When A Nation Dishonors God- Part#2

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology, and we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network.

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This is part two of a special two-part episode. Do you feel like you're on a religious treadmill? Do you feel like Christianity is just a system of rules and regulations?

I can do this, but I can't do that. Do you feel like your efforts to reach God, find God, and please God are futile? Do you feel like your faith is dead or alive? Today, Pastor Russ Andrews will walk us through Scripture to answer these questions. Join us on Finding Purpose, glorifying God by helping men find their purpose for living.

For more information and to connect with Russ Andrews and Finding Purpose, you can visit us online at findingpurpose.net or connect with us on Facebook. Now let's listen to Russ Andrews as he teaches us how to be a Christian without being religious. God is still watching.

He's still measuring sin. In Matthew 24 verses 37 through 39, Jesus says, As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. Up to the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all the way.

The flood was outside the city walls of Babylon, and that flood was the Medo-Persian army. As the revelry of the party climaxed, Belshazzar had a thought. Well, let's bring in the gold and silver goblets from the temple of the Jews and drink from them.

And that's what they did. And listen, through this act, do you know what he was doing? He was declaring that the gods of Babylon were greater than the God of the Jews. And as they drank, they mocked God, and they ridiculed the Lord of Heaven, and they hailed the gods made with hands. But God will not be mocked. Galatians 6, 7 says, Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked.

A man reaps what he sows. So out of the darkness of the night, the hand of God appeared and wrote four words on the wall. Many, many, Tuckled, Parson. Belshazzar was terrified. His face turned pale. He did what all unbelievers do. He called for worldly men to help him with his spiritual problem. Now listen, if you have a spiritual problem, do not go to someone who is not indwelt by the Holy Spirit for any counsel or advice. Psychology is the study of the soul. Who created the soul? God.

If you choose to go to a psychiatrist or a counselor, which is fine, make sure they know Jesus so that he can give you counsel from God's Word that will nourish your soul. The wisdom of the world is passing away. So these wise men came in, and guess what?

They couldn't solve the problem. Why is that? Because they were not indwelt by the Spirit of God like Daniel was. 1 Corinthians 2, 14 tells us that the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them.

Why is that? Because it requires spiritual discernment. So seeing that these so-called wise men had no answers, the queen remembered a wise man from the past, and so she told the king about Daniel. Now Daniel at this time was about 80 years old. That means I've got a few more years hopefully. So Daniel was called in, and the king praised him and offered him all kinds of rewards, but you know what?

Daniel had no interest in the things of this world. What about you? At some point, listen, this may be the most important thing I'll say to you today. As this world grows darker and darker, and your friends realize at some point they have no answers, they may turn to you. And you need to be like Daniel.

You need to speak the truth boldly but in love. Are you ready for that? Because people are looking for answers. I go to Panera Bread every morning. There's this one man there whose son is 25 years old, without a job, he's an alcoholic, and he's looking for answers.

They're everywhere you go. First Peter 3.15 says, Always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect. Daniel reminded the king of the time of his grandfather. This, by the way, sometimes they'll say the father when it's really an ancestor. So there was probably somebody in between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. So Nebuchadnezzar was probably his grandfather. But anyway, he reminds Belshazzar, because I think he's still trying to reach Belshazzar with the truth, just like Jesus did with the Pharisees. He's reminded him of his grandfather and how God removed him from the throne until he acknowledged God is the sovereign ruler of the universe. And then he said to Belshazzar, But you did not honor the one who holds in your hands your life.

Therefore, he sent the hand and wrote these four strange words. Many, many took a parson. And here's what these words mean one more time. Many means numbered. Your days have been numbered and come to an end.

Tekle means weighed. Your life's work has been weighed in the balance and found lacking. And parson means divided. Your kingdom has been taken from you and given to the Medes and Persians.

And why am I emphasizing these words? These are the very words that a non-believer will hear when they stand at the great white throne judgment to be condemned. Numbered. Their days will have been numbered and come to an end.

Tekled. Their life's work will be weighed in the balance and found lacking. And then parson, divided, separated. They'll be separated from the God who loves them and from heaven and from joy and from peace forever. I think sometimes we just take, I mean, I'm talking to me, we take our salvation so for granted that we have eternal life that we don't really care as much as we should for those who are lost. I'm guilty as charged.

I'm in the ministry. History informs us, listen, that that very night Darius, under the authority of King Cyrus, diverted the Euphrates River, which ran under the walls into the city so that it became a dry riverbed and the Medo-Persian army, listen, just walked in under the city gate and killed Beshazzar and the Babylonian empire came to an end. Justice was prophesied in Daniel chapter 2. By the way, did you know that everything that happened right here to Belshazzar on that very night was prophesied 150 years earlier by Isaiah. Isaiah lived around, if I'm doing my math right, around 650 to 700 B.C. and this happened around 520 to 550 B.C.

So 150 years had passed. And here's what God told his wonderful great prophet Isaiah in chapter 13 of Isaiah. He tells Isaiah, Isaiah, see, I will stir up against them, talk about Babylon, the Medes.

I mean, God named the very army. Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians' pride will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah. And if that weren't enough, in Isaiah chapter 45, God told them who the ruler would be. This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor. Do you not marvel at God's word?

It's true. God raised up King Cyrus to be his instrument of judgment as his army brought the Babylonian empire to an end. Why did this happen? Because King Belshazzar crossed the boundary line between God's patience and his wrath when he first surrendered to the idea of exalting the gods of Babylon while insulting the living God of Israel. And God will not be mocked. You have to wonder, folks, if America hasn't crossed that line already.

I have to wonder, when I look out at what's taking place in our country, if God's patience hasn't already run out with us. Just this past month, during the whole month of June, our nation celebrated the LGBTQ movement, calling it Pride Month, my birthday month, by the way. Here's what I want you to think about. What symbol has this movement hijacked? The rainbow. Do you know what the rainbow is symbolic of? God's grace and mercy. Right after the flood that wiped out every living creature on the face of the planet, with the exception of the animals that were on the ark and Noah's family, God made a promise to Noah. There's always mercy in the midst of God's wrath, Habakkuk 3.2. Always mercy in the midst of God's wrath.

So do not lose hope this morning, okay? By the way, this is referred to as the Noahic Covenant. In the Old Testament, you have the following covenants, which are critical to understand God's redemptive plan for the history of the world. You have the Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, and the New Covenant.

Go study them. Genesis chapter 9, and God said, again, he's speaking to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come. I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, have you all seen one recently?

I saw one two days ago. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind of the earth. So God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant I've established between me and all life on earth. You don't believe we've taken that incredible sign, hijacked it, turned it upside down, and we're mocking God every time we raise a rainbow over a gay parade. By the way, I'm going to mention homosexuality and abortion. I'm not picking up these signs, these sins. All sin is sin, but we're not having adultery parades.

We're not having other kinds of parades that I'm aware of. So the reason that ministers like me focus on abortion and homosexuality is because it's being thrust in our face by the media. And so we have to address it, do we not? I had a guy sit in my office the other day who told me he's bisexual. He's now born again. It's not the unpardonable sin.

The only unpardonable sin is unbelief. On June 25th, our city celebrated this movement with a parade, just like that party that Bill Shazzar had. They called it Raleigh Pride Out Day. Some of the sponsors were Wake Med, Red Hat, Wells Fargo, Duke Energy, UNC Health, PNC Bank, Advanced Auto Parts, Blue Cross Blue Shield, ABC Channel 11, and the list goes on and on and on.

I didn't see any church sponsoring this, but I know that there were some churches participating in it because I saw them on Facebook. All throughout the Bible, God says he hates the shedding of innocent blood. Proverbs 6, 16 and 17 says there are six things that the Lord hates. That's a strong word. Seven things that are detestable to him.

Haudias, what is that? Pride. Pride of the Babylonians. A lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood. That phrase, hands that shed innocent blood, is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. One of the most egregious sins committed by the Amorites and even the Israelites was child sacrifice. Can you think of anything worse than taking a little child and placing it on an altar of iron that's been heated up and sacrificing it to a false god?

What do you think abortion is? We've sacrificed over 60 million babies in this country alone to the god of convenience, primarily, and God says he hates the shedding of innocent blood. And listen, we can't expect God to just turn his back on activities that he declares in his word to be egregious sins. Otherwise, he would have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. So here's the question, and this is what I want to end with.

Okay? What has happened to our nation? A nation that began so well. As our history books are literally being rewritten, we need as Christian parents to remember true history.

And we need to teach it to our children. And I don't have a lot of time to share with you a whole lot of events, but I want to share just a couple of events in our formation as a nation that show us how we began. In Gary DeMar's book, America's Christian Heritage, he writes, On December 22, 1620, the Puritans landed from the Mayflower and planned their feet on the rock of Plymouth.

We know it as Plymouth Rock. And began a new era in the history of the world. Their first act after landing was to kneel down and offer their thanksgiving to God. And by a solemn act of prayer, and in the name and for the sake of Christ, to take possession of the continent. Thus they repeated the Christian consecration which Columbus, more than a century before, had given to the New World. And so twice in the most formal and solemn manner was our continent devoted to Christ and Christian civilization. Noel Webster, who lived from 1758 to 1843, was an American textbook pioneer, English language spelling reformer, political writer, editor and author. And he had been called the father of American scholarship and education. He was also a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives. And he writes, now listen to this, All the colonies, educated under the genius of Christianity and indoctrinated into the knowledge of the principles of just civil governments, laid the basis of their civil system on the Bible and made its truths the cornerstone of all their institutions. The fundamental doctrine of the men who planted each colony was that the legislation of the Bible must be supreme and universal. They rejected as heretical the idea that civil governments could be rightly instituted or wisely administered without Christianity. What happened to our nation?

Have you ever heard of the new non-premier? I would have in my hand a copy, a replica, of the one that was used in our nation. It was first introduced in 1690 by Benjamin Harris. And it was the first textbook printed in America in 1777. And for the first 100 years after its introduction, this was the beginning textbook that all of our students were being taught.

Do you know how they taught the alphabet? A. It's right in here. In Adam's sin, we sinned all. B. Heaven defined the Bible mind. C. Christ crucified, for sinners died.

D. The deluge drowned the earth around. I had to mention that because they talked about judgment back then. It's got a plan of salvation in it.

It's got catechisms that they taught the kids, songs, all right here. Not only did the first students who were our great-great-great-great-great grandchildren learn something about the Bible, they also prayed in school up until I was in the third grade, which was 1962, when they removed prayer from school and began to remove God from the public arena. And we would strip away the Ten Commandments in every Bible verse from all the monuments in Washington, D.C., if we could.

One last example. One of our more liberal Supreme Court Chief Justices, Earl Warren, during an interview in 1954 with Time Magazine said this, quote, this is 1954, the year I was born. I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the good book and the spirit of the Savior had been from the beginning our guiding geniuses. I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it. I like to believe we're living today in the spirit of the Christian religion.

That was 1954. Listen to this. I also like to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country, as long as we do so. I believe our founding forefathers, Noah Webster, Earl Warren, would weep if they saw our nation today. I believe God is weeping.

So what happened to us? The same thing has happened to every other nation in the history of the world when you turn away from God. Romans 1 tells us exactly what happened. I'm going to read just a few verses here from Romans 1.

I'm going to begin with verse 22. I want you to notice three times in here it says God gave them over, three times. The first time God gives us over is to natural sin. The second time He gives us over is to unnatural sin. And the third time, pretty much when you reach the bottom of the barrel, He gives you over to a depraved mind.

That's where America is. We have a depraved mind. A depraved mind is one that can no longer distinguish between right and wrong. Verse 22, for although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them over in the simple desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised.

Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.

Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. These are not my words. These are God's words. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

This is the one that gets me. Verse 32. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practice them.

In other words, just look at Hollywood. They celebrate sin. I just remember this.

I wasn't planning on sharing this. The day after, I believe, wrote the Roe v. Wade decision that was first handed down, they were interviewing this woman who said she was Jewish. That didn't have anything to do with it. She just said, I'm Jewish. She was nine months pregnant. She had two children right over here. And she had her shirt pulled up to show her extended stomach. And she had these words written on it. This is not human yet.

She said, those two children are human. This one's not. Now I'll tell you this from the bottom of my heart. I didn't enjoy giving that message.

And you probably didn't enjoy listening to it. But the truth sometimes is painful. And we don't have pain in our hearts for the world. We're blind. I wish I could have come in here and preached the message about the grace of God.

Because I want to tell you this. God's grace is still there. Do you know how we know His grace is still there? Because we're still living. And that means the door to heaven is still open.

The cross is still standing there as an escape from His coming wrath. So let me ask you this. Do you care about the world around you?

I know you do. You wouldn't be here if you didn't. So we're supposed to go out there and be salt and light. So how should we live in a world that's now Babylon? Well we need to live just the way Daniel did.

He is our shining example. I wish I could preach next Sunday and I would talk about how to be a Daniel in today's culture. Let me just give you, in your outline there's I think four.

I'm going to add another one. Because I thought about this one. Now even though the book of Daniel doesn't really talk, I don't know that it talks about repentance. Anybody like Daniel would understand this truth. A believer should live his life in a constant state of repentance.

Why? Because we keep on sinning. And God is faithful and just and He will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Repent. So repentance begins with the church. If we want to see God heal our land, we have to repent first right in here.

And then hopefully God will bring the nation to repentance. And then also Daniel prayed three times a day. That's how he ended up in the lion's den.

That's the only thing they could find against him. He said he would not disobey his God. Was God with him in the lion's den?

He'll be with us in the lion's den. Number three, Daniel studied God's Word. We need to be students of God's Word. If you don't love reading it, ask God to give you love for it. It's a discipline. Daniel lived a life of obedience. I have to say, when I look back at my life, I have some regrets. How about you? You have some regrets. Guess what? You can be a Daniel right now for the rest of your life.

That's what I want to be. Finally, Daniel stood up for truth and spoke it fearlessly. We need to be prepared to speak truth into a culture that has lost all concept of real truth, which is God's truth. I'll close with this one verse. This verse expresses my heart this morning to all of you. Jude, who is half brother of Jesus, he writes this in verse three. Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to speak to you this morning about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith. It was once fall entrusted to the saints, to many of our founding fathers.

By the way, that word contend means to struggle, like an athlete trying to win in the Olympic Games. We're to contend for the truth, people, and it's a struggle. The world is evil. The times are waxing late. We need to be sober and keep vigil because the judge is at the gate. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Lord, even though this was a very difficult message, I thank you that you gave me the strength to give it. And I pray, Heavenly Father, that you would take this message and that you would pour it into our minds and hearts and change us.

I think the church needs to be wakened up to the reality of the world around us that is falling apart at the seams. And we need to go out there, not with our heads hung low, but with our heads held high because we have the hope, we have the hope of you living in us. And what a great hope you are.

And we can share this hope with a lost world. Being a Christian is not about being religious, but about having a dynamic, alive relationship with Jesus Christ. You've been listening to Finding Purpose with Pastor Russ Andrews, glorifying God by helping men find their purpose for living. You can discover more about finding your purpose in life by checking out the resources at findingpurpose.net or connect to Finding Purpose on Facebook. Pastor Russ would also like to extend a special invitation for you to join him and over 300 other local men to study God's Word together every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. in downtown Raleigh. Find out more at findingpurpose.net.