Sunday, September 11, 2005
Sermon Notes: 9/11/05--We Have Forgotten
(Note: These are transcribed from Sermon notes used for the Service, actual Sermon given on video available from Church, ask for details)
Scripture Texts: Nehemiah 4:14, Jonah 2:7, Deuteronomy 6:4-12, Jeremiah 3:21
The country singer Darryl Worley wrote a song a few years ago in which he asked the question, Have you Forgotten? in reference to 9/11/01. The answer, it seems as I look around, appears to be: yes, we have forgotten. In a temporal sense as well as a spiritual sense.
In the news, the anniversary has passed with no memorial mention hardly of the lives lost. No, all we get is political rhetoric of who did what and when and how we may or may not have been misled. We get no spiritual remembrance, no instead we get a few tv movies.
Remember 9/11, when everyone seemed to be coming back to God. Church attendance swelled. People began realizing that humanism was not the answer. We sought comfort from God, rejuvenation from God. And He complied. We grew strong again, we healed some wounds, we rejoiced in saved lives and in new opportunity.
Now, five years later, we are back at it again. Humanism is back on the march. Instead of calling people terrorists, they are freedom fighters, or insurgents. Instead of calling them demonic, we call them akin to our Founding Fathers. Instead of seeking comfort in God, we are returning to the ways of humanism. We try to convince ourselves yet again that there is no evil in this world, despite the vast evidence to the contrary. We are lying to ourselves. And, we when lie to ourselves we set ourselves up for a real fall.
There is evil out there. Osama, Saddam, Zaqawi, they are all evil. They have been infected with the spirit of Satan and they are evil men. How else can you delight in leaving innocent children fatherless, of killing innocent people on the way to work? Yet, that is what they do.
The mainstream would have us believe that this is silly, this notion of evil. However, it is there. We saw it. Even the humanists saw it. However, they are relying on the adage of time healing wounds. Time can do that, but we must resist the urge to forget. We want to forget, we don't want to remember the pain. However, in failure and in pain there is great learning many times.
As we must learn from the security mistakes, we must learn from the spiritual as well. We can sit idly by and just believe that there is no evil...
Because, when we do that, we end up being like those Israelites. They kept coming to God and drifting away, coming and leaving, that finally they were scattered. There is a day coming when we will be held to account for our own coming and leaving. And that, dear hearts, will make 9/11 seem like a small rainstorm. The great cataclysm is coming. The end of days will be here, and we must remember the lessons of times past, including 9/11, to realize we do need God. Our tallest buildings can be knocked down, and still people think we are the be all and end all. Woe unto them when God humbles them, and I pray we will not be amongst them, but amongst the chosen believers who remembered the 9/11s, who remembered the failures to help lead us to eternal success....
Scripture Texts: Nehemiah 4:14, Jonah 2:7, Deuteronomy 6:4-12, Jeremiah 3:21
The country singer Darryl Worley wrote a song a few years ago in which he asked the question, Have you Forgotten? in reference to 9/11/01. The answer, it seems as I look around, appears to be: yes, we have forgotten. In a temporal sense as well as a spiritual sense.
In the news, the anniversary has passed with no memorial mention hardly of the lives lost. No, all we get is political rhetoric of who did what and when and how we may or may not have been misled. We get no spiritual remembrance, no instead we get a few tv movies.
Remember 9/11, when everyone seemed to be coming back to God. Church attendance swelled. People began realizing that humanism was not the answer. We sought comfort from God, rejuvenation from God. And He complied. We grew strong again, we healed some wounds, we rejoiced in saved lives and in new opportunity.
Now, five years later, we are back at it again. Humanism is back on the march. Instead of calling people terrorists, they are freedom fighters, or insurgents. Instead of calling them demonic, we call them akin to our Founding Fathers. Instead of seeking comfort in God, we are returning to the ways of humanism. We try to convince ourselves yet again that there is no evil in this world, despite the vast evidence to the contrary. We are lying to ourselves. And, we when lie to ourselves we set ourselves up for a real fall.
There is evil out there. Osama, Saddam, Zaqawi, they are all evil. They have been infected with the spirit of Satan and they are evil men. How else can you delight in leaving innocent children fatherless, of killing innocent people on the way to work? Yet, that is what they do.
The mainstream would have us believe that this is silly, this notion of evil. However, it is there. We saw it. Even the humanists saw it. However, they are relying on the adage of time healing wounds. Time can do that, but we must resist the urge to forget. We want to forget, we don't want to remember the pain. However, in failure and in pain there is great learning many times.
As we must learn from the security mistakes, we must learn from the spiritual as well. We can sit idly by and just believe that there is no evil...
Because, when we do that, we end up being like those Israelites. They kept coming to God and drifting away, coming and leaving, that finally they were scattered. There is a day coming when we will be held to account for our own coming and leaving. And that, dear hearts, will make 9/11 seem like a small rainstorm. The great cataclysm is coming. The end of days will be here, and we must remember the lessons of times past, including 9/11, to realize we do need God. Our tallest buildings can be knocked down, and still people think we are the be all and end all. Woe unto them when God humbles them, and I pray we will not be amongst them, but amongst the chosen believers who remembered the 9/11s, who remembered the failures to help lead us to eternal success....
# posted by Mark : 5:23 PM
