Hi, my name is Rick Bloodworth. This is the Common Sense Christian channel. And today we're going to look at part two of a gospel meeting that I did in Denver recently. And this particular gospel meeting was focusing upon the problems that we have in America and how we might go about solving them so that we can leave a better world for the future. And the problems that we were looking at ranged from, from things like our abortion problem. We've killed 60 million babies since abortion was legalized about 60 years ago. We have problems with drugs and with the homeless that are associated with that. With those drugs and with the crime that's associated with that we have open borders that are starting to bring in so many people that it's overwhelming our systems. And while we certainly are a nation of immigrants, you and I both had somebody that immigrated to this country at some point in the last few years or hundreds of years. And so we're certainly not against immigrants. We're talking about illegal immigration and, and we're really kind of looking at the, at the fact that, that our very government is taking part in this illegal immigration and it's creating a tremendous difficulties throughout the nation. So much so that governors for most of the states are having to give a huge portion of their time and resources to solving this problem that, that has really come up in the last few years. We have things with sexual immorality that are really starting to overwhelm us. I think about our children and how difficult it is for them to turn on any, anything, a television or a computer or, or whatever without being inundated with pornography. And what that's doing to our, to our country. Add that to the fornication and adultery and homosexuality and you see that we have a very Deep problem with sexual immorality. We have two sets of laws now. One for those who are in positions of authority and, and, and another set of laws for those who are not in authority, and maybe I shouldn't say sets of laws. But we have a different way of applying those laws depending on if you're in power or if you're not in power something that is highly unconstitutional, yet it's common practice today. And so, we see all these things and we realize if we don't do something the consequences for these problems are going to overwhelm us at some point. I used an example. I believe of something that actually occurred. It was one that Zig Ziglar gave of a large southern city that had a big dump outside the city. And as the city grew, that dump grew closer and closer to town until finally it looked like the dump was actually going to be in town if they didn't do something about that. And so we're We looked at this four step problem solving method it's hundreds of years old, actually thousands of years old, but it's very basic, and in these four steps are simply define the problem, analyze the problem, get a solution, and then act upon that solution. We do that unconsciously with a lot of things. If you've ever been driving down the highway and you've heard a thumping outside your car, and you stop, and you look, and you find that you have a flat tire and then, and then you decide you're gonna change that tire, make sure you have everything that you need for that, and then you change the tire. Well, that's the four steps. You define the problem. I've got a flat tire, you analyze it, it's going to have to be changed you have a solution, I'm going to change it and here's how I'm going to do it, and then you act upon that solution, you change the tire. Well, that's a very simple example, but now when we look at something more complex, it's good to understand that it's pretty simple. pretty much the same four basic steps, although the fact that they're not complex should not indicate that they're going to be easy to do. And the longer we wait to start remedying the problems we have, the harder it's going to get. So I guess the emphasis upon this series of lessons is let's get to the work. Today, again, we're going to be talking about analyzing the problem. In Isaiah chapter 14, There's an example of a carpenter and it talks about the fact that he cuts down cedars in Isaiah 44 verse 14. He cut down cedars or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest or planted a pine and the rain made it grow. It is man's fuel for burning. Some of it he takes and warms himself, kindles a fire and bakes bread, but he also fashions a god and worships it. He makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the wood he burns over the fire. He prepares a meal. He roasts his meat, eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, ah, I'm warm. I see the fire. From the rest, he makes a god, his idol. He bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, save me, you are my god. And then God points this out. They know nothing. They understand nothing. Their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see. Their minds are closed so they cannot understand. No one stops to think. No one has the understanding to say, Half of it I used for food. Half of it, or shall I make a detestable thing from what's left? Well, I like this example because it shows how ridiculous people have been throughout history. The idea that you'd take a, a tree and, and use part of it for, for a fire that warms you and allows you to cook your food. And then with the other part of it, you fashion some sort of an idol, and then you bow down to it, and you pray to it, as if it can hear you, and as if this thing you created was your God. And God just pointed out, nobody stops to think. Well, when we talk about analyzing the problem, we're gonna have to now take the time to think about it. In Psalms chapter 1, The writer through inspiration says this. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the path of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight. Delight is in the law, law of the Lord and in his law, he meditates day and night. He'll be like a tree planted, firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit and season. Its leaf does not weather, and whatever he does, it prospers. The wicked are not so. They're like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in judgment. Well, God just makes the comparison to a man who is righteous, who goes to his word you. and not only reads it but he meditates on it. He thinks deeply about what the word means and then God points out that that's not the way the wicked are and because of that they're just like the chaff that the wind blows. And so the second part of this idea of analysis is to deeply meditate on it. It's not just to look at something but it's to think about it very deeply. In this thinking very deeply about the word of God. And in the case we're looking at, to think very deeply about the problems that we have the analysis will look something like this. Here's the problem. What does it mean? What if we don't do anything? What would happen if we did do something? And so now in the analysis, we start looking at the possibilities and the opportunities that might arise if We solve the problem and so this idea of, of thinking about it instead of not stopping to think is an absolute necessity when we talk about problem solving. It does no good just to whine about our problems. We need to think about them. So we can figure out what to do. Another important part I want to make certain at the outset is that we understand that as we look for a solution, that as Christians, we're looking to do that with a respect for our proper authorities. In Romans chapter 13 and verse 1, every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities, for there's no authority except from God and those who exist are established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God and they've opposed, those they have opposed and, excuse me, and they Who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. In Titus chapter three, it tells, it tells us, remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign, no one to be peaceable, gentle showing consideration for all men. And so as we talk about trying to solve our problems, we also want to emphasize the fact. That we want to do so with the proper respect for proper authority and that we're to obey our proper authorities. But there's also one exception to this that I believe is very important for us to understand. And the way that I believe we can explain it best is by going to a couple of, of examples, one in Acts chapter 4 and one in Acts chapter 5. And it involves Peter. And John the Apostles. And in Acts chapter 4, they are called before the Sanhedrin. Now the Sanhedrin is the Jewish ruling council there in Judea. They certainly are the religious authority. for the Jews, for those who consider themselves still under the law of Moses. But since Peter and John are now followers of Christ, they're not their religious authority, but they still are their, their civil authority because the Roman government gave the Sanhedrin, the Jewish leaders, the right to oversee the legal activities there in Jerusalem and throughout Judea. And so as we talk about them appearing before the Sanhedrin, understand that they're not appearing before a religious authority. They're, they're appearing before their civil authority. And so this is what happens in verse 18 of Acts chapter four, when they had summoned them, when the Sanhedrin had summoned the apostles, they commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, whether it's right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge. For we cannot stop speaking about what we've seen or heard. And so here Peter and John are just pointing out this is prima facie evidence that they have to obey God rather than, than men's authority. When the two conflict and so he they just said decide for yourself, which is right Well, this was immediately put to the test in the very next chapter in acts chapter 5 in verse 27 The apostles were back in front of the sanhedrin for speaking in the name of Christ, even though they were commanded not to. And so in verse 27 of Acts five, when they had brought them, they stood before the council. The high priest questioned them saying, we gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name. And yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and intend to bring this man's blood upon us. But Peter and the other apostles answered, we must obey God. rather than men. And so here we see the exception between obeying our earthly authorities and God. When the two are compatible, we obey both, don't we? A good example of that's the traffic laws. God's word is, is certainly compatible with the 70 mile an hour speed limit, even if If we don't like it and so the government has a right to set a speed limit. It's not in conflict with any of God's laws, but now you start looking at some other things. Some of the laws in different states that say if you do not support someone's sin by baking a cake for them or making a t shirt for them or, or holding a wedding for them because you feel that you'd be supporting immoral activity. And the state says, well, yes, you do have to do this. Well, now you have a clear conflict. We're not to support sin. And so we have to obey God, even if it costs us something by coming into conflict with our human authority. And so when the law is compatible with God's law, then certainly we obey both man and God. But when there is a conflict, we have to obey God rather than man. And for those who think that they can obey man when it involves sin, even though God has said they won't, on Judgment Day they're going to find out that even though they thought they were good law abiding citizens and therefore good Christians, if the laws they were abiding by conflicted with God's laws, they're going to find out that they were doing wrong. So, We have a problem. We have a problem with sin. Again, what does it mean? What if we do nothing? What if we do something? And so I want to now look at five different possible outcomes. I used this on another video, but not in this specific context, perhaps. And so let's look at five possible outcomes if we just continue to allow the sin in America to go unchecked. And the first is, The first outcome or, or possibility is just to capitulate to the sin. The idea is, I'm not going to try and fight it. I'll go along with it. If you tell me I've got to do it, I won't like it, but I'll go ahead and do it. In other words, we're just throwing in the towel. and we're giving into sin. This is something that God will not tolerate. We live in an age where we talk about being intolerant as being a sin. That's true in certain areas. If you're intolerant because of somebody's race or skin color, then you are sinning against God. But now when it comes to being intolerant towards sin, This is something that God has commanded us in. And so let's, let's look at this in Habakkuk chapter one and verse 13. The prophet Habakkuk is talking to God and he says, Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil. You cannot tolerate. wrong. Well, God doesn't tolerate sin and neither should we. Now, God will be the ultimate judge. Yes. And God will give the ultimate penalty. Yes. But we don't have a right to tolerate it. And so if we just capitulate to sin, if we just go along with it, thinking that somehow we're going to be pleasing to God. We need to understand that that's far from pleasing to God. Look at this in Romans chapter one. And by the way, as you look at this, it really reminds you of America today, or it reminds me of it America today. Anyway, in Romans 1 29, They've become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent ways of doing wrong, They dis, of evil, they disobey their parents, they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. And then look at this, although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, now we're talking about spiritual death. They not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practice them. So for those who just capitulate to sin, they just, you do what you want, I'll put up with it, I'm throwing in the towel, and they might even take part in that sin as well. This points out that those, those people who sin and approve of those who are involved in sin, are displeasing to God and in God's eyes are worthy of spiritual death. In other words, when the judgment comes, heaven's not going to be their reward unless they repent. There will be a punishment of hell for that. And so as we talk about our trying to figure out how we can solve these problems, we have capitulation is the very worst solution. This idea of, of, of compromising with evil or tolerating evil is something that God will not condone, nor will he let it go unpunished. And so. This first outcome, capitulation, is absolutely unacceptable. The second outcome is civil war. And this happens when we have such a division between good and evil that the only outcome is war. And we don't want that. Let me stress that at the very beginning, this is an unacceptable solution. It's not as bad as capitulation, because I think that that capitulation is for sure going to separate you from God, but it's pretty bad. Think about our own country's history when it was first founded. Most of the founding fathers wanted to do away with slavery. They wanted to make slavery illegal in the United States of America. But in order to satisfy the southern states and get them to sign the constitution and get us to be the United States of America instead of two separate groups or multiple separate groups, they compromised. And they said, we'll give you 20 years And in 20 years, there's going to be an outlawing of the importation of slaves. Well, sure enough, 20 years after the constitution was signed in 1787, in 1808, during Jefferson's term slavery, the importation of slaves was outlawed. But by that time, it was so entrenched in America that it didn't matter if you were southern state or northern state, slavery was part of life. And then as people tend to do, they cheated on that. They broke that law and they snuck in slaves, importing slaves, even though it was illegal. It was finally the Christians, it was the church who put an end to this. It was the Christians who formed the abolition abolitionist societies. They were the ones that helped the slaves not only escape, but they were also the ones working very openly to do away with slavery. And this resulted, as we all know culminated with the Civil War. Now, the Civil War is difficult sometimes because both sides had a, had a a righteous stand, so to speak. The North was against slavery. The South was very concerned about the taking away of the state's rights, and they had a point on that, but slavery overrode that. Slavery, from the Bible's perspective, was man stealing the way that it operated in America. Certainly there were times throughout history where there were indentured slaves because of some kind of a debt you owed that you didn't pay back, where you had to work off that debt, or maybe there was a war and people who had come in and were trying to kill you were were conquered and then they became the slaves of the nation that they came in and tried to conquer as a punishment and to keep them in subjugation. But that's not the type of slavery we had in America. America's slavery was evil. It was sinful. It was, it was what, again, the Old Testament referred to as man stealing, and that was punishable by death in the Old Testament. And so here we have this, this absolute sin. It eventuated in the Civil War and a lot of lives were lost because of that. The question is, do we want something like that again? We have abortion, we're killing innocent people. Are we going to be able to repent of that? Are we going to have a civil war? Or are we just going to and say, kill as many babies as you want, maybe I'll kill some of my own as well. Or the illegal drugs, where we're starting to make them legal, even though the consequences are very much illegal or lead to illegal activities. And so again, we're getting to the point where we're endangering, becoming endangered of a civil war. There's a passage in 1 Kings chapter 14 and it says this, starting in verse 22, Judah did evil in the eyes of the Lord. By the sins they committed, they stirred up his jealous anger more than their fathers had done. They also set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land, people engaged in all sorts of detestable practices of the nations that the Lord had driven out. In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak, king of Egypt, attacked Jerusalem. In verse 29, as for the other events of Rehoboam's reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah? There was continual warfare. Between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, the kingdom of Israel had been united in David's reign, Saul's reign before him, David's reign, and in Solomon's reign. But because the sin had become so great, the nation actually split into two nations, with two of the tribes going with Rehoboam, Solomon's son, and ten of the tribes going with Jeroboam, up to the northern kingdom of, with its capital at Samaria, and so they literally split apart. But they eventuated in civil war. Well, the second, as we analyze our problem, a second possible outcome of our problems is civil war. And again, I think most of us would agree this is absolutely unacceptable. But sometimes it becomes a consequence for our sin. So this should, I hope encourage us to get out of this sin. The third possible solution is to fleer, to hunker. The idea of let's just run away and hide. This has occurred at different times throughout history. When the church persecutions started, when the Roman government was going after Christians, and when the Jewish nation went after Christians and were trying to kill as many as they could, people literally had to flee and hide. And while That's a possibility, and I think it's more acceptable than civil war or giving in to the sin. It's a very difficult thing, and if you are just fleeing to get away and you're never trying to solve a problem, it'll just make the problem worse in the long run. But that is the third possible outcome, either fleeing or just hiding, hunkering. The fourth is we can divide the nation. The idea behind that is, okay, we can't tolerate what you're doing anymore. You don't like what we're doing. So you just take this side of the Mississippi and we'll take this side of the Mississippi or you go to this side of the Mason Dixon line and we'll go to this side and, and, and we'll just we'll have two separate nations. And while that's certainly a possibility, and I believe better than civil war. Don't forget that when the kingdoms of Israel split up like that, trying to just split, it wasn't many years where they were given over to a civil war. And this went on for hundreds of years. So if you're thinking that dividing the nation is a good idea, well, it's an idea, but I don't think it's going to turn out to be as good as many people think. So What's the solution? We've looked at four outcomes that are not good, but now let's look at a fifth outcome, and that is repentance. In Isaiah chapter 30, in verse 9, this is a rebellious people, false sons, Sons who refuse to listen to the instruction of the Lord, who say to the seers, you must not see visions, and the prophets, you must not prophesy to us what is right. Speak to us pleasant words, prophesy allusions, get out of the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. Well, now, they clearly had prophets during that time, people who spoke for God, who had special insight from God. We no longer have that today, do we? There's no such thing as a modern day prophet. I realize that there are some charlatans that represent themselves as a modern day prophet. But if you look at them very closely, you'll see that they're not speaking from God. But we do have people who do speak from God's Word. We have the Bible. We can read the Bible. We can warn people, this is what happens if you get involved with these types of sin. The only solution is to repent. And we'll have a lot of people's reaction to that, to just, you just shut up. You be quiet. We don't want to hear that anymore, especially with the sexual sins that America is involved with today. They don't want to hear that their sin is wrong, even though God's word says that it's wrong and that it has to be repented of. Same thing with the shedding of innocent blood, with our terrible practice of abortion and on and on and on. We can read from the scriptures what God's word has to say about it, but there comes a point where people don't want to hear it. They just want you to be quiet. Therefore, verse 12 of Isaiah 30. This is what the Holy One of Israel says. Since you've rejected this word and have put your trust in oppression and guile, and have relied on them, this iniquity will be to you like a breach about to fall, a bulge in a high wall whose collapse comes suddenly and instantly. For thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in repentance and rest you'll be saved, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you are not willing. This is our solution. Not the unwilling part, but the repentance and rest. And by the way, rest here is talking about a cessation from doing what you're doing. When God created the heavens and earth in six days, on the seventh day he rested or he ceased from his work. It wasn't that he was tired. and had to recover. The word means to cease. And when, when he tells the people that in repentance and rest is going to be your strength. he means you've got to cease from your sins. But this said the people wouldn't do it. And so he reminded them again, just in verse 18, the Lord longs to be gracious to you. And therefore he waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice. How blessed are all those who long for him. Even though we haven't repented yet, God's still giving us time so far. He hadn't wiped us out yet. But that day may come if we don't repent. And so as we analyze the problem, we have to understand that a fifth possible outcome, and certainly the excellent outcome is to repent and to cease from our sins. Well, when you look at these five outcomes, we realize that only one is going to work. Only one is going to result in salvation. Only one is going to help us return the nation to what it once was. Everything else is just a problem. So, again, as we analyze the problem, part of what we want to do is, is to determine what happens if we do nothing, but also what happens if we do something. And I believe that, again, the fifth possible outcome, the one that results in us doing something, repenting, and ceasing from our sin, is the only one that will work. Well, that's all for today. That's a longer lesson, certainly, but it's something to think about as we talk about our problems. They're real. They're significant. I went to a place just this morning in Amarillo and there were two men there and they were talking about how terrible the state of the nation had gotten to. They were both older gentlemen and they were very concerned about what had happened. It's hard to go anywhere today without seeing people talking about our problems and being very concerned about what they mean. But again, we have to go beyond just pointing out that we have problems. We have to analyze those problems so that we can get to the third step of solving those problems. And that's what we're going to look at next time. But for today, I truly appreciate your tuning in. I hope that you'll be looking at this, that you'll be praying sincerely to God about what you need to do, and then you will start to begin to do what you feel from God's Word. That he expects for you to do in our current situation. That's all for today, God bless you, and we'll see you next time.