We Can Afford It, by Pastor Ed Evans

Scripture: Psalm 16

16:1 Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
16:2 I say to the Lord, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from You."
16:3 As for the holy ones in the land, they are the noble, in whom is all my delight.
16:4 Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips.
16:5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; You hold my lot.
16:6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.
16:7 I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.
16:8 I keep the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
16:9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure.
16:10 For You do not give me up to Sheol, or let Your faithful one see the Pit.
16:11 You show me the path of life. In Your presence there is fullness of joy; in Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Perhaps some of you remember an old hymn that says, "This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through. My treasures are laid up, away beyond the blue."

That's us. That's you and I; all of those whose name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. We have placed ourselves in the hands of Almighty God, and our future is assured. In troubles we take refuge in Him, we have nothing of value outside of Him. Today's scripture reminds us that it is God who gives us counsel, a good heritage, and as long as we keep Him always before us, we shall not be moved, our heart is glad, and our soul rejoices.

With such a future assured, what have those who love Him have to worry about, to be concerned about, to be angry or upset about? In fact, the Son of God instructs us to approach everything with love, even those who would be our enemies.

Right now, all across our nation, believers and non-believers alike are being divided into opposing groups as anger, betrayal, suspicion and a raft of other emotions sweep aside good sense, all unity, all common demand for ethics, morals and character in the conduct of our societal relationships and our governing bodies. The dividing is being done by those with something to gain from turning Americans against one another, turning Christian believer against Christian believer.

Some people become self-righteously angry when the nation of Americans is spoken of as one of exceptional ability and blessing. But history has shown the United States of America to be populated by individuals of, indeed, exceptional ability, creativity, foresight and leadership. Originally created upon the belief that all men are created equal before God, and endowed with certainly inalienable rights, America has been a Godsend to downtrodden peoples around the world, as this nation has shared its wealth, it natural desire for freedom, its food with the hungry, its healing with the sick, its riches and resources with those in need.

America has also seen the seamier side of life take root on its shores, as well, as the greedy, the criminal, the lascivious, and those who would gorge themselves on the misery of others, have wormed their way into positions of power and influence and obligation. For believers, the written word of God has warned us to avoid even the appearance of evil, in order to keep clear of exactly what has fallen upon us. In James 4:7, we read, "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

But we've not resisted. We've been drawn into the muck and mire of evil by our desires for more and better and sweeter, turning our back on the needs of others, and compromising what we knew to be just and right in order to satisfy our desires. And in doing so we have poisoned the well of future generations, we have set aside the promised joys and protections of Almighty God, we have cut our own Achilles heel, we have stabbed ourselves in the back.

America is awash in misery and debt even now, entire families out of work and losing their homes, going hungry, creating the long lines at church food pantries and employment agencies, and outlets for the public dole, and the missions for the homeless.

Satan has not done this to us. Evil has not set a snare and trapped us. With our unbridled desires for self-satisfaction, for pornography, for the agreeable killing of infants still in the womb, for the abuse and misuse of innocent children, for the mindlessness of illicit drugs and the relief from our sense of responsibility through legal potions that numb the mind for a time, and kill us before our time.

In a war that began in heaven, a conflict spoken of in Ephesians between monumental good and evil, like the cowardly soldier we have shot ourselves in the foot to get out of the battle before us. But we cannot get out of the battle. We are the battle. Ephesians 6:12 tells us, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

This is a battle every living human being is in. No one is immune, no one opts out, no one gets away.

So I put to you, if we are all in this war between good and evil, and we cannot get out of it, if in not choosing sides we are actually choosing a side, then why would we not choose God's side? Why would we not put ourselves in His all-powerful hands, and follow His leadership? If we are of a sane, logical mind, it simply makes good sense to accept the gift God has given us in Jesus Christ, and follow God's instructions to us, to guide us through this war against evil.

The next step is to find out what those instructions are, and to follow them.

However, while I absolutely encourage you to give yourself over to God, and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, I will not embark upon a full lesson here regarding what His instructions to us are. What I will address here are those instructions relevant to the times which are upon us, the disaster about us and before us.

For I am of the considerable opinion that so very much of what Jesus taught and said and stood for is wrapped up in the words we read in John's gospel, chapter 13, verses 34-35: "“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”

Who is it that we must love? One another. Jesus said this at a feast of love, while He still walked this earth as a human being. And so we are to love one another with a human love, but not "just" with human love. For Jesus went on to say, "as I have loved you." Later on in John 17:21-23a, Jesus prayed, " that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and You in Me — so that they may be brought to complete unity."

We are to love one another that we all might come to unity in Christ; all in Him. All in one. In Him we have nothing to fear. In Him, even with differing opinions about what to have for breakfast, for what newspaper to read, or even in whom we should place our earthly leadership, through love for one another we are still one, one with Christ, one with the Father. It is all about unity, then. Love places us in unity.

Through love, then, we can afford to be generous with our understanding of those who differ with our opinions, we can afford to love even those who would be our enemies, we can afford to stand alone, with Christ, and still be in the majority. Romans 8:38-39 reminds us, "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Nothing, then, can separate us from His love, so we can afford to be kind, understanding, and accepting of even those who would be our enemies

I pray we may come together, in love if it be at all possible, but certainly in unity in Christ to stand against the enemies of Almighty God, against those who would create mischief and disunity in this nation and this world created by the hand of God, for even in the end of all things, nothing can separate us from the love of God, so that as believers we of all people can afford to be generous with our love, as He loved us. Amen.

Anger Won't Save the Vinyard

Anger Won't Save the Vineyard

Sermon by Pastor Ed Evans

Scripture: Isaiah 5:1-7
5:1 Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
5:2 He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
5:3 And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.
5:4 What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?
5:5 And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down.
5:6 I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
5:7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!

The book of Isaiah is rich with wisdom and information not only for those of its own time, but for this day and this age in which we live and move. In these passages, God is comparing the house of Israel to a vineyard. In the same way, these words can be applied to America. Is this national vineyard producing the fruit it was intended, full, succulent grapes from which will come a life-giving wine? Or is its purpose being lost in poor management, destroyed through bitterness, in-fighting and anger?

This past week I commented on Facebook about the growing sense of anger and frustration we see being fed by a sense of helplessness and hopelessness as our elected and appointed officials seem to go off the deep end in ways counter to the welfare of We the People. They are caring more for themselves than for the vineyard we know as our nation. There seems to be an anger growing more intense, and so widespread that it could eventually grow into violence that will kill the very rich purpose of the vineyard.

My initial comment about anger and helplessness came about when I learned that our own State Department is paying for Imam Feisal Abdul Rouf, who intends to build a Muslim mosque a couple of blocks away from the 9/11 Ground Zero in New York City, to travel to the Middle East to drum up more funding for this mosque most of America thinks is a travesty so close to the killing fields created by Muslim terrorists. There is so much anger evident about this across America that I felt led to urge people to turn it into fervent prayer to the Living God whose wisdom and strong hand can make a difference.

An angry shopkeeper in New York City was quoted as saying, "I feel like there is a ruling class in America who think they know better than I do, and they don't give a *blank* what I think."

Another person commented, "It sure is easy to become engrossed in the hatred that is breeding in this Country. Even amongst Christians. I began to act in a way that was unfamiliar to me and I had to really seek God on it. I do feel anger is appropriate to some degree but it must never interfere with our work for the Kingdom. I said just yesterday we need to storm Heaven with prayers for this country and for those deceived by Islam."

Truthfully, we are awash in anger in America today. Fear is most often the genesis of anger; fear of what know but can't control, fear of what we don't know or don't understand.

The news media is replete each week with new examples of fear and anger. Just this past week the Associated Press released a story about increasing fear of more violent patients in hospital emergency rooms, with recommendations for "24-hour security guards, coded ID badges, bulletproof glass and panic buttons." Many hospitals are now installing metal detectors, with one hospital in Ohio "confiscating 33 handguns, 1,324 knives, and 97 Mace sprays in the first six months of the program."

Fear and anger cause some people to go armed, even if it's only with Mace spray and an attitude.

The news media, of course, is not an innocent party in all this anger. For the sake of controversy that draws readership, which hikes ad rates and pays everyone's salary, their entire approach to the world is, "Let's you and him fight." Then they have a story. Their very greed and self-interest works against a healthy vineyard.

Sometimes we pole-vault into anger out pure and continuing discouragement. We seem to see no way out of our dilemma and this lack of power makes us angry. Pastor Charles Stanley recently wrote about the External Causes of Discouragement, based on Colossians 3:21.

" Discouragement can hit us from many angles," Stanley wrote, "depleting our energy and productivity. Wise believers will learn to detect its sources in order to avoid this paralyzing effect." He listed six common external causes:

1. Unresolved disappointments. This applies to letdowns caused by our own failed expectations or someone else's.

2. Constant criticism. When we are criticized frequently, it is natural to think, "What's wrong with me?" Yet, unless God reveals a truth in the comments, we must learn to let them go.

3. The feeling that no one's listening. The natural response to this is rejection.

4. The sense that we aren't appreciated after doing our best. We can get so tied to our work that someone's failure to acknowledge our efforts feels like a personal rebuff.

5. Bad working conditions. Many believers enjoy what they do but pick up on coworkers' cruelty, bitterness, or refusal to recognize their efforts. This can make it extremely difficult to get motivated about going to work each day.

6. Lacking opportunities to shine. A job that doesn't make the best use of one's gifts and abilities can wear a person down. So can tight-fisted management that limits freedom to make innovations.

Stanley points out that oftentimes, it's the people we see every day who seem to have the most power for causing emotional impacts in our lives. So if any of the above scenarios sound disturbingly familiar, we need to pray for the strength to face these external discouragers with renewed confidence, so we respond from a point of peace, and not anger.

Far too often anger is that out-of-control emotion that leads a person to take action they otherwise would not have. In New York City this past Monday, a flight attendant reportedly had taken enough cursing and battering abuse from an angry passenger while the plane was still on the ground, so he grabbed a beer from the galley, deployed the slide-for-life and left the plane in style, and in anger. Although he was arrested, arraigned on several charges, and put in jail under $2,500 bond, by the next date a Facebook page set up in his name had 20,000 supporters, with membership growing by the thousands each hour. One member had established a legal defense fund for the flight attendant. The angry passenger was not arrested. But at least 20,000-plus people felt a kinship with the flight attendant's anger.

Where does this anger come from? Are we not better off than the disease-plagued ages of yore? Is the very vineyard not much improved from olden times? Are not miracle medicines, instant communication, faster cars and boats and planes, world-wide entertainment, central air and heating, are they not enough to please our hunger for "the good life?" Enough so we feel we are being treated fairly?

And yet we see anger searing nearly every episode of life; both winning and losing sports fans destroying post-game stadiums and neighborhoods; petty arguments escalating instantly into gunplay and death, road rage on the highways that kills, maims and destroys whole families. Both losing and winning political opponents spew their agenda-driven rage while campaigning and even after the election. Anger in the supermarket lines, anger in bank meetings, anger in the boardrooms, in the kitchen, in the living room, and in the bedrooms. Even anger in the church as one faction takes another to court to exact their pound of flesh.

Where does such anger come from? It certainly doesn't come from worship, from praising God, from being filled with the Spirit of Almighty God.

II Timothy 1:7 reminds us that "God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power, love, and sound judgment." In most cases, when you have the power, you have the solid footing for sound judgment. There is no reason to be making snap judgments and bad decisions that come from not giving the facts and the context due consideration. God wants us to make decisions that honor Him. He wants our every word and action to be such that it honors His holiness.

It's when we act out of fear, out of feelings of powerlessness, embarrassment, humiliation, or out of anger and frustration that we step away from His guiding spirit, that we do things "our way," and we do not honor God, we do not act within His will. After 27 years as a U.S. Marine and 18 years as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, there really isn't much I'm afraid of, except being one second outside the will of Almighty God. We are forever one second, one heartbeat away from eternity. The kind of anger we've been talking about will take us outside that second.

Pastor Dale Williams, Jr., has said there is another anger we should all be concerned about. He indicates the Bible says, "For we are consumed by your anger, and by your wrath are we troubled. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance (Psalm 90:7-8)." Adds Williams, "The world isn't 'troubled' by God's wrath. They are offended by the thought that He is angry at them."

Nevertheless, the Bible says that they are 'consumed' by His anger. It abides on them and envelopes them as a raging fire. This is because He has set their iniquities in front of Him, like a judge who places all the evidence of a heinous crime on the bench before him before he passes sentence. But more than that, their secret sins are in the light of His countenance. They are not at His feet. They are in front of His face. He sees every wicked thought and deed. No wonder Paul said, 'Wherefore knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. (2nd Corinthians 5:11)'"

Anger among men and women often has its roots in pride, in a lack of humility before God and before men. "I didn't get what I deserved." "I was not treated fairly." "I deserve better than this." Our self-pride pushes us to levels of what we tell ourselves is righteous anger."

Facebook friend Jeremy Kurth shared with me and others this verse from Obadiah 1:3, "The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks in your lofty dwelling, who say in your heart, 'Who will bring me down to the ground?'"

Added Jeremy, "We live our lives a lot of the time with the attitude that we are better than other people, but the fact of the matter is the more we puff ourselves up the more we push others away. How can we effectively minister to people when we are always thinking of ourselves?"

In our moments of pride, self-righteousness, moments when our anger lashes out, that's the question we will have to each answer for ourselves. Let us ask and answer that question prayerfully for ourselves. God has no need to ask. He already knows.

We would do well to remember John Donne's admonition that no man is an island, that our emotional responses, whether out of love or anger, have an impact on the world around us, on the entire vineyard.

For in light of recent events it seems apparent we stand today where Israel stood in the time of Isaiah, and the Lord God has some specific pronouncements in Isaiah 5:5-7 about this vineyard, of His, in which we live and raise our families: "And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; He expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!"

Like Israel of old, the same remedy that would have saved Israel is the only one left to the Christians of America: "If my people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." -- 2nd Chronicles 7:14.

Amen.

Daily Scripture Readings for August 16-22, 2010
Monday -- John 14:1-14
Tuesday -- Matthew 11:1-5
Wednesday -- Hebrews 10:19-25
Thursday -- Matthew 8:18-27
Friday -- Luke 5:27-39

Saturday -- John 12:20-36

Sunday -- Jeremiah 28:1-9; Psalm 84; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:22-30