Briefing, a fine program to listen to, by the way, and he highlighted an article that appeared in Saturday's New York Times that announced that for the first time in the history of the

United States amongst women 20 to 30 years of age, which of course is the primary age for the giving of birth, that for the first time in the history of the

United States amongst that group, the majority of children born last year were born to unwed mothers.

They did not have a father and a mother. That means this is the new norm.

The new norm is to be illegitimate. And, of course, now that term hardly even has any meaning for this next generation coming forth.

While listening to another webcast, I heard the statistic that in my generation, 65 % of people viewed themselves as Christians.

In the next generation, it was 28. In the next generation, 8. Now, of course,

I would argue that 65 % of my generation never gives second thought to the

Lordship of Jesus Christ, and therefore nominal Christianity might produce the results we're seeing, but that's another issue.

Then I got in my car pondering these things, and I turned on news radio, and they were discussing the sheriff of Pinal County, here in the state of Arizona, who over the weekend came out and announced that he's a homosexual.

Well, he didn't really announce it. He had to announce it because his homosexual lover had exposed him and exposed that he had been posting his profile on homosexual dating sites and including sending nude pictures of himself to people he had never met and then setting up liaisons with them.

This is the sheriff of the county. Of course, in the midst of this discussion, those engaging in the dialogue, which

I guess is even ongoing right now on that local radio station, wanted to make sure that everyone knew that it didn't matter that he was homosexual.

That doesn't matter at all. It was the fact that he was cheating on his lover. And I thought to myself, cheating?

Where was the commitment? Where was the covenant? How does the word cheat have any meaning at all anymore in this culture, where even marriage itself is considered just to be something you can get into.

Hey, 70 days down the road, don't like it? You're gone. You're out of it. The idea of a covenant, especially a lifelong covenant, isn't that the foundation of the word cheating?

Well, I thought it was. So by this point, I'm very confused. Actually, I wasn't confused.

I was very angry. And then the news came on. Yeah, it's a news talk radio station.

Why not? And what was one of the stories but the fact that there is a growing number of clinics in the

United States, specifically designed to provide sex change hormone therapy to children.

No, not 12 year olds, 5 and 6 year olds, who have decided somehow without any interference from mommy and daddy, have decided that, well, they were born with the wrong body at 5, 6, 7 years of age.

By the time I got to my office, and it's not a long drive, I was truly feeling beaten up considering what kind of world my grandchildren will be facing.

I think it is time to recognize on the part of any serious

Christian, and I mean a serious Christian, I mean someone who actually believes God has spoken in his word, believes the truth about Jesus Christ, and actually seeks to live his or her life under the

Lordship of Jesus Christ. A serious Christian, it's time for those folks to recognize that Western culture is not doing what is going to bring the wrath of God.

Western culture is in the middle of the outpouring every day of the wrath of God.

I say to you that any parent that could so pervert the thoughts of their children as to introduce gender confusion to them at age 5 is demonstrating the wrath of God.

What we are doing in the murder of unborn children when we have more knowledge now of their humanity than any generation of the past, that's the wrath of God.

When we can take God's divine institution of marriage designed for the continuation of our race, for the greatest joy and comfort, happiness and fulfillment, for the taming of young men and turning them into mature individuals, little children are the greatest

God -given way to strip selfishness out of us and make us serving human beings.

When we can profane the very institution that God has instituted for our life and consider it something you can put up for a vote, that is

God's wrath. It's all around us. And we are absolutely blind if we do not see it.

And we are dumb if we do not say to our society and our culture, this is the wrath of God.

Why is it that so many people have despair today? Why is it that so many people live in fear today, have no hope for the future?

It's because they have embraced a fundamentally anti -God worldview.

It's godlessness. It's not just the new atheism.

It has become the orthodoxy of our society. And that is why when Christians, if we say anything that even begins to suggest, to intimate an attitude of godliness about something, the looks of disapproval, we now live in a society where good is evil and evil is good.

It's good, we are told, to introduce our children to gender confusion.

It is good. We are being told by governmental entities, by people in the highest realms of government, that we must not only accept homosexuality, we must view homosexuality as a positive moral value.

You know it's happening. It's happening in the school systems. It's happening in government. That is

God's wrath. It's perversity. It is moral evil.

And yet we are being told that if we say anything against that, you are the one who is evil. That's why homosexuals have taken up the chant, shame, shame, shame.

They yell shame at people because it's the best way they've found to project the shame that they actually feel in their own hearts because they are creating the image of God.

They know this is wrong. They are constantly suppressing the knowledge of God. They project it onto other people. It's wrath of God.

It's the wrath of God. And there is, there is only one prayer that a believing

Christian can pray for a culture such as this. God bless

America with repentance. That's it. Until there is repentance, how can we pray for anything else for our country?

Think about it. I know this is not how I was raised, but things have changed. Things have changed.

How can we pray for security against our enemies? Oh God, bless us with security against our enemies.

We who murder our unborn children. We who profane your institutions of divine marriage.

We who engage in every type of sexual deviancy and a perversion of the gift you've given to us in sexuality.

Bless us with security from our enemies. Really? Bless our economy,

God. Give us more gadgets and things to make our lives even easier so that we can use them on our sexual perversity and our profanation of marriage and our murder of unborn children.

Really? Really? That's what a serious Christian can pray? When we talk about praying for repentance, the people of this culture need to hear a clear message of what they need to turn from and what they need to turn to.

And part, another part of the wrath of God upon this culture is the fact that there's so much false religion in this culture.

So many who have abandoned the gospel. They do not give a clear witness to the gospel or they give a completely false gospel.

And so part of our prayer for the repentance of our nation should be, God, close the mouths of false teachers and let your gospel ring forth with clarity.

Now some of you are saying, that's never going to happen. Well none of us have lived long enough to make that kind of a proclamation because God has done it in the past and he can do it again.

He's doing that in other lands. He can do it here. Our prayer must be,

God grant repentance. But you see, I don't hear a lot of people praying that because a lot of Christians I know are afraid to call evil, evil.

Psalm 119 verse 136 says, my eyes shed streams of water because people break your law.

Fellow Christian, is your, has your heart become apathetic to the profanation, the profaning of God's law, to the promotion of that which is the exact opposite of what is godly and good?

Psalm 128 says, the wicked strut about when that which is evil is honored amongst men.

All you got to do, turn on your computer, turn on your television, turn on your radio.

The evil are strutting about because that which is evil is now honored amongst men.

And if we can't call it evil, and believe me, those who promote evil want to silence us.

They want to end our right to call it evil. But then again, since we've been pretty much afraid to call it evil, why should it really matter?

We live in a day where aside from the prayer of repentance for our culture, my most common prayer is,

God, I need wisdom to know how to respond when living amongst a people who in spite of the great light that this culture has experienced, and continues to experience in the proclamation of the gospel, is willing to close, not just close the eyes, but to cover the eyes, and to do everything possible to suppress that light.

And I can't help but think of Jesus' own words. To Chorazin and Bethsaida, it would have been

Sodom and Gomorrah would have repented.

Well, we're right back in Sodom and Gomorrah, but now Sodom and Gomorrah has a lot of light. And if God judged those cities the way he did with so little light that they had, what would be his just sentence upon a nation and upon a culture like ours?

So bring thoughts. We must pray, Lord, you've called us to be lights.

How can I be a light? Not by compromising with this culture.

Not by using weasel words, but how can

I be a light to expose the evil and wickedness that is becoming that which my society calls good?

That's the challenge that we face today. May God give us the strength and the wisdom to be his servant.