Adrian Rogers - A Nation in Crisis
Be finding in your Bibles the book of Isaiah chapter 59. And may I tell you, as you're finding it, that our beloved United States of America is in a crisis. And the title of the message today, "A Nation in Crisis". One by one, the lights of decency and the lights of hope are being blown out in America. But one day calamity will come. One day we will face perhaps international terrorism, perhaps unparalleled economic reversal, perhaps natural disasters over which we have no control whatsoever, and then we will fill our churches. And we will turn our eyes upward, and we will dial 9 1 1, but there'll be no answer. The line will be dead.
First Samuel chapter 8 verse 18 says, "And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which you have chosen you and the Lord will not hear you in that day". You'll cry out. You'll say, "Oh, God, have mercy". You'll pray, and your prayers won't be answered. Why is that? Well, look in Isaiah chapter 59, verses 1 through 4, "Behold the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is His ear heavy that it cannot hear". God is not palsied, and God is not deaf. "But," verse 2, "your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid His face from you that He will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness. None calleth for justice nor any pleadeth for truth; they trust in vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity".
Now what is Isaiah saying to a sinful nation in that day? "God is well able to hear your prayers. It's not that He cannot hear your prayers; it is that He will not hear your prayers because your sin has created a barrier between you and a holy God". And Isaiah tells us what the sin of that day was and how it tracks and parallels the sin of our day. First of all, look in verse 2; they had bloody hands, bloody hands. America is swimming in an ocean of blood. A modern holocaust has stained and flooded America. The blood of millions of pre born babies cry out from the ground against us since 1973, that horrendous Roe v. Wade ruling, when nine men dressed in black robes said that a little pre born baby can be treated as a piece of protoplasm. And we in America are now killing babies at the rate of four thousand a day.
Notice what Isaiah said in chapter 59 verses 2 and 3, "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God. Your sins have hid His face from you." verse 3, "Your hands are defiled with blood". When you ask a politician about abortion, he'll dodge the issue. He'll tell you that's a moral decision, it is a religious decision; that's not a proper forum for politics, and that needs to be studied in the church between the priest, the rabbi, the pastor. It is a personal decision, not a political decision. But if the priest, the rabbi or the pastor speaks about it, they'll rise up and say, "Why doesn't he stay out of politics"? And meanwhile the babies die. And we are swimming in an ocean of blood. And the violence of our day has surpassed the days of Noah, the days of Lot; King Herod is in the background today.
One man has wisely said, "Today, we're living in a day where twelve year olds are having babies, fifteen year olds are killing each other, seventeen year olds are dying of AIDS, and eighteen year olds are graduating from high school with a diploma they can't read". That's where we are in America today. Bloody hands. But then he goes on to say, not only bloody hands but lying lips. Again look if you will in Isaiah 59 verse 3, "Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness". We've been talking about lies in high places and low places. And, well, people say, "Everybody lies, everybody lies". What's so rare about lies? Everybody lies. U.S. News & World Report, said this, quote, "Governmental officials dissemble, scientists falsify research, workers alter career credentials to get jobs". And then the magazine asks, "What's going on here? The answer, a growing number of social critics fear, is an alarming decline in basic honesty".
Bloody hands, lying lips, number three, wicked hearts. Look if you will in Isaiah 59 verse 4, "None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity". It's terrible to raise teenagers today because we have a day of moral ambivalence. We have a day of ethical fogginess. What are we being told today? We're being told that, "Adultery is really no big deal. Everybody does that".
Friend, I want to tell you, if a man will not keep a sacred vow before Almighty God, to his wife, I wouldn't trust him to keep any promise anywhere, anytime. We're being told today that private morality can be disconnected from public service. That's not what God's Word says. Ecclesiastes chapter 10 verse 1 says this, "The dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor. So doth a little folly in him that is in reputation for wisdom and honor". Dead flies in the ointment.
Friend, something stinks in America. Theodore Roosevelt, a man of yesteryear, won his first major election back in 1898. He was elected governor of New York. About that time, Theodore Roosevelt wrote something that's so pertinent to our day and our age; I want you to listen to it. Sounds like it was written for today, but listen to it. He says, "No community is healthy where it is ever necessary to distinguish one politician among his fellows because he's honest. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life. It matters not how brilliant his capacity. It hardly matters how great his power of doing good service on certain lines may be".
Now what Teddy Roosevelt said was, "If he's not honest, that he just simply disqualified". Again, Teddy Roosevelt said this, and I quote, "If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law. Under the higher law, under the great law of morality and righteousness, he is precisely as guilty if, instead of lying in a court, he lies in a newspaper or on the stump. And in all probability, the evil effects of his conduct are infinitely more widespread and more pernicious. The difference between perjury and mendacity is not in the least one of morals or ethics; it is simply one of legal forums".
Now what he is saying is the same thing that Jesus said in Matthew 5:37 when He said, "When you speak, let your yea be yea and your nay, nay". It doesn't matter whether you're under oath or whether you're not under oath. We're being told today that somehow public approval validates wrong behavior. This same Isaiah, whose book we're reading, said in Isaiah chapter 5 verse 20, "Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter". We're being told that if a man is approved by society, that that is good. It is not good, no matter how many times we take a poll. Yet Jesus said, "Let your yea be yea and your nay, nay".
Now what has brought about this condition? Why is it that Isaiah's people came to a place where they would look up to God and say, "God have mercy on us," and God said, "No, I'm not going to hear your prayer". What brought about bloody hands, lying lips, and wicked hearts? Three things; I want you to see them right here in this text. Number one, the people had been feeding on a diet of deception. Look in Isaiah 59 verse 5, "They hatch vipers' eggs and weave the spider's web. He that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper".
Now if you'll look at verse 5 and link verse 5 to verse 4, you're going to find out that those vipers' eggs, those snake eggs that he's talking about that are hatched in Hell's incubators, they are devilish lies and philosophies that are being hatched, were hatched in Isaiah's day and also being hatched in our day. Lying, poisonous philosophies that are being swallowed down by adults and youth alike. Our world, our nation is on a snake egg diet. A diet of deception. The incubators that hatch those eggs are materialism and humanism, New Ageism, liberalism; they've hatched these out. The old granddaddy serpent who has spawned and fertilized these eggs is Satan himself because he's a liar and the father of all lies.
There are certain philosophical underpinnings that are so incipient in American life today that they are poisoning our educational, our philosophical, our religious, our economic, and political outlook. And our young people are going to public schools and each morning they're served a snake egg omelet. They swallow these things down. Dramatic changes have taken place in America, and in twenty years, there was a complete reversal. From 1962 to 1982, let me tell you what happened in twenty years. In 1962 the Supreme Court ruled that voluntary prayer in public schools is unconstitutional. Now they tell us that our children must be in the public schools, but they say you cannot have voluntary prayer. We'll put you there, but you cannot pray. That's 1962. Then in 1963 the same court dismantled classroom Bible reading. No room for the Bible in our halls of education. Then in 1980 the posting of the Ten Commandments was declared unconstitutional.
Now when kids are bringing guns to school we cannot post on the walls of our schoolrooms, "Thou shalt not kill". In 1982 the court prohibited the teaching of biblical creation. In twenty years God has been expelled from our public schools and been told not to return. Now, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia all become possible in a world where you believe that man is the creation of some blind, evolutionary force, that he's not created in the image of God but evolved from some primordial ooze. So what do we have today? What is it like? Well, today, children, if they go to school, must receive parental permission before a school based clinic can prescribe an aspirin. An aspirin! But still in America a little teenage girl can be given an abortion, abortion guidance, counsel, and the abortion itself, without the parents even knowing that this is taking place.
That is in America. School based clinics dispense birth control devices and counseling without parental notification or approval. What has happened in America is that our kids are being served snake eggs every day. Prayer is out, policemen are in. Bibles are out, values clarification is in. The Ten Commandments, yes, they're out, but rape and armed robbery, gang warfare, murder and cheating are in. Creation instruction is out, evolution and blind chance is in. Corporal punishment is out, disrespect and rebellion is in. Traditional values are out, unwed motherhood is in. Abstinence is out, condoms and abortion is in. Learning is out and social engineering is in. History is out, revisionism is in. Is it any wonder that the suicide rate of our teenagers is soaring, runaway statistics are soaring, promiscuity problems, violent crime?
Our kids are not being raised in a society, in a school that says that they have rights that are given to them, unalienable rights given by Almighty God, but they are told that the universe is self-existing, not created, and the wisdom that built this great nation is being laughed at. But here's the sad thing. Look if you will in Isaiah 59 verse 5, "They hatched vipers' eggs, they weaved the spider's web. He that eateth their eggs dieth," now watch that, "and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper". When you come against these things and try to stamp them out, all you do is create more snakes. To stamp out these snake eggs is not the answer.
Now, not only is there a diet of deception, but that is compounded by a second thing in America that makes our nation a nation in crisis; not only a diet of deception, but a web of wickedness, a web of wickedness. Look again in verse 5 if you will. He says here in verse 5, "They weave the spider's web". I got down my encyclopedia and read some about spiders. I don't know whether you have a love affair with spiders or not, I don't. But spiders weave a web, almost invisible, very sticky. And the purpose of that web is to catch an unsuspecting insect who will fly into that web, become entangled by that web, where the spider can come out and wrap him up in more strands of that web, then the spider injects poison into the body of that insect and the spider sucks that insect dry.
Now Satan has woven some webs, and he is poisoning and sucking dry a generation of young people today. Satan has a network, are you listening to me, a web of evil that is absolutely terrifying. And our young people can hardly see the web. They don't understand it. There's pornography, for example, the web of pornography. "Pastor Rogers, does pornography lead to degeneracy"? Pornography is degeneracy. That's what it is. Our kids today can get on the internet and watch unspeakable, unmentionable things, even at school, as they can access these things. At home, they can pick up the phone, dial a porn, and listen to lesbian sexual activities, sodomy, rape, incest, bestiality, or sex with other children. There are more adult bookstores in America today than there are McDonald's restaurants.
Pornography is a multi billion dollar industry. That is a web! And so many kids and adults alike are being caught in it. Satan has his web of drugs and alcohol, a deadly trap. America is filled today with walking dead whose lives have been sucked dry by the spiders of alcohol and drug abuse. I read where students spend five point five billion dollars, students spend five point five billion dollars on alcohol, more than they spend on non alcoholic drinks like Pepsi or Coke or 7 Up and books put together. On alcoholic beverages. And these Madison Avenue people come into the living room through their beer ads and through their sports ads, and they'll have these boys, as I've said before, out there on a bass boat somewhere hoisting a six pack and one of them smiles and says to the other one, "It doesn't get any better than this". Boy, they're right, it always gets worse. "Doesn't get any better than this".
And we have a generation of walking dead who've been sucked dry, embalmed by alcohol. There's the sticky web of immorality. Young people are being told today there are no fixed standards of right or wrong. And the media and entertainment has created the myth that pre marital sex, extra marital sex, homosexuality are on the same level as chastity, monogamy, and heterosexuality. And in our so called sex education classes in many of our schools, they have a three fold goal, and that is to teach children how to fornicate without guilt, without catching a disease, and without conceiving a baby. That's called, "sex education" today. How would you like your child to go to school and hear what some are being taught?
Here's what they're being taught. Here's the textbook, quote, "Premarital sexual intercourse is acceptable for both men and women if they are involved in a stable, loving relationship. It has been suggested by some marriage counseling authorities that all couples should live together before they're married". How'd you like that for education? Or listen to this, "Often promiscuity is labeled as bad by persons who do not accept this type of behavior. As with other patterns of sexual behavior, one should not pin a good or bad on a practice". Here's another, "Morality is individual; it is what you think it is. Your conception of what is right or wrong morally is an individual decision".
May God have mercy upon us when, when these tell us we cannot pray, we cannot read God's Word, we cannot post the Ten Commandments, but we can denigrate God's Word and God's law and kids today talk about going all the way. That's the one thing they don't do. They haven't gone all the way. They go a little further when they catch a disease along the way. A little further when a baby is conceived and they have to tell a father or a mother. A little further if they decide to murder that baby. But they really haven't gone all the way until they stand before a holy God who says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery;" a holy God that says, "Flee fornication".
Friend, we are in a terrible situation. What has brought about this crisis in America? Number one, a diet of deception. Number two, a web of wickedness. Number three, the trashing of truth, the trashing of truth! Fast-forward to verse 14. Well let's begin in verse 12 and read through verse 15, "For our transgressions are multiplied before Thee, our sins testify against us, for our transgressions are with us. And as for our iniquities, we know them. In transgressing and lying against the Lord and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood," now watch this, "and judgment is turned away backward and justice standeth afar off".
Why has judgment been turned away backward? Why does justice wait in the wings? Here it is, "For truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey". That is, when you stand up and speak against it, you become the bad guy. I haven't been preaching this many years as not to know that I am the heavy today. I am the bad guy today. I'm making myself a prey when I say this is wrong; when I speak against these things. When you call for justice, when you call for truth, you become the guy in the black hat. That's the state to which we have come today. But notice what he says, he says there's a traffic jam. There's justice, equity, truth, trying to get through the streets, but they cannot, rather. Justice, equity cannot come through the streets because truth is fallen and all of the traffic is backed up because truth is fallen in the streets.
Well what caused truth to fall? Notice truth is not dead. There is a traffic jam. Judgment, justice, and equity cannot enter. It's not that truth is non existent, you can't ever murder truth. It is not that truth is dead. Truth will not die. But truth has stumbled. Truth is lying prostrate on the ground. Why? Well, she's been knocked down in America by doctors of philosophy. She's been tripped up in America by dishonest politicians, and she has been chloroformed by liberal preachers. And she's lying there in the street. May I say with all of the unction, function, and emotion of my soul, God help me to say it, the job in America today is to put truth back on her feet. That is the job in America, to put truth back on her feet.
And I really believe there's not a lot wrong in America that could not be put right quickly, dramatically, if across America, in the pulpits of America, from sea to shining sea, this Sunday and every Sunday, a generation of preachers would open the Book of Truth and preach, "Thus saith the Lord God Almighty," without fear or favor. We're in a situation today that is a crisis. Why did God write a Bible? He calls that Bible the Word of Truth in Ephesians 1:13. Why did God send the Holy Spirit? He calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth in John 14:17. How does God describe Himself? He describes Himself as the Truth. Who is Jesus?
Jesus said in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life". What is the church? The church is called the pillar and the ground of truth in First Timothy 3 verse 15. The Apostle John said, "I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in the truth". Third John 1 verse 4. We can get facts from the internet. There's a difference between facts and truth. Knowledge may double, truth will never double. There is eternal truth. Truth is what food is to your body, light is to your eyes, and melody is to your ears. Now, you know what most of us want to do? Most of us want to be stamping out snake eggs. Most of us want to be sweeping down spiders' webs. But friend, you stamp out a snake egg, just more snakes.
You sweep down a spider's web, you've done it before, it's back the next morning, is it not? We need something that will slay the snake and destroy the spider. And that is truth. That is truth. Only truth, only truth, only truth can keep this daddy serpent from spawning those eggs. Only truth can keep that spider from weaving those sticky webs. We need to lift up truth in America today, to put truth on her feet. And I want to call upon you and every believer in this building to rededicate himself to the truth. Parents, teach your children to live the truth, to love the truth, to tell the truth, to know the truth, to believe the truth. Jesus said in John 17 verse 17, "Sanctify them through Thy word, Thy word is truth".
Let me give you a Proverbs here and I'm all, I'm almost finished. Proverb 23 verse 23, "Buy the truth and sell it not. Buy the truth and sell it not"! There is a prize to possess, it is truth. There is a price to pay, you must buy the truth. You must study it, pour over it, learn it, live it, know it. And you must preserve the truth. Don't let anybody take the truth from you. That truth is in God's Word. The early Christians did not argue over the Bible. They loved it, they believed it, they expounded it, they poured it forth as white hot lava. Now, one by one, person by person, family by family, city by city, church by church, we've got to take America back. We've got to take America back. My heart is broken over snake eggs, spider webs, and traffic jams.
What about you? I'm not talking about the person sitting next to you. What about you? Are you right with God? Do you think it's somebody else's problem? What about your home? What about your business relationships? Have you been feeding on snake eggs? Some right now are wrapped up in spiders' webs. There's only one thing that'll set you free. Jesus said in John chapter 8 verse 32, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free".
I want to tell you the truth is today, that God loves you. The truth is today that Jesus Christ died for you. He carried your sins to the cross and with His blood He paid your sin debt. The truth is that He walked out of that grave and He has ascended to high hills of glory. The truth is, that one day soon and very soon, I hope, He's coming again. And the truth is; if you will believe on Him and trust Him, He will save you. I promise you on the authority of the Word of God. And not only will He save you, but praise His holy name, He will satisfy you. What you're longing for you'll never find until you find in the Lord Jesus. And not only will He save you and satisfy you, He'll sanctify you. He'll begin to make you more and more and more and more and more like Him.
Now when you come to Jesus, you're not going to sprout wings and get a halo right away; you'll have to grow. But this saving Jesus is the satisfying, sanctifying Jesus. And I'll tell you something else, He'll secure you, He'll keep you, He'll keep you. It's not a matter of your holding onto Him, He'll hold you, if you truly really give Him your heart and in your, your life. You know, if I could give my heart to Jesus for you today, I would, but I cannot. I've preached as best I know how. But the Lord sent me here to tell you today that He loves you. And He invites you to give your heart, your home to Him once and for all, now and forever. Just say, "Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Forgive my sin, cleanse me and save me, Lord Jesus". If you can't remember all of that, just, just say, "Lord Jesus, save me," and mean all of that.
Would you bow your heads in prayer? Heads are bowed and eyes are closed. If you're not certain that you're saved, would you like to be saved, would you? Would you like to know that you really do have life? Jesus said, "I've come that you might have life". Could I lead you in a prayer? We'll call this prayer the sinner's prayer. And you can pray and accept Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. You can do it right now. Would you pray this prayer?
Dear God, I know that You love me. Thank You for loving me. And I know that You want to save me. Jesus, You died to save me and You promised to save me if I would trust You. Jesus, I do trust You. I believe You're the Son of God. I believe you paid for my sin with Your blood on the cross. I believe that God raised You from the dead. And now I receive You as my Lord and Savior. Forgive my sin. Cleanse me. Come into my life. Take control of my life and begin today to make me the person You want me to be. And Jesus, give me the courage to make it public. Help me never to be ashamed of You. In Your name I pray, Amen.