Where Did Morality Go

Where Did Morality Go?

Exodus 20:1-17

May 2, 1999

Exodus 20:1 through Exodus 20:17 (KJV)
¹And God spake all these words, saying, ²I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. ³Thou shalt have no other gods before me. ⁴Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: ⁵Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; ⁶And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. ⁷Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. ⁸Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: ¹⁰But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: ¹¹For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

¹²Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. ¹³Thou shalt not kill. ¹⁴Thou shalt not commit adultery. ¹⁵Thou shalt not steal. ¹⁶Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. ¹⁷Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

Let me tell you what we are going to talk about today. We are going to talk about a war. You've probably heard on the news that we are a nation at war, you've probably seen the results of our mighty military action in Europe. You, like me have prayed daily for the safe return of our three soldiers held captive, and PRAISE THE LORD, it appears as if they will be on their way out of Yugoslavia today. Yet this war, the war over Kosovo is not the war we are concerned with this morning.

We are concerned with a war that is destroying our nation, killing our children, and causing us to lose our way. It is a war that is being waged from within and is laying waste to our cities, decimating families, and causing heartache for tens of thousands each day. This war is the war upon morality. The casualties are to be found in our integrity, our honesty, and the respect we hold for all of God's creation. This war is going to destroy our country. If we as God's children do not win this war we will preside over the destruction of our nation. Today we shall talk about the "DeMORALization" of America. (Thanks to Pastor David Zimmerman who used this as the title to his sermon dealing with this passage. Parts of this message are taken from Pastor Zimmerman's outline)

We just read a passage of scripture that is considered by many today to be archaic, out of touch with reality, and in desperate need of an update. The old fashioned values shown to us in the ten commandments don't apply to today's man or woman. They are not politically correct, and are not inclusive of other belief system. They don't take into account the changes that society has undergone over the passage of time.

There is a very good reason that God tells us right at the beginning of the Ten Commandments that HE is God, and that we are to have no other gods except for him. For when a nation rejects God that is the day that its morality begins to decline. The day a nation rejects God we see crime become rampant. When a nation rejects God we see social unrest. When we take God out of our homes, out of our schools, out of our government, and out of our lives it is inevitable that our morality will begin to fail.

Last Wednesday in our discussion of Revival we talked about the ills in our society. We talked about disobedience, about disrespect, about parental responsibility, and about families falling apart. We talked about neighbors not knowing each other, and the lack of values among our young people.

These values that have disappeared in our nation are directly related to our relationship with God. This is why the first commandment is so important to our discussion today. In the 1960's our government in all of it's wisdom decided that the Ten Commandments were no longer a reasonable guide for determining moral values. No, they didn't directly attack this foundation of God's law for us, what they did do however is attack the first commandment. It says that we shall have no other gods before HIM. Our government decided that God has no place in education. Our children should not learn about God in school.

Recent events at schools across our land, beginning with the horrible tragedy in Littleton, CO, and spilling over even to DeLand High School, and schools in Orange County show the fallacy of this idea. Our kids need some sense of direction, and they aren't getting it. Children in today's schools are being taught a humanistic philosophy that denies God! It was not enough to simply remove Him from the curriculum, He has been denied in our school system. Today's moral decay is a direct result of trying to raise a generation of children to believe that we can be good without God.

No longer are our children taught absolutes. Everything is a shade of gray and we must be tolerant of all other lifestyles and philosophies. We pride personal choice over and above personal responsibility. We pride popularity over reliability, we pride the freedom to do as we choose over the obligation to do as we should.

Our sign out front says for Parents to train up a child in the way he should go…the remainder of that scripture promises that when he is old he will not depart from it.

Tragedies like the one in Colorado are occurring today because yesterday we decided to remove God from our schools and our homes. If we allow the world to teach our children that alternative lifestyles are acceptable, or that adultery is no big deal, or that lying is ok if you have a good reason we have failed in our responsibility to be the salt of the earth. If we are not holding our selves and our families accountable to God then we are contributing to the downfall of our great nation.

How do we reverse this trend? What can we do to bring morality back to our nation?

We must put God First (Exodus 20:1-3)

We must make God our priority. All of the jobs, groups, schemes, and opportunities that have drawn us away from God must be given a secondary consideration. If we expect for our nation to return to God we must first return to Him ourselves. When we fall away from God, sin enters our lives. When we break the first commandment it is but one short step away to begin to break all of the others. When our relationship with God suffers, so does our relationship with those around us.

When we turn away from God we become a lawless society. Mankind cannot function without laws. We, in and of ourselves, are not able to control ourselves without boundaries being laid down before us. God's law and morality are the foundation of our system of government and even our system of justice. When we tossed God aside to pursue worldly satisfaction, we began a descent into lawlessness.

For days we have been scratching our heads, wondering how in the world two young men, who seemed to have everything they could have ever wanted, could even think about murdering 13 innocent victims in a deadly rampage. What could they have been thinking as they made over 70 bombs and placed them around the school? What could they have been thinking when they viciously gunned down innocent children?

Well, I can't tell you what they were thinking, but I can tell you how it happened. We have scoffed at God's word, and made a mockery of His teachings, and now we are reaping the seeds of iniquity that we have sown.

As we turn away from God our heart hardens and we forget how to love. When we turn away from God we forget how important the other person is, how much value their life has. When we turn away from God, mothers murder their unborn children and we accept it. When we turn away from God promiscuity becomes common place and we allow it. When we turn away from God deceit becomes a way of life and we expect it. Sexual deviants are given special rights and privileges and if we stand against it we are labeled bigots and narrow-minded. Where does it all end? It ends with making God a priority in our life again.

Make our families preeminent (Exodus 20:12)

Exodus 20:12 is the forgotten commandment.

Exodus 20:12 (KJV)
¹²Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

In our hurry to climb up the ladder to that nebulous rung we call success we have let our families disintegrate. In today's two wage earner society we have allowed the pursuit of our material happiness to destroy our families. Two boys built over 70 bombs, sawed off shotguns, and maintained an arsenal big enough to outfit a squad of Marines, and their parents never knew it??? Our families have taken a mortal blow in our society and if we are going to change the tide we must bind up the wounds inflicted upon our family life.

Parents, it is time for you to be parents. It is time for the parents in our land to once again accept the responsibility of parenting. We have shoved off that responsibility to the state, and look at the results. It is time we as parents expect obedience from our children. Not ask for it, not suggest it, but rather to demand it. It's time we took to heart the biblical admonition that to spare the rod spoils the child.

Children, both young and old, it is time we took seriously the commandment in verse 12. We must honor our parents. We must respect the family. If those two boys in Littleton, CO had been raised to honor their father and mother, this event could not have taken place. There is no way we can imagine that this even honored their parents. If those two sets of parents had taken the responsibility of parenting seriously they would have known their children were doing the things they were.

We cannot continue to allow our families to decline. The family unit is the most important part of a young person's development. We must provide stable families for the next generations of children.

We Must Love One Another (Exodus 20:13-17)

When Jesus was asked which commandment was the most important, he said the first was to love God, but He said the second was to love one another. There is no respect for each other in our society today. We have traveled so far down the ME highway that it's difficult to turn back. We do all that we can to build ourselves up, even if it means tearing someone else down. Life becomes less special, especially if it is someone else's life.

When we neglect to love each other we don't care as much. We aren't as close as in times past. We become immune to the sadness that sin wreaks upon a community. It takes much, much more to shock us even to the point that nothing surprises us anymore. How many more Littleton type tragedies must we endure before we realize that the status quo isn't making the grade? How many more must die before we realize that all life is precious before God? How many more men must be drug behind a truck before we realize that every man is our neighbor? How many more are to be left to starve in the streets before we give our ourselves and of our wealth and help a fellow man?

The scriptures tell us that they will know we are Christians by our love. BY OUR LOVE! Do we truly love one another today? If we cannot bring an atmosphere of Love back into our society we can never hope to foster change.

2 Peter 2:5 through 2 Peter 2:8 (KJV)
⁵And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; ⁶And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;

⁷And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: ⁸(For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)

Peter mentions two men, Noah and Lot. Noah lived in a day when the thoughts of men were "only evil continually." Lot lived in a city in which men "burned in their lust one toward another." Both men are called righteous. We would call them "Christians." They were righteous because they were rightly related to God. Noah is called a "preacher of righteousness." He cried out against the lawlessness of his age. Lot, on the other hand, merely "vexed his righteous soul." He was grieved over the unlawful, wicked deeds of the men of Sodom. But he took no stand against it. He never separated himself from it. He put his comfort and prestige before God.

One man took a stand, the other merely wrung his hands and lamented the deplorable conditions of the society around him. Noah "saved" his family. Lot watched his family be broken and destroyed. Having accommodated lawlessness, he saw his family divided in their love and overcome by the sins of Sodom.

Every Christian has a choice to make. We can be like Lot, in-different to the rebellion, tolerance, and delusion which is contributing to the collapse of our nation. Or, we can be like Noah - taking a stand against the unrighteousness of our day.

--Pastor David Zimmerman http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/5487/Default.htm

Our world is awash in unrighteiousness, what will you do about it? Will you place God first, make your family preeminent, and finally begin to love one another? This is what we must do to stop this out of control deMORALizing of America.