Jack L. Martin Praise Assembly of God
Sept 8, 2002
TITLE: 9/11 What have we learned?
Jeremiah 8:19-20
Listen to the cry of my people
from a land far away:
"Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King no longer there?"
"Why have they provoked me to anger with their images,
with their worthless foreign idols?"
"The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved."
Maybe the Question for America today would be this.
Is the Lord no longer in the United States, Is her King no longer there?
In the words of the song writer - Have the 3 that we admire most, The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost caught the last train for the coast.
This coming week in America will be a very traumatic one for sure.
And especially in citys like New York, and Washington DC as well as a small community in western Pennsylvania.
A lot has happend in the year since that day when 4 Commercial Airliners suddenly became implements of Osama Bin Laden and his Alquita Network of terrorists..
I wish this morning that I could stand in this pulpit, with only a good declaration concerning - Sept. 11 a year past.
I wish that it had borne only good fruit & that america had come to her senses and national revival had taken place because of it.. How great it would be to be able to say
• There is good fruit. Many that day got saved,
• Many got saved in all the funerals and all of the pauses to bring out another body.
• Many got saved all over the world because of the shock over 9/11
• Literally more money was donated by private means than at any time before in the history of the world.
• People lined up around blocks all over the world to donate blood.
• Politicians stopped there squabling and came together in defense of our nation.
• Other nations joined in our grief.
And I don’t mean to down play the good that has come from it.
But I have to be fully transparent this morning in saying that America has missed almost completly what God would have done in our nation had we continued in the spirit that
First took place in our nation and in the world for that matter.
God wanted it to serve as a wake up call as to how far we had moved from Him.
How far out of his protective hands we had chosen to go.
He was wanting America to stop quoting II Chron. 7:14 and instead choose to obey it.
And for a time we did just that.
• For a time the congress worked feverishly as one.
• For a time people gave unselfishly
• People started back to church and praying.
• Kids prayed in school.
• For a time America was a nice place to live again.
For a time!
But thats the problem, TIME....
Time makes us forget what has happend
and brings us back to the same stupid place we were before the tragedy
George Sant ayana famous quote........
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Over the coarse of the year we have not only slid back to where we were before Sept 11, 2001 but we have fallen even further.
Thurdays cross fire... Man who has brought the suit to remove under God from the pledge of alliegance, has now filed to stop the Congress of the United States from opening in prayer, and has said he will challenge in God we trust next. At a time when we need the Lord more than ever.
Fridays Paper - A conservative Episcopal Priest was defrocked for complaining that the denomination had become to liberal.
Think of this past year with me.
• The Catholic church was rocked with the priest sex scandal
• People in trusted positions, people we have looked up to have failed in alarming ways. - Martha Stewart Enron MCI
• More Kids kidnapped an murdered, in more brutal ways than Id like to remember.
• Baseball Players and owners that only settled because they got the hint how mad the fans were at them. RIGHT IN THE SHADOW OF 9/11
• Congress both republican and democrat are back to doing business as usual.
• Steroid user has rocked the baseball world and Im sure other sports as well.
• Baseball legend Ted Williams had to have his last memory be one not of his baseball skills but the butt of jokes of being Teddy the Red Sox snowman.
• Dishonesty in the Olympics. Fixing outcomes.
• Judges actually entertained that foolish man in calif. Motion.
• Someone in the face of the disaster of 9/11 mailed anthrax all over the nation.
• Weve had floods, fires, disaster after disaster.
And one strange one - 100 years ago. Azuza Calif. Was the place that the fires of the Holy Spirit were poured out. This last week they had fires again but rageing fires, destructive life taking fires. Lit by the candles from satanic worship in the same place the Holy Spirit had been poured out.
We ask the Rhetorical question
• "How did this Generation get dumb as rocks?"
• Simple answer. They didnt learn from our mistakes.
Again I repeat the words of George Sant ayana
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
The apostle paul admonised that the Old Testament was an example to us that we would learn from their failures, there turning aways, but as a nation we havent.
As a dog returns to its vommit so have we as a people.
Hear me church we are heading back down the same path to perdition that we were on before Sept 11, 2001. Any ground we gained has been swallowed up like a florida sink hole.
Even the redicilious like arguments over what will be where the WTC was.
I can hear the words of Jesus
Matthew 23:37"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. 38Look, your house is left to you desolate.
A year ago I preached this same text.
Deuteronomy 30
1 When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. GOD WAS TRYING TO SPEAK THIS TO US.
4 Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. 5 He will bring you to the land that belonged to your fathers, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. NO MATTER HOW FAR YOU HAVE FALLEN.
6 The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.
7 The Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you. 8 You will again obey the Lord and follow all his commands I am giving you today. 9 Then the Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your land.
But because we failed to obey, our lands have been burning, plagues like the west nile now go from coast to coast, our stock market has become totally unstable. Our corporate leadership has faltered.
The Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your fathers, 10 if you obey the Lord your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
FRIENDS THE LORD IS STILL SAYING THAT BUT FOR HOW MUCH LONGER I DON’T KNOW!
The Offer of Life or Death
11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. ( IM TIRED OF ITS TO HARD TO LIVE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ) 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, "Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, "Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?" 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
CHURCH PLEASE HEAR ME THIS MORNING THIS IS STILL GODS OFFER
15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
LOVE GOD
WALK IN HIS WAYS
KEEP HIS DECREES
BASK IN HIS BLESSINGS
Listen to the warning for disobedience.
17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient,
and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them,
18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.
I believe this morning that is prophetic for this nation.
You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
Please hear me... listen to Gods word to his people...
19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
CHAP 31 What a mark of Gods Creativity... He is saying if you cant remember then make a song or something to remember it by. its that important.
19 "Now write down for yourselves this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it, so that it may be a witness for me against them. 20 When I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, the land I promised on oath to their forefathers, and when they eat their fill and thrive, they will turn to other gods and worship them, rejecting me and breaking my covenant. 21 And when many disasters and difficulties come upon them, this song will testify against them, because it will not be forgotten by their descendants. I know what they are disposed to do, even before I bring them into the land I promised them on oath." 22 So Moses wrote down this song that day and taught it to the Israelites.
If a new verse were to be added to America the beautiful it would go this way
Once beautiful, but forsaken land.
How have we grown so lame.
From Gods rich hand to mans own plan.
We labor now in vain.
America America
when will you heed Gods call,
And turn from sin
Invite Him in
lest pride precede your fall..
We are a nation of Isolation.
• A nation afraid to fly, and inconvenienced everytime we do.
• Afraid to take the mail out of our mail box.
• Afraid of what will happen next.
• 1 has literally put thousands to flight.
•
And that one, most likelly a rotting pile of bones in some Afghanastani Cave.
But still we live in fear.
Our schools have cow towed to Islam.... You can’t say Jesus but you can force them to read books on the Koran in our National Universitys and our Public Schools.
Paul said if anyone come with any other gospel let them be accursed - but were afraid thats politically incorrect.
In the words of the Prophet Jeremiah in chap 8 I repeat
20 "The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved."
Were as lost as a nation as we were before Sept 11.
Where a ship without a compass.
But God is still crying out to us today.....
Church we have got to quit playing church..
We have got to quit waiting for someone else to do something about it.
We have got to quit saying were small.
We have got to quit letting sin reign in our own mortal bodies.
We have got to stand up for Jesus.
Jesus said you are either with me or against me...
Even if America never repents we are accountable to God for what we have done.
One last time the words of George Sant ayana
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
We can choose to stick our head in the sand but Judgement is coming.
Friend now is the time to examine your own relationship with the Lord and make right anything that has to be righted.
I close with this from Isa chapter 6
5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"
And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
9 He said, "Go and tell this people:
ALTAR CALL
Even our church went through a bad time after 9/11
