Complete Sermon Notes

Why Didn’t Someone Do Something?

 

INTRO:  Memorial Day is a day of remembrance for those who have died in service.

When many ask, “Why didn’t we do something”, they did something!

In the words of Mr. O’Brien who served in World War II: “It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate.” O’Brien continues: “It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.”

 

• The vast majority of the men and women who died for our country did not die for what we’ve become today – they wanted to be One Nation Under God, not Above God.

 

By Roy Moore, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama—from his book, So Help Me God.

One Nation under God was their cry and declaration, Upon the law of Nature’s God they built a mighty Nation. For unlike mankind before them who had walked this earthen sod, These men would never question the Sovereignty of God…

…I’m glad they’re not here with us to see the mess we’re in, How we’ve given up our righteousness for a life of indulgent sin. For when abortion isn’t murder and sodomy is deemed a right, Then evil is now called good and darkness is now called light.

While truth and law were founded on the God of all creation, Man now, through law, denies the truth and calls it “separation.” No longer does man see a need for God when he’s in full control, For the only truth self-evident is in the latest poll.

But with man as his own master we fail to count the cost, Our precious freedoms vanish and our liberty is lost. Children are told they can’t pray in school and they teach them evolution, When will they see the fear of God is the only true solution?

Our schools have become a battleground while all across the land, Christians shrug their shoulders afraid to take a stand. And from the grave their voices cry, the victory has already been won. Just glorify the Father as did His only Son.

And when your work on earth is done, and you’ve traveled where we’ve trod, You’ll leave the land we left to you, One Nation Under God!

 

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God designed us to remember. “Remember” is used 167 times in the NIV version of the Bible.

• But what about Philippians 3:13 to “Forget what lies behind and strain toward what is ahead.” Forget means – don’t focus your attention on the past –

• When something drifts – remember and return

 

You will stop defeating yourself when you stop deceiving yourself.

 

3 Important Areas of Remembrance –

 

1. THE CHURCH – I remember when the church walked in the power of the Holy Spirit – “The church lived in the fear of the Lord and was encouraged by the Holy Spirit” (cf. Acts 9:31).

 

• “We come with expectation ‘waiting here for you’. You’re the Lord of all creation and still you know my heart – the author of salvation you’ve loved us from the start. ‘I’m waiting here for you’.”

 

People camp out for Big Sales

 

1. The church waited in an upper room then POWER fell.
2. Peter waited for direction then lives were changed.
3. Paul waited in the Arabian Desert before beginning his ministry.
4. Stephen waited on God and was filled with Power AND Boldness –  “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right side of God!”

 

Remember and Return was Jesus’ call to the churches in Revelation.

 

“The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world.” A.W. Tozer

 

WHY DOESN’T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING?

 

2. THE FAMILY – “Fathers do not provoke; wives respect; children obey.”

• To stimulate a reaction or emotion in someone

 

PROVERBS 5:18, “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth.”

 

• I remember when the hero was the Father – not Sports Figures who beat their wives; not Rock Stars who glamorize sexual perversion; not Actors who belittle and mock God!

 

The confession of one Christian father: My family’s all grown and the kids are all gone. But if I had to do it all over again, this is what I would do. I would love my wife more in front of my children. I would laugh with my children more—at our mistakes and our joys. I would listen more, even to the littlest child. I would be more honest about my own weaknesses, never pretending perfection. I would pray differently for my family; instead of focusing on them, I’d focus on me. I would do more things together with my children. I would encourage them more and bestow more praise. I would pay more attention to little things, like deeds and words of thoughtfulness. And then, finally, if I had to do it all over again, I would share God more intimately with my family; every ordinary thing that happened in every ordinary day I would use to direct them to God.

(Adapted from The MacArthur New Testament Commentay: Ephesians.) http://www.gty.org/resources/articles/A325/ways-parents-provoke

WHY DOESN’T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING? Remember and Return –

 

3. THE NATION – Deuteronomy 28:1 – If you diligently obey the voice of the LORD and observe all that He has commanded you, He will set you high above all the nations of the earth. Psalm 33:12 – Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD.

 

SEEING A NATION DRIFT IS NOT MUCH DIFFERENT THAN SEEING A PERSON

1. “Remember ever, and always, that your country was founded by the stern old Puritans whose first act on touching the soil of the new world was to offer on bended knees thanksgiving to Almighty God.” HENRY WILSON (1812-1875); 18TH U.S. VICE PRESIDENT
2. “The law . . . dictated by God Himself is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.” ALEXANDER HAMILTON (1755– 1804), SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION
3. “And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790)
4. “From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation…that this is a Christian nation.” THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, 1892
5. In 1790, Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, said this about public schools, “But the religion I mean to recommend in this place is that of the New Testament . . . .”
6. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, said, “Unto Him who is the author and giver of all good, I render sincere and humble thanks for His manifold and unmerited blessings, and especially for our redemption and salvation by His beloved Son.”
7. In 1647, the Old Deluder Law established the first biblically based public schools in America. The Colonists believed that they could protect their civil liberties by eliminating biblical illiteracy.
8. As yet another example, consider the 1642 Rules and Precepts of Harvard University founded by Reverend John Harvard: “Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3)…and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” What would those at Harvard say today?

REMEMBER – Newsweek magazine, on December 27, 1982, in an article entitled, How the Bible Made America, made this revealing statement, “historians are discovering that the Bible, perhaps even more than the Constitution, is our Founding document.”

 

The Delaware Constitution initially required that everyone appointed to public office must say, “I do profess faith in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ his only Son…” Many other Constitutions such as Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and Connecticut all acknowledged their reliance on God.

 

Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater – Muslims Think US ‘Has Gone Completely Insane’ Over LGBT

• SLAVERY – As President of Congress Henry Laurens explained: I abhor slavery. I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British Kings and Parliaments as well as by the laws of the country ages before my existence . . . Benjamin Franklin, in a 1773 letter to Dean Woodward, confirmed that whenever the Americans had attempted to end slavery, the British government had indeed thwarted those attempts.

• NATIVE AMERICANS – David Brainerd was an American missionary to the Native Americans who had a particularly fruitful ministry among the Delaware Indians of New Jersey.

 

DON’T CONFUSE ME WITH THE FACTS – DON’T UPSET ME WITH THE FACTS!

 

REMEMBER God judged nations who continually tolerated sin. Arnold Toynbee, in a ‘A Study of History’ in 1961, said: “Of the 22 civilizations that have appeared in history, 19 of them collapsed when they reached the moral state America is in today.”

I’m reminded often of Jeremiah 2

 

WHY DOESN’T SOMEONE DO SOMETHING?

 

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8

 

Pray and fast for our nation. Prayer is more powerful than protest! We should not rely on political power, but on the power of God through prayer. The great preacher, C.H. Spurgeon, once said, “I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach.”

 

Our sincerity is measured by what we’re willing to give up!

• Fast starves the flesh so we can be filled with the Spirit – from Moses to Daniel – From Jesus to Paul – and from me to you – fasting is crucial in these dire times.

One Nation Under God—The History of Prayer in America, said that “Prayer stands as one of the most critical and indisputable factors to have influenced the course of American history.”

 

Why Didn’t Someone Do Something?

THOSE FIVE WORDS STILL HAUNT MY THOUGHTS TODAY!

 

Let it not be said of us today, “…And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord” (Judges 2:10) because the church was apathetic, lazy, and dead to the things of God.