Claiming to be wise, they became utter fools instead.
Romans 1:22 (NLT)
This past Sunday, two traditions collided. First and most importantly, was the celebration of Palm Sunday where Jesus showed Himself to be the one, true King. The second tradition was the tradition of playing pranks on people called April’s Fool day. The irony was not lost on me.
When my children were little, I used to love playing April’s Fool pranks on them. The best one took me a couple of days to set up. My oldest children were about 12 or 13 years old and thought they were too big for our annual pranks. So, a couple of days earlier I started making a few off-handed comments about an escaped psycho from the county jail. (This was believable because our county jail was always losing prisoners… and still does.) As April 1st grew closer, the comments increased. I made a point to watch the news to see if the police had “caught” my version of Michael Meyer’s that I created. On April 1st, I made a point to give them a safety lecture about keeping the doors locked, and if they see anyone strange to call the police.
That evening they were watching TV and I went outside to get something out of the car. While outside, I dumped Ketchup all over me, started screaming as loud as I could, and ran inside the house…. My family just looked at me and asked me to keep it down as they were watching their favorite TV show. After showering and washing the Ketchup out of my clothes, they reminded me that I had pulled the same stunt a few years earlier with only slighter better results. It’s tough when the old memory fades with old age!
Today, our society also has a fading memory. There was a time when the American society showed respect (fear) to God – even if they were not believers. But, now we as a society have forgotten the need of respecting the one true God. We have forgotten how He blessed this nation. We have forgotten the basics of the Christian faith. Today, we worship gods and idols of our own making. Deep down, we know there is one true God, but we spend our strength and energy trying to explain Him away or recreate Him in our own image.
Why? Because we want salvation without repentance. We want to continue in the sins we adore so much. We want to continue to seek only after our own pleasure. We want our sins, but without the guilt. So, we hold on to our idols and create false religions or false conceptions of God to worship. We do this all the while acting so superior and thinking ourselves so wise. But like Paul writes in Romans 1:16-32, we have become fools. We have pranked ourselves into believing lies, and Hell awaits us.
But, God always loves His creation. So, out of His merciful love – His hesed – He gives us over to our sins in the hope that we will become so sick of it that we will turn to Him once again. As is recorded in the first chapter of Romans, God gave us over to our sinful lusts and we fulfilled them anyway we liked. Eventually, our reprobate minds filled us with desires with all sorts of perverted sexual practices and lusts that eventually we turned to homosexuality as the “new norm”. But, it doesn’t end just there. No, as our society continues to fall (like so many societies before it), our hatred grows as strong as our perverted lust.
Just read what the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write in Romans 1:26-32:
That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relationships with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved.
When they refused to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their evil minds and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, fighting, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They are forever inventing new ways of sinning and are disobedient to their parents.
They refuse to understand, break their promises, and are heartless and unforgiving. They are fully aware of God’s death penalty for those who do these things, yet they go right ahead and do them anyway. And, worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too. (NLT)
I think this is why our society is crumbling. I think it is because we refused to worship God as God. Instead we tried to recreate Him, or even abandon Him and pursued our sinful pleasures. He gave us over to our sins of lust, and we filled our lives with strip joints, porno sites, illicit sex, homosexuality, and finally, sexual perversions of all kind. He gave us over to our self-centeredness, and we filled our lives with greed, hate, envy, fighting, and even murder. We refused to repent when our conscience convicted us. So, He gave us over to our guilt, and we filled our lives with deception, lies, gossip, and false pride. And this false pride causes us to backstab others. Thus, we destroyed our friendships, our marriages, and our children’s lives.
And instead of repenting, our society mocks God and encourages everyone to go even deeper into our sins. Our nation has become a nation of fools. And politics won’t save us.
But, the love of God is always the answer. That is why Paul wrote that he was “not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes…. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight….” (Romans 1:16-17 NLT) The cure for our society’s sin has always been, and always will be the Good News of salvation. We need to tell others the truth. And, we need to do it in love. It does no good to just condemn everyone as sinners. We must tell them how they can be set free by receiving Christ Jesus as their Savior. Only by placing their faith in Jesus as Lord, God, and King will they ever be born again and free from the sin that destroys them.
But, why doesn’t the Church in America tell them? I think it is because we suffer from the same sin of self-centeredness. We may not express it in immorality as we lust for all kinds of physical pleasures, but we do express it in seeking out what is best for us and not necessarily for others. We put ourselves first, and not the lost world that our Father loves so much. We are selfish, plain and simple. I think we are also frightened. We are scared of the world’s hatred when we stand up and spread the Gospel of Christ’s love. We think if we don’t call sin what it is – sin, then the world will like us better. That maybe they will leave us alone a little longer. So we hide the Gospel away behind our selfish, frightened lives and curry the favor of the world. Or worse, we hide our fear behind hate filled proclamations and attacks on the very sinners that God wants us to take to the Good News to. Yes, we should call all unrighteousness what it is – sin. But, we should show the same love Christ did to them, and live our lives for them and even die for them if need be.
Yes, our society is filled with millions of lost fools. But, the American church is filled with millions of selfish cowards. Let’s not be a fool or a coward. Let us purpose in our hearts to be loving messengers of the King of Kings and dedicate ALL of our lives, careers, and money to the cause of the King.
Anything less than total commitment to the Kingdom is just… well, it’s just foolish.
God’s Peace,
Todd