FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS, volume 7, number 48, November 27, 2008
So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair, Nehemiah 13:25.
After hearing of the devastation in Jerusalem and consequently praying and fasting, Nehemiah moves to Jerusalem to repair the wall around the city. Later he hears that the men of the covenant are giving their sons to foreign women and their daughters to foreign men. He contends with them, pronounces curses upon them, hits some of them, and pulls out their hair. For whom do you feel compassion in this story? If you answer, "Those being abused by Nehemiah"; then you are part of the problem in our nation. Nehemiah, Ezra, and Daniel were all devastated by the sin of the covenant people. After all, Yahweh had a long history of blessing His people, going back to the days of Abraham and later in their deliverance from Egyptian bondage at the hands of Moses. He continually warned them of the consequences of playing the harlot with foreign gods, eventually bringing destruction upon both the northern and southern kingdoms. However, in a remarkable work of grace He returned them to their land at the hands of Cyrus of the Medo-Persian Empire. Indeed, Yahweh was good to His people. And how did His people reward His beneficence? They continued to play the harlot, giving their children to godless pagans. No wonder Nehemiah and Ezra tore their own hair from their heads and beards, not to mention that of the perpetrators!
"An astonishing and horrible thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule according to their desires, and My people love it so. But what will happen at the end of it?" Jeremiah 5:20, 21. Though wonderfully blessed by the true and living God, we have continually turned away from Him, thus provoking Him to wrath. I suggest at least three national sins which threaten to destroy us. The first is pride, "I know what is best and I do what I want." Pride reveals itself, among many other things, in our sexual sins. We are a culture given over to fornication, adultery, pornography, pedophilia, and homosexuality. The second is greed, "I want what others have. I deserve it, even though I choose not to work for it." Greed is rampant on Wall Street with CEO’s sacrificing long term, respectable financial growth for a short term profit which inflates their stock options and leaves the employees with little to nothing. Greed is rampant on Main Street with a growing welfare, redistribution of wealth ethos. I am not simply speaking of the Democrats. Many leading Republicans also pushed through the bail out package. And third is unbelief, "I don’t believe what God’s word says." This has left us with religious pluralism and the Islamization of the west. British schools have removed references to the holocaust from their text books. The reason? Muslims are offended by the holocaust, saying it never happened. Wherever Christianity has flourished (the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe) Islam has eventually overcome it or is in the process of doing so. Why? We have given ourselves over to folly. We have turned away from devotion to the true and living God, of humbling ourselves under His mighty hand; and instead we have spread our legs to every suitor (Ezekiel 16:25) who passes by. God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. God will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. He is a jealous and avenging God.
Our greatest evil, however, the very fountainhead of all our sin is abortion. It is the root of our pride, greed, and unbelief. If I were a black man, I would be doubly incensed by the godless in our land who foist it upon us. That’s because, in keeping with Margaret Sanger’s (originator of Planned Parenthood) racist and bigoted statements about black people (they read like something out of the KKK), the black race is currently being decimated by abortion (1000 per day, 15 of the 44 million abortions in America).
Abortion is fueled by pride because people use it as birth control. "I can live as I want, and if I become pregnant, then I will simply have an abortion." It is fueled by greed. Some say, "I don’t want a baby right now. This will interfere with my career, the travel I wish to do." And it is fueled by unbelief. Only ten percent of Down Syndrome babies are born today. That’s because people deny the authority of God who says that all life is precious, that He is sovereign in all the affairs of life, that He makes no mistakes, even in giving certain women children with birth defects.
What are we to do? We are not to circle the wagons, to act as though the world is so evil that we must retreat from it, protecting ourselves from its evil influences. Instead we must take the word of God and the light of Christ to those who live in such darkness. Preachers must preach, getting the word of truth into as many people as they possibly can. I urge preachers to take every opportunity they can to teach and preach the word of God. I urge lay people to learn the Bible and start Bible studies in their neighborhoods and places of work. And then we must call people to faith in Christ. We need a holy boldness to take the gospel to a culture drunk on the blood of the innocents, a people satiated with lasciviousness, to a greedy nation which worships Mammon, exchanging the truth of God for a lie. I am not naïve, however. I know many of you will not pray, and fewer of you will take the gospel boldly to your communities. I also know your unbelieving communities hate God and want nothing of biblical Christianity. I have been in the ministry long enough to know that the last thing most of us want to do is to pray and evangelize.
What are we to do then? We need to ask God to give us a burden for revival prayer. We need to be brought low, to be devastated, grief stricken, to gain a deep sense of corporate guilt and condemnation for the sins of our nation. We need to feel the wrath of God against us for our rebellion against His mercies. We need, as it were, to pull out our hair, even that of believers who so easily continue in grievous sin. When we are deeply moved, devastated, then and only then will we pray revival prayers. Revival prayers are different from prayers for revival. The latter are nice, short, calm prayers we throw up to God, those which salve our consciences, which give us the ability to say, "Well, I prayed for revival, and God did not do anything. I guess this is His will." Revival prayer is what the Chinese, Korean, and Sudanese Christians do, who live with the threat of destruction and persecution. There is earnestness, steadfastness, desperateness in their prayers. They pray for long periods of time (often all night, all day, for many days) confessing their sins, praying with a clear sense that unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Without this kind of prayer and God’s consequent outpouring of mass conversions, the west will be Muslim in fifty years. I hope I am wrong, but history says otherwise.
FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS is a weekly devotional by Reverend Al Baker, pastor of Christ Community Presbyterian Church in West Hartford, Connecticut.
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